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Jerry Cohen’s camping-trip fable offers a down-to-earth approach
to social-democratic principles.
Being a socialist often requires a leap of faith. Though there are real
institutions we can point to that at least in part embody key socialist
values such as equality and community – the NHS of course springs
to mind – the cause of socialism has suffered from not being seen
as feasible, or as part of the everyday. It’s great in theory but
too difficult in practice. The right, on the other hand, make their market
fundamentalism sound all too tangible; it is presented as the embodiment
of human nature. More than that – the market and its culture are all
too often viewed as simply but powerfully natural.
So it helps enormously when people write books that ground the case for
socialism in something ordinary and everyday. The latest and highly readable
example of just such a book is the late Jerry Cohen’s Why not
socialism?.The first thing that strikes you about the book is its size.
It’s tiny – just 82 pages – but it packs a huge punch.
That is because Cohen, a Fellow at All Soul’s College Oxford and a
prodigious author, uses the rather common example of a camping trip to explain
what socialist values are, how they can be put into practice and how they
might be spread more widely.
The camping trip is an experience in which everyone brings something and
has to share it – equipments, time and expertise. The trip only works
if everything is shared and no one monopolises their own equipment, time
and expertise in order to win an advantage over others. The camping trip
works because it creates a community in which all are equal despite all
being different.
Cohen then use this experience of camping to establish key principles that
identify why it is that only non-market values and culture are appropriate
if we are to avoid living in a world based on the market approach of greed
and fear. The trip shows that we all have to contribute, but that we don’t
make these efforts simply for our own reward. Yes we want and expect others
to do their bit, but we also relish co-operation for the sake of it –
not just for instrumental gain. Cohen says that communal reciprocity is
the anti-market principle: we serve others not because of what we get in
return but because others need our service, and for the same reason will
serve us.
The last section of this beautiful little book then looks at the desirability
and feasibility of the principle of communal reciprocity. It asks how we
can make generosity turn the wheels of the economy, rather than fear or
greed. This is not a book review so I won’t go through all this, and
I won’t tell you what I think are the omissions and problems of the
book. I would suggest, though, that you go and read it, and do so in this
context.
The Labour Party in Britain is in a big and unnecessary hole. It is always
governments that lose elections, and this government seems hell-bent on
letting the Conservatives in at a time when we need less markets and not
more. I can think of at least four examples of New Labour basing its current
decisions on fear and greed rather than the principle of communal reciprocity.
The first is its back to the future attitude to the banks: it looks like
the government wants these now nationalised industries to be turned back
into high street retailers rather than become community-based mutuals. The
second is its decision to give legal rights to NHS patients to be treated
by private providers. The third is its decision to limit the review of higher
education funding to considering only whether or not variable fees should
be raised, rather than whether they should be scrapped. And the fourth is
the government’s backing for the anti-union and labour stance of Royal
Mail management in their current dispute, rather than support for an approach
to public sector modernisation based on the commitment and experience of
the whole workforce.
All of these positions are wrong in principle, but are also wrong in political
practice. Adopting these positions will never be enough for the right, who
will carry one pushing for ever-more pro-market responses based on fear
and greed; and they will lead to Labour’s core support being further
demoralised. The party is now facing the same kind of meltdown as the SPD
suffered in Germany in September. It might be too late this time for Labour
to adopt Cohen’s campsite analogy as the basis for a revival in its
political fortunes; but we know that New Labour always liked a big tent
approach to electioneering. It’s just a shame that they didn’t
realise the best basis for putting tents up – which is Jerry Cohen’s
communal reciprocity rather than market forces.
Neal Lawson is a political commentator and chair of the
pressure group Compass.
To read more articles,
and make a comment, go to
http://www.goodsociety.social-europe.eu
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