Social media is replete with left debate, at least on my timeline. Some of it is deeply philosophical or theoretical, and some more explicitly activist-oriented; and typically these comprise entirely distinct discourses.
This brief blog raises three issues that I regard as critical to any left action, whether philosophically/theoretically anchored or not.
I used to say to the UCL medical students I taught for many years, if ever they complained of a new and unwarranted regulation or course of action imposed on them by the medical school: ‘you do realise that if you all walked out and refused to accept this they’d drop it, don’t you?’ They’d look at me, half understanding. And I’d add: ‘this is one of the core issues sociology has to address, namely, how the people – ‘the many’ – can come or be brought together in solidarity to right wrongs inflicted on them by ‘the few’.’ Acting in concert and with foresight and fortitude ‘the many’ are irresistible.
This is my first issue. It’s true that there is much discussion around this pivotal issue on the left. But as the self-inflicted wounds of the infant Your Party testify, it is often submerged under philosophical or theoretical difference and/or factional dispute. In other words, we on the left frequently shoot ourselves in the foot, in the process severely undermining the potential for wider engagement in change. It hardly needs adding that this is to the unalloyed pleasure of ‘the few’.
My second issue is the online bias, and often fixation, on middle-class ‘intellectual’ notions of what it is to come together in pursuit of a social transformation. I may be a peripheral part of this myself (I can’t negate my ‘middle-classness’). While I totally support activism oriented to combat the status quo and its class-motivated ideological advocates, too often this remains an almost exclusively middle class project. Whether it’s the advocacy of green policies to divert the imminent catastrophe of climate change or the opposition to genocide in Gaza, the leaders of these nascent movements are largely professionals. It needs to be added that this doesn’t of course mean that working-class citizens are disinterested. But it needs to be factored in that their primary concerns are most likely to do with ‘getting by’ during the politics of austerity and the present cost-of-living crisis: a manageable wage or benefit, secure accommodation, food on the table for the kids, and so on. There is a gap in other words between middle-class activism and working-class engagement. An important addendum here is that working-class ‘leadership’ is hugely important. People will not follow affluent/comfortable headliners into hugely risky political ventures.
And the third issue can be posed as another question: are those who advocate and campaign for fundamental – revolutionary – social change planning and prepared for the level of resistance they will meet. I have suggested in my writings that significant or transformatory change is most likely: (1) to be triggered by an unforeseeable event or happening – possibly an outrageous political scandal, another dramatic fall in living standards, an Orwellian excess of state autocracy or an unwarranted incident of police brutality – that brings people onto the streets in large numbers; and (2) when this trigger mobilises and engages a significant part of the working class. In the event of such a protest and neophyte movement for change emerging – and this is my point here – what is the level of readiness to face up to, resist and confront the inevitability of suppression summoned up by ‘the few’ and enacted via, first the police, and second the armed forces? According to Gareth Steadman Jones, Marx briefly thought peaceful revolutionary change might by possible in England; but he was rapidly disillusioned.