The left needs a broad mass-narrative: Suggest themes, methods and strategies

[Bakunin]

so anything good on the box while we wait for a revolutianry leaders to tell us what to do?

I already know what they'll tell us to do.

'Build the party, sell the paper.'

'Sell the party, build the paper.'

'Remember, we re the only people here with an overall strategy for the anti-capitalist movement. So I want five people to go out with membership cards, five to sell papers and five to sell bandanas.'

 

[trevhagl]

very good point from OP. There is no mass leftist movement, and only the EDL and BNP seem to be recruiting in working class areas. Most people on here just bitch against similar minded people which is a bit daft if you ask me (and Carousel of course who just bitches against ANYONE for any reason)

 

[treelover]

'Remember, we re the only people here with an overall strategy for the anti-capitalist movement. So I want five people to go out with membership cards, five to sell papers and five to sell bandanas.'

I take it you were on the trains to the various G8 protests then?

 

[Bakunin]

I take it you were on the trains to the various G8 protests then?

I joined the SWP facepalm and got into activism just after Genoa. I was involved with the Gleneagles summit protests, the STWC, SWP, Trident Ploughshares, CND, three visits to Faslane, Climate camp, Greenpeace, Friends Of The Earth, the local Nuclear Free Coalition and innumerable local and national A to B marches.

Nowadays, I'll soon be starting work with the National Autistic Society and the Time To Change campaigns.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

This thread could have been created by just taking posts at random from the hundreds of others on the same topic.

Is there any possibility it could move outside the usual tiny little field for a bit?

The situation you have in the UK (bear in mind that other places are very different) is that whilst most people don't have many (or any) explicitly right-wing views they continue to support a system that implements right-wing policies, against their own interests in the vast majority of cases.

2 questions:

Why is the right-wing narrative successful? Please answer without reference to the failings of the SWP, the Left as a totally undefined group of people, or any of the other negative shit that has been done to death and beyond.

Can any aspects of this narrative be appropriated by members of the working class in order to convince other members of the same class that revolutionary activity is possible and could result in a desirable outcome? Can they be subverted in some way, that maintains their political efficacy, but denatures them of their undesirable elements?

This is probably a good place to jump back in, but also to re-state what someone said earlier about placing action above theory. I seek more unity in action across the left and I think Vestas is a very good example.

What fruitloop says about majority support for the system may be true. But it is support which is increasingly weak. Most of it is more a case of tacit apathetic acceptance. Capitalism is very good at keeping busy and diverted, and much of that business is working pretty much for the banks.

I think the right wing narrative owes much of its success to media and social programming.

In crude terms, the error and the arrogance is summed up in Fukyuamas "end of history" quote.

It was utter nonsense but spoke of an accepted orthodoxy that held sway for many years and has only recently looked in any way more vulnerable.

Distrust of media and government is now pretty rife, but for a long time 2 narratives helped shore up the general neoliberal and conservative orthodoxies:

1) The incredibly simplistic propaganda meme that the fall of the USSR meant socialism "didn't work". It really was as simplistic as that. Capitalism has support but many just accept it as given, "the only game in town"

They had to do some big doublethink when it came to the bailouts. Suddenly socialism was cool, as long as all it meant was underwriting capitalism.

2) The "War on Terror". Won't open that can of worms here.

Can any aspects of this narrative be appropriated by members of the working class in order to convince other members of the same class that revolutionary activity is possible and could result in a desirable outcome?

It's only my opinion, but I think a good and easy-ish issue is explaining the banking crisis and it's implications (£40k per household into a global casino blackhole while we suffer cuts and unemployment)

An anti-bank demo I helped put together the other day got a very good response.

I will be brief on the "class" issue. It certainly is the issue, but the language of class can be exclusivist. It is the vast majority of the people in this country who are being ripped off, not just those who consciouslly identify as "working class" (let alone in a political rather than cultural sense).

Will leave it there for now.

 

[Carousel]

I think the right wing narrative owes much of its success to media and social programming.

Didn’t work on you though did it. What’s the difference between you and the brainwashed herd then Taff? Tinfoil hat is it?

 

[kyser_soze]

The left needs a broad mass-narrative: Suggest themes

How about:

'We're all in this together.'

 

[Rod Sleeves]

I will be brief on the "class" issue. It certainly is the issue, but the language of class can be exclusivist. It is the vast majority of the people in this country who are being ripped off, not just those who consciouslly identify as "working class" (let alone in a political rather than cultural sense).

Will leave it there for now.

The vast majority of people in this country (and all the other countries for that matter) are working class whether they identify as that or not - and most surveys show that the majority, anything from 55 - 70% (do a google) do self identify as working class.

The narrative of class is being drowned out in favour of a mass of vague cultural identities in which the "white working class" becomes just another cultural identity, which are portrayed as being mutually incompatible if not outright hostile to each other. You can't be a gay, black, working class male - you have to be black or gay, or maybe even working class, or maybe just maybe black and gay in which case you could get a channel 4 documentary made about you, exotic creature that you are...

The Left have played an enthusiastic role in creating this state of affairs since the seventies - taking the very real problems of sexism, homophobia, and racism and due to their own weakness enthusiastically jumping into bed with liberals who proposed solutions that promoted their own vision of society.

 

[kyser_soze]

It certainly is the issue, but the language of class can be exclusivist

Is 'exclusivism' some new sub-branch of left-wing ideology we were all previously unaware of?

 

[Rod Sleeves]

Are you exclusivist? Yes mate I'm M-L-E (Marxist - Leninist - Exclusivist).

 

[Carousel]

Last time I checked, exclusivity was a selling point rather than a flaw. Perhaps the quest for a left wing narrative is just avoiding the awful truth that the difference between “socialists” and the rest of society is an intrinsic conflict of values, of personality if you like. One has a moral critique of exclusivity, the other aspires to it. This idea that everyone’s being “ripped off” for instance. Only a smallish number of losery neurotic types are going to buy into that to the extent it expresses itself in something approaching political action, and the BNP are more than welcome to them. I mean, it’s suggested the left should unite around action. Action to what end? Is it a given than your normal punter even wants what socialists want? Security, equality, freedom for all? Hardly. And even if they did, there’s no reason to assume that the action socialists advocate would deliver that any more effectively than just installing a Tory government. The “problem” with the left’s narrative is that it has to express it’s character or it loses all meaning, and then it becomes an allegory for socialists vs society. Joy Division vs The Saturdays. Train spotters vs party girls. Chalk vs cheese. I mean why do socialists even want socialism? What’s in it for them? It’s just the same as Muslims wanting Sharia. It really is.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Didn’t work on you though did it. What’s the difference between you and the brainwashed herd then Taff? Tinfoil hat is it?

Doesn't work on plenty of people. Does work on plenty of people. Not hard to understand. Case in point: advertising. Doesnt matter how many people say it doesnt work, the capitalists wouldn't pay for if it did.

Anyone can be a sarky pants wibbling on about tinfoil hats, but do you suppose states and corporations gave up on propaganda after the nazis and soviets, or is it just possible that they got better at it?

 

[Fruitloop]

Apportioning blame is a key aspect of any populist political narrative, be it right or left wing.

 

[Carousel]

Apportioning blame is a key aspect of any populist political narrative, be it right or left wing.

True. However, the left are just the “left wing of Capital”, to coin a phrase. False choices. The left and its narrative is just a part of The Right.

Besides, blame for what? What you see as a problem, others see as a boon or a tolerable consequence. And not because they’ve been brainwashed either.

Doesn't work on plenty of people. Does work on plenty of people. Not hard to understand. Case in point: advertising. Doesnt matter how many people say it doesnt work, the capitalists wouldn't pay for if it did.

“Capitalists” (as if advertising isn’t booked and created by petit-bourgeois with the Machiavellian instincts of a pink poodle) are as easily sold to as the rest of us. As any successful marketing firm will tell you, first market yourself. Besides, what makes you so sure their propaganda is any less valid than yours? A special insight into The Truth? If it’s a matter of the population's weak critical faculties, then what’s the problem? They’ve only got themselves to blame. Or are they like dumb lab animals in need of liberation for their own good? Sounds like it.

 

[Stoat Boy]

The left need to acknowledge the importance of individual aspiration be it for material wealth or social advancement.

People, by and large, dont give a toss about Palastine or whats happening to Polar Bears and similar shit. Now that does not mean they are chuffed about the bad stuff that might be occuring to your average Palastinian or Polar Bear but in their day to day lives it means nothing and so trying to motivate them into supporting what ever your political solution of choice might be to these issues is always going to be a loser unless you deal with their worries and concerns first of all.

You need to tell them that if they support you they will get a better car, enjoy nicer holidays and have more money in thier pockets to buy what they want with. Not that they need to get the bus, fly less and pay more tax.

But you wont. You will, for 95% of the time, just talk and rant about stuff that not many people give a flying one for and thus remain an irrelevance.

Live with it.

 

[Carousel]

The left need to acknowledge the importance of individual aspiration be it for material wealth or social advancement.

Yeah. That'd be like Muslims acknowledging the non-existence of Allah and the importance of playing "Withnail and I" drinking games on 'drone. Rather defeats the object. Besides, when they do that, you get Blair.

 

[likesfish]

Whats In It For ME ? wiifm
basic fail with most of the lefts ideas.

in worse when you consider the real go getters getting stinking rich in city or run a tractor factory
no contest really

 

[Carousel]

basic fail with most of the lefts ideas.

As if the commoditisation of sex is in some way "bad".

 

[LLETSA]

no remeber BT when it was in the "peoples" hands phone choice one of 4 approved handsets wait around for months for a line etc etc.
British leyland was shite etc.

monopolys are always shit customer gets fecked over

Nothing like a subtle, nuanced critique of something.

A bright future would seem to await this man.

 

[LLETSA]

You need to tell them that if they support you they will get a better car, enjoy nicer holidays and have more money in thier pockets to buy what they want with.

Looking to the long-term most people won't, though.

They won't get these things no matter who is in power.

 

[LLETSA]

As if the commoditisation of sex is in some way "bad".

By the way, have they changed your medication yet?

 

[Fruitloop]

At the moment both the political mainstream (the Labour/Conservative party) and the only significant threat to that consensus (the BNP) justify themselves by a narrative that is populist in content, although in the former case only the justification – the selling point – is populist, the reality is administrative and managerialist. The Left have traditionally opposed this tendency and formulated their campaigns (the ones for which they are criticised at inordinate length) in terms of demands. There is a certain correctness to this criticism I think, although not the usual one that these demands have no relevance to the working class, since as has been pointed out issues like pollution, climate change, war etc already impact the working class to a far greater extent than more privileged groups. The problem is rather that to make a demand is to put oneself in the position of Oliver Twist asking ‘please sir, can I have some more?’. With the relations of Oliver and ‘Sir’ thus established, the political status-quo is always already preserved, regardless of the number of people from whatever social background mobilised, and whether the campaign is eventually ‘successful’, i.e. the demands are met or a compromise reached.

What Oliver should have done is kicked ‘Sir’ in the shin, tied him to a chair and had a look at what Sir was having for dinner. In political terms this would require the inclination on the part of the broad mass of people to shoulder the burden of self-determination - because people aren’t stupid (mostly), and they no more believe the populist narratives of the political consensus than they do the exaggerated claims of advertisers. Just as pretty much every toothpaste has the same active ingredient, every mainstream political party has the same style – ‘modernisation’, managerialism, the Anglo-Saxon model.

So the question that needs to be asked is not how to construct a populist leftist narrative that could compete with the fake-frontage ones of the mainstream political parties, or the real (if somewhat muddled) one of the racist right – whose success against the odds (i.e. their own incompetence and generally unappealing characteristics) if it shows anything indicates that a lot of people don’t want what they know the political mainstream is selling. The real task is to discover what collectively as a class we do want, and what price we are prepared to pay, what risks we are prepared to take, in order to get it.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

good post Fruitloop

 

[Stoat Boy]

Looking to the long-term most people won't, though.

They won't get these things no matter who is in power.

But they have. Living conditions have improved. Thats the point. The vast majority of people now have cars. A majority of people go abroad for longer and nicer holidays than they used to have. And they are wealthier.

Its good.

Labour and the left used to be about that. They wanted working class people to have their own cars and so on. Wanted them to have better lives and so on.

Now its all about trying to make people live with some sort of collective guilt and forcing them to give up the good stuff in life.

And its why the left are nothing now. Just a historical political foot note.

 

[LLETSA]

But they have. Living conditions have improved. Thats the point. The vast majority of people now have cars. A majority of people go abroad for longer and nicer holidays than they used to have. And they are wealthier.

Its good.

Labour and the left used to be about that. They wanted working class people to have their own cars and so on. Wanted them to have better lives and so on.

Now its all about trying to make people live with some sort of collective guilt and forcing them to give up the good stuff in life.

And its why the left are nothing now. Just a historical political foot note.

What used to happen is neither here nor there really. It's what happens as the capitalist-industrial system comes up against it's outer limits. This has already started to happen.

'The left' might have many faults, meanwhile, but I'm not aware of any widespread tendency to persuade people to 'give up the good stuff in life.' Certainly such people might exist but they're not exclusive to, or even mainly to be found on, the left.

Here's a clue: environmentalism isn't left-wing (although there might be left-wing environmentalists.)

 

[Carousel]

The real task is to discover what collectively as a class we do want, and what price we are prepared to pay, what risks we are prepared to take, in order to get it.

So how do you cope with the discovery that desire can’t be meaningful aggregated across a group? (Arrow’s paradox). Further, what makes you so sure the prevailing order doesn’t do an effective job of summing those desires already? Finally, what you’re suggesting is an ideologically neutral ultra-democracy, there’s no guarantee you’ll get socialism out of it. You’re as likely to appoint Katie Price as your Goddess-Queen and pass all authority to her.

 

[Fruitloop]

Cars are an interesting case in point. I remember being struck by a comment in Milan Kundera about how someone believed in socialism, and then they looked at the West and saw workers driving to work in their own cars, as if capitalism was in that single fact absolutely vindicated, and socialism utterly defeated.

I thought to myself 'workers driving to work in their own cars'; is that really, honestly what we really want? Is this the highest thing to which we can aspire, to drive to work alone in a mid-price hatchback, work all day and then drive back again? Or is it as Soros says a 'manufactured demand'? Because my suspicion is that just as we have outsourced our political desires, it seems to me that we have also passed the buck when it comes to our more tangible needs.

 

[LLETSA]

Cars are an interesting case in point. I remember being struck by a comment in Milan Kundera about how someone believed in socialism, and then they looked at the West and saw workers driving to work in their own cars, as if capitalism was in that single fact absolutely vindicated, and socialism utterly defeated.

Ironically, after he moved to France Kundera appears to have grown to loathe cars.

 

[Carousel]

Labour and the left used to be about that.

Nah. That was the Tories guv. Labour were more about limiting the amount of Sterling you could carry over the border, keeping rationing going for as long as possible and so on. Besides they were hardly in. It was mostly Tory by quite a margin up till ‘97. There was no golden age of Labour.

 

[Fruitloop]

So how do you cope with the discovery that desire can’t be meaningful aggregated across a group? (Arrow’s paradox). Further, what makes you so sure the prevailing order doesn’t do an effective job of summing those desires already? Finally, what you’re suggesting is an ideologically neutral ultra-democracy, there’s no guarantee you’ll get socialism out of it. You’re as likely to appoint Katie Price as your Goddess-Queen and pass all authority to her.

That is exactly one of the risks that would have to be borne; as Heidegger said 'what if democracy is not the answer to the current predicament?'. Although hopefully we wouldn't come to a similar conclusion.