COMMUNISM is suddenly in danger of becoming fashionable again, with a whole new layer of young people finding themselves attracted to Leninist ideas. That’s the kind of claim I usually discount on sight, after having heard it so often advanced by far left activists desperate to disavow the readily-visible decline in the membership of their vanguard party of choice.
But when exactly this argument is put by one of Britain’s best-known centre-right philosophers, the lack of obvious self-interest make it rather more worthy of consideration. So I was intrigued to read this assertion in John Gray’s review of the the latest book offerings from Slavoj Žižek and from co-authors Michael Hardt and Toni Negri:
No longer confined to dingy meetings of ageing Trotskyites or the longueurs of the academic seminar, communism has been reinvented as a kind of intellectual cabaret act. The 20th century's biggest mistake is being marketed as high-end entertainment, with a modish neo-Bolshevism promising the jaded consumer an exciting experience of forbidden ideas.
Now, until Hackney SWP branch meetings find themselves mobbed with star-struck teenyboppers who swoon when the evening’s speaker takes to his or her feet, or Kate Winslet stars in the title role of a Spielberg-directed Clara Zetkin biopic, we probably have to factor in a certain degree of writerly hyperbole here.
But speaking as one who spent far too much time in both academic seminars and dingy meetings of ageing Trotskyites in my progress from youth to middle age, I cannot help but notice the new faces that show up at the rather fewer leftwing gatherings I do get to these days.
Buddies still in far left groups insist that they are picking up plenty of newcomers, and the turnout behind their banners on demos indicates that they are probably not fibbing, either. It’s also worth noting that the ‘On the Idea of Communism’ conference at Birkbeck earlier this year – at which both Žižek and Negri spoke - attracted an audience of over 1,000.
Gray bases his assessment of the two works he reviews on the argument that there is some essential linkage between Leninism and Stalinism, which is a separate debate and not one I want to resurrect here. So let’s leave that aside for now and concentrate on his observations about an incipient youth radicalisation.
The reasons for this, he believes, are the little local difficulties capitalism seems to have experienced in the last year or two, and the arrival of a new generation for whom Actually Existing Socialism was something that happened before they were born. And, when you are in your twenties, ‘before you were born’ = ‘like, ancient history, innit’. Intuitively, both postulates seem plausible.
So what should the older layer of leftists - the milieu formed between 1968 and the early 1980s, to which the punk rock cohort is the tail end – be saying to the recent arrivals? Maybe I am getting old and jaded, but my first reaction is along the lines of the old disclaimer broadcast with each episode of the original Batman television series: don’t try this at home, kids.
You deserve better than to participate in the continued fragmentation of the far left into numerous competing sects. While this state of affairs continues to obtain, far left politics will remain marginalised. The theoretical differences are important, yes, but should not be a barrier to joint work.
Be wary of middle-aged blokes who order you to shut down your website in the name of 'democratic centralism'. If you are going to style yourselves Leninists, make sure you read Ms Luxemburg's criticisms of the Bolsheviks. The perusal of a few anarchist critiques probably wouldn't hurt, either.
If I were you, I’d vote most of the old farts off their central committee positions – hey, many are close to retirement age, anyway – and unify into a group with sufficient social weight to win at least the beginnings of a wider audience. This is hardly rocket science, and I apologise profusely that my lot were far too sectarian to pull off this ABC task.
On the other hand, those of us have waited two decades to see some sort of revival cannot help but be pleased at what is happening. I don’t suppose any of you would happen know where I could score some decent blow, do you?
Posted at 14:32, 25 November 2009
Comments (28)
Philosophers or bullshit artists. Make up your own mind. I do hope that if communism becomes popular it will go back to the good old ballot rigging days, infiltrating the trade unions and denying the Gulag existed. Their popularity will be short lived.
Amsterdam.
I'm sure your advice is being perused right now with enthusiasm, with the only regret is that you aren't participating in such an enterprise.
Thanks Skidmarx
It's just that the Netherlands is a bit far to go for a quarter.
There are very good reasons why a rightist would bullshit up a Leftist revival. It's an excuse, and a boogeyman. He's written in the the Independant the same thing that Hitchens writes in the Mail and Glenn Beck shouts on Fox News. It's a target.
When graphs all pointed upwards, there was no socialist presence, it was the triumph of Neoliberalism. Suddenly the game has changed and they've decided it was Marxism all along- and what we need is a good dose of Neoliberalism to cut into this debt!
I fail to see how government collusion with rent-seeking big business can somehow be described as having anything at all to do with liberalism.
I would be ever so grateful if you could enlighten me.
Good to see you seem to be getting the audience you deserve - right wing prats and fellow members of the inequality, privatisation, cuts and war party.
Some time ago the Grauniad predicted both a surge of the far right among working-class people and a revival of Marxism among the middle class and the educated. The first has certainly happened.
"I would be ever so grateful if you could enlighten me."
Is that possible? Enlightenment, I mean.
I doubt if a 1000 political sages from the past 150 years could have a hope in hell's chance of getting even the simplest political(non Libertarian/non Tory/non barking mad right-wing) idea into Obnoxio The Clown's cranium.
James Glasgow:
"Philosophers or bullshit artists. Make up your own mind."
Some are philosophers, some philosophers and bullshit artists and some are bullshit artists.
Not always easy to 'make up your own mind' is it, James?
Is that 'philosophy' or bullshit, James?
Let's not be too hard on Obo. The clown's great at juggling his balls when he turns up at parties. And being of a tiny, frustrated political philosophy with no worth or relevance in the real world almost makes him one of us.
Almost...
If I can interupt this subject and inform all of you that a man from Lebanon is on death row in Saudi for the crime of witchcraft. I am sure some of you Lefties and the moderate Muslims! will wish to organise a huge rally to protest outside the London Saudi Embassy. This was reported on Radio Scotland this morning. I did not hear any mention on the main news. Do not want to annoy our oil supplier do we!
Hello Lobby, Just a bit of Jimmysbull. We still have our sense of humour up here in wind/rain swept Sconie Boatland. We even have some wannabee Tories. This being a pact between the former socialists from the Labour/SNP Parties. They are all arguing about the best way to make the cuts. The real TORIES ARE SITTING BACK LAUGHING AT THEM FOR DOING THEIR DIRTY WORK. A sense of humour is required. They have forgotten the old slogans about taxing the rich.
Forget reviving Lenin, Comrade Chavez has called for the workers of the world to establish a Fifth International!
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4946
"I fail to see how government collusion with rent-seeking big business can somehow be described as having anything at all to do with liberalism.
I would be ever so grateful if you could enlighten me."
Thanks- that's a perfect example of what I mean. Haven't the Tores spent the last decade rightly accusing Labour of stealing their economic policies? There was none of this criticism aimed at Labour while the media narrative was that the economy was working.
Whether it actually is "liberal" or not is a completely different matter. Hell, Bismarck was big with the National Liberals, liberalism has meant all things to all people. Neoliberal, though, it certainly was.
It was interesting, right after the banks crashed it was "Unregulated Free Market Capitalism" that came under fire, which is a joke, and the cure was "Regulated Capitalism". It's not the fault of specifically Free Market Capitalism, but of "Actually Existing Capitalism", to turn a phrase the other way!
Leninism's not dead. It's just starting to smell funny.
Badiou and Žižek have the great advantage for Conference goers of all ages in that none of their ideas have the slightest relevance to political activity. They are also difficult to read (though Žižek has flashes of clarity and interest). Which increases their USP - hard, but abstract, and when you've got some of the hand of it, hey, you're ready to spout.
There is nothing specifically new about this package. People who knew some of us who liked Althusser back in the 'seventies will probably recognise some of us there (though Louis did have a lot of political relevance towards the end when he turned on the PCF).
I can't see anything wrong with more serious people - plenty of them under us ex-IMGers' age we are - wrestling with such ideas. I do - though Badiou is not worth much. Gray's review didn't even bother.
Negri is a different type - for all that Gray said about his writing (with Hardt) being just trendy. Negri was an activist, as well as an intellectual. And approachable. Not a Guru. His works deserve to be taken seriously.
I would have thought that around your home it wouldn't be that difficult. A drug dealer walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The landlord says "Where the fuck did you get that?". The parrot replies "Hackney mate, there's fucking millions of them."
Obviously if I were to suggest any details on your blog, the police might be the first to check out any purveyor of fine goods mentioned. Maybe try and do an interview with Howard Marks, he could probably point you in the right direction.
Is this what they call 'the green shoots of recovery'?
Greatings, Come On
Thank you
Truden
what would you tell someone thinking of joining the Labour Party?
"Never trust anyone over thirty,except me", perhaps?
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it.
I recently saw Zizek on BBC News channel's Hard Talk. He was embarrassingly bad. Permanently in a state of agitation, his principal argument seems to be that as the world is in such a bad state we definitely need to do something completely different. Which is a line of argument that did indeed sucker yours truly once upon a time but I wouldn't wish my experience of trying to improve the world by working alongside trots & tankies on anyone.
The hard left is a haven for posturing egotists who think they are saints but fail to recognize they are as altar boys mindlessly recreating a failed revolutionary methodology. Yet the red star and clenched fist salute will always resonate with some 'demographic' in the same way pop culture sects never completely die - having their revival get togethers in out of season holiday camps.
I am minded of a lyric can’t remember who from but which said something like “skip that hippie shit find what’s next”. The idea that the likes of the people who, for instance, run Stop the War Coalition should aspire to run the country – global economy even – is risible.
Of course those who are currently running the world economy are doing a fantastic job. The possibility of any serious challenge to their way of doing things is frightful.
Hugh,
The people running the world economy are the workers. It is just that ownership, wealth and power are in the hands of the ruling class.
So the political question is how we solve the problems created by this and as a socialist I believe we have to change ownership from private to public. Production from competitive to cooperative.
As for Zizek, I saw that too and half agree with your observations. He was awkward no doubt about it but he was trying to make the point that even though the Soviet model of socialism failed miserably, the big questions still remain and the more to the point the problems associated with capitalist production are very real and humanity will have to address them.
It's always funny when ignorants trot out the tedious old arguments from their smug position of "ex-leftist who saw the light".
You think you can pronounce judgment over the Left because of your own failings when you considered yourself Leftist? Fuck off, Hugh, you've said nothing that hasn't been said by every "ex-whatever" before you, every ex-Christian, or ex-Atheist, or ex-Capitalist or whatever.
Yes. I have now discovered that large sections of the worlds population must suffer malnutrition as its for the greater good and prevents the brutality of totalitarianism.
Goodness me. Is the left really this bad now? Wet wet wet