A couple more books on the leftist theme

Alternative Societies for a Pluralist Socialism Luke Martell (2023)

Chapter 1 covers alternative economies of communism; co- ops and other forms of alternative and participatory economy; non- work and slow society; eco- localism, especially in the Global South; and tech and digital alternatives. 

Chapter 2 looks at social alternatives in education, intentional communities, food countercultures, alternative social centres, alternatives to prison and policing, and political institutions of welfare and social democracy. In these cases, I look at the ends and means of change. These chapters raise themes and examples, some of which are mainly discussed there while others are expanded on in the remaining chapters. Many alternative societies are regarded as utopian. While giving talks about alternatives and discussing them during the writing of this book, I was confronted with fierce criticisms of utopianism, often from people committed to political alternatives.

Chapter 3 looks at common criticisms of utopianism from Marxist and liberal perspectives, arguing that it is very defendable against their judgements, and that this is possible from within these perspectives rather than by rejecting them. Utopianism as materialist and not idealist, and as liberal rather than totalitarian, is advocated.

Chapter 4 explores criticisms of socialism from liberal, neoliberal, green and feminist perspectives. I think the most telling concerns about socialism can be found in questioning from these approaches. I argue that sometimes these viewpoints give reasons for socialism expanding, as a good way to tackle their concerns. But sometimes I believe they lead to socialism needing to limit itself to some extent, where the points critics make hit home. Criticisms of socialism lead to both arguments for socialism and arguments for a more pluralist socialism. For me, the most defining aspect of socialism is democratic and collective ownership in the economy, which has come back more into mainstream politics in recent years.

Chapter 5 looks more closely at this, focusing especially on proposals for, and practices of, local, decentralized, and democratized social ownership, about which there have been new thinking and experiments, often localized but relevant also at levels above the local. I sympathize with such proposals and trials of the democratic economy but see dangers in localism and in optimism about winning support for them. I argue for national public ownership in a democratized form and well-planned strategies for political actors so they can be ready to fight back against resistance and opposition from interests like international capital and the political Right.

Chapter 6 looks at the global dimension, discussing the way anti- and alter- globalization movements have gone, their energies channelled more into national and local forms, and what promise these may hold. It looks with hope but pessimism at proposals for political globalization in support of social democratic and social policies, arguing instead for a sub- global internationalism. I argue that hopes in global change for a better world rest more with opening borders to the free movement of people. I believe there is a very strong case across the board for open borders and more positive hope and possibility for them than both critics and supporters often see.The concluding chapter ties together what I have been arguing for. I draw together arguments about globalism, sub- global internationalism, national and local approaches, and experimental, prefigurative, and political approaches to change towards, and organizing of, an alternative society. I argue against dichotomous and polarized thinking about different levels and approaches to social change, and against false oppositions between materialism and idealism, utopianism and Marxism.

This book is based on grounded theory, looking at concrete alternatives and then developing analytical, theoretical, and political discussions founded on this. The concrete alternatives come in Chapters 1 and 2 before the more theoretical and analytical Chapters 3, 4, and 5. This follows the learning process that happens in many of these alternatives, and the one that I went through in studying this area, writing this book, and coming to its conclusions. I also think starting the book with concrete alternatives is the best way to make it accessible to less academic lay readers. The two parts of the book, on concrete alternatives and then more theoretical and analytical discussions, are not separate; the first leads to the latter, and they go together and are one whole. There is some minor reiteration across chapters because while the whole book makes a case with all the chapters together, some will read just parts. So occasionally something mentioned in an earlier chapter or section is brought up again briefly in another one where it is important for someone not reading the whole book. Where this happens, I point this out, so readers of the whole book can skim issues that may have been discussed earlier.

It become less and less reasonable to think that capitalism might be keeping any of the promises made on its behalf by its supporters. Wealth was not trickling down; the gap between the rich and the poor was growing daily. Even the lucky ones who capitalism enriched were not happier than before. While at the same time the results of electoral politics seemed increasingly questionable, public corruption was on the rise and democracy moribund as the economy alternatively boomed and burst. Capitalism had not brought us peace and security, neither at home nor abroad, but instead involved us in endless warfare and mass slaughter. It daily became a more intense threat to the natural environment and human survival on earth. Nor have the moral requirements of racial and gender equality made great inroads. Overwhelmed by these realities, we thought that socialism is clearly what the world needs. But, at the same time, we found that the large anticapitalist literature had little to tell us about the detailed features of a socialist society. Hence we asked a group of our friends to write papers about their thoughts about a socialist society. They did and what emerged is a really interesting book.

But the book did not answer the question that needs answering. When you ask someone about their conception of socialism, you may very well get a description of their fantasies about a better world. They will give you their dreams and wishful thinking. But wishful thinking will not repair the ravages of capitalism. What we need are alternative institutions that we can build in the present. We need not only to ask ourselves how we imagine a better world but also how we are going to construct it in the prefiguative process of reconstructing ourselves and our social relations.

Socialism has been on the agenda for close to 200 years. It began its career as the name for a society based on cooperation and equal economic and political rights. Becoming then associated with the Marxist theory ofhistory, socialism became a future state that would follow capitalism once that mode of production met its inevitable demise. Not much needed to be known about socialism because we would find out, when the time came, how we needed to construct a society not dominated by the private ownership of the means of production.

Socialism was going to be the opposite of a society where means of production were privately owned. For a variety of historical reasons that was taken to mean that in a socialist society the state would own and direct the economy. This conception spawned numerous socialist experiments—most of them brutal failures.

Socialists have recommended political strategies which have not worked. They have organized labor unions that turned out to be solidly anti-communist. They have organized “socialist” political parties that became staunch supporters of capitalist institutions. They have talked grandly about international working class solidarity only to find workers flocking to their national colors when war broke out. They have created schools and families that have reproduced the very authoritarianism they were intended to overthrow.

Many theorists today, however, critical of capitalism follow in the footsteps of Eduard Bernstein and deny that capitalist collapse is inevitable (without adopting Bernstein’s electoral strategies). If capitalism is not expected to fall apart it is extremely unlikely that we will be able to replace the entire capitalist system with an alternative—socialism. The anti-capitalist project needs to be reoriented. Instead of organizing an entirely new society from the ground up, our task as the enemies of capitalism, is to develop projects which can restrict the dominance of capitalist institutions and values. No longer in the business of changing everything all at once or in a short period, the enemies of capitalism are becoming enormously inventive in thinking about what specific changes they want to make. None of these projects will bring about a better society by itself. All together they may—we hope—help. Absent serious thought about how socialism will come into the world in concrete incarnations our descriptions of aspects of a socialist society must remain utopian. It is time for socialists to abandon the comforting generalities of the past and the pleasing fantasies with which we maintain our sanity in an insane world.

Taking Socialism Seriously ed Antole Anton and Richard Schmidt (2012)

It become less and less reasonable to think that capitalism might be keeping any of the promises made on its behalf by its supporters. Wealth was not trickling down; the gap between the rich and the poor was growing daily. Even the lucky ones who capitalism enriched were not happier than before. While at the same time the results of electoral politics seemed increasingly questionable, public corruption was on the rise and democracy moribund as the economy alternatively boomed and burst.

Capitalism had not brought us peace and security, neither at home nor abroad, but instead involved us in endless warfare and mass slaughter. It daily became a more intense threat to the natural environment and human survival on earth. Nor have the moral requirements of racial and gender equality made great inroads. Overwhelmed by these realities, we thought that socialism is clearly what the world needs. But, at the same time, we found that the large anticapitalist literature had little to tell us about the detailed features of a socialist society. Hence we asked a group of our friends to write papers about their thoughts about a socialist society. They did and what emerged is a really interesting book.

But the book did not answer the question that needs answering. When you ask someone about their conception of socialism, you may very well get a description of their fantasies about a better world. They will give you their dreams and wishful thinking. But wishful thinking will not repair the ravages of capitalism. What we need are alternative institutions that we can build in the present. We need not only to ask ourselves how we imagine a better world but also how we are going to construct it in the prefiguative process of reconstructing ourselves and our social relations. Socialism has been on the agenda for close to 200 years. It began its career as the name for a society based on cooperation and equal economic and political rights. Becoming then associated with the Marxist theory of history, socialism became a future state that would follow capitalism once that mode of production met its inevitable demise. Not much needed to be known about socialism because we would find out, when the time came, how we needed to construct a society not dominated by the private ownership of the means of production.

Socialists have recommended political strategies which have not worked. They have organized labor unions that turned out to be solidly anti-communist. They have organized “socialist” political parties that became staunch supporters of capitalist institutions. They have talked grandly about international working class solidarity only to find workers flocking to their national colors when war broke out. They have created schools and families that have reproduced the very authoritarianism they were intended to overthrow.

Is the Left Finished? part 2

I've been trying these past few days to get my head around a growing list of books I need to read. Here are some of them - with a few excerpts...

After the Third Way – the future of social democracy in Europe ed O Cramme and P Diamond (2012)

We take ideas to be of central importance in our analysis, structuring the electoral strategies, political identities and policy agendas of centre-left parties. There is a vast historical literature on European social democracy which explores the role of ideologies, institutions and interests. Although ideas are referred to in passing and are closely related to ideologies, institutions and interests, for many authors, they remain of secondary concern.

Taking Socialism Seriously ed Antole Anton and Richard Schmidt (2012)

Why the Left Loses – the decline of the centre-left in comparative perspective ed 

Rob Manwaring and Paul Kennedy (2018)

After the 2008 financial crisis many observers expected a significant swing to the left among Western electorates, since many blamed the economy’s problems on the neoliberal policies that had proliferated during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. But the centre-left lacked a convincing message for dealing with the crisis, or a more general vision of how to promote growth while protecting citizens from the harsher aspects of free markets. Instead, it kept on trying to defend out-dated policies or proposed watered-down versions of neoliberalism that barely differentiated it from the centre-right. The centre-left also lacked a convincing message about how to deal with increasing diversity or a vision of social solidarity appropriate to changing demographic and cultural realities. Instead, the centre-left either ignored the challenge of diversity or especially among the intellectual left, put forward a message of ‘multiculturalism’ – neither of these responses was able to stem social conflict or electoral flight from the left, especially on the part of the working class.

It has now become fairly commonplace to note the support given by traditionally centre-left voters to the populist right. This connection was on obvious display in the Brexit referendum, where many traditional Labour strongholds and supporters voted to leave the EU, and it has been a prominent feature of elections in Europe as workingclass voters have flocked to right-wing populist parties. And, of course, a version of this was present in the US, where Donald Trump garnered disproportionate support from less-educated and working-class voters. What is still worth stressing, however, is the causal connection between the failures or missteps of the centre-left and the rise of right-wing populist parties that offered simple, straightforward messages in response to citizens’ economic and social fears. Economically, the populist right promises to promote prosperity, via increased government control of the economy and limits on globalisation. Socially, the populist right promises to restore social solidarity and a sense of shared national purpose, by expelling foreigners or severely limiting immigration, diminishing the influence of the EU and globalisation, and protecting traditional values, identities and mores.

For those who bemoan the decline of the centre-left and the rise of the populist right, the challenge is clear: you can’t beat something with nothing, and if the centre-left can’t come up with more viable and attractive messages about how to solve contemporary problems, and a more attractive vision of the future than those offered by its competitors, it can expect to continue its slide into the dust heap of history. The following chapters provide an excellent starting point for the debate about the centre-left’s future.

Leftism Reinvented – western parties from socialism to neoliberalism Stephanie Mudge (2018)

Key to the ideological mass party form was a triple orientation: first, toward knowledge production, education, socialization, and truth-claiming; second, toward representation, agitation, and mobilization; and third, toward office-or power-seeking. Each orientation, in its own way, expressed the historical moment. Ideological mass parties of the left were educators and knowledge producers when there was no mass education; they agitated and mobilized in a world of severely limited voting rights; they provided a means to political careers for the nonwealthy in an age in which aristocratic avocational politicians, with no need for a regular salary, were the rule rather than the exception.8 As such the mass party of the left shaped the formation of parties, politicians, political identities, and the boundaries of politics itself. They are major reasons that one can say, in the words of the political scientist Peter Mair, that “above all else, the twentieth century has been the century of the mass party. My approach to the study of center-left parties is comparative, historical, and biographical. I narrow the general task of analyzing mainstream leftism by punctuating a long-term, four-party analysis with emphases on three time periods: the 1920s–1930s, 1950s–1960s, and 1980s–1990s. I construct my explanatory puzzle, leftism’s reinventions, not by measuring policies in these periods but by tracking changes in political language—that is, changes in the most basic stuff of representative politics. Embracing the time-tested sociological principle that historical analysis should be able to tell the “big” story and that of actors on the ground, I account for changes in political language via an analysis of both large-scale institutional transformations and the trajectories, positions, and self-accounts of actors who speak for parties: party experts. Party experts are social actors in party networks who orient their activities toward the production of ideas, rhetoric, and programmatic agendas in political life in the effort to shape how both electorates and politicians view and understand the world. For reasons explained further below, I focus especially on European ministers of finance and their advisory networks and, in the case of the American Democratic Party, on economic advisory networks centered on presidential candidates.

The Dark Knight and the Pupper Master Chris Clarke (2019) 

Renewing Left-Wing Ideas in 20th Century  Britain Max Shock thesis (2020)

Alternative Societies for a Pluralist Socialism Luke Martell (2023)

I’ll Get to that Bridge When I get to It – heretical thoughts on identity politics, 

cancel culture and academic freedom Norman Finkelstein (2023)

Hilary Wainwright on David Marquand Political Quarterly 2025

Is the Left Finished?

I have been reading The Death of the Left – why we must begin from the beginning again S Winlow and S Hall (2022) - a 350 page book which could do with some editing but which contains an admirable mix of sociological analysis and intellectual history. They are both Professors of Criminology 

The left has clearly undergone fundamental change. It no longer offers a genuine alternative to the existing order of things, whether reformist or revolutionary. Now, as we move further into the twenty-first century, the left seems to have discarded its traditional identity as a mass movement intent on achieving political power. It displays little interest in protecting – let alone improving – the prosperity and security of multi-ethnic working populations. Centre-left political projects of the past – such as Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s or the British Labour Party’s programme of economic restructuring after 1945 – achieved electoral success on the back of a compelling range of policy initiatives made comprehensible to their electorates. Electorates continue to yearn for the genuine kind of economic change that would provide a platform of material security. However, today’s left has little to offer.

The left abandoned its traditional commitments and transformed itself into a cultural hub serving mildly apologetic neoliberals and a range of bespoke activist movements that oppose what they see as historical structures of social injustice. This cultural or identitarian left has accepted neoliberalism’s individualised mode of social competition and rejected democratic socialism’s appeal to solidarity and common interests.

Throughout our lives we have invested heavily in the principles and ideals of the left, only to watch it fail, fail again, and then gradually mutate into a clannish, exclusive, intellectually bereft and politically suicidal melee of disparate cultural groups, some of which now appear to be as belligerently disconnected from each other as they are from the population at large.

So far – so good.

Virtually every sphere of intellectual life veered sharply not to the left or the right but towards liberalism. Many other traditional leftist themes atrophied. Individuals, it was argued, should be freed from the authoritarian diktats of an interventionist state, from traditional gender roles and norms, from the expectations of their parents, from heteronormativity, from popular condemnation and censure, from the myths of religion, from ‘morality’, from accepted knowledge and wisdom, and from established biographical patterns. The list grew ever longer as everything solid seemed to melt into air. So much that was previously categorised as known was removed from that category and put into question.

An accompanying critique was levelled at the institutions that seemed to be propping up the supposedly conservative social order: the criminal justice system; the welfare system; the education system; the tax system; religions; marriage; even the established conventions of electoral democracy itself.

A huge amount of effort was poured into proving how the criminal justice system failed, how the welfare system failed, how the education system failed, and so on. Some of this material was of considerable worth. Institutions of this kind were rightly subjected to sustained intellectual critique. However, as the left liberalised, increasingly these institutions were portrayed as inherently and irredeemably oppressive, and in need of abolition rather than reform. Many radical liberal leftists became as unashamedly antagonistic to the state as their radical cousins on the liberal right.

However, as time wore on, the socialists on the right wing of the Labour Party found themselves at first outnumbered and then completely swamped by a new class of right-wing Labourites: these incomers were essentially advocates of the free market, and they believed that the interests of Labour voters would advance if the state withdrew from the formal economy, stepped back from economic management and encouraged investment capital to drive innovation and create employment. Some were directly influenced by the work of Hayek, and keen to convince all who would listen that Keynesianism was over and that the Labour Party could succeed by developing a better understanding of the market. It takes 200 pages for the book to start treating the The New Left

Our analysis here moves away from the practical world of politics and economic planning to explore a range of intellectual matters. This is simply because it is in the realm of ideas that the roots of change are to be found. There can be little doubt that the intellectuals we discuss in this chapter and the next informed the left’s post-war remodelling. By identifying new goals and concerns, and developing new forms of critique, they encouraged the gradual evolution of the left’s political culture, which in turn prompted changes in the practical sphere of leftist politics. The Frankfurt School’s influence in Britain spread slowly and sporadically. Its scholars, greatly influenced by the fields of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, displayed little interest in academic history. British intellectual culture has always been largely dismissive of the abstractions of continental thought, which is one of the reasons why EP Thompson’s version of cultural Marxism caught on quickly in Britain, and the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxism did not.

The Frankfurt School, however, made great strides in the United States.

The Frankfurt School’s continued influence there might be better explained by the fact that a number of key Frankfurt School theorists fled from Nazi Germany to the United States and remained there until the 1950s. One might also argue that Frankfurt School Critical Theory contained an undercurrent of hybridised libertarianism and showed little interest in social class or the complexities of the rapidly evolving capitalist system. These features of Critical Theory fitted neatly with the United States’ established characteristics of political radicalism whose critiques of the capitalist economic system are broad and generalised, whereas their critiques of capitalism’s cultural effects are nuanced, multifaceted and, on the whole, unremittingly bleak. The liberal left in the United States tended to treat the capitalist system as a fait accompli, and only in the trade union movement did talk of class linger on into the post-war era. However, the Frankfurt School’s intellectual assault upon Western culture drew a great deal of attention and seemed to give the liberal left in the United States a new lease of life. The Frankfurt School’s criticism of Western civilisation is undoubtedly incisive and occasionally convincing. These were, after all – especially Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin – intellectuals of genuinely historical significance. Their attack was unrelenting, and they certainly managed to land some effective blows. For the Frankfurt School, Western civilisation was brutal and strewn with manifold injustices. It had been built on tyranny and oppression and had stripped man of his humanity and freedom. It was not simply the working class that suffered. All groups from across the social hierarchy were invited to gaze into the Frankfurt School’s deep well of cultural criticism to find resources that could be used to explain their diverse discontents.

Postmodernism was built upon the negative conception of liberty we commonly associate with the neoliberal right whereas the reforms pursued by traditional socialism, and those put into practice by social democratic governments during the first half of the twentieth century, reflected a commitment to positive social liberty. However, over and above minimal welfare provision, postmodernists saw nothing in modern social democracy worthy of commendation or preservation. Social democratic interventions produced, they argued, freedom-sapping bureaucracies geared towards the reproduction of cultural uniformity and the status quo.

The Chapter on Postmodernism focuses very much on Foucault and is where the book begins to lose its way. But it is the chapter “Identity Politics” which I find incoherent rubbish

Postmodernism accelerated existing processes that were already liberalising the left and moving it further away from its traditional values, policies and sources of support. In advocating a creative individualism free from the intrusions of the state and the judgements of the social order, it also paved the way for contemporary identity politics. However, the truth of the matter is that post-structuralism played a more active role in determining the shape and content of twenty-first-century identity politics. Postmodernism and post-structuralism are often conflated, but to shed light on the intellectual foundations of identity politics, we need to briefly disentangle these two terms.

In future posts I hope to explore other books on this theme.