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23/05/07 Ann Fisher writes on Jeremy Gilbert:
Reading Jeremy Gilbert's argument brought me straight back to that same sinking sense of disaster that I also got from the French election - and, in a different way, from the recent results in the elections in East Timor, where Fretilin, having been extensively undermined with outside backing, lost the presidential election. The odds against the left ever getting anywhere always seem so overwhelming.
However, as the life coaches advise, we have to break things down, so we don't feel too immobilised. We have to have an idea about what political action is possible without a major crisis or break, since there isn't one on the cards. What are the things we can do? What are the steps we can take along a road (i.e. visualise change as steps towards something, not just piecemeal reform)? What are the things that have worked before? If we don't think in this way, we will end up doing nothing or retreating into academia/mindless activism. And in Britain, we have to take on the argument about the public versus the commercial. That is one key place where the battle is being fought out, and where gains could be made, including within the Labour leadership. At the very least we could try to stop labour movement institutions actively co-operating with business to undermine the public sector. I think we need to find the areas where change can be made - the environment is another obvious area - and work within them.
23/05/07 Andrea Markham writes on Jeremy Gilbert:
I agree with Ann Fisher that a step by step approach with a clear goal is the best way for the left.
23/05/07 Francis Grant writes on Erik Olin Wright:
Erik Olin Wright's article provides a good model for thinking about political change, but where is the political organisation in the UK that would adopt this approach?
23/05/07 Neil Darby writes on Jeremy Gilbert:
I agree with a lot of what Jeremy Gilbert has to say, and sadly have no quick or easy solutions to offer. He makes the point that a radical confrontation with capital (actually I think Marx is someone we need to go back to and save from the 'Marxists', so don't be embarrassed by the terminology) is something that the public does not want. I think this is the wrong way of looking at the situation. Radicalism comes from experience, through practice, and when there is a belief that aims can be achieved. Nothing is static not even a passive public. Part of that passivity is the result of the trade union movement and Labour Party not involving people but instead trying to substitute itself in a legalistic approach to change. What is needed, I feel, is a revitalised trade union movement and political party that, as Jeremy Gilbert argues, gives a true picture of the state of the world, but also once again dreams of utopias and actually organises people to challenge current problems and fight for immediate goals. Not easy, but without organisation (and a belief in socialism) we are just individuals who will achieve nothing.
23/05/07 Sally Davison writes on Erik Olin Wright and Pat Devine:
Reading both these pieces – which are both welcome and useful – reminded me of some of the discussions we had when planning the 30 June event. Some people may recall that at first we were going to call the event ‘new kinds of socialism for new global modernities’ – that was to try to encapsulate the idea that (a) we haven’t given upon the idea of socialism and (b) that there are multiple contemporary modernities and therefore takes on socialism. We subsequently changed to the broader left futures concept, because some of us (including me) thought that dreaming up new kinds of socialism might be a bit too prescriptive. I started to think we should be thinking instead about what kind of questions we need to be asking about the present and who are the people we should be trying to work and liaise with. This also made me think about what Soundings as a project was trying to do in a different way. I thought we should be doing a number of things – identifying what are the key critical questions to ask, within our specific framework (call it gramscian as a short cut); thinking about how to produce socially useful critiques; ‘bringing into view’ what capitalism does; recognising other sites of contestation; exploring alternative imaginaries; challenging hegemonic interpretations; trying to be involved in articulating and making connections between different elements of counter-hegemonic practices and ways of thinking. I mention all this because I think these more fluid ways of thinking about left futures can sometimes be more helpful in unblocking our thoughts than imagining specific scenarios for the future. To have a goal and then look at the obstacles to getting there may make us blinkered about other things that are going on.
24/05/07 Mark Perryman writes on Jeremy Gilbert:
Jeremy Gilbert makes depressing but entirely correct reading. What was once moderate social democracy has become the intellectual property of Labour's outside Left. Jon Cruddas only seems like a breath of fresh air because he is talking this kind of language. New Labour was an entirely conservative model of modernity, made ten times worse by its warmongering and sleaziness. Soundings if it is to make a serious contribution cannot simply seek to conjure up the intellectal grounds of an alternative modernity. It must engage with the agencies, in and out of the Labour Party, which might shape it. Kinnock to some extent was able to inspire the emotions Jeremy describes because we all presumed a Labour government was the alternative we hope for after Thatcherism. 1997-2007 has rocked those dreams to their core and we cannot afford to ignore that any more.
25/05/07 Jonathan Rutherford writes on Erik Olin Wright:
Erik’s article captures what I think Soundings as an intellectual project is trying to do. In short it’s attempting to turn the desirable into a viable politics. Its relationship with Compass, as well as the many Soundings contributors who participated in the Compass Programme for Renewal, is about facilitating the next step of turning a viable politics into achievable reform.
Soundings comes out of the New Left and it has a strong independent tradition of critical analysis and of open, plural and radical thought. It is one of the few places in which academics can publish politically engaged and scholarly articles for a wider public, and this has enabled it over the years to build up support within the universities. It has provided a forum for a critical and oppositional politics to neo-liberalism as well as trenchant criticism of New Labour. But if it wants to gain political influence, I think it must play its own distinctive role in a network of other journals and organisations. This is why we have organised the 30 June event in association with Red Pepper and Compass.
We need to create a left intellectual culture which is able to connect with political struggles for social transformation, generate imaginative and philosophical thinking around culture and politics, as well as giving shape to feasible political strategies. It also requires a connection to real political leverage. Such a culture cannot be contained within a single organisation, but requires a more networked approach which has the flexibility to manage the inevitable political differences and contradictions.
25/05/07 Grahame Thompson writes on 'Are we all neo-liberals now?' (A fuller blog will follow):
In my written comments I would like to ask how far anybody can now fully 'escape' the neo-liberal embrace? Is the left so embedded in this that it too must reassess its attitude towards neo-liberalism? Is the left itself partly enacting and performing the neo-liberal agenda and project, if unwittingly, unknowingly and unrecognisably?
This is a very difficult and controversial argument to make. But I think the issue of 'responsibilization' is so prevalent that it begs this question. One of neo-liberalism's most effective moves has been to 'unite' the left's commitment to 'participation' with the rights commitment to 'responsibility'. These have merged in terms of the further over-determined conceptual apparatus of 'performance'.
But I would then ask whether there still remains a space for the authentic left to, not so much 'stand aside' from neo-liberalism and simple criticise it, but to partly embrace it so as to manoeuvre for 'progressive' positions within it. So the left would need to adopt a completely different stance towards neo-liberalism if all of this were to prove the case.
Grahame Thompson’s prescient argument about the hegemony of neo-liberalism doesn’t go far enough. I’d say neo-liberalism is by now sublime, in the sense that it not so much represents something ineffable beyond our capacity to know, describe or understand it, but the perfect illusion brought about by our collective indifference to the way in which the very status of truth and knowledge have been altered. This view is summed up well in Lyotard’s idea of the performativity criterion.
As is well known, Lyotard’s basic premise is that modern knowledge established its monopoly of Truth through the use of grand narratives (e.g. Marxism, Hegelianism), which not only promised justice at the end of inquiry but were also able to legitimate themselves in such compelling ways that they were hardly questioned - by their adherents at least. In modern society, it emerged that it was science (rather than religion) that would be the chief criterion by which the most convincing of these knowledge claims were made. However, Lyotard points out that with the emergence of the hegemony of neo-liberalism there has been a conspicuous shift in the way in which knowledge claims come to be legitimated. Basically, capitalism has become so pervasive that there is nothing left that is not commodifiable. Science (like politics, religion, sex or sociology or sport or philosophy) has become merely another commodity and in turn truth is now determined, not by its ability to tell the Truth, but by its exchange value. If modernity in its formative stage stood for the language game of denotation (the difference between true or false), modernity today stands for an alternative, ‘technical’ language game of efficiency versus inefficiency. As a result performativity becomes the new criterion of the legitimacy of knowledge claims.
For Lyotard, then, the upshot is that the very status of knowledge has been altered and performativity has now come to represent a kind of hyper-capitalist efficiency which is able to bring the ‘pragmatic functions of knowledge clearly to light and elevate all language games to self- knowledge’. Truth is now performative rather than constative and the most convincing truth claims are those which the market will determine are the most performatively efficient. In a nutshell, everything is judged by its market value and if it doesn’t sell, it is not what is wanted, pure and simply. Truth is today in the manner of its performance and the upshot is that if branding was once upon a time solely the language of the market it has now become the language of the world as a whole. This explains the reason why Neil Kinnock seemed so embarrassing when he addressed the country; he spoke in a language outside the orbit of this new reality. More knowing than Kinnock, Ségolène Royale did not dare say to French voters ‘only something like a revolutionary mobilization will have any hope of defending the way of life to which you have become accustomed’ because she knows that in a world governed by the performativity criterion it is no longer ‘cool’ to say so (cool is the frontline feeling of the neo-liberal age not only because it has an elusive disposition, but also because it operates with the sense of having a certain independence from rational evaluation).
31/05/07 David Coates writes on Jeremy Gilbert
Jeremy Gilbert seems to have succumbed to an unnecessary pessimism. "Neo-liberalism" is by no means as hegemonic as he suggests or as uniform in application across the developed world. Gosta Esping-Anderson's work shows that patterns of inequality vary widely across countries as do levels of taxation, the extent of redistribution and the size of the state. There is ample scope for social and political choice even in a world of open markets and mobile capital. Adair Turner makes a very similar case in "Just Capital" - odd isn't it that a "liberal" is more optimistic about the prospects for social democracy than most of the "left"?
There is consequently no reason to believe that our political options have been narrowed significantly or that social democracy is in headlong retreat.
Even the OECD has conceded (see their review of the 1994 Jobs Study and the papers published in recent editions of their "Employment Outlook") that there is no single route to full employment and the Nordic approach is just as viable (and probably more sustainable) than red blooded Anglo-Saxon capitalism. The prophets of neo-liberalism seem to have (partially) abandoned the faith.
We might usefully refer too to the work of the US economist Peter Lindert who has shown in a masterful study ("Growing Public") that a widening of the public realm has been a critical element in economic growth - contrary to the strictures of "pure" neo-liberalism.
My approach is therefore rather different from Jeremy's. Social democrats have every reason to be intellectually self confident. The market fundamentalists have failed to demonstrate that their model is superior. Let's recognise that fact and move on. If we start believing the right's propaganda we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
The best remedy for those neo-marxists out there who still retain a slightly depressive cast of mind is Gramsci's old maxim: "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will". But even the most dispassionate assessment would lead us to believe that it is the right rather than the left that is in retreat across most of the developed world - leaving aside the exceptional case of France...where the PS was offering a better yesterday rather than a brighter tomorrow.
31/05/07 Tony Blackshaw writes on Michael Rustin
What Michael Rustin overlooks in his excellent article is that when turning to Anthony Giddens New Labour was looking for a Messiah figure who could tell it what the world was really like without recognizing that is the job of democratic politics. Politicians will of course always need gurus or prophets, but they do not need Messiahs. As Agnes Heller points out, whatever the content of a Messiah promise, it is always a false promise. Having said that we should never assume that the Messiah will never come, but we should treat all putative Messiah figures as pretenders (and every one of them is a pretender). Giddens is a pretender.
What is most wrong with Giddens is what is most wrong with sociology. That is he continues to try to make sense of ‘society’ with the theories and methodologies that have been around since sociology’s inception without recognising that the trouble with sociology’s doxa (the knowledge it thinks with but not about) does not work as well as they once did. Indeed, most of the concepts and ideas sociologists work with today are dead, or have at least become what Ulrich Beck calls zombie categories. The upshot is that if ‘society’ continues to exist in the worn-out theories and methodologies that still fill the heads of sociologists, its members – the ordinary men and women of the sociality – today by and large have no idea that they belong to it. As Milan Kundera might say sociology is surrounded by a curtain of pre-interpretation that occludes it from the view of the real world and that curtain is indeed thick stuff, 'woven of it own legends'. Any sociologist worthy of the name must understand that it is part of his or her job to rip that curtain down to ask of sociology some operative questions. What this means is that the role that sociology needs to play in the transition from the Blair to the Brown era is to effect change by coming up with new ideas which, if tried out, might solve or dissolve, problems created by the old ones.
01/06/07 Neal Lawson writes on Mark Perryman
Dear Mark, You say that Compass is a pale imitation of the soft left of the 1980s. Well as Chair of Compass I'm bound to suffer from Mandy Rice Davies syndrome of 'I would say that wouldn't I?' but here you go - Mark you are wrong. I was part of the soft left in the 1980s and let me tell you it was sadly more soft than left. The flag carrier in the Labour Party was the Labour Coordinating Committee (LCC). It did a job on some internal party reform matters and the wider democracy agenda. But at its height could boast only 1000 members and little else. But it did give birth to a pale imitation in 2003 - Compass.
Compass now has 2500 members. We have a group of MPs committed to democratic left politics. We have campaigned inside and outside parliament on education and lost and civil liberties and won. We made a stand on Trident bringing together over 100 civil society leaders like Stephen Hawkins plus dozens of NGOs and pressure groups. We have reached out to Oxfam, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. We are running a campaign on the commercialisation of childhood which has assembled a huge coalition from faith leaders, to teachers and parents. We have built a relationship with the unions on the basis of our strength. And we are beginning to build relationships across Europe, into the US and to further field to Australia. Expect more Compasses to spring up.
We know we have to build global alliances because we have gone through a huge policy and idea process called the Programme for Renewal. This involved hundreds of academics and thinkers and has produced three pretty good reports on the good society, new economics and the renewal of democracy. It's just the start of a process that will take us to a tighter policy agenda to campaign on that will be determined by our members. Many people from Soundings have been instrumental in this process. We know that the Labour Party is a necessary but insufficient vehicle for our politics.
It's all work in progress. We started from a low base. After the death of Robin Cook there was no soft left. We have had to reinvent it. Now we are campaigning like mad to get Jon Cruddas elected to the Deputy leadership of the Labour Party. He has come from nowhere to be a contender. Just as important he has shifted the debate to issues like council housing, new rights for immigrants and fighting the BNP.
Come and see this pale imitation in action at our national conference on 9th June. Hundreds of speakers and over 1000 activists and thinkers will fill Methodist Hall. The inspiration was the Marxism Today events of the 1980s. We need all the help we can get to put a bit of colour in our cheeks. All the best, Neal
04/06/07 Mark Perryman replies to Neal Lawson
Dear Neal. You are clearly hurt by my depiction of your Compass Labour lobby group as a 'pale imitation' of the soft left of the 1980s. Compass, and Neal as their media spokesperson, is one of the few bright sparks in an indelibly grey Labour firmanent. But to pretend that they in any way resemble the impact of the 1980s Labour Left is to disastrously underestimate the scale of the defeat Blair, with Brown mostly in tow, has inflicted on the Left. The McDonnell leadership challenge suffered as a result of this, we might have expected better of Neal and his co-thinkers. I'm sorry tub-thumping doesn't do very much for me these days.
Whatever its faults Bennism was a huge movement. It brought many thousands of active socialists into the Labour Party. The municipal left did something similar at the local level with the different examples set by Livingstone and Blunkett in London and Sheffield of particular importance. The democratic reform of the Labour Party was the result of tireless efforts by Labour's rank and file. Popular mass campaigns, CND in particular, were built at a community level often by Labour Party activists. The party became a serious option for feminists and black activists seeking social change. This was a considerable movement, far in excess in terms of size and impact of Compass. The only trouble, and I'm being ironic here Neal, Labour couldn't win a General Election.
In 1997 of course all that changed, but at a terrible cost for a politics of idealism. Its not just Blair and Brown who are the problem. Hain, Hewitt, Blunkett these and many more were figures of the Left in the Thatcher/Major years. In government they twisted and turned to deliver a government quite unlike anything those in the 1980s soft left could have ever imagined. It is an insult to our intelligence and memory of the past 10 years that Hain now presents himself as a figure of the Left, against policies he has wilfully supported for the past decade.
Compass does its thing, good. But a national conference backed grandly with free advertising in The Guardian and the New Statesman which attracts a crowd of a thousand is hardly earth-shattering. And looking at its format it is plainly obvious precisely nothing has been learned from a decades worth of disaffection from politics. We need a fundamental remaking of the political if we are going to engage those turned off by the self-serving political class and hangers-on who have helped elevate cynicism to the only credible response to what they inflict upon us. Conferences of this type, vastly over-priced, and dependent on one round of speeches after another are as much of a turn off as one can possibly imagine. Is it so hard to reimagine forms that are actually pleasurable and empowering? Marxism Today attempted that in a small way in the 1980s. It took imagination, and in retrospect we didn't go far enough in breaking with these forms but at least we tried. With a tiny budget the T-shirt company I helped found, Philosophy Football, has been experimenting with some Friday night club nights mixing food, drink, dance, film, ideas, visuals. The Left won't engage beyond its incredibly depleted ranks until it accepts that its forms are part of the problem and I can't see anything that Compass conference offers to suggest it has even the beginnings of a recognition of this.
Neal is generous enough to recognise that the political landscape stretches beyond the Labour Party. He can hardly do anything else given the enormous numbers who have left a party that treats Hazel Blears as a serious candidate for its Deputy Leadership. But as a Labour loyal organisation how seriously can Compass explore the potential of other outbreaks of Left renewal. The success of the Greens in Brighton, Norwich, Lancaster in particular, their two MEPs and highly effective voices on the GLA. And while George Galloway has turned himself into a bad joke, what about the local success of Respect in Birmingham and Preston. These are fragments but they deserve attention, there may be broader lessons for a constituency who in all likelihood are never going to trust Labour with their hopes again. Internationally of course the experimentation and impact of this 'outside Left' is of considerably more significance and it about time the British Left, or more correctly the English Left, took what is going on elsewhere in the European Left of Social Democracy parties seriously. We might actually learn why we've failed so badly to carve out such a space ourselves.
In the 1980s the GLC and other Labour led councils engaged in a quite extraordinary effort at redefining the local state, which in turn offered the potential for a renewal of what local parties might do, might look like. The Labour Party published a newsstand magazine, New Socialist, which for a few years until they purged its editor Stuart Weir for a tactical voting article, not only sold tens thousands of copies (considerably more than Marxism Today) but was genuinely pluralist in its content. And when Labour launched Red Wedge, its movement of musicians, comedians, film-makers and others it was seriously trying to connect to a different way of doing politics. The Municipal Left was defeated in the end by Thatcher's reform of local government, the Labour narrowed the content of New Socialist then closed it down, and the same fate befell Red Wedge. But all three point to the potential of an entirely different modernisation of Labour than the one Blair imposed and all the evidence indicates that Brown will continue with. But what emains of a movement capable of spearheading such a renewal? Cruddas apart, the signs aren't exactly encouraging are they!
A pale imiation? I'm afraid so. That doesn't mean there aren't alternatives to explore but we start from a much lower base than Neal would have us believe, Labour is simply not as important as it once was, and the old forms of politics he continues to champion are almost entirely worthless. To move on we need an entirely different formation. That's what we should be debating, because without such an agency what precisely is the point?
04/06/07 Sally Davison replies to Mark Perryman
Compass may not be the organisation where Mark Perryman wants to place his energies, but I am not sure why he feels the need to criticise it so heavily. I too am very critical of the Labour Party and therefore am not as interested in Compass's focus on that as on its other aspects. However I welcome its attempts to broaden itself out - even if this sometimes does take a backseat because of their involvement in the main events of the Labour Party.
We all know that the left has suffered a series of defeats over the last thirty years, so berating people who are trying to find a different way through the jungle seems churlish. The Labour Party is the main vehicle for left electoral politics in this country, and those who are trying to shift it to the left, and to maintain some level of debate within it, should be supported. After all, the Communist Party and Marxism Today are no longer with us. At least the Labour Party still exists.
The future for the left does not lie in this kind of heavy-handedness. Part of the pleasure of politics is in discussion - let's try to find ways of discussing in a friendly way.
04/06/07 Viet-Hai Phung comments on Jeremy Gilbert:
The problem that both Segolene Royal and Neil Kinnock had was a perception, rightly or wrongly, by the electorate that they did not really believe in the electoral platforms that they stood on. In Kinnock's case, as leader, he was heavily involved in policy development. His two defeats may have resulted from a perception that the changes made between 1983 and 1992 were cosmetic and were borne out of political expediency rather than out of conviction. Royal had the excuse that she was chosen as the Presidential candidate after the party's manifesto had been agreed so had to defend it, however reluctantly.
In the analysis of Labour's history post-Kinnock, the role of John Smith always appears to be overlooked but should not be under-estimated. He commanded respect right across the labour movement and implemented some incremental changes, e.g. One Member One Vote, that laid the foundation for Blair.
What Blair did brilliantly in opposition was to revamp the Labour Party to take account of social changes. He sold himself as a national, rather than a party figure. There was a clear sense of what needed to be done. Whether the third way can truly be described as social democratic is debatable. And he got his message across by using a ruthlessly efficient spin machine. However, what worked in opposition has not worked as well in Government. The Government sends out mixed messages depending on who its audience is. As a result, the groups that have benefited most from it policies, e.g. poor pensioners, children in poor families, the working poor, are among the groups least likely to vote Labour.
In order to renew itself, the next Labour Government needs to have a set of core values, which are clearly progressive, rather than just specifically social democratic. That would help to re-build the type of broad-based consensus of the centre and centre left we had prior to 1997..
05/06/07 Jeremy Gilbert replies to Mark Perryman:
I think it's worth noting that, as I read him, Mark is really making a criticism of Soundings rather than Compass. Rightly or wrongly, the implication of his remarks is that Soundings' enthusiasm for Compass is not so much problematic in itself as depressing when compared with its relative lack of interest in some of the other issues that he mentions. Whether this is a fair criticism is another issue...
It might be more interesting, however, to debate the following question: was the strategic decision of the 'soft left' effectively to side with the Labour right against the 'hard' left from the late 80s onwards, a historical mistake? I think in effect that this is one of the questions that Compass DOES have to address to itself. If New Labour's capitulation to neoliberalism has been as disastrous as much Compass discourse implies that it has, then doesn't that mean that the left was right all along that sacrificing all remnants of socialism for short-term electability was likely to prove a disastrous strategy? And where would that observation leave the legatees of the soft left? And if that isn't the case, then why isn't it, given that things have turned out pretty much as many Trots and Bennites would have predicted? I'm not saying that this IS the case, so please - no polemics against the hard left, of whom I am not a representative. The question has to be asked though - if New Labour represented a defeat for the soft left, and if Compass now wants to revive it, then at precisely what point does Compass assume the soft left 'went wrong'? Was it in the failure to mobilise behind a possible Cook leadership? The acceptance of Brown's first budget? Or was it much earlier? This really does matter because any possible answer will generate different strategic priorities for the future….
Some observations on this general question. Why couldn't the left mobilise successful opposition to…war…differential university tuition fees…in fact to ANYTHING that this government has done… within the Parliamentary Labour Party? Partly because the current generation of Labour MPs grew up in a climate where being against-the-left was the only political reflex that mattered, so great was the (understandable) hostility to Bennism, Militant Tendency, etc. But if the long-term result of that moment, which really was the moment when the soft left 'won' control of the party, has been a situation in which anything resembling a traditional leftist critique simply cannot be mobilised within the parliamentary party, then was the basic judgement which formed the soft left - the judgement that the prize for moderation in the short term would be an opportunity to shift the political agenda to the left in the long term - always already mistaken? I really don't know, and would be interested to hear responses.
PS, aside from this, I agree with the people who have agreed with me and disagree with the people who don't.
05/06/07 Mark Perryman responds to Sally Davison:
Well I'm not exactly alone in not being attracted to the Labour Party! How many members have left since 1997, 200,000? and what is the state of the party at a constituency level, with less than half of constituency parties even bothering to nominate a candidate for the Deputy Leadership not exactly overflowing with activists I suspect. This isn't personal, churlish or heavy-handed, but it is a plea for some realism. It is the defeats of the last ten years when Labour has been in government which we should focus on right now as a Brown Premiership approaches. Of course the Labour Party remains central but there are some big questions that need to be asked. In what sense does it remain a party of social democracy? What support, including financial, should the trade unions continue to give the Labour Party? How significant can organisations to the Left of Labour be in reconstructing a politics of ideals and hope? Should such formations adopt an electoral strategy? What democratic mechanisms remain in the Labour Party to shift it to the Left in the way Sally describes?
Sally is obviously right. Neither the Communist Party nor Marxism Today exist any more, the Labour Party does. Is this a good, bad, or in-between thing? Does there remain the potential to patiently build a next Left outside of the Labour Party , or is Labour all we now have to involve ourselves in? And why is it that in almost every other European Country such a party to the left of social democracy exists, and in some are actually growing. Why does the British, in particular the English Left, so wilfully ignore what is happening elsewhere in Europe. Doesn't the Linkspartei in Germany, the Dutch Socialist Party, Portugal's Left Bloc, Italy's Rifondazione matter? Could we possibly learn something from them?
I'm all for conducting politics in a friendly way. Even more importantly politics should be pleasurable and empowering, entertaining and inspiring. I am entirely unconvinced that conferences and seminars, whether organised by the Far Left or the Soft Left have the potential to achieve any of this. Our entire political culture needs to be transformed if we are serious about engaging with anybody apart from ourselves. Lets not make the mistake of becoming comfortable with the small gains that might be being made instead of ducking some really difficult questions. And lets ask, and answer, those questions in the framework of constructing an agency which can actually effect political change.
5/06/07 Michael Gilligan responds to Sally Davison:
Sally, I couldn't agree more. There is no utility to anyone in criticising Neal. He passionately believes in a Labour party that uses some of the values and insights that came out of the New Left, MT, etc, and is fighting hard to try and restore some semblance of sanity to the party that means a great deal to him.
Neal is bright enough to realise the mess Labour is in. Considering the uphill task he has taken on, to get this far requires both balls and a degree of stamina that most people don't have. It's quite possible Labour is facing extinction (IMHO it is beyond saving) but if he succeeds in shaping into even the pale imitation of the soft left that Mark is castigating him for, surely it would be an infinitely more desirable entity than the lardy-arsed, half-witted, neocon rump that it is today?
5/06/07 Andy Pearmain responds to Mark, Neal, Jeremy and Sally:
At last! A real debate about contemporary British politics in Soundings (as opposed to all the - sorry folks - airy-fairy waffle about the good life and yet more implications of globalisation...). Neal, Mark, Sally and Jeremy are to be congratulated for stirring things up and raising the central questions of the recent history of the British left and what we can actually do in our pretty dismal contemporary circumstances. Let me chuck a few further provocations into the mix.
Firstly, Neal and Compass. Let's start by saying that Compass is the only sign of intelligent life around the LP at the moment, and for that they deserve a little place in history. But they have left some pretty major strategic issues unresolved, some of which Mark and Jeremy have touched upon. Is Compass a retread of the soft left/LCC of the '80s? Not consciously, as Neal rightly responds, but it does often have the feel of a (vain) attempt to rewind the clock back before "the wrong turn" of New Labour. Mark is right to say that Compass events feel very much part of the "Labour tradition" - I always feel like I've wandered into some awful throwback conference fringe meeting. I think the bigger, current problem facing Compass is that it has become a repository for all the many and diverse accumulated grievances within the Labour Party, which explains the current furore over its (misguided and quite unnecessary in my opinion) support for Brown. One thing these grumblers generally agree on is that they loathe Brown (almost) as much as Blair. Compass still has to decide - is it a creature of Labourism, and as such one of the last gasps of that generally woeful ideology of British social conservatism? Or might it just be a "raft" to carry some intelligent, worthwhile survivors away from the wreckage towards some new, more promising vehicle?
Mark - you know I've got a lot of time for what you did with New Times and Philosophy Football, but I think you're over-impressed with the hard left, Bennism and the GLC, and that whole package of 1980s "alternative activism". So much of it was merely a vehicle for the vanity and ambition of career politicians like Benn and Livingstone, who continue in pretty much the same vein (and within a certain limited framework, i.e. the nostalgic left and London, alarmingly successfully). The crucial, central problem of hard leftism was that it delayed a full, rounded appreciation of the epochal nature of Thatcherism. The left has been playing catch-up ever since, which explains our exhaustion, and also the ascendancy of New Labour, which took on certain, superficial elements of the MTD-style critique of Thatcherism but left its underlying ideological framework unchallenged (and has indeed gone on to deepen and extend it even further). Sorry Mark, but I think elements of what you say embody what I was getting at in my earlier blog about leftism - sometimes we can be so "innovative" and "pioneering" in our political practice that we end up completely out of touch with most ordinary people.
Jeremy - you ask when did the soft left "go wrong"? Well, I'm really not sure there's much to be gained from such exercises in "wishful rethinking". The concept of "history gone wrong" is a central element of the phenomenon of "uchronia", about which I wrote an article tucked away in the back of Soundings a couple of years ago. All we can usefully do is conduct a hard historical analysis of the function of the soft left in labour history. In my view (and most other labour historians, I think), it was a transitional, curiously insubstantial phenomenon, and behind the repackaging and rebranding primarily represented a way back to the more comfortable right-wing/revisionist terrain of labourism. Of course, Blair and Brown have travelled even further down that road, beyond social democracy and arguably labourism altogether. What we have to recognise is that all that stuff is dead and gone, and we really do need something genuinely new.
Finally, Sally - you point out that the CP and MTD no longer exist. Bloody good thing too, say I. The CP was a major historical failure (if not necessarily a mistake), repeatedly missing whatever opportunities for political breakthrough presented themselves. I also think the value and achievements of MTD (oh dear, I'm about to fart in church...) are vastly overrated. It hit the wave of "magazine culture" at a very opportune time, and established a very effective signature tune, but surprisingly little of its content stands up now (I've just finished re-reading a lot of it, and apart from anything else was amazed to find that a publication retrospectively labelled "Gramscian" only had one article about Gramsci in the whole of its 1980s heyday!). To a surprising extent, it was a part of the soft left "transitionalism" I talked about above. But, and this is important, both the CP and MTD continue to cast long ghostly shadows over the British left, not least because nothing has arisen to replace them as vehicles for progressive, creative, thoughtful mass left wing politics. Having said that, elements of the CP "legacy" do linger on - the peculiar New Politics Network, Soundings itself (which, whether consciously or not, still has a recognisably latter-day CP/MTD "feel"), all these wandering academics like me contributing to "debates" like this. The current of thinking which the CPGB at its best represented is still around, and in some countries thriving. Perhaps we shall only fully exorcise the CP/MTD ghost when we have consciously created a new agency to promote that thinking in Britain, a genuinely "Modern Prince".
5/06/07 Michael Gilligan responds to Andy Pearmain:
Andy: I have a lot of admiration for the Soundings/MT/SOTT posse myself. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Some genuinely interesting stuff emerged from those schools of thought. The issue I suppose is what can we usefully apply to our current situation.
5/06/07Andy Pearmain responds to Michael Gilligan:
Point taken. What tended to happen with MTD was that the "opening" articles of debates were absolutely brilliant (and do stand up well), such as Hobsbawm's Forward March, Stuart Hall's Great Moving Right Show and Robin Murray's Fordism and Post-Fordism. The ensuing debates would then go all over the place - frequently repetitive and uninteresting, rehearsing particular "lines" and "positions" within the sectarian topography of the CP and the "broader left", or particular personal or professional or academic hobbyhorses. There were also, particularly in the New Times debate, clear and firm foundations being laid for New Labour - especially the stuff by Leadbeater and Mulgan, which was brilliantly facile, just like the character they both ended up supporting and advising.
So yes, it is a more complex picture than simply all bad or all good, and there are elements of "the legacy" we can still use (most of the things, for example, by Stuart Hall, including that one MTD Gramsci article, Gramsci and Us in 1987), but let's be honest and see it as part of the story of pretty catastrophic defeat for anything coherently "democratic left" in British politics. We face, to use the title of Hall's 1989 anthology, "a hard road to renewal".
6/06/07 Michael Gilligan responds to Andy Pearmain:
Andy Pearmain # Laughs # Brilliantly facile! You have a point there. I must go back and read some of the MT stuff. Anything in particular anyone would like to recommend?
Speaking of MT and the brilliantly facile, roughly four years ago I attended an event at the ICA titled "Where do ex-communists go?". Aaronovitch, Campbell, Moore and (Francis) Beckett and were on the podium. David was attacking the mainstream media pundits who were at the time opposing PFI/PPP's. Over a few minutes a selection of ordinary people in the audience made some common-sense reasons why they are bad value for money. In effect David 'lost it' and couldn't make a coherent statement for the remainder of the event.
6/06/07 Mark Perryman responds to other comments:
We're getting a tad lost here in trying to outdo ourselves with which bits of the historic left to cling on to. However Jeremy does raise a crucial strategic juncture. The choice way back in the mid-1990s by a New Statesman editorial, backing Blair, it commanded, was 'the only show in town'. And that was what most of us bought, if we're honest. It turns out he was on a mission not to wage war on cynicism, which of course he has gloriously reinforced as just about the only sane view of the political class. But more importantly he has extinguished anything resembling idealism in politics.
Andy is therefore correct to warn against over-romanticising the Bennite/Livingstonite Left but what we can at least say was they represented some kind of dogged commitment to ideals. As did the Communist Party, at its best. Dumping this in the drive towards the managerial technocracy that new Labour cast itself as has left a serious gap in politics. If you like new Labour has privatised idealism, it's about time it was returned to the public realm.
This neatly returns us to the central issue I was seeking to raise in my original piece. Agency. Some, like Compass, are going to construct a new Left in the Labour Party, they deserve our support as well as occasional criticism. And this includes asking the serious question, do the democratic structures remain to enable you to shift the party towards your way of thinking and acting?
Others, and these are principally localised, will seek to challenge Labour from the Left, this includes the Greens, Respect, SNP, and in some instances the Lib-Dems. We cannot ignore these efforts, some are successful, some not, why? What lessons can be learnt from local successes? And here the international dimension is absolutely central. Unless we are wedded to a perverse form of English particularism surely it's worth exploring why the outside Left in the rest of Europe is markedly more successful than over here. Others will seek a response at the level of civil society. The post-Seattle 'turn' to anti- capitalism and major setpiece confrontations at the G8 and WTO seems to be in decline. Why? Does this mean the kind of mass, militant, youthful and global movement Seattle seemed to encapsulate has come to an end? A depressing conclusion if it has but the state of this once vibrant form of political organising needs discussing.
I could go on. Some, perhaps all, will be parts of any patchwork of resistance. Sometimes in conflict with one another, sometimes co-operating. But all, and there are of course others, trade unions in particular, or the most successful movement of the past year local anti-BNP campaigns, are agencies of change. We cannot afford another ten years of Blair or his successor extinguishing the last flames of political idealism. Agencies that can resist this, recover and build anew are an absolutely central focus for anyone serious about politics. And the idea that this will all be conjured up within the Labour Party is frankly ridiculous to even the most casual observer of the defeats Labour has inflicted on the left under Blair and threatens to do so all over again under Brown.
Finally. Such a focus simply cannot be divorced from an examination, an experimentation even, with forms of politics. This is crucial, if we fool ourselves into believing that the ways of organising, educating, discussing that we've depended on previously remain any good at all for reaching beyond the seriously depleted ranks of existing activists then we really have been sleepwalking through the Blair years. Unless those ways change we really are finished.This demands a prefigurative practice of the left, to do whatever it can to set an example that there is a different way of doing politics, and in that process we will make our idealism too. That's the kind of project that could connect with, inspire the next Left.
7/06/07 Michael Gilligan responds to Mark Perryman:
Mark from reading your contributions it looks like you already have your ducks set up in a row but you're not getting to the point. Can you cut to the chase and put them up so we can have a look at them?
7/06/07 Jeremy Gilbert writes:
A minor quibble. It may be arguable, but it's not clear that the anti-capitalist movement is in decline. Attendances at the World Social Forum have continued to increase every year. 2005 arguably saw the 'summit protest' reach a new level of mainstream participation with the links made between the more radical end of the meovement and the more moderate NGOs through Make Poverty History. Right now the protests against the G8 in Germany are large and intense (see Indymedia UK/). The UK media have lost interest in this formation as they lose interest in any phenomenon not directly connected to government or the culture of celebrity after a couple of years, and the dispiriting effects of the apparent failure of the anti-war protests are still casting a shadow over UK 'activist' culture. The WSF has its problems and ATTAC has been having a massive internal crisis. But overall, to compare the current situation, whereby the WSF process continues to involve far more people than were ever involved in things like the Seattle and Genoa events, to that moment of spectacular media protests a few years ago, and to conclude that these movements are 'in decline', is to risk assuming that what the Guardian and BBC tell us about world politics is all that is really happening...at the same time the developments that Mark refers to as well as the massive leftward-shift of Latin America are connected to this movement in many ways. The rise of Latin American socialism would not have been possible had the US not got itself mired in a hopeless situation in the Middle East. The difficulty of this situation for Bush is in part a product of the US losing all international legitimacy, a situation which was itself greatly assisted by the international protests against the war which were, in fact, initially co-ordinated at the first European Social Forum. So - just because this stuff isn't making headlines any more doesn't mean that it isn't happening, and in some ways on a much bigger scale than several years ago.
Beyond this quibble, however - surely one of the reasons for the decline of interest in this movement in the UK has been precisely the fact that it's been ignored and dismissed by all 'mainstream' political leaders, and most intellectuals, despite having some clear impacts on a global scale.
7/06/07 Mark Perryman responds to Jeremy Gilbert and Michael Gilligan:
Michael. No 'ducks in a row'. In fact the precise opposite. What I am pleading for is a recognition firstly of the scale of the defeat the Blair/Brown partnership have inflicted on the left. Hence we cannot afford to delude ourselves that modest revivals are much more than that, though any kind of revival right now deserves some encouraging noises! Secondly, rather than presuming that only a Labourite pressure group, ie Compass, is worthy of these encouraging noises lets recognise that a strategy of challenging Labour from the left will take place inside and outside the party, and indeed more often than not no party. These efforts deserve an engagement too. My hunch, for what its worth, is that most left idealists want to have very little to do with the Labour Party following the last ten years, and moreover the democratic structures no longer exist to shift the part to the left, but I also recognise that following an outside Left strategy on its own would be futile. Thirdly rather than looking to Latin America, a political and social system we have very little in common, we must engage with sections of the European Left who are challenging their social democratic parties from the left. And fourthly, however limited and partial our practice must be rigorously prefigurative, remaking our political culture so that it is pleasurable, participative and inspirational should dictate how we organise.
Those would be my ducks in a row.
Jeremy. Yes the current G8 protests number a few thousand but they seem to lack the centrality of Genoa and the achievement of Seattle which did at some stage stop the WTO meeting. Two things have changed, the repressive state has got organised while the protesators tactics have hardly altered. And secondly the links that began to build between direct actionists, particularly in the anti-roads movement withy communities have started to fracture with the turn towards international setpiece confrontations and anti-capitalism. And the NGOs have successfully professionalised part of the movement. Make Poverty History and Live8 were indicative of this. A traditional march and concert, very little left behind. Live Earth will be the same. Jeremy is right to be serious about a Next Left we need to engage with these movements, celebrate and generalise their successes, examine the reasons for failures and setbacks. One is useless and deluding without the other.
8/06/07 Michael Gilligan responds to Mark Perryman:
Mark: I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself. Especially the 'scale of defeat' issue.
What aspects of the European Left are you thinking on? Although not an academic I have a preference for Continental Thought but let's not forget some interesting stuff has emerged from the North American Left. Speaking of which, Mike Davis has some thoughts on the bear-traps the Left should consider avoiding.
(I'm enjoying reading the articles posted)
11/06/07 Mark Perryman writes:
One of the most creative moments of the British left was its engagement with Eurocommunism in the late 1970s. A similar moment was 1968, again engaging with forces and movements beyond our shores.
Right now neo-liberalism is triumphant across what we once thought of as 'the West'. And in most cases social democracy is putting up a frankly weak resistance. The defeat of the left isn't national, it's international. Parts of Latin America may inspire but it is unlikely that Chavez, Morales and others can offer us models for the reconstruction of a European Left.
Although the defeat is continental, in almost every other European country apart from Britain there exists a sizeable party to the left of social democracy, often with deeply imbedded links to social movements and trade unions, which while nowhere near hegemonic does at least succeed in posing a substantial challenge to this headlong rush to the right, including by nominally social democratic parties such as the PS in France, or SPD in Germany. Given the current state of new Labour, the huge numbers who have exited stage left, the unions that have disaffiliated and those who have scaled back their financial support we might think we might have something to learn from the European experience? In particular Linkspartei in Germany, Rifondazione in Italy, Left Bloc in Portugal, Dutch Socialist Party, Red-Green Alliance in Denmark.
18/06/07 Andy Pearmain writes:
Just a brief response, Sally, from one of the "P"-s. I'm sure we can discuss things further and in greater depth at the Soundings event (at least I hope we get chance to). I should also stress that these are my views, not necessarily those of the other two P-s and the D.
Yes, FBB does have a bias towards history and political economy, mainly because its authors are economists and historians. I make no apology for this, because the last 20 years have seen no shortage of "cultural politics" on the British left (as reflected in most issues of Soundings I've seen), but hardly any serious political economy. This is the primary reason so many of us were so susceptible to New Labour, because we did not not initially see its underlying economic project of deepening neo-liberalism.
What I think is really interesting (and tricky) is the contribution "cultural politics" has made to the regeneration, expansion and ultimately deepening hegemonic reach of neo-liberalism, so that the "new social movements" of the 1980s (the familiar checklist of gays, women and blacks) have been so thoroughly incorporated within the new 21st century capitalist dispensation (I'm thinking pink pound, "feminised" consumerism, and what Stuart Hall calls the "hustle" factor in black people's economic activity). I think this poses a real challenge to the "identity politics" wing of the MT/Eurocommie tradition, alongside the reemergence of class as a critical social category in virtually every political "debate" currently going on.
On children - yes, we do argue that the current climate around child sex abuse is a classic case of moral panic (actually I think it's nearer hysteria, and yes I am aware of the historical connotations of that term), such that any contact between men and children has been placed under scrutiny, regardless of its nature or motivations. What we argue for is a sense of perspective, and rational discussion of what can be done to diminish and ultimately eliminate pedophilia - including measures to increase not reduce the constructive engagement of men with children. If this upsets some elements of '70s/'80s sexual politics (actually it chimes in with much of it, especially the "sensible" women I knew in the CP and the broader left), then so be it, but we can't go on as we are...
You say that we neglect the international dimension - yes we do, and deliberately so. We wanted to look at what's going on in this, "our country", right now and what we can do to further some kind of democratic left "national popular" project. Again we've had no lack of lefty debate about globalisation and internationalism, but we've had very little to say (arguably in the last 100 years) about what progressive politics is possible within the geographical entity of Britain (and now the increasingly separate entities of England, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland). This is where most British people still locate themselves, for better and for worse (and arguably more so, as "globalisation" forces people to hang on to the "cultural" aspects of their national identity as some form of "subaltern" protection). What do we have to say to the people of "England", apart from please don't vote BNP?
Finally, you say you welcome "any form of oppositional activity" - I find this statement really rather alarming, and I think it touches on what I was trying to say about leftism in my earlier Blog-thingy. One thing of value I carry from my days in the CPGB is that that many forms of "oppositional activity" are immensely counter-productive (I never once supported a "student occupation", for example, and I'm kind of proud of that), and detract from attempts to build a new hegemony around a new "historic bloc". We have to make choices and judgments about what forms of political activity and organisation take us forward or backward. By all means let's talk with anyone, right across the political spectrum, openly and constructively and self-critically, but let's not kid ourselves that anything describing itself as "left wing" is necessarily progressive.
18/06/07 Richard Hull writes:
Hmmmm .....
Well, I was going to respond to Grahame's piece but I see this has become yet another 'incrowd' debate, a debate that pretends to be open but is in fact principally addressed to a small cadre who already know each other's views inside out, just repeating arguments they've been having amongst themselves for years.
You've lost me, in both senses.
18/06/07 Andy Pearmain writes:
Erm...OK Richard. It's a shame it's not clear just what (or who) you're objecting to. Perhaps it might have helped if my comment had included the first paragraph I actually wrote, which explained that I was responding to Sally Davison's response to Feelbad Britain, which I co-authored. But then again, it's not clear from your comment what you're objecting to - history? Informed debate? Whatever... but then again (again), if we've lost you so thoroughly, you're not reading this, so... I find these kind of "I'm not talking to you because I don't feel included" comments a little bit difficult to respond to.
The point of all this is surely, as Neal Lawson rightly points out in his latest comment, the "left" In Britain (whatever we mean by that) is in very serious trouble right now, seriously threatened with extinction unless it can at least begin recovering from the massive defeats of the last 30 years. I don't think that's an "in-crowd" issue... Quite the reverse actually.
18/06/07 Sorry your first paragraph was missing, Andy, it's now there. Liz Millner, web editor.
19/06/07 Michael Prior writes:
I hope it is not too presumptuous but I feel that Sally has entirely misread the meaning of the phrase 'cultural politics' in her critique of our pamphlet FeelBad Britain. The crisis of capitalism in the 1970s was at its heart an economic crisis which can be summarised in the drop in profitability towards zero. But, as we emphasise, the cause of this economic crisis was essentially cultural; what we describe as a general mutiny across society against capitalism. It was inchoate and, in the end, unable to exist within the economism of the organised left of the time. In much the same way, what we call 'feelbad Britain' is essentially a cultural fact; the widespread disillusion with just how market forces operate within Britain. Our focus is not on economic factors but, for example, how the network of popular agencies providing solidarity and support has been steadily dismantled leading to individual isolation, resentment and mental disorder. These are cultural impacts not specifically economic. It is such as Gordon Brown who look at nothing but growth in GNP and who cannot see beyond economics.
Her mistake is to view 'cultural politics' as referring to such as feminism and anti-racism, things which we never deny, but which are only a part of a much wider cultural frame.
There is a dreadful pessimism in most of this Soundings debate along the lines that the left has suffered terrible defeats and may soon disappear. The problem is that this really refers to the 'socialist left' which once ruled the progressive roost but which now sits on a solitary dunghill crowing largely to itself. There is a large and, I believe, growing left out there inside green politics, inside various nationalisms, inside a range of anti-global actions, which simply no longer has any time for the socialist left let alone the internal politics of the Labour Party. If this residual socialist left is to exert any influence on this broader left then it really has to stop the uniquely patronising yet despairing discourse which characterises it.
19/06/07 Sally Davison writes:
Yes, it is a bit presumptuous to say that someone has misunderstood something when what you mean is that you disagree with them. Apart from the fact that gender and race (not the same thing as anti-racism and feminism) are fairly major cultural questions - as is national identity, which I also mention in my review - I was trying to indicate that culture has its own effects on political and social life - whereas the analysis in Feelbad is very political economy based - i.e. the culture it discusses is largely a result of political economy.
19/06/07 Mark Perryman writes:
Mike Prior makes an important point. While the organised socialist left has been engaged in a headlong decline, inside and outside the Labour Party, there has at the same time emerged new 'homes' for a socialist or at least social democratic parties. The SNP and Plaid Cymru offer such a thing in Scotland and Wales, while around Britain in local pockets the Green Party are a significant force. At the same time of course most of those who would once have constituted Labour's Left, or been involved with socialist groups outside of the Labour Party no longer belong to anything, and haven't been replaced with a new generation either.
Dispersal and fragmentation? Pluralism and creativity? I would tend to opt for the more pessimistic conclusion. But what is certainly the case is that it is hard to cite a single example of a Left political project in recent years that gives us a sense that an alternative is possible. If there is one, I'd like to hear about it. With this absence of a prefigurative politics is it any wonder that idealism becomes privatised and activism professionalised? This it seems to the most pressing need, to find a project that can convince ourselves as much as others that an alternative still exists. It won't be a journal, website, blog or a conference, but something that is participative and practical, pleasurable as well as worthwhile. If we cannot achieve something along those lines then what on earth is the Left for?
20/06/07 David Coats writes:
Just a quick post to reinforce the point I made about the need for some optimism in response to Jeremy's article - with specific reference to the results of the National Assembly election in France.
It seems remarkable to me that a weak and divided PS could do so well - relatively speaking. This is an unreconstructed party, unreformed and wedded to largely outmoded policy solutions yet they still managed to improve on their 2002 performance and have put something of a brake on Sarkosy's triumphalism. Just think what the PS might have achieved if they had been united and had offered the French electorate a more positive prospectus. One might reasonably say they tehre is a strong foundation on which to build for another effort to unseat the centre-right - assuming of course that the PS can get their act together...and a resurgent Democratic Party in the US could change the whole geopolitical situation if Obama/Clinton/Gore can defeat the Republicans next year. Certianly we shouldn't be over-optimistic (and I accept the Democrats are in no sense social democrats), but there are plenty of reasons to believe that the neo-liberal consensus is crumbling.
21/06/07 Richard Hull responds to Grahame Thompson:
One of the clever moves of neo-liberalism was to incorporate some radical positions, and 'responsibilisation' was one of them - what 'reasonable person' could possibly object to the notion that we should all be more responsible in our actions and behaviours?
You are absolutely correct to distinguish the political economy of neo-liberalism from the neo-liberal mode of governance, including responsibilisation. But you are wrong to then tar all responsibility with the neo-liberal brush.
You give a very good example in the discourse and practices of Corporate Social Responsibility as being an opportunity to subvert neo-liberalism from within, and correct to suggest a challenge to the legal status of Limited Liability. But financial capital has already reached the same prognosis and is rapidly shifting capital from PLCs to private equity.
You are correct to say that we need a more nuanced picture of neo-liberalism, but wrong to suggest that we are "all neo-liberals now", and wrong to imply that the only valid position for the left is in reform, not revolution. If we - the left - put all our energies into reform, we will forget about capital's capability for continuous structural revolution.
Yes please, let us resuscitate that old conundrum of reform or revolution, as it seems to flow underneath so many of the contributions and debates in this forum.
And the answer is both, of course. Reform AND Revolution.
We work our socks off to achieve tiny reforms in our everyday lives - union recognition, community work, countering discrimination - and it is exhausting, frustrating, seemingly endless. But we also develop alternative forms of living, working, relating and organising, we also make small revolutions in our everyday lives, and that is also exhausting, frustrating and seemingly endless.
And when you're working hard trying to keep a small co-operative alive, or developing new forms of community participation, or sustaining free music festivals, you don't have much time to reflect, or read the Soundings debates.
On our local website there is a lengthy debate about what to do about local youths who are trashing and vandalising every Friday night. All the usual stuff, police, parents, CCTV, being a more responsible community, ASBOs. But one person asked - OK, what alternatives do you suggest? What concrete alternatives can we provide to young people on a Friday night who currently get pissed as rats and just want to play hell and make havoc? And, so far, no-one has responded. But I happen to know that the guy asking that question does go out every Friday night to try and talk with local youth, try and find out why they trash stuff, try and quietly suggest different ways of resolving arguments other than a fisticuff or a kicking.
Let me give a totally different example, the Open Source Software community. Long before Nike, they coined the phrase 'Just Do It'. Since Nike's incorporation, they've changed the motto to 'Just F***ing Do It'. Their social theory is that if you allow many people to try out all sorts of little experiments, and allow each other equal access to all these little experiments, then the 'best' will attract most followers, most interest, most momentum. The best will rise to the top. That was how Linux emerged, and it has successfully challenged Microsoft on its own terrain, its own market, and it has succeeded where all traditional firms and organisations had failed. Now, I have some disagreements with them, especially on the apparently magical process by which 'the best' emerges, but there are strong elements of truth - and utility - within the Free Libre Open Source Software 'movement'. And you will find similar elements of truth and utility in thousands, hundreds of thousands of little experiments and alternatives being conducted and developed all over the world.
For those people engaged in these acts of non-violent revolution, the 'Left' is alive and well and happily short of turgid rhetoric.
For Soundings and this forum, I think there needs to be far more Description, and far less Prescription. OK, I'm being prescriptive. Tough - build a bridge and get over it.
21/06/07Michael Gilligan writes:
Agreeing more or less everything so far.
I especially liked Andy Pearmain's reply to Sally. For the record, I want nothing to do with "oppositional activity".
22/06/07Michael Gilligan writes:
From hegemonics:- "...Trade unions would demand higher wages from their members' employers, whilst simultaneously pressing government for more regulation and welfare spending. The hope was that this contradictory and unrealisable strategy would force a final and successful showdown with the entire capitalist system..."* Taking the above quote into consideration would it not be an unfair conclusion that you brought both Thatcherism and the destruction of the Left entirely upon yourselves? It's not a rhetorical question.
*Feel-bad Britain (page 18, last para)
23/06/07Cynthia Cockburn writes:
I've read with great interest most of the papers and comments on this website and look forward to hearing the discussion on June 30. I feel hesitant about adding this comment of my own. And yet - this is Soundings, Red Pepper and friends, after all. There's no other region of the left it's more likely to get a hearing.
I need to start with a few historical pointers, if only to remind myself. I've always termed myself a 'socialist' (of some kind). That is, I feel socialism to be 'my' project as much as anyone else's.
All the same, since 1979, when a group of us published "In and Against the State", subtitled "discussion notes for socialists", I've researched and written on gender issues, as a feminist. As, that is to say, a socialist-feminist, which I take to mean never knowingly neglecting a class analysis while contributing to the development of a gender one. In this mode I hung in there for some time, in the CSE, then on the Marxism Today editorial board. But my main activism was increasingly in the women's movement. While some of us took this route, other socialist-feminists continued to contribute primarily to left groups and left discourse. But the heyday of the 'patriarchy and capitalism' debate was in the early eighties, after which the attempt to compare, combine, reconcile or counterpose Marxist and feminist theory became less explicit. Not surprising, because it is something of a struggle, analytically. Socially too - who you're among, how it's received.
Now, here we are in the Soundings website conversing about new / future socialisms and I'm asking myself (and you) is it worth the huge heft to get the gender dimension back into the socialist story? Mmmm…
The tropes in the Soundings discussion so far include neoliberalism, globalization, individualization and identity, consumerism, social ownership, ethics and more. Such things have a lot of relevance for women / feminists. The question I'm addressing is the obverse: do gender-specific experiences and feminist theory have a matching relevance for new and future socialists and socialisms? A reading of the website so far suggests perhaps not. I was encouraged to glimpse the family, child abuse and male power in Sally Davison's critique of "Feelbad Britain", but dismayed to find Andy Pearmain calling on 'gays, women, black…' and others 'hopelessly mired in their various isms and phobias' to 'sink their petty differences' and get on with the socialist project.
There does exist in the various papers and comments, I think, a general assumption that new and future socialisms embody 'equalities' and (probably) these include not only the dimension of 'redistribution' but also the dimensions of 'race'/ethnicity and sex/gender (and others). However, I don't want to argue from 'equality' here, nor from 'identity'. And I hope, in present company, I don't need to stress that I suggest nothing here about any individual man (or woman), and less still about 'all men' (or all women). Rather I'm raising questions about systemic things, our understanding of the structures and processes of power that our political projects seek to dismantle or transform.
I find it easier to be empirical than polemical, so maybe I'll base what I say on my own research.
For the last ten years I've been studying the thinking and methods of activist women opposing militarism and war in numerous countries and continents (see "The Space Between Us" (1998), "The Postwar Moment" (2002), "The Line" (2004), "From Where We Stand" (2007). To be very brief about it…
These women I speak of have a certain authority, since many are survivors of recent wars, in the former Yugoslavia, say, or Colombia, or ethnic massacre in India. They make it clear to me that they understand militarism and war as generated and sustained not only by capitalism and its class processes, on the one hand, and, on the other, the animosities of nationalism / religion / ethnicity. They see gender power relations as a third motor of war. The term patriarchy is in common use among them, as also is a critique of the social processes by which patriarchy is reproduced. That's to say, cultures that shape masculinities in forms (authoritative, combative, muscular, inclined to force) adequate to male domination and militarization, and shape feminities appropriately.
Research by others has shown such cultures and discourses to be at work in wealthier Western societies too, for instance in the posturing of the Cold War, or the crisis of masculine / national self respect after the US defeat in Vietnam. It shows them to be at work in the training of men for war-fighting and in the evident difficulties of integrating women into combat units. But just as nobody is suggesting that NATO and the arms trade are nowt but gender, likewise I don't believe that 'power' can be reduced to class power. The subordination of women to men, globally and historically, doesn't derive from capitalist class relations alone. Nor does the racializing and subordinating of some national and ethnic collectivities by others.
In a Latin American country in which I was living for a while earlier this year, there was not long ago a terrible war. Extreme economic exploitation, a genocidal impulse and deep misogyny were all implicated in it. The fighting ended a decade back, but still today the discrepancies of wealth and poverty are enormous, indigenous people / women are the poorest, the statistics of violent death are very high, many men carry guns, many women are raped, many rapes end in murder. This week, as I write, the threat of rape and assassination has been used there once again by politically motivated elements to try and intimidate feminists into ceasing their activism for human rights. These local women inescapably understand class domination, ethnic domination and gender domination as mutually reinforcing. How could they not?
The circumstances I describe differ from those of other societies in degree but not in kind. So my questions concern how, this being so, a new / future socialism might be achieved. If we can see militarization and war as perpetuated through the malign intersection of economic/class relations and nationalist/racialist relations with gender power relations, should we not also understand the power operating in all the political and social systems we are addressing (the British state, the Labour Party, multinationals) as being equally complex? Can our new and future socialisms achieve any of the changes, can they be any of the things, to which we aspire, without transformative change in gender power relations? How can we not address this explicitly in our debates and imaginings? And indeed isn't it something we have to address in shaping our own movements prefiguratively? Myself, I don't believe you can transform one dimension of power without the others. They are too intricately, and horribly intimately, involved with one another. The subordinations, exclusions and violences of one are too often those of the other.
23/06/07Michael Prior writes:
I am not quite sure who the "you" in Michael Gilligan's comment refers to but if he means the socialist Left in the 1970s, the bald answer is 'Yes, it brought down Thatcherism on its head as Samson brought down the temple'. It followed a strategy which in time of capitalist crisis intensified the crisis but failed to provide any legitimate solution to it. The situation at the time was, of course, a lot more confused than this bald answer but it was still possible to see that the strategy was a mistake at the time (as other pieces on hegemonics.co.uk show).
23/06/07Richard Hull writes:
On William Davies: An interesting contribution, but unfortunately some myths and misunderstandings are being perpetuated.
1. Market Failure This is not a 'neo-classical paradigm', and it is silly to label it in this negative manner. The concept of market failure is one of the key reformist paths, as it allows the justification of state intervention within the terms of the state's own economic paradigms. This is especially important in the European arena, where the concept of market failure is institutionalised under EU Competition law.
The concept (although not the exact term) arose from the Victorian philosopher Henry Sidgwick and was strongly developed by Keynes, and later by Neo-Keynsians. It was most famously deployed in the debates about Development Economics and Welfare Economics from the 1960s onwards. Of course at a fundamental level all markets are 'failures', but if one wishes to reform the government of market economies then this is a central concept.
2. Schumpeter Oh please! This is such a totally wrong misreading.
Schumpeter developed the findings of the Marxist economist Kondratiev, who identified 'Long Waves' in the global pattern of the rate of change of economic growth. Schumpeter believed that it was entrepreneurial activity in developing new technologies and techniques which stimulated the start of each upswing in economic growth. His work was definitively amended by the Marxist economists Chris Freeman and Carlotta Perez, from the late 1960s onwards. Neo-Schumpeterian Economics, as Freeman calls it, is again a key path for reformists to engage in dialogue with the economic paradigms which dominate policy making. In fact, it was the OECD, before Margaret Thatcher, who took up Freeman & Perez's work on the centrality of technological innovation to economic growth.
I agree that the 'innovation agenda' has been incorporated, but when used carefully it can provide powerful arguments for progressive change.
Jessop's label of 'Schumpeterian Workfare' as the form of regulation under Post-Fordism is lazy argument; it refuses to acknowledge the positive success of the insertion of the 'innovation agenda' into mainstream policy making; it refuses to acknowledge that the central characteristic of Post-Fordism is the techno-economic paradigm generated alongside new information and communication technologies; and it refuses to acknowledge that the concept of Knowledge Based Economy is the neo- liberal capture of some of the elements of that ICT techno-economic paradigm.
However, Jessop correctly points out that neo-liberalism, as a related set of governmental policies, is only one amongst a number of alternative forms of governance - others being neo-corporatism, neo-statism, and neo-communitarianism [Bob Jessop, 'Recent Societal and Urban Change: Principles of Periodization and Views on the Current Period', published by the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.]
23/06/07Andy Pearmain writes:
Yes Michael, dead right - the strategy of "militant labourism" which the CP and the Labour Left pursued through the '60s and '70s, allied to trades union "impossibilism" (make demands which capitalism cannot possibly concede and it will crumble before our very eyes...), was always going to lead to an impasse. Unless accompanied by some kind of broader-based social progress - little short of revolution, always unlikely in British circumstance - it left us (and British society) wholly exposed to the right-wing backlash represented and organised by Thatcherism. The left in Britain has always been curiously blind to the real strength, reach and hegemony of capitalism, beyond the crass rhetoric of the Benn/Scargill/Dave Spart/Citizen Smith variety. That's why Gramsci is so important, because the concepts of hegemony and subalternity enable us to understand the hold of the established order over our minds, hearts, souls and pretty much every aspect of our selves, and give us some clues as to how we can start to turn resistance and opposition into a rather different ruling "new order". But really, very few people on the left have seriously considered Gramsci since the '70s, when (surprise surprise) our historic decline set in.
So yes, we were partly responsible for the defeat of the left and the hegemony of neo-liberalism, and I don't think the disoriented remnants of the "left" have ever faced up to that responsibility.
Marxism Today came close at times, in its critique of the left and its appreciation of the power of Thatcherism, but always dodged the issue of what positive politics might revive the left in Britain.
Of course the problem we now have is that, amongst all its other facets, New Labour was an attempt of sorts to break the impasse. What's now clear is that its political base (the higher echelons of the Labour Party, largely clustered around the parliamentary/government ambitions of its career politicians, and associated media/PR/thinktank outriders) was far too narrow to mount any serious strategy for progressive modernisation. So what we've ended up with is further layers of neo-liberal modernisation, market-driven, heavily technocratic and pro-US, which Brown (with all this talk about "a government of all the talents") is determined to take even further.
So we not only have to account for the defeat of the left and Thatcherism, but for the failed "modernisation" of New Labour. AND come up with some sense of where (and how) we go next! Quite a tall order, methinks....
24/06/07Michael Prior writes:
Andrew Glyn touches on a glaring feature of British society which has been largely lacking in this Soundings debate; that we are currently in the later stages of a the kind of classic financial bubble which has intermittently characterised capitalism. In Feelbad Britain, we started from idea that Britain was suffering from an acute social crisis, manifested in many forms both individual and social, and which is a consequence of the neo-liberal policies initiated by Thatcher and continued under Brown and Blair. We touched only very lightly on the economic instabilities contained in the neo-liberal project (partly because we did not want to be accused of an over-emphasis on economics - perhaps not too successfully)but it seems likely that these will be come increasingly important in the next couple of years.
The bubble is apparent not just in the financial funds Glyn discusses but in such as consumer debt, house prices, art prices (£10 million for a Hirst pill cabinet!), the Chinese stock market, English football clubs, US trade deficits; all symptoms of huge volumes of money flooding through the global system in search of some safe resting place, a search which doomed to failure. When it bursts, and it is when not if, Britain is g