Mind your language
Mark Perryman reviews an argument for a new political vocabulary
The latest installment of the hugely ambitious After Neoliberalism Manifesto from the politics and culture journal Soundings has just been published.
Geographer Doreen Massey is the author. In her contribution she makes a key argument that has an increasing currency on the Outside Left, that to construct a radical politics is a vital starting point is to find a new language. The newspapers, radio phone-ins, TV news programmes are full of the vocabulary of the necessity of austerity, the inevitability of a marketed version of globalisation, the monetisation of the public good. It is this more than anything else that creates an everyday commonsense of despair. ‘We are all customers now’ the rubric of contemporary non-citizenship.
Contrast this with Marx’s wonderful phrase of yesteryear: ‘All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.’ Evocative and at the same time resistant. Doreen Massey cites the keywords that construct a popular understanding of today’s world and frame a debate which excludes this kind of critique, in the process ruling out of order the prospect for any kind of alternative. Choice, growth, work, expenditure have all come to be defined in a particular way which then narrows the political options to only what the mainstream offer. She suggests that for any kind of Left revival we need to start by challenging these definitions, explore, illustrate and articulate different ways of understanding. And that such a politics is rooted in the shaping of a new commonsense.
Such an approach fundamentally challenges much of traditional Left practice, rooted as it is in its own jargon, a culture that is pre-existing and thus often unchanging, where the sharpness of the slogan will often miss out any opportunity to engage and attract. Mind your Language? Not bad for a watchword towards the next Left.
The full version of Vocabularies of the Economy by Doreen Massey can be downloaded for free here
8 comments
8 responses to “Mind your language”
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To communicate millions need simple language, if use big word explain meaning simply. You promote political education.. Need to learn to say much in few words. Learnt this commenting bbc website – have 50 words! I write then strip it down without changing meaning. Need to effectively communicate.
Thanks for this Mark.
Doreen Massey is coming to Leeds next Wednesday, 19 June at 6pm: http://www.takingsoundings.org.uk/doreen-massey-on-the-kilburn-manifesto/
As many of us know from experience, it is not just what we say and write that needs to change, but what we do and how we do it. Dullness is today throwing its moth-eaten cloak over LU, at the national meeting in Doncaster. The lose-the-will-to-live, soul-destroying descent into ‘resolution land’, using a threadbare ‘democratic’ process to argue over and vote on a load of lousy left language.
But, as Bazza often says, there is hope! There may be a revolt against boredom. Enough people on this site (eg. Kettering!) have advocated an alternative approach. Fingers crossed, that will be articulated this afternoon and we may embark on the long journey to a new relevance and effectiveness for left ideas and action.
This may include a short and simply expressed set of principles that we can unite around, rather than tomes of policies; a methodology of ‘activism’, ‘meetings/planning’ and ‘political education’ that draws people to us in droves rather than repels; consensus decision-making rather than voting (using systemist and other methods); and a solid commitment to fun, that Mark and others advocated a while back on this site.
I agree with Mike Scott from Nottingham (and others): this is a long term project and we are starting from a very low point. The needs are so great that to some it is tempting to rush at it, but that would be a great mistake. We need to get it right, or as right as a group of unruly humans coming together from many ‘positions’ can.
You do go on , with your 5th form toy spontaneist anarchism, Ben. The “threadbare democratic process” taking place in Doncaster is of course the perfectly normal democratic process whereby , after debating the issues and differing positions, the wishes of the majority prevail – ie “democracy” !
You, and your tiny group of Kettering anarchist chums would of course prefer “decisions by consensus” – for the simple reason that to achieve “consensus” the majority would have to continuously concede decisions to a tiny claque of irreconcilables and their minority agendas – ie, you and your chums. Very democratic !
Your juvenile toy anarchist slogan mongering has nothing to offer Left Unity in its task of building a credible radical Left party with the potential to win millions of ordinary people to a radical anti austerity political agenda. In fact the nonsense you spout will seriously put off potential recruits. Please desist, its very tiresome for the grownups.
A surly “kiss off” response, John Penney, to a legitimate point of view and concern that Ben has expressed. Again, Left Unity has a lot to unlearn.
Thanks Alan and sorry Bev, I was tempted not to reply to the patronizing old codger, but I can’t resist.
“You do go on” – from JP the master of the ‘less is more’, state-the-obvious-then-tell-us-how-we’ve-all-gone-wrong school of monologue. Hoom had it right on June 11, 2013 at 11:51 pm.
Calm down me old pal. I’m not an anarchist and don’t agree with all of Ben’s (Kettering) argument: I merely said: “Enough people on this site (eg. Kettering!) have advocated an alternative approach.” It is a bit of a 2+2=13, to then conclude I am a “chum”, but you may have missed my surname: wakey, wakey – and from a John too!
Ben’s use of the term “true democracy” is as bad as your “perfectly normal democratic process”: both assume there is only one way of being ‘democratic’.
And oh dear, “the nonsense you spout will seriously put off potential recruits”: after this I don’t think LU will let you anywhere near the youth section, do you?
Gone all quiet on this one, eh John. The absence of a delete button, once submitted is sometimes very handy.
I agree with Ben,Mike and others: LU is a long-term project and we must avoid rushing (e.g. not putting up candidates at the first electoral opportunity.)
We have a lot to learn …and unlearn.
Read these recent vote stats soberly:
http://www.theleftvote.org.uk/
In the next 18 months or so, why would the results be any different if LU ran candidates?
” Your juvenile toy anarchist slogan mongering has nothing to offer Left Unity in its task of building a credible radical Left party with the potential to win millions of ordinary people to a radical anti austerity political agenda.”
As John McEnroe once said, ‘You cannot be serious’. Is this the kind of make-believe politics that is to shape Left Unity? Millions of members. voters? Credible and radical alternative? Believing this kind of nonsense is immediately on the cards will doom those who have gathered round an esteemed and much loved film director’s appeal to disappointment.
We have to face the wholesale failure since 1997, thats 16 years of failure, to achieve any such thing. Our esteemed and much loved fikm diretor has been associated with each and every one of those failures. If we can’t find the time , the space, the vocabulary to engage with that failure we have absolutely zero chance of bucking the trend. The timescale being suggested for this process is absolutely ludicrous and will guarantee it achieving nothing very much as a result. What a shame, what a waste.
Mark P