I have argued now and again for a left strategy comprising: (1) ‘permanent reform’ and (2) ‘alliance formation’. In other words, a strategy that (re-1) commends the left to start – as boldly as possible – with what is achievable, and then builds on these reforms towards socialism, and (re-2) acknowledges the essential salience of alliance formation to this end.
I have always recognised and accepted Ralph Miliband’s thesis that socialism will not be achieved by parliamentary means. Hence I hold the view that it will take a strong extra-parliamentary movement to either buttress any effective PLP input into permanent reform, or to reform or revise or displace our flawed parliamentary democracy with genuinely democratic institutions.
The point I want to make here involves what I am going to call ‘political layering’. I have been struck, the more so since the constitutional crisis has unfolded in the UK, that left activists have often been talking at cross purposes. There has been something of a binary divide, at its simplest between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activists. Those in the first camp have invested their energies in getting left-of-centre Corbyn elected as PM. Some have undoubtedly over-played the significance of this for any social transformation or transition towards socialism. Some too have been unsympathetic to extra-parliamentary or movement activism, which has sometimes been portrayed as ineffective and even self-indulgent. Those in the second camp have committed to movement building and have been more or less dismissive of change occurring via parliament democracy, which they see as a class-based or establishment sham. With the partial exception of the postwar Attlee government (which traded on the aftermath of world conflict), all Labour governments – they correctly point out – have (been) almost terminally compromised when in office.
The notion of political layering, I suggest (with no great claim to originality), allows us to recognise the following:
- There is no necessary contradiction between reform-oriented activism and revolutionary activist, with Miliband’s proviso that parliamentary democracy will not on its own give rise to social transformation/socialism.
- Each side of the binary divide – let’s call on the age-old distinction and label them ‘reformists’ and ‘revolutionaries’ respectively – has its own set of reference groups; and it is in relation to these reference groups that their distinct and distinctive world views and strategies are constructed, agreed and enacted.
- Notwithstanding their contrasting reference groups, visions and modes or organisation and activity, reformism and revolutionism contain heterogeneous sets of people and viewpoints.
- My emphasis on alliance formation recognises this heterogeneity but commends and emphasises the importance of building and utilising intra-reformist, intra-revolutionary and most especially inter-reformist/revolutionary consensus and commitment whenever and wherever possible.
- The highest common denominator of productive alliance formation is a common or overlapping interest in particular discrete changes.
- The principal precondition for the effective prosecution of any ‘common or overlapping interest’ is (still, in my view) working-class unity and class-driven change (see previous blogs on class and class mobilisation).
In a nutshell, I am trying to alert both reformists (from MPs to Labour members to Momentum activists) and revolutionaries (from Trotskyist groups to feminists to anarchists) to the importance, even necessity, of reciprocal awareness and an openness to multiple alternative ways of getting on, working together and achieving discrete aims and objectives via a commonality of ends. We must include in this mix also campaign-specific groups around climate change, anti-war coalitions, race, sexuality, oppression at home and overseas and so on. There exist several political layers of perspective and engagement.
A statement that is true or realistic at one layer of engagement (‘pessimism of the intellect’) can be false or unhelpful at another (‘optimism of the will’).
We can all fight our corners. If pushed (or just nudged in fact), I would define myself as a revolutionary socialist much influenced by Marx. The kind of social transformation and embryonic socialism I can see on the distant horizon will surely only edge closer on the invitation of a mass movement with strong class roots and sufficient commonality of interest and commitment to demand change via or in spite of the House of Commons and, iniquitously, the House of Lords and the anachronism of the Monarchy.