"The “Left” as it now exists in most western countries consists overwhelmingly of these middle-class elitists, who have lost whatever acquaintance they had with the genuine ideologies of the Left, but have retained or inherited the sense of entitlement and the distrust of the capabilities of people like you and me. For such movements, nothing could be more unacceptable than seeing ordinary people organising themselves and collectively expressing their wishes. And since ordinary people are basically stupid, then if they express ideas which differ from the Right Ideas, it must be because they have been propagandised by rival forces: notably the dreaded fascists. They must be cajoled and harassed into the Right Way of Thinking."
If you see the "left" parties in Europe and the US as the class consciousness of the PMC made manifest, everything makes sense. The masses are too cloddish, backward, unintelligent, and unfashionable to be entrusted with any real power, while We The Better Sort of People, the educated professionals who would never do something so oafish as misgender someone, we will use that power much more wisely.
At the same time, contemporary left discourse does not require the rulers to give up any part of The Goodies.
The PMC can have it both ways. Demand more more power because of their self-evidently superior virtue, but at the same time, the existing distribution of wealth in their favor is obviously just and proper.
That is an extraordinarily clear and cogent commentary, Aurelien. Thank you.
I keep wondering, however, if anything can really be changed "from above" by a new government (in any country). Maybe the era when this was possible has passed. All of it seems to be such a pathetic theatre, with thespians to match. With the powers that be hidden in the shadows.
"[...] I still have to pinch myself to remember that Liz Truss, who by all accounts was terrifyingly unsuited for the job, was taken seriously as UK Prime Minister for several months, before she was strangled and her body dumped in the Thames. Perhaps the generational decline in competence that we see in engineering and science applies just as much to politics? There’s a thought."
Aurelian, your summation of Liz Truss got a delighted, genuine guffaw from me just now. Your ability to dish out rough chuckles is awesome, as is your finesse at directing the horses with sense to where the water is.
“Now, poor Mr Starmer seems unsure what to do next, apart from making the lives of ordinary people harder. As I have pointed out before, acquiring power is the only objective in the Party. Having purged his opponents, what is left for a politician like Starmer to do?”
Your articles (and this excellent comment in particular) make me think so often of “1984” where power was the only real purpose. It’s where we are today across nearly all of the west.
I don't think "power" was the only purpose in 1984, at least not at the level of individuals. Even the Inner Party people, though more privileged and "aware" of the truth (but also totally believing the truthfulness of the Party and the falsity of the reality that contradicts it per the dogma of doublethink), were themselves cogs in a big machine that was self-perpetuating without a clear purpose, other than chewing up everything to continue to exist. Everyone, even the Inner Party members, go along with the game because there is nothing else they can do (that goes anywhere), thinking that they enjoy rolling the boulder up and down all the time. (I always thought there was a peculiar nexus between Orwell and Camus, personally.,)
But, in a way, this is a more fitting description of the world today, isn't it?
We may be in danger of splitting hairs but worth recalling that O’Brien does tell Winston during his interrogation: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake…..Power is not a means, it is an end.” So power seems relevant, at least as a word.
However, I agree with your broad comment. At the level of the individual the cogs in the machine analogy becomes true. It also seems in “1984” that there may be no overarching human dictator but rather it is a self sustaining system driven by its own internal “logic”. In that respect Big Brother’s existence as a real person is left ambiguous as far I can tell. The world of “1984” is a machine. I agree.
That is also quite apt for our current system where the politicians are frequently little more than mouthpieces for what the “system” is driving and cannot alter it materially even if they wish to. In traditional capitalism we talk about the “Invisible Hand” as the driver of the system. We need a similar concept / analytical framework for how our state systems work.
It does raise an interesting question: what the heck is "power"? If there is someone or some group who is grabbing "power" for themselves, then it becomes fairly obvious. But in an institutionalized world, no single person really has much power.
They just have roles, some of which pay better. So they do what they are supposed to. And the more "institutionalized" the politics/society/etc. becomes, the roles become ossified: you do your thing and shut up. Certainly, there will be short term scheming and plotting, but nothing on a system-disrupting scale, at least not by the insiders, and only insiders are likely to have the means to do something about "it," whatever "it" is, and only if there's a big enough conspiracy, which is not likely to form successfully.... So, does anyone actually have "power" here?
"For such movements, nothing could be more unacceptable than seeing ordinary people organising themselves and collectively expressing their wishes."
No direct democracy or sortition for their ilk. The Bolsheviks made sure to annihilate the local "soviets" after comming to power. But the right also has similar fears:
On the morning of May 29, 1787, in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, opened the meeting that would become known as the Constitutional Convention by identifying the underlying cause of various problems that the delegates of thirteen states had assembled to solve. “Our chief danger,” Randolph declared, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” None of the separate states’ constitutions, he said, had established “sufficient checks against the democracy.”
Of course, popular vote share is also only a debating point (one much loved by the supporters of Hillary Clinton). In the end, only being able to gather the votes in parliament matters (although trying to pressure them from the outside might be a viable tactic in the short run, assuming one is actually capable of it). I suppose it's also tempting to think that there exists a simple "democratically legitimate" solution to this crisis. Like having a "one true heir" out of a dozen more or less valid contenders in a hypothetical monarchic succession crisis, instead of it coming down to more or less sordid backroom deals or something worse.
"One of their mentors was the maverick Marxist Louis Althusser, enormously influential among students in the 1960s and 1970s who famously taught that the thought of Marx was inherently correct: it was not right because it was true, as demonstrated by anything as banal as facts, but true because it was right, and there was no arguing with it."
The teaching of Marx is all-powerful, because it is true! :) I wonder if Althusser had any knowledge of that Soviet slogan.
Trust A to know nothing about the classic left. You that PCF that he is so impressed by? Althusser wasn’t only a member, he was a leading intellectual for a long time.
His influence on the new left that A loves to hate was minuscule. He was a professor at a prestigious university, and his supporters were mostly his students.
His philosophy (if you can call it that) was a strange blend of Catholicism, Marxism, freudianism and a very rigid variant of structuralism.
He held the view that knowledge was the outcome of relations between theoretical objects, and had no relation to reality. He claimed that Marx somehow discovered that, but it was an epistemological stance that applied to all knowledge, not just Marxism.
Edouard Phillippe is 20 years younger than Barnier. A decent PM which is probably why he polls so high. An average sized man is tall when compared to dwarves.
I don't remember where you said that the neop-liberal onslaught has killed every organized interest and every organized discussion. And that – or do I extrapolate? – politicians can't for that reason act as representatives as they could when there organized interests, but have to be mere mercenaries and media mouthpieces.
I find it strange that you nevertheless can believe that party politicians from the left can do anything to get back any representativity and accountability to the system. It must be like lifting oneself by the hair. At least if they try to do it as party politicians.
As I see it, the organized interests must first be recreated, as interests. And I believe that being too tied to traditional political solutions and traditional political identities then is a disadvantage. Ideologies and political practices will have to build up from below – otherwise they will seem like making use of the interest as hostages.
"Three years of making faces and hurling insults at the RN won’t achieve very much."
I couldn't help but think of what's going on in US politics because this is exactly what the Dems are doing, and, well, it could actually be working. This, of course, is the product of the peculiar workibgs of US parties, that they are (historically, at least) institurionally porous and it is possible for outsiders to take power, but once they do, they are melded together with the older party more or less. So the electoral coalitions have shifted only marginally in the US, despite the size of the discontent. Like in Europe, a total collapse of the existing political "coalitions" (groups of insiders who wield power within the institutions) can bring about change and, somewhat ironically, Europe might be closer to that moment than we are, if only because the party institutions are more brittle and calcified and thus more easily "broken."
This still means that something has to take the place of old parties, if only as means to create coalitions, amalgamate wishes, needs, and agendas of different segments of dociety, and transform them into some kind of productive action. While we speak of the PMC losing the skill to do these, fo non-PMC possess these skills? In many ways, the leaders of the past are remarkable: skilled organizers and negotiators came out of backgrounds that did not include silly credentials. And the people who had credentials knew (or quickly learned) how to work with these people. Does anyone still have these skills and/or aptitudes now, in the West?
Aurelian, you brought up the question of stupidity, and I will not accuse you of being stupid, but your ignorance is… admirable, when you talk about a left you where too busy being an obedient cog in the machinery for career advancement reasons to be a part of.
Yes, there where some maoists and they were mostly students (often from a working class background), and they liked theory (imagine the horror) but when confronted with the fact that Europe in the 1970ies didn’t offer any prospects for their peasant war the groups quickly dissolved. If it wasn’t for haters like you they would be forgotten by now.
The trots where mostly outside universities (france is an exception) working in unions and grassroot organisations. We did NOT dismiss mass parties, in fact the largest group on the continent, The Militant, was a current organising inside the Labour Party.
And you are totally wrong about what the leninist distinction between agitation and propaganda was.
Agitation is a call to action: “strike for 15 pounds now!”
Propaganda is information: what is a strike, how do you organise one, what is the role of outside support, what would 15 pounds mean for the workers, what would it mean for the company, the economy?
Then there were those debates you seem anxious about. They were seldom about theory but most often about strategy and tactics. Should we stay in the Labour Party? Is now a good time to strike or will we just be beaten?
But it was all out in the open for everyone to read or listen to. We would sometimes even stand on the street on a rainy October morning and literally put it in your hand. We opened bookstores so that people could buy and read our books. There was no inparty/outparty distinction, in fact we WANTED the most people possible to get our material.
Mr disgruntled establishment: what we live with now is the heritage of your generation. I tried to fight it, and admittedly I lost. But exactly how did you earn your right to rant? In practice, very concretely now: what did you DO?
We are all influenced by our experience. In my case what I saw at first-hand and one remove in the 1970s and 1980s, and the former activists I came across who swiftly went to vote for right-wing parties as they got older. I'm not ranting, I hope, but putting forward an analysis of why I think things have gone wrong, based on fifty-odd years of direct and indirect observation.
My sympathies have been with the traditional Left all my life, and I'm not planning on changing them. But the balance in the sixties between genuinely populist parties and a predominantly middle-class leadership was lost long ago, and, as I have often argued, parties of the Notional Left have turned into boutique organisations practising the kind of politics I knew at university.
So basically you base your analysis on your personal encounters with the focault-agogo sellouts?
That makes it a rant, because they were neither revolutionary nor Marxists to begin with. As typical establishment youth they went with what was hip, and when teaming up with your crowd became the thing to do they did that instead. And naturally they adapted to the discourse of your circles, probably being no more sincere than when they were placard-bearing members of the new left.
I try to find an analogy from every day life to what you are doing, but it so far out I can’t. Since we are both men of science: do you think that there could be a problem of bias in your sample?
And now that we have established that you didn’t try to prevent what happened from happening, could you please stop attacking those of us who did? Or at least have the decency to do some research before you sit down to write?
(That some former boutique revolutionaries played a role in turning the former worker parties into boutique radical parties is obvious, but those parties had already cut their ties to the community, so they didn’t cause the rightward drift, they just dressed it up in nice clothes.)
I have met both kinds of 70s lefties, both university elitists and trade union elitists. And of course non-elitists too. I suppose they as people are/were as diverse as people in general.
But we should not speak of people here, but organizations. Even political partylets behave in an organized fashion where the whole is bigger than the parts. In that way they are, I would say, like government offices – they have routines that can cause lots of havoc with no ill intention.
My friend trade union activist Frances Tuuloskorpi tells about a big unionist meeting, for once not under central control, in the late 80s where people on the floor were about to discuss how to counter the neoliberal currents that began to grow then. And one after another of the lefties held their premeditated speeches against eachother, and most of the others who were not organized in leftist groups thought the meeting was at top-down as if it had been led by the chairman of the Swedish Trade Union Central. There wasn't any sequel. The lefties had killed a promising anti-neo-liberal resistance with their know-it-all attitudes.
Perhaps they are more sensitive today – but I'm not sure. I have friends active in the World Social Forum who tell me about how the traditional lefties, mostly trots, do what they can to prevent meetings to take decisions about further action. They prefer talkshops, so that they can keep as much control as possible themselves. All very understandable – who doesn't want control? – but nevertheless destructive.
Well Jan, you met me more than once, so you get to write a review of the work that I used to do trust pilot if you like to, while Aurelian doesn’t. :-)))
And I knew Frances (give her my best if you talk to her). One of the deciding factors in me breaking with what was left of the new left actually was when she and her fellow workers occupied the factory. I was on the inside, of course writing about it but also trying to organise solidarity from the outside. It didn’t work because we could only scramble together a few grassroot trade unionists, most of them ex trots of the USFI brand. The left groups weren’t interested, but mind you: neither was the Social Forum crowd.
And speaking of the devils, Frances is the only one that I know that still claims to be a maoist, and that takes ‘serve the people’ seriously.
The trots suffer from the delusion that we live in a permanent revolutionary or pre revolutionary situation, quoting Lenins four thesis on the objective factors, forgetting his three points on the subjective factors, not even mentioning Trotskys theory of dual power… When the illusion brakes they then suffer from a confusion that they have no idea how to handle.
And they often suffer from vanguardism, not understanding that what marx and lenin referred to as the revolutionary vanguard was a crystallisation of the most politically advanced layer of the working class hardened in the class struggle, not a tiny group of people that had read a few books.
And you may well be right about the WSF today, but I was in Porto Alegre in 2003 and the forum had already been lost to the NGOs. Being there was a powerful emotional experience, but already by then it seemed clear to me that the process would not be a vanguard (if you pardon the expression) but a sideshow. That was confirmed by my travels through most of the continent meeting with people who were in real struggles: nobody referred to the WSF, it simply wasn’t a thing.
So I have no problem with people who criticise the new left, but it should be done from a position of first hand experience or second hand knowledge and with a clear understanding of what we were trying to do. And that’s where Aurelian fails when he goes on his reoccurring rants.
You are right about the WSF – but much of the blame goes to the leftists that can't permit others than parties to take on the whole society, so they have to keep the WSF a talkshop, or a buffet of good ideas. Well-funded NGOs must of course also take a lot of blame for that, but in this case it is just what one could expect from their interest in keeping their paid jobs.
It's just recently – last year – less well-funded, member-governed organizations escaped from the trap and could start discuss about priorities and common programs. Of course I don't know if it will last.
And you are dead right about the vanguardism, of course. I have nothing against vanguardism meaning "let's do this" (somebody must take the initiative, whoever it is, and if nobody else...) – but the posturing of "I know it all but you are an amateur because you are not a member of the Party" really makes me sick. It ruined the budding campaign against neoliberalism in Sweden about 1986 (according to Frances), and according to Marcela López Levy: We are millions, 2004, it also ruined the anti-neoliberal movement in Argentina in 2000. To most people it looks like freemasonry.
It's probably irritating to Aurelien also, that's why he writes as he does.
A polemic is fact based, a rant is emotional. So what A went on a rant (I point to the factual lapses in my post), while my answer was harsh but polemic.
I earned my right to be polemic, to even sometimes mock disgruntled former establishment figures, by being a 24/7 revolutionary Marxist activist for 20 years, earning just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, constantly trying to get the word out about what was happening and trying to organise grassroot resistance.
In no way am I attempting to hide the fact that we failed. Miserably. But at least we tried to stop this bullshit while the bull still was shitting. Did you?
You are remiss in not mentioning that, whomever Macron picks would be subject to a simple majority Censure vote in the National Assembly...and frankly, Barnier is the only one of those mentioned that could probably survive a vote........I am SURE Macron asked others, but they knew they didnt stand a chance.
"The “Left” as it now exists in most western countries consists overwhelmingly of these middle-class elitists, who have lost whatever acquaintance they had with the genuine ideologies of the Left, but have retained or inherited the sense of entitlement and the distrust of the capabilities of people like you and me. For such movements, nothing could be more unacceptable than seeing ordinary people organising themselves and collectively expressing their wishes. And since ordinary people are basically stupid, then if they express ideas which differ from the Right Ideas, it must be because they have been propagandised by rival forces: notably the dreaded fascists. They must be cajoled and harassed into the Right Way of Thinking."
If you see the "left" parties in Europe and the US as the class consciousness of the PMC made manifest, everything makes sense. The masses are too cloddish, backward, unintelligent, and unfashionable to be entrusted with any real power, while We The Better Sort of People, the educated professionals who would never do something so oafish as misgender someone, we will use that power much more wisely.
At the same time, contemporary left discourse does not require the rulers to give up any part of The Goodies.
The PMC can have it both ways. Demand more more power because of their self-evidently superior virtue, but at the same time, the existing distribution of wealth in their favor is obviously just and proper.
That is an extraordinarily clear and cogent commentary, Aurelien. Thank you.
I keep wondering, however, if anything can really be changed "from above" by a new government (in any country). Maybe the era when this was possible has passed. All of it seems to be such a pathetic theatre, with thespians to match. With the powers that be hidden in the shadows.
"[...] I still have to pinch myself to remember that Liz Truss, who by all accounts was terrifyingly unsuited for the job, was taken seriously as UK Prime Minister for several months, before she was strangled and her body dumped in the Thames. Perhaps the generational decline in competence that we see in engineering and science applies just as much to politics? There’s a thought."
Aurelian, your summation of Liz Truss got a delighted, genuine guffaw from me just now. Your ability to dish out rough chuckles is awesome, as is your finesse at directing the horses with sense to where the water is.
PS - Sorry for the misspelling. Disgraceful, given the proper spelling is at the top of my screen in the address bar. Old Dog is old.
“Now, poor Mr Starmer seems unsure what to do next, apart from making the lives of ordinary people harder. As I have pointed out before, acquiring power is the only objective in the Party. Having purged his opponents, what is left for a politician like Starmer to do?”
Your articles (and this excellent comment in particular) make me think so often of “1984” where power was the only real purpose. It’s where we are today across nearly all of the west.
I don't think "power" was the only purpose in 1984, at least not at the level of individuals. Even the Inner Party people, though more privileged and "aware" of the truth (but also totally believing the truthfulness of the Party and the falsity of the reality that contradicts it per the dogma of doublethink), were themselves cogs in a big machine that was self-perpetuating without a clear purpose, other than chewing up everything to continue to exist. Everyone, even the Inner Party members, go along with the game because there is nothing else they can do (that goes anywhere), thinking that they enjoy rolling the boulder up and down all the time. (I always thought there was a peculiar nexus between Orwell and Camus, personally.,)
But, in a way, this is a more fitting description of the world today, isn't it?
We may be in danger of splitting hairs but worth recalling that O’Brien does tell Winston during his interrogation: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake…..Power is not a means, it is an end.” So power seems relevant, at least as a word.
However, I agree with your broad comment. At the level of the individual the cogs in the machine analogy becomes true. It also seems in “1984” that there may be no overarching human dictator but rather it is a self sustaining system driven by its own internal “logic”. In that respect Big Brother’s existence as a real person is left ambiguous as far I can tell. The world of “1984” is a machine. I agree.
That is also quite apt for our current system where the politicians are frequently little more than mouthpieces for what the “system” is driving and cannot alter it materially even if they wish to. In traditional capitalism we talk about the “Invisible Hand” as the driver of the system. We need a similar concept / analytical framework for how our state systems work.
It does raise an interesting question: what the heck is "power"? If there is someone or some group who is grabbing "power" for themselves, then it becomes fairly obvious. But in an institutionalized world, no single person really has much power.
They just have roles, some of which pay better. So they do what they are supposed to. And the more "institutionalized" the politics/society/etc. becomes, the roles become ossified: you do your thing and shut up. Certainly, there will be short term scheming and plotting, but nothing on a system-disrupting scale, at least not by the insiders, and only insiders are likely to have the means to do something about "it," whatever "it" is, and only if there's a big enough conspiracy, which is not likely to form successfully.... So, does anyone actually have "power" here?
Good thing Europe is not on the threshold of world war!
"For such movements, nothing could be more unacceptable than seeing ordinary people organising themselves and collectively expressing their wishes."
No direct democracy or sortition for their ilk. The Bolsheviks made sure to annihilate the local "soviets" after comming to power. But the right also has similar fears:
On the morning of May 29, 1787, in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Edmund Randolph, governor of Virginia, opened the meeting that would become known as the Constitutional Convention by identifying the underlying cause of various problems that the delegates of thirteen states had assembled to solve. “Our chief danger,” Randolph declared, “arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions.” None of the separate states’ constitutions, he said, had established “sufficient checks against the democracy.”
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/democracy/our-chief-danger
Of course, popular vote share is also only a debating point (one much loved by the supporters of Hillary Clinton). In the end, only being able to gather the votes in parliament matters (although trying to pressure them from the outside might be a viable tactic in the short run, assuming one is actually capable of it). I suppose it's also tempting to think that there exists a simple "democratically legitimate" solution to this crisis. Like having a "one true heir" out of a dozen more or less valid contenders in a hypothetical monarchic succession crisis, instead of it coming down to more or less sordid backroom deals or something worse.
"One of their mentors was the maverick Marxist Louis Althusser, enormously influential among students in the 1960s and 1970s who famously taught that the thought of Marx was inherently correct: it was not right because it was true, as demonstrated by anything as banal as facts, but true because it was right, and there was no arguing with it."
The teaching of Marx is all-powerful, because it is true! :) I wonder if Althusser had any knowledge of that Soviet slogan.
Trust A to know nothing about the classic left. You that PCF that he is so impressed by? Althusser wasn’t only a member, he was a leading intellectual for a long time.
His influence on the new left that A loves to hate was minuscule. He was a professor at a prestigious university, and his supporters were mostly his students.
His philosophy (if you can call it that) was a strange blend of Catholicism, Marxism, freudianism and a very rigid variant of structuralism.
He held the view that knowledge was the outcome of relations between theoretical objects, and had no relation to reality. He claimed that Marx somehow discovered that, but it was an epistemological stance that applied to all knowledge, not just Marxism.
The usual italian translation:
"Papà in soccorso.
E smettetela di dire "non è giusto!"."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2024/09/papa-in-soccorso-e-smettetela-di-dire.html
Thank you Marco as always!
A most excellent report. Well put and a pleasure to read.
Edouard Phillippe is 20 years younger than Barnier. A decent PM which is probably why he polls so high. An average sized man is tall when compared to dwarves.
I don't remember where you said that the neop-liberal onslaught has killed every organized interest and every organized discussion. And that – or do I extrapolate? – politicians can't for that reason act as representatives as they could when there organized interests, but have to be mere mercenaries and media mouthpieces.
I find it strange that you nevertheless can believe that party politicians from the left can do anything to get back any representativity and accountability to the system. It must be like lifting oneself by the hair. At least if they try to do it as party politicians.
As I see it, the organized interests must first be recreated, as interests. And I believe that being too tied to traditional political solutions and traditional political identities then is a disadvantage. Ideologies and political practices will have to build up from below – otherwise they will seem like making use of the interest as hostages.
"Three years of making faces and hurling insults at the RN won’t achieve very much."
I couldn't help but think of what's going on in US politics because this is exactly what the Dems are doing, and, well, it could actually be working. This, of course, is the product of the peculiar workibgs of US parties, that they are (historically, at least) institurionally porous and it is possible for outsiders to take power, but once they do, they are melded together with the older party more or less. So the electoral coalitions have shifted only marginally in the US, despite the size of the discontent. Like in Europe, a total collapse of the existing political "coalitions" (groups of insiders who wield power within the institutions) can bring about change and, somewhat ironically, Europe might be closer to that moment than we are, if only because the party institutions are more brittle and calcified and thus more easily "broken."
This still means that something has to take the place of old parties, if only as means to create coalitions, amalgamate wishes, needs, and agendas of different segments of dociety, and transform them into some kind of productive action. While we speak of the PMC losing the skill to do these, fo non-PMC possess these skills? In many ways, the leaders of the past are remarkable: skilled organizers and negotiators came out of backgrounds that did not include silly credentials. And the people who had credentials knew (or quickly learned) how to work with these people. Does anyone still have these skills and/or aptitudes now, in the West?
Aurelian, you brought up the question of stupidity, and I will not accuse you of being stupid, but your ignorance is… admirable, when you talk about a left you where too busy being an obedient cog in the machinery for career advancement reasons to be a part of.
Yes, there where some maoists and they were mostly students (often from a working class background), and they liked theory (imagine the horror) but when confronted with the fact that Europe in the 1970ies didn’t offer any prospects for their peasant war the groups quickly dissolved. If it wasn’t for haters like you they would be forgotten by now.
The trots where mostly outside universities (france is an exception) working in unions and grassroot organisations. We did NOT dismiss mass parties, in fact the largest group on the continent, The Militant, was a current organising inside the Labour Party.
And you are totally wrong about what the leninist distinction between agitation and propaganda was.
Agitation is a call to action: “strike for 15 pounds now!”
Propaganda is information: what is a strike, how do you organise one, what is the role of outside support, what would 15 pounds mean for the workers, what would it mean for the company, the economy?
Then there were those debates you seem anxious about. They were seldom about theory but most often about strategy and tactics. Should we stay in the Labour Party? Is now a good time to strike or will we just be beaten?
But it was all out in the open for everyone to read or listen to. We would sometimes even stand on the street on a rainy October morning and literally put it in your hand. We opened bookstores so that people could buy and read our books. There was no inparty/outparty distinction, in fact we WANTED the most people possible to get our material.
Mr disgruntled establishment: what we live with now is the heritage of your generation. I tried to fight it, and admittedly I lost. But exactly how did you earn your right to rant? In practice, very concretely now: what did you DO?
We are all influenced by our experience. In my case what I saw at first-hand and one remove in the 1970s and 1980s, and the former activists I came across who swiftly went to vote for right-wing parties as they got older. I'm not ranting, I hope, but putting forward an analysis of why I think things have gone wrong, based on fifty-odd years of direct and indirect observation.
My sympathies have been with the traditional Left all my life, and I'm not planning on changing them. But the balance in the sixties between genuinely populist parties and a predominantly middle-class leadership was lost long ago, and, as I have often argued, parties of the Notional Left have turned into boutique organisations practising the kind of politics I knew at university.
So basically you base your analysis on your personal encounters with the focault-agogo sellouts?
That makes it a rant, because they were neither revolutionary nor Marxists to begin with. As typical establishment youth they went with what was hip, and when teaming up with your crowd became the thing to do they did that instead. And naturally they adapted to the discourse of your circles, probably being no more sincere than when they were placard-bearing members of the new left.
I try to find an analogy from every day life to what you are doing, but it so far out I can’t. Since we are both men of science: do you think that there could be a problem of bias in your sample?
And now that we have established that you didn’t try to prevent what happened from happening, could you please stop attacking those of us who did? Or at least have the decency to do some research before you sit down to write?
(That some former boutique revolutionaries played a role in turning the former worker parties into boutique radical parties is obvious, but those parties had already cut their ties to the community, so they didn’t cause the rightward drift, they just dressed it up in nice clothes.)
I have met both kinds of 70s lefties, both university elitists and trade union elitists. And of course non-elitists too. I suppose they as people are/were as diverse as people in general.
But we should not speak of people here, but organizations. Even political partylets behave in an organized fashion where the whole is bigger than the parts. In that way they are, I would say, like government offices – they have routines that can cause lots of havoc with no ill intention.
My friend trade union activist Frances Tuuloskorpi tells about a big unionist meeting, for once not under central control, in the late 80s where people on the floor were about to discuss how to counter the neoliberal currents that began to grow then. And one after another of the lefties held their premeditated speeches against eachother, and most of the others who were not organized in leftist groups thought the meeting was at top-down as if it had been led by the chairman of the Swedish Trade Union Central. There wasn't any sequel. The lefties had killed a promising anti-neo-liberal resistance with their know-it-all attitudes.
Perhaps they are more sensitive today – but I'm not sure. I have friends active in the World Social Forum who tell me about how the traditional lefties, mostly trots, do what they can to prevent meetings to take decisions about further action. They prefer talkshops, so that they can keep as much control as possible themselves. All very understandable – who doesn't want control? – but nevertheless destructive.
Well Jan, you met me more than once, so you get to write a review of the work that I used to do trust pilot if you like to, while Aurelian doesn’t. :-)))
And I knew Frances (give her my best if you talk to her). One of the deciding factors in me breaking with what was left of the new left actually was when she and her fellow workers occupied the factory. I was on the inside, of course writing about it but also trying to organise solidarity from the outside. It didn’t work because we could only scramble together a few grassroot trade unionists, most of them ex trots of the USFI brand. The left groups weren’t interested, but mind you: neither was the Social Forum crowd.
And speaking of the devils, Frances is the only one that I know that still claims to be a maoist, and that takes ‘serve the people’ seriously.
The trots suffer from the delusion that we live in a permanent revolutionary or pre revolutionary situation, quoting Lenins four thesis on the objective factors, forgetting his three points on the subjective factors, not even mentioning Trotskys theory of dual power… When the illusion brakes they then suffer from a confusion that they have no idea how to handle.
And they often suffer from vanguardism, not understanding that what marx and lenin referred to as the revolutionary vanguard was a crystallisation of the most politically advanced layer of the working class hardened in the class struggle, not a tiny group of people that had read a few books.
And you may well be right about the WSF today, but I was in Porto Alegre in 2003 and the forum had already been lost to the NGOs. Being there was a powerful emotional experience, but already by then it seemed clear to me that the process would not be a vanguard (if you pardon the expression) but a sideshow. That was confirmed by my travels through most of the continent meeting with people who were in real struggles: nobody referred to the WSF, it simply wasn’t a thing.
So I have no problem with people who criticise the new left, but it should be done from a position of first hand experience or second hand knowledge and with a clear understanding of what we were trying to do. And that’s where Aurelian fails when he goes on his reoccurring rants.
You are right about the WSF – but much of the blame goes to the leftists that can't permit others than parties to take on the whole society, so they have to keep the WSF a talkshop, or a buffet of good ideas. Well-funded NGOs must of course also take a lot of blame for that, but in this case it is just what one could expect from their interest in keeping their paid jobs.
It's just recently – last year – less well-funded, member-governed organizations escaped from the trap and could start discuss about priorities and common programs. Of course I don't know if it will last.
And you are dead right about the vanguardism, of course. I have nothing against vanguardism meaning "let's do this" (somebody must take the initiative, whoever it is, and if nobody else...) – but the posturing of "I know it all but you are an amateur because you are not a member of the Party" really makes me sick. It ruined the budding campaign against neoliberalism in Sweden about 1986 (according to Frances), and according to Marcela López Levy: We are millions, 2004, it also ruined the anti-neoliberal movement in Argentina in 2000. To most people it looks like freemasonry.
It's probably irritating to Aurelien also, that's why he writes as he does.
PS. For those who can read Swedish, or have access to DeepL, Frances' view can be seen at https://francesblogg.com/2011/08/13/kampen-och-ofarliggorandet/
"But exactly how did you earn your right to rant?"
Well JH, that was quite a rant. I'll pose that same question to you.
BTW, there is a difference between a polemic and a rant. I believe Aurelian provided a polemic. You should explore the difference.
A polemic is fact based, a rant is emotional. So what A went on a rant (I point to the factual lapses in my post), while my answer was harsh but polemic.
I earned my right to be polemic, to even sometimes mock disgruntled former establishment figures, by being a 24/7 revolutionary Marxist activist for 20 years, earning just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, constantly trying to get the word out about what was happening and trying to organise grassroot resistance.
In no way am I attempting to hide the fact that we failed. Miserably. But at least we tried to stop this bullshit while the bull still was shitting. Did you?
You are remiss in not mentioning that, whomever Macron picks would be subject to a simple majority Censure vote in the National Assembly...and frankly, Barnier is the only one of those mentioned that could probably survive a vote........I am SURE Macron asked others, but they knew they didnt stand a chance.