A certain arrogance born of correct ideas
Posted on Saturday 27 January, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
We’re right and we know we are right. The Marxist left is uniquely informed by the most advanced philosophy humanity has yet developed. So, necessarily, we can have every confidence that our ideas are correct and that one day the rest of the world will all of a sudden realise this and instantly swing over to our way of thinking. Can’t we?
Well, not necessarily. The trouble is, there is a battle of ideas going on out there. Just to take one example, the libertarian right frequently markets itself as a populist champion of ‘the little guy’ against the liberal elite. Think Rush Limbaugh in the US or Richard Littlejohn over here.
But such is our arrogance born of correct ideas that, all too often, the left does not consider it worthwhile getting its hands dirty in the fight to win friends and influence people.
For instance, people working around the McDonnell campaign for the Labour leadership frequently complain of a ‘media blackout’. But I’m not sure what they are doing actively to influence media coverage.
Where’s the 24/7 press operation? Where’s the instant rebuttal unit or the constant round of guerilla marketing stunts? Let’s not gripe about ‘resources’ here. if these things are not happening, the campign is by definition not serious.
And while there are some excellent socialist blogs out there, if they fail to find an audience, they don’t mean jack. And yes Southpaw Punch, that jibe was directed at you.
Meanwhile, most attempts to put over basic socialist ideas in an accessible fashion – agitation as opposed to propaganda, if you want to use the classic distinction – are dismissed as ‘talking down to the class’. They are said to manifest a lack of confidence in the ability of workers to come directly to revolutionary conclusions.
The corollary is that numerous orthodox Trotskyist sects and the massed ranks of the sundry Fourth Internationals of One complacently bask in the kudos of their ‘no compromise’ brand of unstinting communism.
The choice is this. Either we realise that printing weekly papers that tack the odd transitional demand onto the end of rehashed Guardian articles is not enough, or it’s ‘game over’ for the far left.
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37 Responses to “A certain arrogance born of correct ideas”
Of course, if Marxists today are inside the Labour Party then it might well be that they are suffering less from ‘an arrogance born of correct ideas’ but an idiocy born of a outdated strategy or tactic.
Show me the superior tactic, Snowball. Show me the superior tactic.
The floor is open to a guest post for anybody who wants to make a politically literate defence of Respect, BTW.
Tempting, tempting. I might email you…
Well…
Respect campaigns for basic socialist policies in general and local elections amongst the general electorate whilst Labour Party left activists are essentially tied to fighting for pretty much the same positions in an endless and unwinable faction fight within ossified labour party branches and structures.
Respect got quarter milion votes in its first election, got one mp and came 2nd in three other wards in the last GE and has 20 councillors. Compared to say the Greens who have been around for 30 years and came closest to a MP in Brighton where they came 3rd (not knocking the Greens I know they have 80 odd councillors, MEP’s , maybe 5% vote, just setting out the stall). As modest as this may be it compares pretty favorabably to any achievement by non labour left since 50’s.
A space has opened to get socialist voices, independent of the Labour Party machine, into elected positions where they can speak openly in support of strikes, grass roots campaigns etc without being compromised in the way that even some of the better Labour lefts have been by the pull of the machine.
The possibility of more councillors, GLA seats and even 2-3 parliamentary seats is an outside possibility. A historic chance to get a left of Labour voice into the mainstream debate.
Shouldn’t every socialist put aside their hobby horses, accept that the perfect vehicle with the perfect leader, structure and membership is never going to materialise, and throw themselves into a strategic fight to secure the next rung on the ladder?
Just a passing thought.
That last argument could equally used for campaigning in the Labour Party. In fact, massively more so, because it’s (still) massively bigger. Someone else can point out a few other obvious things about Respect, I’m fed up of it.
Dave O: I’m not sure you’ve got your priorities right here. Socialist blogs aren’t supposed to be mass agitational tools. Anyone who thinks (s)he can have a significant impact on the class by burbling on the internet is deluding her/himself. Political blogs are to communicate ideas to people who are already interested in politics.
Quite other strategies are needed to get out there to “the masses”. These are being pursued by the John4Leader campaign in a way the Left hasn’t for rather a long time. If you want John’s small office staff to stay up 24 hours a day I’m afraid you’re making an impossible demand (though I know one at least who might try it!)
Plus, if we went into a media campaign expecting our instant rebuttals to be all over the national press every day we’d be sorely disappointed. No Left campaign has ever won in the pages of the bourgeois media! Instead the campaign is pursuing a grassroots strategy which is basically correct, though it would benefit from lots more of its supporters volunteering to be activists!
Just for clarification, that comment by last is not yours truly.
Dave will know we’ve both posted similar stuff recently on the left (but with important differences). I agree with the first two paras here completely.
I had more ideas I was going to be posting over the next few weeks but I’ll mention a few sketchy ones now as a reply from me is clearly expected to the comment that Dave has made. (I’ll be using this stuff again on my blog).
On numbers – I get maybe 50-100 separate people each week looking at my blog who aren’t search engines, lost fight fans, etc. The descriptive term for that is ‘none’. I’m guessing Dave gets low 4 figures, high 3 figures. The term for that is ‘next to none’. I wish left blogs were read by millions.
He’s right that my blog, but also most blogs posting here are (probably) going nowhere.
I think mine’s eclectic – it needs serious thought about whom it’s for and what it wants to achieve. The stuff I like best is almost administrative e.g. advising people on the minimum wage. Some opinion stuff may be well written and would be well worth doing if published in the Daily Mirror but as Dave says, it’s just useless without the numbers.
Dave’s blog suffers the same problems but not to as acute a degree.
None are likely to ever be as read as e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com although there’s no reason why not.
But I want more than that a news/opinion site like all these are trying to be. I want a left portal. Dave’s is the only present UK contender (Harry’s Place is a rightwing blog) but it’s a very blunt instrument.
Dave’s isn’t a portal both because of the resources and time that would be needed (not his fault) but also because we shouldn’t become reliant on a non-revolutionary to provide the main meeting place. We need to organise away from Labour – not least to have some credibility with the millions hating Blair for the right reasons – and then Dave can leave the stage of history.
I want somewhere with a list of all strikes happening near me; what left meetings
are in London (or Lossiemouth) this week. I want a portal where a USDAW branch publicity officer could get advice on better branch newsletters from a Amicus steward; where a year old London dental nurse could ask ‘How do I organise a trade union and get an appropriate reply from an active nurse trade unionist and where a school student could ask ‘What is anarchism?’ and get good (and varied) answers.
There should also news, reporting, polemics, debate and it should be as widely known in the way http://www.myspace.com
It would be best if we had a communist party to do all this. It would be more coherent.
The BNP, as a party, are a lot more on the ball. For example they will do a daily news release tearing apart some new government policy and are sussed enough to have the premium rate phone numbers, party shop etc to support all this (but don’t do all the other things I have listed).
Failing a party (some hope) it would be great if the SWP, SP, indies are more supported a portal site, maybe calling it something like e.g. http://www.socialist-tradeunion.org.uk But they are too sectarian to do that.
Failing that it’d be great if there was a red personality who could use their weight to run a portal, in the way that Richard Littlejohn could (and Rush Limbaugh did?).
I would imagine this sort of portal looking like the site consumer journalist Martin Lewis does rather well with http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ – full of facts, advice, news, bulletin boards. All a left portal would need as well would be reporting, policy and debate and other innovative things to attract the new (and make money?) e.g. left lonely hearts?
A minor point of clarification – I see a red portal as not just agitational/informative, it would also have all (or at least link to and promote) the current blogs written by revolutionaries – e.g. Lenin (Lenins Tomb) writing his foreign news stuff; Socialist Unity with their art stuff and more; reports on public meetings, etc.
I want somewhere with a list of all strikes happening near me; what left meetings are in London (or Lossiemouth) this week.
Right on, if you’ll pardon the expression. I remember this is very much what we were hoping to achieve with the Socialist Conference (which begat the Socialist Movement, which turned into the Socialist Network, which didn’t really go anywhere). About the only lasting achievement of that entire scene was Red Pepper (which isn’t nothing).
Money and volunteer labour are always problems, but I think the fundamental problem is trust. You or Dave or Duncan could set up a barebones site like that tomorrow, but it’d be worthless unless all the groups running the various meetings were willing to keep us informed – and it’s not hard to think of groups which wouldn’t be willing to talk to you (or Duncan, or Dave).
Sectarianism runs very deep on the Left, that’s the thing. Going back to the Socialist Movement, it took me years to realise that our open-doors appeal to everyone – that is, everyone who wanted to work together on an egalitarian and non-sectarian basis – was mainly being heard by those specific groups whose programmes currently prioritised egalitarian and non-sectarian joint work. The rest, not so much.
Yes, Phil
I’ve been there as well (anyone remember ‘Socialist Federation’)and gave some money to someone who was going to do a paper version of the above a few years ago.
I wonder how much work it would need now – e.g.for a meeting, you just have a template and they upload the details and publish it (but doubtless spam and rubbish would get through as well).
I think you’re right on the problems – the answer is to make something so well known that they have to come. No easy task.
Anarchists and left communists have libcom.org, which is a very good site, maybe other socialists could do something like that?
There’s broadleft.org which does pretty much that portal job for the leftist parties of the world… maybe the owners could be persuaded to expand and mess about with it? The URL is pretty catchy after all…
PS – well it usually works, albeit that the URL seems to be down at present?
Broadleft.org is good and I link to it from my site, but, of course, it is just a list of left parties – something that I would see as just one of many sections (or links within) an (inter?) national
portal.
http://www.libcom.org is good and quite like what I was writing about. Well done whoever. It’s shame it’s just anarchist etc focussed, I feel a lot closer to the average anarchist than I do to LP Lefts.
I think McDonnell faces greater problems than a lack of media coverage. There simply isn’t the ‘buzz’ around middle of the road Labour Party members that generated support for, to give the example I know best, the initial Grassroots Alliance Campaign. There is instead, as Paul Anderson indicated not so long ago, a degree of distance from him. Being wary. Leadership challengers form the remote corners of the Parliamentary Party are pretty isolated in the Labour Party’s culture in any case. This is not to denigrate McDonnell, apart from some asine comments about ‘Islamophobia’ to appeal to permanent Victimhood, he seems a good candidate. It’s just pretty obvious that he’ll get nowhere.
As for Respect being anything other than a permanent pantomime, of self-important ‘revolutionaries’ whose ‘Marxism’ (or what’s left of it after their grovelling to Islamicist reaction) and a handful of self-important ‘community leaders’… Well, words succeed me in abundant succession.
My view is that the left makes itself unattractive, not by having the wrong line or the wrong sort of organisation, but by the vituperative nature of its internal debates. If discussion isn’t fraternal then it’s destrutive, even if you wholly disagree with what other people are saying or doing. There’s far too much pronouncing and denouncing, if you know what I mean. Constructive activity, constructive discussion.
As for finding mass audiences – Well, I don’t think it can be done anyway and I don’t think it’s really what blogs are about. Blogs are about the opinions of individuals. Some people might not even want to write about politics on theirs (I rarely do on mine) and why should they?
I think the goals of socialists nowadays, for the while, should be modest. Start connecting with people – and for that matter, start connecting with one another. (I think this blog does quite well at that, by the way.)
I see Dave’s feeling grummpy again
Depressing yourself over the state of the left is becoming a regular weekend thing, comrade.
I agree with the vision Dave has set out in a previous post and what SouthPaw puts forth above. Those of us in organisations could start making the case for lending assistance in establishing such a portal for the good of the movement as a whole, but they won’t unless something basic’s in place to begin with. What then can a network of us bloggies who think this is a good idea do about it?
This is not to denigrate McDonnell, apart from some asine comments about ‘Islamophobia’ to appeal to permanent Victimhood
Perhaps you’d like to explain your opposition to John taking a stand against the rising tide of anti-Muslim hatred?
I’m personally proud to support a candidate who takes an uncompromising stance against all forms of racism and bigotry. I would have nothing to do with a candidate who refused to stand up to the gutter press, New Labour politicians and the BNP as they stir up hatred against one of the most vulnerable, impoverished and besieged communities in the country.
Finally – as regards our complaints about a “media blackout”. In my view, it’s not helpful to use such terms because it makes us sound like conspiracy theorists. However, it’s not as though we don’t have an up and running media strategy. We usually issue press releases several times a week and have a number of experienced comrades with good media contacts working on the said strategy.
Let’s just say that a number of well-placed sources (including journalists) have told us that there is an intentional strategy to block coverage of the campaign in certain media outlets. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that the lack of coverage of the campaign is not as a result of our own incompetence, but rather because of a relunctance by the capitalist media to give us a platform. I doubt we’d get much coverage if John McDonnell paraglided off Big Ben in a Mr Blobby suit.
More than a few times Guardian Unlimited have run articles which included a John McDonnell quote. The exact same article has appeared in the hardcopy version – with just one alteration. Guess what it was?
This is not to denigrate McDonnell, apart from some asine comments about ‘Islamophobia’ to appeal to permanent Victimhood
Perhaps you’d like to explain your opposition to John taking a stand against the rising tide of anti-Muslim hatred?
I’m personally proud to support a candidate who takes an uncompromising stance against all forms of racism and bigotry. I would have nothing to do with a candidate who refused to stand up to the gutter press, New Labour politicians and the BNP as they stir up hatred against one of the most vulnerable, impoverished and besieged communities in the country.
Finally – as regards our complaints about a “media blackout”. In my view, it’s not helpful to use such terms because it makes us sound like conspiracy theorists. However, it’s not as though we don’t have an up and running media strategy. We usually issue press releases several times a week and have a number of experienced comrades with good media contacts working on the said strategy.
Let’s just say that a number of well-placed sources (including journalists) have told us that there is an intentional strategy to block coverage of the campaign in certain media outlets. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that the lack of coverage of the campaign is not as a result of our own incompetence, but rather because of a relunctance by the capitalist media to give us a platform. I doubt we’d get much coverage if John McDonnell paraglided off Big Ben in a Mr Blobby suit.
More than a few times Guardian Unlimited have run articles which included a John McDonnell quote. The exact same article has appeared in the hardcopy version – with just one alteration. Guess what it was?
(P.S. – I’ve been getting my blog address wrong – it’s socialistyouthnetwork.blogspot.com)
Well thanks for that Andrew. You have succinctly and eloquently dealt with all my points. Which lucky organisation has the joy of your company?
As for using the web why doesn’t John McDonnell make more efficient use of youtube. It would be so easy to put up a 5 min ‘political intro’ and link it to everyones blogs. Maybe a million have watched Galloways sky news clip for example.
Right, instead of this turning into yet another thread arguing about John McDonnell, shall we try and get something concrete going out of this?
Southpaw that is a brilliant idea. I’m willing to help you on this one.
We need some way of articulating basic socialist ideas and class politics to people or we might as well give up because the way we do things at the moment isn’t working.
Phil, I appreciate your deep misgivings about this idea but perhaps, just perhaps, as long as we don’t have a specific programme or allow one group to dominate the project we could get people to co-operate and share information.
Plus a lot of information is publicly available. I’ll be out picketing during the upcoming PCS strike on January 31st and all the information on the strike, protests, etc is on the PCS website. You simply have to look for it. The last time I was out on the pickets I just phoned up the local UNISON office and asked where they were.
I know a lot of people on the groups on the left are mindlessly sectarian, we all know that but reading this blog must be a fair percentage of the prominent, active left-wingers in the UK.
Aside from all the sectarianism there are many basic ideas and concepts that we do all agree on.
About 7 or 8 months ago I posted on the need to promote left-wing ideas through the internet:
http://nation-of-duncan.blogspot.com/2006/07/changing-world-one-person-at-time.html
If we could get some sort of loose collective, like Libcom where I occasionally write things, going to create this website the left might actually achieve something for once.
Send out the appeal on the UKLN as well.
The SPGB have the right idea on this, they’ve got a frequently updated MySpace, Youtube videos, etc.
What’s our first step going to be? Start a thread on UKLN maybe? Try and get some volunteers?
OK,
This idea – a portal – has maybe developed a life. Various people are making suggestions and offering to volunteer.
I’d been happy to volunteer time but I regret I have no great web knowledge and don’t know any programming. I also have no idea on how big a task it would be.
I’ll be posting about the idea on my site (to catch those that don’t come here) but it would be best that there is just one place to discuss this.
Dave’s blog wouldn’t be best – not for the reasons I list above – but because it may get big and complex and a comments box just wouldn’t do.
Anyone know where and how we can start a topic somewhere?
I know nothing about UKLN. Do people think that is the best way?
Southpaw
UKLN is a list not a blog, so people have to join.
What i would suggest is that you do a post on it on your blog (I think you said you are doing that anyway) and perhaps other bloggers can do posts directing people to it, to maximise who sees it and to get a mix of left people and groupings. Duncan could also put it up on UKLN and suggest people go to your site. Thats if you want to start getting people together.
The only techie person could think of is Will, but who knows if he would agree .
Yes, how about a total retreat from reality into the internet. Cracking idea.
Owen
I don’t think it has to be, its just one way to organise(alongside the real world) and communicate and hopefully get people out to pickets, campaigns etc.
Trouble is to do properly takes time and effort.
Southpaw,
UKLN is the UK Left Network, it’s a yahoo discussion group about left-wing politics in the UK with several thousand members.
I’ve now posted your idea to the list with a link to your blog, this thread and my post from months back.
I imagine this will be a huge task. From all the anti-fascist work I’ve done I’ve got a lot of contacts in different organisations. I think it should be a matter of approaching branches, individuals, etc rather than national organisations and party HQ’s who I imagine will be more likely to say no. I could be wrong though.
Stroppybird,
Could you possibly ask Will very nicely?
Between us all we must know loads of bloggers who will promote this on their website.
Owen,
I for one would be happy to promote McDonnell meetings on whatever sort of portal we set up.
I meant to type several hundred members, not several thousand members.
Duncan
Will does pop over here so should see this.
I can though send him an e-mail and get him to look at the post. Who knows though what he will say, he is not known as the twisted genius for nothing.
This does though seem a lot of work and I can see there will be issues of people not having time or groups not wanting to pull together.
Not meaning to sound doom and gloom like Dave
That’s fair enough.
In terms of it being a lot of work, I’m a student I’ve got loads of time on my hands…
There AWL lot seem to have a fair few students who blog as well and I’m sure they would be willing to get involved.
We could try and be really modern and go for a website where people submit their own meetings and events. Might get a lot of spam that way though.
I think, hope, that we can avoid the sectarian bloodbath that this could be by contacting people individually rather than contacting the organisations directly.
That said, it’ll probably piss off some people on some central committee.
Owen;
Who’s talking about a “retreat into the internet”?
And besides, given the choice between the internet and an organisation combining ex-members of Oxford University Labour Club and the CPGB youth section, I would be personally torn
Phil wrote:
“I remember this is very much what we were hoping to achieve with the Socialist Conference (which begat the Socialist Movement, which turned into the Socialist Network, which didn’t really go anywhere). About the only lasting achievement of that entire scene was Red Pepper (which isn’t nothing).”
I remember this from the mid-1990s – was “sort of” around their co-ordinating committee, and then it all disappeared. Does anyone else recall this era, and the people involved?
I’m all for a general portal. At the moment the unions are our only hope. The Left movements within individual unions need some means of keeping together – and not via Galloway’s party. Or Red Pepper, for that manner. Worthy but too much like a student mag.
OK – I’m not clear where we will collecting all our thoughst on this – UKLN or my blog.
I’m guessing that UKLN would be best as it will have mailing lists, ability to post threads etc.
(My slight concern about it could be that it would one of those groups that send you loads of emails.
You get up early in the morning to see if you have received an email of sweet nothings from someone and open your email box only to find 91 postings about ’socialist’ Cuba.)
It’d be a huge task. Minimum 20 volunteers, some with IT knowledge? But libcom.org have done it.
Do we agree on UKLN? One place is best.
Southpaw,
I’ve done a post on the subject, perhaps you could do one as well, just to clarify what we have so far (my post was a bit rushed).
You can choose how many emails you get a day. If you have no social life you can get an email everytime someone posts but I prefer the daily round up where you get one big email with most of the posts from that day.
I’d go for UKLN but this shouldn’t exclude us from promoting the idea wherever we can.
632C5R09OW8
ftssoldier.blogspot.com
http://www.edwardsaid.org
Speaking about polical activity,
Why is the antiwar movement dead?
For example during the launch of
Euston Manifesto of which 600
people turned up. They raised
£1350 and have 3100 Signatures
to their “Manifesto”. By
contrast The Stop war Coalition
and general antiwar movement is
always reacting to events and putting on
a defensive position. What position
should it take or should it quietly fold up?
Please reply?
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
Speaking about political activity,
Why is the pro-war movement dead?
For example during the last few years the Stop the War Coalition have organised mass demonstration after mass demonstration, where tens of thousands of people have turned up and hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for troops to come home. By
contrast the ‘Euston Manifesto’
and the general prowar movement is
always reacting to events and putting on
a defensive position. What position
should it take or should it quietly fold up?
Please reply?
Left Portal
I have moved the discussion of this issue to my blog at http://southpawpunch.blogspot.com/2007/01/red-portal-sell-out-of-week-polls-icon.html
See also a letter at http://southpawpunch.googlepages.com/leftportal
I will copy the above points to my blog as well
It would be good if any further points on this issue could be made there so we can keep the discuussion in one place.
Voltaires_priest :”And besides, given the choice between the internet and an organisation combining ex-members of Oxford University Labour Club and the CPGB youth section, I would be personally torn
”
Someone clearly knnows nothing about Communist Students and is reacting agaist the word ‘communist’ as due to the history of the 20th century it has unwanted connotations. The CPGB and indeed the Communist Students which is about 50/50 in terms of CPGB/non-CPGB intervenes and gets involved in as many left campaigns as possible and see’s the Labour party, and hence the SYN to which you allude, as a good thing – it brings socialists together (proper ones that is, not social democrats) where they can do the most good- in the Labour party. Why you’d rather be torn than commit, along with many of the good memebers of Communist Students and SYN, to Socialism eludes me and your glib remarks do not strenghten your argument or even provide one.