Nothing to Lose but the Chains on our Minds

How can we engage in collective action when we are living a more and more individualized existence? Jeremy Gilbert’s delightful little book Twenty first century socialism (2020) brought this question home to me when I looked at it over the weekend 

Today most people have very little regular experience of working effectively in groups with other people. They probably don’t know their neighbours. Their co-workers won’t be their co-workers long enough for them to get to know one another.

Even if they do, what they have in common with their co-workers is probably a ‘bullshit job’, which none of them wants to be doing and over which they feel no sense of control. In many sectors they may be working on short-term contracts, so their current co-workers will be their competitors in the labour market once the present contract runs out.

When they have to attend meetings, those meetings are boring, bureaucratic and frustrating, seeming to prove the neoliberal hypothesis that people acting together can achieve nothing.

 

They fill their hours with social media, communicating with people most of whom they will never meet and with whom they will almost never do anything more substantial than share memes. They find pleasure and satisfaction in their private lives, as consumers, on holiday, maybe pursuing solitary hobbies,31 probably just watching television.

Neoliberalism says that people are happier this way – consuming, competing, pursuing their private interests. They are not. They use platform technologies and a vast range of drugs to try to make themselves feel better, to feel some connection with other people and the wider world.

 

But this experience of daily life often makes it feel to them as if actually getting things done with other people is impossible, especially if those things have any objective other than making money.

If socialism in the twenty-first century has a single objective, that objective is to turn people’s desire for connection into real social and cooperative action for the greater good. And, if it has a single obstacle to overcome, then it is the feeling that no such thing is possible – a feeling that the whole machinery of neoliberal culture deliberately inculcates in people.

Gilbert’s little book has certainly encouraged me to look more closely at his previous book Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism (2014) whose title had appealed to me when I first saw it a few years back (not least because I had used the “Common Ground” as the name of a website I set up that very year). The book’s Preface had been promising – not least because it generously offered a summary of each chapter) viz   

It was arguably the ‘New Lefts’ of the 1960s, and the social movements of the 1970s, which posed the first lethal challenges to the highly conformist, homogenising model of collectivity which informed the political and democratic institutions inherited from the mid twentieth century. These had questioned the legacy of liberal individualism, not in the name of any kind of conservative ideal of community, but in the name of a radical democratic politics.

 

The book’s first chapter – “Postmodernity and the Crisis of Democracy” - argues that existing systems of representative democracy were relatively effective in the era of ‘Fordist’ industrial capitalism, but that they didn’t respond successfully to the pressure exerted by a new set of social demands emerging in the 1960s (from women, young people, black people, etc.), to the growing complexity of ‘post-Fordist’ societies, or to the mobility of capital in an era of financialisation and globalisation. Weakened by these challenges, governmental institutions have largely been captured by the ideology of neoliberalism, which the political class has normally colluded with in preference to acceding to the demands for more radical and participatory forms of democracy which characterised what the Trilateral Commission1 called the ‘democratic surge’ of the 1960s and 1970s (Crozier,  Huntington and Watanuki 1975).

But that generosity was the book's undoing since it was clear that Gilbert was in thrall to the French deconstructionists (viz Laclau, Derrida and Deleuze) whom I can’t stand. So the book was left on the shelf despite my knowing that Gilbert writes well – as this review of his most recent little book testifies

But I have now downloaded it – and will let you know how I get on with it…..

For the moment let me simply share with you some of useful reference which Gilbert’s references put me on to - 

- “A New politics from the left”; Hilary Wainwright (2018);  a short book by one of the friendliest writers (she has a great annotated reading list). Most books like this are strong on the critique and light on how to get to a better world – but the process of change is at the heart of this one. It’s in epub format which requires conversion for reading 

- “Freedom is an endless meeting – democracy in American social movements” (2002) looks at collective action on the American scene. One of 2 pdf files which can be directly accessed

- “The will of the many – how the alterglobalisation movement is changing the face of democracy” (2009)

-  “No shortcuts – organising for power in thenew gilded age” (2016) looks at trade union actions in the US in epub format which requires conversion 

- A useful article on Deepening democracy which may be from 2006 but has a typology which makes it still pertinent.

What's in a Name??

 “Capitalism”…I started, but the barman hopped out of a pipkin

“Capitalism”, he countered…”That’s a flat and frothless word

I’m a good Labour man, but if I mentioned capitalism

My clientele would chew off their own ears

And spit them down the barmaid’s publicised cleavage”

“All right” I obliged “Don’t call it capitalism

Let’s call it Mattiboko the Mighty

……..

The poem finishes…

This was my fearless statement

“The Horror World can only be changed by the destruction of

Mattiboko the Mighty,

The Massimataxis Incoporated Supplement

And Gumbo Jumbo the Homely Obblestrog Spectacular”

Audience Reaction was quite encouraging

Adrian Mitchell “Come on Everybody Poems” 1953-2008

Some time ago I suggested that all references to words ending in “ism” or “ist” should be banned in discussions – on the basis that they had, these days, become mere insults and likely, as a result, to polarise rather than assist conversation.

It was a serious point I was making – brought home in the current American Democratic party debates for the Presidential nomination. One article suggests that Saunders, to distinguish himself from Warren, needs to clearly name his enemy….capitalism – although it’s not so long ago that Republicans were advised to stop using that particular term.

The Financial Crash of 2008 is still with us and has certainly made it easier to use the word (capitalism) which had been very much celebrated until the new millennium when it started to acquire its current negative connotation

In my youth, I was a Young Socialist ( a member of the Labour party’s youth wing) – but it was not a term I used of myself. I was a “social democrat”…a “Labourite” and very much opposed to the “Hard Left” on the fringes of the party who were always proud to label themselves “socialist”. Of course, if forced to choose between the two extremes, I would have to plump for “socialist” but was happy to occupy the middle ground – even if it meant accusations of being a “mugwump”

I’m currently trying to find a decent readable book to recommend to my readers about the shape of the “better system” we need to replace the offensive thing which currently rules our lives…..and realise how difficult it is to find a term for that “thing”. Paul Collier’s “Future of Capitalism” is one of the contenders – to which I devoted a series of posts last month. He’s very much a pragmatist; is happy to use the “C” word in his title but rarely (if at all) uses the “S” word.

Another contender is Jerry Mander’s The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System (2012) which I am now rereading for purposes of comparison (As you can also since the book can be read in full by tapping the title).

His opening chapter (pp8/9) tells the story of a friend who said to him “I hope you’re not going to use the “C” word!” which inspired me to this post a few years ago.

Mander goes on to make the important distinction between “Big Capitalism” (the multinationals) and small and medium-sized business – what others (like Geoff Mulgan) call “bad” and Good” Capitalism

I suddenly remembered that the famous playwright GB Shaw had written a book called The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism almost a hundred years ago – and wondered if it might tell me something.

I should warn you that, far from being a short, punchy pamphlet, it runs to more than 500 pages and that its contents sheet alone - normally 2 pages at most – runs to 33 pages. This because of the charming habit of giving the reader a synopsis of each chapter – and there are no fewer than 84 of them!

A modern journalist, in a mercifully short article, suggests some parallels with the post-crash world

But I want to persevere with my question – why do we have so much difficulty finding a word to describe a more sensible and acceptable system than the one which has had us by the throat for so long????

It’s a silly question I know – since the obvious term (“socialism”) has been maligned by the cleverest marketing of the corporate elites..…and that those who continue to use the term do so almost as a virility symbol….

The key question, therefore, is what term should be used to attract the support not only of the activists but of the huge numbers of others who are, very reluctantly, supporting the populist parties???  

Well certainly not “The Third Way” – nor “Diem25”!!

It’s interesting that one of the American websites trying to develop an alternative is called The Next System……..

Paul Mason is by no means the only person who has taken to using the phrase “post-capitalism” but the phrase is no more than a gentle indication we are in a transition phase – it says nothing about where we SHOULD be going….

And few people realise that it was the father of management Peter Drucker who first wrote (in 1993) about The Post-Capitalist Society. I’ve just discovered the full book on the internet – so will have to refresh my memory on its contents but it certainly isn’t about socialism!