Andy Beckett: right about the left?
Posted on Monday 17 August, 2009
Filed Under The left
HERE’S a political conundrum for you; an economic climate that should be profoundly conducive to socialism instead seems set to herald a decade in which British politics is dominated by reanimated Thatcherism and the menacing growth of the fascist right.
Writing in the Guardian’s G2 supplement this morning, Andy Beckett considers the outlook for what might broadly be defined as socialism, with soundbites garnered from a spectrum ranging from Jon Cruddas and Geoff Mulgan through Hilary Wainwright and Paul Ormerod to Alex Callinicos and Martin Smith of the SWP.
It’s not particularly an incisive or well-written piece, but the conclusion is broadly that the left is all out of fresh thinking, and has subsisted for decades on rehashed truisms, available in either Marxist or Keynesian flavourings according to choice.
This isn’t the whole story. Beckett accords too much weight to ideological factors, and not enough to the industrial relations defeats of the 1980s, the changes in the British class structure seen since the advent of Thatcherism, and the Blairites’ deliberate use of the Labour Party machine to destroy the Labour left.
There is also the question of the culture of the left, which has for long periods allowed it to deny that anything important was changing and that the old nostrums surely still had to work, if only activists agitated for them hard enough.
On the far left, small organisations have been complacently content to be small. That is unfortunately an inherent by-product of the whacky idea that a microsect can be a revolutionary party ‘in embryo’.
So long as it has ‘the right politics’ in place, it can depend on being catapulted into the big time by impending crisis, just like the Bolsheviks in 1917. Mass membership? Why would anybody want that? It would only make it harder to ram through the next 180 degree change of line.
Attempts at regroupment have now been a work in progress since the launch of the Socialist Labour Party in 1996. It is not worth enumerating just how many new party vehicles have since been launched and then lightmindedly cast aside.
The result is that capitalism can find itself in the worst spot of bother it has seen since the 1930s, and yet a flagship project involving a major industrial union, the Communist Party of Britain and the Socialist Party secures just 1% of the votes in a low turnout proportional representation electoral contest. Ludicrously, boosterists talk even that up as a triumph.
But Beckett is completely correct to point to a paucity of fresh thinking, and a lack of any attempt to make socialism relevant to a new generation that has only the faintest idea of what the word entails.
New Labour has from the start been gulled into intellectual stupor by its own self-delusional rhetoric. Convinced that its own brand of softer neoliberalism was enough to make it ‘the political wing of the British people as a whole’, if only by self-proclamation, it neglected even to renew the bases of Labourism itself.
Old Labour, by contrast, pulled up the drawbridge and refused to acknowledge that the society that created it was disappearing before its eyes. As a combined result, the Labour Party is now so hollowed out that it could collapse at the slightest push.
Intellectually, the Stalinist tradition ran out of road in 1989. The leading figure on the Marxism Today wing has dissolved his politics into soft Sinophilia, shocked and awed by a society that is even more inegalitarian than either Britain or the US.
The Morning Star side of the CPB – which constituted the brains of the No2EU operation – still cannot get its head round the reality of what the USSR represented in history. Constrained by their origin, neither element is capable of forging an attractive new left politics.
Most Trotskyist groups have become sects in the full sociological meaning of the term, with any criticism of a closed belief system automatically equated to heresy. Tendencies that once quite rightly derided student vanguardism and guerillaism as ‘substitutionism’ fell foul to analoguous elephant traps, relating primarily to anti-capitalist youth and the bourgeois and clerical layers of religious minorities rather than the organised working class.
In short, through a collective failure of the imagination, the left has failed to come up with a politics relevant for this country in the early twenty-first century rather than early twentieth century Russia or postwar Britain. Now we are living with the consequences.
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43 Responses to “Andy Beckett: right about the left?”
Astute post.
Very good article. It is true to say that the left have seen none of the benefit of the economic crisis. The beneficiaries have been the BNP, UKIP and the incumbnent Tory government. This has been a massive failure of the left.
With the SWP claiming ludicrously that there ‘is no space at present for a left alternative’ (they have changed tack of course) and the SP/CPB lash up performing woefully in the Euro’s where do we go from here. Nearly all of the left groups from the AWL, SWP and No2EU are calling for unity, yet won’t unite with each other seemingly. The layers of the Labour left never did split away as many were waiting for. The micro-sects remain…..well, micro-sects.
The anti-fascist action and workplace occupations that are being celebrated are defensive movements (not downplaying their importance) but higlight the weakness of the movement rather than it’s strength. What happens now I don’t know. I think Dave’s analysis of the CPB and Trotskyist groups is spot on sadly. A wasted opportunity.
” the brains of the No2EU operation’ ? Who Whom ?
This is indeed an astute post and I cannot disagree with you.
I want to say that if there is hope then it lies in the trade union movement.
I may just be whistling to keep my spirits up.
But I think such hope does exist and that the CWU motion to this year’s TUC is an expression of the thinking that is going on in parts of the trade union movement (as is the Trade Union Coordinating Group).
We’re told this mysterious entity called “The Left” have blown it. On our behalf, or something.
This despite not really getting a sniff or a whisker of positive media coverage, not getting the concerted funding to really do anything much, and a widespread lack of belief in politics to achieve anything much. If there is a “left” it consists of a scattered camp, with very little or no space for a reprise of the mavericks and colourful personalities of the past. It’s just bits and pieces, people with no co-ordination, often ill-disciplined.
Have “The Left” blown it – or has it been deliberately blown away? It’s a bit of both.
But things change. And prosperity is deeply rooted in much of England. So whether English people sit up, depends how high the flood waters rise. It really is that simple. There is every indication that, push comes to shove, most people would opt for socialist alternatives if they had to, if the choice was socialism or penury. The SWP may try to convince them that is already the choice, but people’s eyes and ears tell them otherwise. So if and when people felt threatened enough, maybe they will “pull the cord”.
In certain ways reaction to the crisis offers some kind of parallel with the 1930s, but obviously with a much weaker communist party, with stronger feelings for environment and more general irreverence. Is all this bad? Is it all bad? We’ll see in 10 years. But I think the young people who grew up in the Blair years will have contributions to make.
I was not too impressed by the Guardian article. Any article which attempts to evaluate where the left and left oppositional movements in Britain are by using the moribund festival of the moribund SWP as a starting point and then proceeds to talk to various right social-democrat recuperators for “balance” is not going to give a full picture of where we are.
However, a glimmer of revelation came with the note towards the end of the article that green currents continue to grow in influence, number and variety (although in ignoring the potentially very significant eco-socialist/left green/red-green/green syndicalist developments whose potential is seen in some aspects of the current Vestas campaign the article falls back on the lazy journalist caricature of a monolithic green movement that has no points of contact with the left.)
The future for the left is in the development of a libertarian, direct democratic, ecological, workplace and community centred movement. Such a movement could tranform party, union and community activism by seeking to relate directly both to the ongoing grassroots struggles around employment, welfare, education, housing etc and the overarching questions of climate change, resource scarcity and sustainability which illuminate the bankruptcy of capitalism and its lack of a future.
What we need is not another new Party or another futile attempt to battle for the soul of an old one, but a new attitude and vision, and new ways of working at the grassroots.
Are you a shipping expert, Dave?
The article is no great shakes and, as others said, a review of the Left is always going to be fatally flawed when it defines that as encompassing all from John Cruddas to the SWP; but the occasional gem does shines through
Rebecca Solnit: “A lot of activists,” she wrote, “specialise in disappointment.” She adds now: “Despair is a black leather jacket that everyone looks good in. Hope is a frilly pink dress that exposes your knees.”
And even from the wettest of wet – “The crisis of the financial markets has become a crisis of public spending – it’s incredible!” says Hilary Wainwright, editor of leftwing magazine Red Pepper. “Public servants are going to be scrutinised down to the last paperclip, while bankers are not going to be scrutinised down to the last million they have received from the government.”
And Geoff Mulgan says: “A lot of the left literature feels like it’s just words, just rhetorical…”
But I just don’t buy the argument that the Left fails because it hasn’t got what the right had, “a whole alternative worldview – later called Thatcherism”.
I know what socialism promises and most people have a general view – an argument amongst my rightish colleagues at work last week were lines I have often heard – ‘communism sounds very good; everything shared out equally but it can’t work in practice’; ‘human nature’, ‘look at the USSR’, etc. And even beyond the abstract, measures are readily understandable if graduated e.g. – free public transport, tax the rich heavily, seize the capitalist’s property.
But there clearly is a major problem. Not only did the Left fail to capitalise on the crash but the Left (SWP,CPB and others) led the multi million marches against the Iraq, but with clearly zilch long lasting effect.
The problem is both political and organisational.
The political problem is the rightward politics of many Left groups. But these arguments will never be settled in the abstract.
They will be settled in a party. And to get that the organisational problem needs to be solved.
Organise a party aimed attracting anyone Left of Labour (and anyone who will leave that party) on the basis of a minimum acceptable programme.
Bar all prominent person from any left groups form having any leadership role (they have all failed) and ensure 2/3rds of any exec committee are under 25.
Adopt measures such as wearing insignia to build a profile. Adopt new marketing strategies e.g. computer games of reds v capitalists; propaganda graffiti (e.g. a Left Banksy).
Take nothing as read -encourage debate e.g. would we support instant e-democracy; should we be a matriarchal society; should we oppose all nation states?
Create an atmosphere to allow any debate e.g. where someone can argue, wrong as they are, shouldn’t reds be racists.
Drop the Red Flag, 1 May, ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ (all besmirched forever by Stalinism).
Rip it up and start again.
Old leftist
It is true to say that the left have seen none of the benefit of the economic crisis. The beneficiaries have been the BNP, UKIP and the incumbnent Tory government.
What tosh, the BNP is the labour party of the 70/80,s. Cameron is a statist and has placed the tories on the left of the political spectrum.
The whole article is nonsense, we are not livingin a neoliberal paradisem but an extended left wing one party state, where the three main parties, most of the smaller parties (UKIp, LPUK apart) are social democratic parties if not socialist parties. They try to use the free market for their own ends but do not understand that they distort the market leading to the failure we have now. We have a mainstram media that is devoutly left wing, even the so called torygraph with a couple of exceptions, es[ose keynsian econimoics, anti human green/global warmimg policies. Between them they offer the population a false dichotomy between communism on one side and fascism on the other and pretend that they are a centrist alternative. effectively a choice between two left wing socialist parties with social democracy as the alternative.
The real choice is between liberty and authoritarianism, with all the parties being on the side of the devil being positively syayist.
The thatcherite free amrket wing of the conservatives, and some of the so called orange book liberals do not fit this scenario, but continue to support their parties, while the balance of the paryies and all the labour party are control freaks who want to be in power for power’s sake.
This is the left / right divide if you need one with the left being clear winners on all but economic matters, where they have attempted miserably to use the market.
Obnoxio has some competition, all be it someone who can’t spell !!
All the ‘top down’ left organisations have failed or have only have very limited success – the founding of the Socialist Party after their departure from the Labour Party, the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance -1&2! and the No2EU. However their have been some interesting and very local initiatives that have produced good results, especially where the Labour party is weak and been in power for years -the community based pilots of the IWCA in Hackney, Islington, Harold Hill and Oxford. The recent developments in Wigan with the Community Action Party joining forces with progressive and left organisations, around the ‘Peoples Charter’ could be an interesting development.
“all be it someone who can’t spell ! !”? That would have been more effective if you had spelled “albeit” right, closed up the spaces between “spell” and the exclamation marks, and used only one exclamation mark or none at all.
Not that any of that helps to improve the prospects of the left, but, I’m sorry to say, nothing much does.
Been waiting for a post like this for a long time Dave. Well done.
The 20th century project called ‘socialism’ is dead. If the Left is ever to have a future even as a component of human thought then it needs to accept this fact.
However the ‘Left Project’ (b.1789) is still as vital to our future as it ever was i.e. to transform our World for the benefit of the many, (no, all!) not the few. That basic idea still has resonance- even amongst my right wing workmates!
@Southpaw- I think you’ve got the right idea. It can do no harm and an awful lot of good to start with a clean slate.
As to what shape a future Left will take I really don’t know. However I do hope it will accept certain basic principles namely:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of Conscience
Democracy. whether direct or indirect.
Equality (as in we’re all born equal)
Progress- social and economic.
That we can achieve greater things working together rather than alone.
Ok, I know some of that sounds like motherhood and apple pie and I could add more but I’m knackered after work! Something to chew on at any rate.
BTW Dave,do the Beeb pay cash in hand? ;oD
Yes Jako, ’twas me.
No Johnny Uk, you have to wait a few week before the cheque arrives.
I would recommend Andy Becketts book ”When the Lights Went Out”.
Well have the problem is most of the so called left aren’t left.
Look at those in the Labour Party. Blood on their hands , so not sure how Dave can really say anything on the subject. They need to leave, though to be honest I don’t think any left group should have them as members. What sort of socialist would spend anytime in New Labour ?
Those outside are often wishy washy and not much better.
for anyone born after the end of WWII, the single most significant policial event must be the collapse of the USSR and eastern bloc. It’s not just the CPB who can’t get to grips with this, most of the left behave as though we’re back in 1980 and Brezhnev’s still in the Kremlin
the left was bouyed up by the fact that a large proprotin of the world’s populatin lived under communism of one sort or another. Its demise had sod all to do with Thatcher and Reagan; they were pushing at an open door – the fact that one corpse after another was being wheeled out to run the USSR gave a clue that the jig was up
let’s face it, Cuba and N Korea don’t really make the cut as socialist role models these days. People now equute ‘socialism’ with long queues for stale bread and rotten cabbages
I recognise that “anti imperialist” bloke from a couple of posts up ^
Yes, I suspect “anti imperialist” is a bloke. Trouble is the left is full of macho posturing and falling behind ‘charismatic’ male leaders.
Perhaps that could be added to the issues Dave addresses in this post and why that might be one of the factors in why the left is doing so badly.
It certainly puts me of getting involved.
More pathetic breast beating, distortion, straw men, faulty analysis, fallacious conclusions from someone who never was a revolutionary (Beckett) and someone who has been moving to the right so fast that he’s still in New Labour (Osler). Either shut up Osler or stop pretending to care about the Left because your repetitious whining is beginning to get really tiresome. Jon Cruddas, Martin Smith, Hilary Wainwright! I wonder if Beckett actually asked someone from the SP for their views.
Ah Doug
A kindred spirit .
Too much whining, not enough action all round i’d say.
‘Collective Failure of the Imagination.’
Splendidly put, sums up the cause of the left’s, in all its varieties, defeat in 5 words. And worth a treatise all of its own.
Mark P
Doug
Whilst writing that did you also put your fingers in your ears and go la la la , not listening ?
Yes, the SP does some good stuff, so do other groups, but collectively the left is in a weak position and all you can do is the usual , dismiss someone as being right wing and so not take on board that the state the left is on.
Now I don’t have much time for people being in New labour, but have you wondered why left wingers aren’t all rushing out to join one of the many varieties of sects? Why they aren’t all enthused by the latest project , be that Respect or…don;t hold your breath…the New Workers Party ?
Ooh yes, lets waste another year of my life on another project that will go tits up in no time at all.
Dave’s article doesn’t put forward one proposal for how the left should procede, so forgive me for not being blown away by it!
The discussion here is centered too much on parties and not enough on the working class.
Though I suspect I would have many differences of opinion, I think Greenman has made the best contribution.
“Dave’s article doesn’t put forward one proposal for how the left should procede, so forgive me for not being blown away by it!”
Well, obviously this kind of “if we get the recipe right, then the working classes will come running to us” type of thinking, combined with the “tell us what to think, please” mentality are part of the problem.
Surely, the more sensible way is to list all of the Left’s bad habits and things to avoid then try to not replicate those errors?
There is not a formula for socialism.
Had there been one someone would have discovered it years ago, rather as humans we need to imperfectly grappled towards the end goal, learn from history, avoid repeating the same errors and try not to be too literalalist.
So Dave no more has a recipe for what to do than anyone else, he’s made his points and now the question is will people engage with them?
Modernity,
So we put forward no proposals at all do we?
A movement with no proposals is no movement at all!!
And who said anything about “if we get the recipe right, then the working classes will come running to us”? Certainly not me!
And no offence to Dave but he is not saying or highlighting anything new, the left have been discussing this problem for years.
Where does that leave us anti-imperialist? Why should no left group have them as members and if the left outside of Labour are ‘wishy washy’, what do you suggest we do?
“And no offence to Dave but he is not saying or highlighting anything new, the left have been discussing this problem for years.”
aye right enough, but are we to have another 30 years of chatter?
Personally I think / thought that the British left showed its weakness many years ago when it failed to find a principled position re civil rights and use of troops etc, etc, in the Six Counties.
It was all a bit too difficult, so we all looked elsewhere for a ’cause’.
And what would that principled position be, pray tell? Various components of the British left actually took a myriad of positions so surely one of them must have pleased you. And since most people in Britain don’t give a damn about what happens in Ireland it’s hard to see how this principled position would have won the hearts and minds of the masses over here.
Thank you ‘gobby fud’ (witty or what?), for making my point for me in such an elegant way.
Prat.
Yes, well given your complete inability to ever make any coherent point you need all the help you can get. Still waiting to hear what that principled position is, you tedious waste of space.
Is that you, Will, before the cheap whiskey kicks in?
“Various components of the British left actually took a myriad of positions…”
Well there’s something new, thanks for reminding me, I nearly forgot that it was implicit in the short comment I made.
“And since most people in Britain don’t give a damn about what happens in Ireland it’s hard to see how this principled position would have won the hearts and minds of the masses over here.”
And you can’t see the problem? Oh well.
Have one on me.
I have no idea who Will is and I don’t drink. I am trying, clearly in vain, to find out what you believe this “principled position re civil rights and use of troops etc, etc, in the Six Counties” that the Britih left showed its weakness by not having actually is.
gobby fud – the point is simple. The British state took upon itself extreme powers to impose itself upon legitimate opposition to its rule – internment without trial being only one of its techniques. The British left was incapable of opposing this.
That “”Various components of the British left actually took a myriad of positions…” is a measure of their weakness.
And no, I don’t have a magic solution as to how that should have been addressed nor how it should have been made central to British politics.
But it should have been central to leftist politics in Britain, the use of the full power of the state – its armed men – to impose its political ends, but it was not.
The left in Britain is happy to oppose the use of force in say, Iraq, but copped out when it came to Ireland.
I know this is only a partial answer, and I am sorry that I have taken an offensive stance.
It’s not just the lack of some magic position that would solve everything – such did not exist. It’s the lack of any coherent position. The reflex of the Sasanach left was simply to ignore Ireland as far as possible.
Well, some agreement here, if memory serves, most of the English were fairly clueless about the Six Counties and the British branch of Amnesty Int. weren’t too good either, but times have moved on, the “New” Left dominates now much of the political scene in a way it didn’t in 1969 and would probably go for a united Ireland at sometime in the future, etc.,
So it is a bit of an old issue and hardly one that can be used to blame the contemporary Left, given the obvious lack of continuity since then, 40 years ago.
LL – okay, apologies for my rudeness. I still don’t take your point though. As always it depends whether by the left you mean the far left or a broader category, but the former (ie IS/IMG/SLL/Militant/CP) certainly did oppose internment and support the initial civil rights movement, and in general opposed the deployment of troops (not counting the IS wobble on the question or the CP’s more nuanced position). Indeed, most of the far left adopted a position on Ireland based on a crude distillation of Irish nationalism which a 1930s Irish Christian Brother would have dismissed as somewhat naive. The problem was that most people in Ireland were turning away from and increasingly repelled by that version of nationalism. Meanwhile, northern Protestants refused to play the role of disfunctional colons who would collapse at the first whiff of grapeshot, projected onto them by Farrell et al, and British workers remained strangely immune to the charms of the Provos under Seamus Twomey and co. But I don’t think you can actually blame the far left for trying.Like I said, the vast majority of British people have never been to Ireland and take little interest in it. Banging on about the subject is not going to get you any closer to their hearts, however virtuous it may be in itself.
This entire stream of comments is hilarious.
SU blog is running a similar thread, and its like a car-crash, but one poster made a lot of sense:
“118. One sensible correspondent asked, quite reasonably, why a discussion about the future of the Left almost instantly degenerates into a tiresome, quasi-Biblical squabble about the deformed workers’ states or state capitalism. The response of another contributor is immediately to brush the question aside as ‘dreary economism.’ This stale retreat into jargon typifies the Left’s isolation from the concerns of the vast majority of people and its self-indulgent isolation from…well, reality.
I joined the SWP way back in the early Seventies. I was a member through some of the more productive initiatives such as the Right to Work Campaign and the Anti Nazi League. I was a member for twenty odd years before becoming disillusioned, not just with this section of the Left but most of the self-appointed Popes of Marxism I encountered. Too many preferred being a big fish in an empty pond rather than a sprat in a big ocean. There are many things I did or said as an SWP member which I find embarrassing or stupid. The times I remember with affection is when we managed to genuinely pull together people with different opinions around an issue of common concern.
I now organize a campaign to defend reading and libraries called the Campaign for the Book. We had a conference of 200 delegates recently and have been at the heart of the defence of Wirral and Swindon libraries. We now cooperate with publishers, trade unions, library campaigners and ‘book people.’ Our supporters come from many different political backgrounds but we cooperate around an agreed nine-point charter. We look for issues which unite, rather than divide us. We don’t kow-tow to clay-footed ‘leaders.’ We do what we can to protect important public services in difficult conditions. I think it is a sensible approach.
I honestly think that, if the Left is to have any resonance with ordinary people, it must speak their language and address their main concerns. If it wants to appeal it must cast aside self-indulgence and self-obsession and be realistic about its size and potential for growth.
Which brings me back to the Guardian article. Cast your mind back. It took about six weeks before there was a single protest in the City of London against the ‘masters of the universe.’ By that time there had been several protests in Washington where there must be even fewer radicals and socialists. At the moment the Left is divided and unimaginative and tends to put its interests before those of the people suffering the impact of the recession. The bankers and their political apologists have got away with vandalism on a quite colossal scale. Vast bonuses are issued and the majority of us will pay for this economic lunacy with our jobs and services.
The Left should be able to unite around a common platform and appeal to a substantial minority of people. Everywhere I go, former Labour supporters tell me how they throw things at the TV but then groan that ‘politically there is nowhere for me, to go, is there?” it is the most crass pessimism to say that in a recession politics moves right. The nineteen thirties saw fascism, the New Deal, the Popular Front, mass strikes in France and civil war in Spain, in other words many different outcomes. Part of the reason for the different responses was what people did on the ground.
If opponents of the free market jungle are to offer any sort of alternative they must be able to offer a non-sectarian, principled and accessible platform. If they can’t, they should just belt up!
Comment by alan gibbons — 19 August, 2009 @ 4:45 pm”
A phrase borrowed by blogger Martin Kelly from economists Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson sums up the last 12 years, when we exported jobs, imported workers(supported by pretty much the entire left including the unions), and sold our strategic industries to countries much too sensible to ever reciprocate:
“Globalisation In One Country”
That sums up the last 12 years, are you serious?
Do you remember Thatcher?
And is it just us or is this process world wide?
The US economy is virtually reliant on China and German companies have moved production to Vietnam etc etc etc.
“Globalisation In One Country” is a moronic phrase.
Does anybody know what happened to the unity conferences that were supposed to be happening? I mean the SWP and the SP/CPB/No2EU ones in particular. Also are the AWL doing anything re. the call for a new Socialist Alliance?