Is grassroots political empowerment a fantasy, or could it be a reality?
- Thread starter ViolentPanda
- Start date
tbaldwin said:
My parents came from a not very well off w/c background, but were the first members of their families able to get higher education, ever. They could get on the housing ladder, albeit with a fair amount of difficulty, and could rely on a minimal level of job security that meant that by their thirties a mortgage and kids didn't seem like a recipe for future disaster, but like some kind of sustainable lifestyle. Most likely they'll have access to free healthcare for the rest of their lives, although the standard of it is likely to get increasingly cruddy, and they have state pensions that provide some minimal level of support in their retirement.
Au contraire, I left university with 15,000 pounds in debt, spent years doing some pretty horrific jobs that had nothing to do with my degree just to make ends meet. The average price for a terrace or a semi where I live is ten times what I earn, and ten years after graduating I still have £4000 of student debt. By the time I'm old and falling to bits there will be no free healthcare, no state pension, I probably still won't own a house. My job insecurity, even about 5 years into a different profession (I junked the one that my degree was in as it was going nowhere) is such that I wouldn't dream of having kids as I couldn't guarantee that I could keep them in food, housing and clothes, let alone all the consumer crap that they might want.
It might sounds like some kind of sob story, but actually it's pretty much the standard tale for the people of my age that I know, and it's not surprising in a country where the over-50's have 80% of the total wealth. In fact plenty of people have bigger debts, or earn less or are in really explicitly precarious emploment situations like contracting or temping.
Well lucky fucking you!
I certainly wasn't profligate as a student, I lived like a fucking pauper off baked beans the whole time, and worked in term time (secretly, as the university I went to doesn't allow it).
How old are you? Are we in the same generation anyway?
I certainly wasn't profligate as a student, I lived like a fucking pauper off baked beans the whole time, and worked in term time (secretly, as the university I went to doesn't allow it).
How old are you? Are we in the same generation anyway?
Actually, its not like that for everyone, just look out of your (maybe metaphorical) window, you will within a few seconds see a rich young urban professional driving an open topped sportscar worth over 15/20 grand, in fact, the uk has more of them than any other EU country. There have been many young 'winners' in Blairs globalised Britain, though of course many more young losers.....
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
This shows how much attention you pay to the substance of threads, doesn't it?tbaldwin said:
Perhaps if you weren't so wrapped up in being snide you'd have noticed that fruitloop said £15,000.
Whereas you not only sound like a rude cunt, you are one.
People don't have to be living beyond their means to not be able to be better off than their parents.
For a start, anyone whose parents exercised their "right to buy" could get a discount of up to 75-80% on the market price of the property. The maximum has been 20-25% for the last 5 yrs or so.
Perhaps you should stop assuming that your own experiences are somehow standard to the w/c.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
tbaldwin said:
Lots of "seems".
Heavy on assumption, light on substance.
As usual.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
So maybe an argument for activity around which a separate political space could be created might go like this.Fruitloop said:
Given that the state has been pretty much captured by investor and corporate interests and serves them instead of us, and given that for this reason it's progressively re-absorbing all the social wealth of our nation, we need to take action on the grassroots level, through things like credit unions funding local projects, to start replacing that social wealth in a form that the corporate state can't gobble up in order to fund more tax cuts for rich gits.
Almost like going back to the Rochdale Pioneers and other early worker's self-help movements and starting from scratch, but this time with a much clearer idea of the pitfalls of the state-based approach and given the century we're in, a strong emphasis on environmental as well as economic stuff.
Also the shift from 50% of people in council housing to more like an eight of people has pushed a whole generation into the arms of cunty landlords.
It seems like hardly anyone here buys to live in any more; there's an inevitable progresssion in the signs on houses from 'For sale' to 'Sold' to 'To let'
It seems like hardly anyone here buys to live in any more; there's an inevitable progresssion in the signs on houses from 'For sale' to 'Sold' to 'To let'
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Personally I wouldn't claim that politics per se is becoming discredited, but it's certainly the case that large-scale party politics are far more likely nowadays to activate boredom or even hostility than they used to be even 15-20 years ago.Paulie Tandoori said:
Furedis' point isn't a new one though, he's repeating some fairly widespread concerns about convergence of party-political interests.
Now, of course, we have in the UK parliament a pair of political bodies who while they still lay claim to separate traditions of politics, are essentially, insofar as Capital is concerned, birthing the same quasi-corporatist ideas, and both locked into the practice of shedding any commitment to their founding ideals in favour of placating the market.
Where that leaves "us" is fairly obvious: at the sticky end of a shitty stick.
So, do we settle for that, and the promises of "jam tomorrow", or do we withdraw our support from their system?
I don't want to sit, night after night, in the local council chamber listening to planning applications or details of local parking control schemes. I prefer the system where I vote for someone to be a local councillor and they have to go to all the boring and petty meetings, looking at the minutia of each and every scheme or policy.ViolentPanda said:
I am however in favour of more openness, access to information, public input and accountability - for example of council 'officers' (ie employees) as well as elected councillors.
I like the idea of 'representing myself' - having the right to go along to a meeting, express my opinion and have some input but I don't see this is a replacement for people who set out a whole set of policies, who have to try and balance the budget and set taxes, who manage specific areas and have to attend all the detailed meetings. I don't mind leaving this to elected representatives with the input of experts/officers and from local community and interest groups. These meetings should be open to the public but you can't have the final vote taken simply by whoever happens to be able to turn up to the meeting (ie self-selecting & self-appointed 'concerned citizens') which is why we have elected representatives.
Bernie Gunther said:
Good post.
Just from personal experience I feel like a major trap for young people is the housing situation, which traps everyone into basically living from one rent (or mortgage if you're lucky) payment to the next. Personally I've never been in a situation where I could have tolerated more than about a month without full employment without ending up on the street. It's worse in the UK where it's much less socially acceptable to stay at home than in say Italy - in fact it's often seen as the mark of serious failure to be still at home after your education is finished.
Plenty of parents of people I knew started charging their children rent once school/university finished, regardless of whether they were in employment or not. Half of the parents in question owned their houses anyway, and so were paying no rent themselves - some of the bastards owned more than one and were extracting rents left right and center.
I think that some way of helping young people to break out of the rental trap could be enormously successful, but I can't really see how it could be realised in the UK - it seems like the whole business is completely sewn up.
Bernie Gunther
Fundamentalist Druid
That's why I mentioned credit unions. Where do banks get the money they invest? They get a very great deal of it, ultimately from workers savings, or speculation on those savings. So what I'm suggesting is that we start taking some of that money out of their hands and putting it to work doing something useful in the community instead giving it to a bank which will seek out the best financial return on it, even if that turns out to mean investing in some distant sweat shop operation.Fruitloop said:
Edited to add: here's a good link if you want to see some more detail on these kinds of ideas.
http://www.feasta.org/documents/shortcircuit/contents.html
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
e19896 said:
Yes but look at this lot we have stacked and ready you asked Is grassroots political empowerment a fantasy, or could it be a reality? only when we have the right tools such as above.
That's where we differ.
Having used firearms professionally I'm not convinced of their value except as an instrument of repression in the hands of whoever holds them, you or "the man".
Mao may have believed that political power proceeds from the barrel of a gun, but strangely enough, genuinely participatory politics don't tend to. Political empowerment that is born from a gun too often ends in disempowerment and dictatorship.
northernhord
Active Member
soulman said:I hope one day it will become a reality. That's all
Yeah same view ere
ViolentPanda said:While we have a fairly venerable tradition of working-class grassroots politics in the UK, we've also had a less admirable tradition of larger political forces co-opting (and sometimes smothering) grassroots movements.
This seems to, cyclically, lead to periods of general (although not total) w/c grassroots inertia, often tied to a sense of despair over whether "people can make a difference", and to a perception that, to paraphrase an Urbanite, people adopt a "wildebeest mentality" where they feel more confortable "following the herd" than in thinking for themselves.
The problem, it seems to me, is not that people might despair over the hegemony of Capitalism, or that they might feel ground down by being purportedly represented by party politicians who in reality are mostly "on the make".
Where (IMHO) the problem lies is with those who claim to truly represent the interests of the w/c, usually through incorporating the word "worker" in the name of their political organisation, and who are often (transparently) treating them with the same contempt and condescension as the party politicians do, seeing them as a route to power rather than as a constituency worthy of representation. To this problem we also have to add the plethora of pundits who claim to speak for the working classes (usually through the device of extrapolating their own individual opinion as being representative of the mass) while actually seeking to only enhance their personal standing or forward their own agenda.
We have many people who claim that they can solve all the problems of the working classes if only the working classes would listen to them, trust them, vote for them. The truth is that a century of the full franchise for men, and 70 years of the full franchise for women has shown those promises to be hollow.
I don't claim to have a panacea, I don't claim to represent a type of socialism, liberalism or any other -ism. What I do claim is that the answer to our political problems is within ourselves. It's only when we believe that we are worthy to represent our own interests in solidarity with one another, empower ourselves rather than a placeman, believe that we don't need intermediaries (who'll glad-hand us one day before the election and cold-shoulder us one day after) that we'll be able to transcend the shit that the "political classes" believe is what we deserve.
It may only be a fantasy of mine that people can escape the dead hand of the politico-capital complex, or represent themselves to it on more equitable terms, without the interference of intermediaries who want to ride to power on their backs, but it's no more of a fantasy than the fictions put forward by those who call themselves revolutionaries, but who are usually reactionary vanguardists. We don't have to dance to their tune, we just have to convince ourselves that our tune is as good as theirs, and then it's up to us, as communities made up of individuals with equal rights and responsibilities to ourselves and each other, to decide which dance is most appropriate for us.
Idealist rant over.
top op vp!
Good thread, ViolentPanda.
Lots of food for thought. Actually spurred me to meet someone I used to work with who has had a lot more experience in grassroots politics. Chatted for a few hours over a couple of beers.
The gist of what he was saying is that politics has itself become a dirty word. Issues have to be addressed indirectly to people, otherwise they switchoff.
The level of apathy I encounter amongst what I'd consider intelligent caring people is frightening. That the gross inequality is not only accepted but encouraged as though it's a good thing. This country desperately needs a grassroots political party for all people least we see the rise of the far-right on the anti-immigration ticket.
(Probably need to come back to this later.)
Lots of food for thought. Actually spurred me to meet someone I used to work with who has had a lot more experience in grassroots politics. Chatted for a few hours over a couple of beers.
The gist of what he was saying is that politics has itself become a dirty word. Issues have to be addressed indirectly to people, otherwise they switchoff.
The level of apathy I encounter amongst what I'd consider intelligent caring people is frightening. That the gross inequality is not only accepted but encouraged as though it's a good thing. This country desperately needs a grassroots political party for all people least we see the rise of the far-right on the anti-immigration ticket.
(Probably need to come back to this later.)
rhys gethin
New Member
Fruitloop said:Also the shift from 50% of people in council housing to more like an eight of people has pushed a whole generation into the arms of cunty landlords.
It seems like hardly anyone here buys to live in any more; there's an inevitable progresssion in the signs on houses from 'For sale' to 'Sold' to 'To let'
Fruitloop - You - and Bernie - are completely right. It has always been possible for some shites to get extremely rich under capitalism - at the expense of the rest of us, and idiots have always argued that the fact that new pigs can get at the trough somehow makes it all okay.
I think we HAVE got the whole bloody thing to do again. There was a situation of something so near dual power for so long (the Class could really have taken over, if only a little aware and united) that people have forgotten where the old advantages came from - which certainly wasn't the mind of our Great Toothsman and his grovelling band, but from the earlier self-activity of the Class itself.
This country desperately needs a grassroots political party for all people least we see the rise of the far-right on the anti-immigration ticket.
I should have said movement rather than party.
It should be, by definition, from the people rather than imposed from above.
Assuming that's what you picked up on?
...
As I was saying, politics has become a really DIRTY word. I find myself having to chat about things culturally rather than ideologically. Pointing out that, for example, status isn't solely dependent on material possessions and your bank balance.
soulman said:Me thinks you are missing the point about grassroots political action. Or maybe it's me who is missing the point?
I should have said movement rather than party.
It should be, by definition, from the people rather than imposed from above.
Assuming that's what you picked up on?
...
As I was saying, politics has become a really DIRTY word. I find myself having to chat about things culturally rather than ideologically. Pointing out that, for example, status isn't solely dependent on material possessions and your bank balance.
voiceofreason
Well-Known Member
Politics is a bit of a dirty word, thanks to the main political parties. But it's my perception and belief that people are by and large more clued up and politically conscious than they were 10 or 20 years ago. The internet has played its part in this.
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
I'm not sure that i would agree with you on that point. I talk to many people who almost seem to take a pride in not understanding the forces that mould their lives. Politics has become almost an abstract pseudo-celebrity side show, within this country at least. People enjoy moaning about parochial issues but can't be bothered to get off their arses to do anything about them commonly.
People being aware of wider issues but thinking, 'i can't be bothered to do anything about it'. And with disaffection and disenfranchisement comes a disengagement with 'normal' society. And if the only way that you can change things for the better for the poorest members of society is by scrapping the system of society that currently maintains and coming up with something new, who better to guide that process than the dispossessed themselves?
People being aware of wider issues but thinking, 'i can't be bothered to do anything about it'. And with disaffection and disenfranchisement comes a disengagement with 'normal' society. And if the only way that you can change things for the better for the poorest members of society is by scrapping the system of society that currently maintains and coming up with something new, who better to guide that process than the dispossessed themselves?
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