What we’re trying to build
I’m currently a couple of years into a long, drawn out process of doing up our flat, says Adam Roden. I’m trying to make a home that works out of a space that is, to a certain extent, flawed; with the kids, there are now four of us living in the top floor of a large Victorian seafront terrace. We technically have two bedrooms, but one of those rooms has mainly been turned over to storage/guest/simply out of bounds because it’s in the roof and is – literally – below freezing in winter.
Slowly, I’ve added in ingenious storage, modified what rooms are used for, decorated, tweaked and repaired. As the kids grow, and as our livelihoods and interests change I adapt and reconfigure what I did last year to reflect this. I use salvaged items wherever I can, drawing on my experiences to make things that work out of other things that were broken. The flat will never be finished. I accept that as a fact from the outset. There will never be a point when I’ll light tea-light candles, stick ambient music on and invite the neighbours around to gawp. The flat will always be in a state of flux, because our lives are. The sea is only 100-feet or so from our front door at high tide, so given the changes in climate I’m well aware that one day we may have to relocate entirely. That I will then have to start a new home, drawing on what worked from this one, but adapting it to the new place we find ourselves in.
In house renovation terms, I’m a reformist. A more revolutionary decorator would demand the entire flat be swept clean and an entirely new and perfect layout be installed in its place. In fact the whole structure of the flat would have to be changed. As I said, it’s a terrace, so I guess the neighbours’ flats would have to be deconstructed too, in order that they would still be able to retain strength and solidity with this one. So be it. Then when everything is done and perfect, then the neighbours can be invited around, but only if they agree to do their flats up the same… to make their flats perfect.
But perfect for whom? And more importantly, for how long? And where are we supposed to live in the meantime? And how are we going to afford this?
I’m loading the analogy with more than it can take now, but I think it works. What we’re trying to build here – in our houses everyday, in our workplaces, in our communities, in our political choices – is a home, a place within which our lives can take place with the greatest amount of security, liberty, enjoyment and satisfaction that we can work for. Those liberties will constantly change, what we call justice and security today we’ll call yesterday’s unstable unfairness. The world we have to deal with is flawed and pluralistic, life is messy. It changes constantly, and there’s no guarantee that what works today will work tomorrow. And there’s no guarantee that the grand ideas we have will ever work in reality. Flux is reality. Adaptation, compromise and co-operation are how we – and every other living thing – have evolved. Reform is the natural state of change. There is no end point to aim for; there’s just a constantly growing list of things to attend to that will make all our lives better. Knock one of those things off the list and yes, we’ll have the satisfaction of a job well done, but another thing will replace it on the list and demand our immediate attention
Look at the difference between the ways we live now, in Britain, compared to 150, 100, or 50 years ago. Life is unrecognisable, and in many, many ways it is unrecognisable for the better. Consider all that has been achieved in terms of feminism, race issues, sexuality, lifestyle choices, environmental awareness… it’s staggering, and we forget so easily that the reality and freedom we enjoy have not always been there, and that they are still not available to everyone everywhere.
I signed up to Left Unity because I sensed, like many others, that those hard won freedoms and gains we have were in many ways slipping away, piece by piece, little by little, and have been for some time. I also sensed, again like many, that the cause of that erosion is to be found somewhere within rampant global capitalism, that all of our taken-for-granted liberties are slowly being sacrificed so that a very powerful few can have more power, freedom, justice, equality and resources while the many have less and less and less of what’s left over.
I signed up because I want to be part of a party that doesn’t just try to stall that erosion, but seeks to build on the gains made and move forward, bringing about more equality, more justice, more freedom for more of us. Do I need to be explicitly Socialist if my desires for the world are implicitly socialist? No, I don’t believe I do, and that’s one of the reasons I signed the Left Party Platform. I don’t think that Capitalism is the best way of running the world, but I don’t believe you’ll get rid of it in its entirety overnight – it needs to be chipped away at, absorbed, subsumed and… evolved into something better. And who’s to say that Socialism couldn’t also evolve into something better than itself? By adaptation and modification we can build a better life out of all we have available to us, and what’s more, a better life for those alive now, not just a theoretical better life, for theoretical people, alive in a theoretical future.
But the main reason I signed the LPP is because that’s what I was promised by the original Left Unity idea: a broad coalition of the left, putting aside the sectarian, tub-thumping utopianism of the past to deal with the reality of living in the world as we currently find it. A movement that would constantly attend to that ever growing, ever changing list of things to do to make life more equal, more just, more democratic, more co-operative and more enjoyable for as many people as possible. I don’t necessarily disagree with the other two platforms, I’d just rather that, at this particular moment in time, we dealt with the leaks in the roof and the puddles on the carpet before we get into a complete redesign that, by the time it’s built, doesn’t actually work for the future lives we have to live under it. And after all the hardship of the revolutionary makeover we’d still be left with an ever-growing list of things to adapt, modify and attend to. We may as well just roll our sleeves up, stick the kettle on, and start work on the list now, eh?
Right, that shelf isn’t going to put itself up; oh, and that plug socket’d be better over there; and, ooh, if we knocked that through…
19 comments
19 responses to “What we’re trying to build”
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I am sorry but this metaphor is just not inadequate.
We are not trying to build or redcorate a house that we own – we are trying to completely change a house that is currently owned and controlled by someone else.
Moreover, they are bigger and stonger than us and have a big stick. They sometimes will let people who say they are like us manage their house but every time we try to do something to the house that the owners don’t like, or if we try to run the house for our benefit rather than theirs they cut off all our money, refuse to sell us anything and, if we persist hit us with the stick until we stop trying challenging their right to own and manage the house as they see fit. They occasionally ask their rich neighbours to surround the house and isolate it and bring even more sticks to beat us with.
Thanks for an articulate expression of exactly why I cannot support the LPP even though I could never support the SP either. Every Labour government has tried to do what you suggest and they end up becoming the problem instead of the solution, attacking ordinary people to preserve capitalism while they are pretending that they are chipping away, absorbing , subsuming or evolving it into something better. We have all got that T-shirt. We have seen it before and it’s not pretty. Surely the one defining principle of Left Unity, the reason we exist at all, is NOT to be the Labour Party.
Nice piece Adam. The folk swiping you here and on the Facebook page are dull literalists, enchanted by debates over a century old. It’s obvious that even if you consider yourself a wevolutionary, the changes we will want to make or will see in our lifetime or are at all conceivable in our modern democratic societies, will seem gradual to us even if they are revolutionary on a historical scale, ie, are described as revolutions by future historians.
The problem is Ray and I do accept your point is, if we tried to implements David’s house building the rich and powerful capitalists will beat us down. But that is why a united powerful left can counter and defend our beliefs and help the poor and destitute a little now will strengthen our aims and core beliefs in the future. Take away all platform terminology. Do we believe in social justice yes or no. Do we believe in a system where the few dictate to the majority yes or no. We all need to build and strengthen our commonality for Left Unity to gain strength for all.
Completely disagree with Ray….Adam’s metaphor/analogy is very apt….but maybe I think that because I am a wishy washy communist who thinks socialism is merely a transitional stage on a longer road and that socialism inevitably contains characteristics from capitalist society alongside the embryonic forms of a communist society. “Socialism” cant really be defined since it must evolve along a spectrum….it is the goal of communism that needs to be defined….and that calls for vision and solid principles…..and communism cannot be defined by a set of anti capitalist slogans and mantras.
Jim
Of course a new society will contain ELEMENTS of the old. I do not want to sweep away everything. I am not Pol Pot. In fact, on my other contributions to this site I defend aspects of the market system and private ownership of industries, as well as individual liberty more generally.
Stuart
I can assure you I am not enchanted by debates about old revolutions. I am not a Leninist or a Trotskyist. Most of that debate is arid and pointless in the 20th Century. I do not support the so-called ‘Socialist Platform.’ I have been in and out of the Green Party, for heaven’s sake.
But…..but…..there has to be some kind of line between what WE are suggesting and the Labour tradition that has led us to this baleful situation. Going for the idea of gradual reform of capitalism ie running it while the vast power and wealth imbalance is left essentially untouched, means that all we can hope for is what the ruling class ALLOW us to have. It is the end of our hopes.
In good times this might be temporarily progressive, but these are not good times. When the going gets tough the ruling class will force a ‘Left’ government elected on this basis to do its bidding – increase profits, attack trades unions, cut welfare, privatise industries and state services, victimise immigrants, marginalise disabled people. The well meaning reformers with a kind heart are then transformed into agents of the rich and powerful, nationally and internationally. From being moderate friends they are transformed into our enemies.
I thought all this was the essence of our break from Labour. If not then why not join/stay in the Labour Party?
Hi Ray, sorry if I misrepresented you. I do see your points. All the best
Ray – I get your point, and find myself wavering constantly between your viewpoint, the Socialist’s viewpoint, and the reformist viewpoint. And that’s kind of what I’m driving at above – no one viewpoint is actually going to cut it anymore. Binary either/or decisions haven’t helped us as a class to coalesce together, they haven’t helped previous movements achieve their aims. Splitting everything in to Revolution or Reform choices actually makes the toolbox we have available to us much much smaller. Stuart’s right – what seems reformist at the time may be seen as revolutionary from a long enough perspective.
My point is, at this particular moment in time, faced right now with what we’re faced with, we need immediate response – to get the ball rolling. And to do that we need to bring in people who probably aren’t ‘revolutionaries’, and with their help at least start repairing the barricades in advance of greater change. I don’t see why reform can’t be effective – yes, in the past attempts at reformism have led to the reformers being little more than red capitalists. But then Socialist attempts in the past have led to little more than totalitarianism – same prison, different wallpaper… it doesn’t mean that this time either of those things have to lead to what they have in the past.
And what that’ll be down to – whichever route we take out of this – will be how Left Unity is structured, how we (us normal folk down here who can do little more at the moment than express an opinion) are able to take part in the democratic structure of the party, how consensus is reached, how debate takes place… it’s going to be down to us to make sure this is the sort of party that could be reformist, yet is able to be held to account at all times by enough of us to stop it becoming New Labour.
I have, maybe, a little more hope than you, and maybe I’ll learn the error of me ways… but I just don’t see how, faced with what we’re faced with, binary choices will help us at this point.
Cheers,
Adam
Adam
The issue is not whether we fight for reforms from capitalism. Of course, every single supporter of LU and, for that matter, the People’s Assembly, support fighting for partial reforms. Without that we would be left with a ‘Socialism or nothing’ position, which is just absurd.
In that fight against the austerity measures and the neo-liberal agenda I am prepared to combine with anyone. My main political activity before LU was, and is, in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, alongside Liberals, Conservatives, New Labour, Marxists, Trotskyists and even Maoists. Fine.
The dividing line between us, which I sincerely hope to erase, is whether you can envisage a Left Unity Government, elected on a simply reformist mandate, (ie defend the gains of the pre-Blair Labour Party, nicer cuts, less inequality, a bit of Keynesian government spending) getting into government and running capitalism without taking steps to fundamentally challenge the rule of the rich and powerful. What would such a government do if capitalism decides it can’t afford benefits for unemployed workers, decent minimum wages, a good health service and education system. Would it resign? Or would it say, “Oh well, our cuts are better than their cuts.” or “the cuts are a necessary evil, but we can run the government more effectively than them, so we will accept their terms” or “I like my ministerial car, and the illusion of power I get from being a government minister, so I am going to limit my aspirations to what is realistic – ie what the rich will allow me to do.”
You might say that at this stage of the game, when we are so incredibly weak, that it is ridiculous to have a debate about what a future Left government would do, and you would have a point. But the debate we are currently having about the new party and its core values means that we simply must make clear why we have decided to reject the history of Labourism – not just Blairism, or Kinnockism but Labourism. EVERY Labour Government, even Clem Attlee’s, ended up attacking the rights and living standards of working people.
Frankly, if all we are fighting for is a slightly better Labour Party then I have a few boxed sets of TV programmmes to watch , and lots of good novels to read. I don’t campaign and go to meetings for fun (although fun meetings should exist!). If nothing fundamental is going to change then I could happily go back to being a private, non-party rebel shouting at my TV.
Adam & Ray
I have to be honest, Keynesian economics the basics I probably get. Marxism communism and other factions again I understand probably just the basics. I understand you need good honest debate to iron out various viewpoints to understand one another and respect those views and a lot of what you say when it is understandable to the average Joe like myself make a lot of sense. But how are people like myself, especially those who do not take as much interest as I supposed to understand and get them involved in a debate some may not understand the importance and urgency that is needed for said debate. However, like myself people just see austerity and injustice, but need real leadership and guidance but above all hope. So guys? How do you compromise these beliefs, build on them and turn them into policies the man on the street can trust and believe in???
LU should not be aiming to be an election focussed organisation….that is secondary and longer term. LU needs to focus on leading a transformation of our society from below….not simply by organising protest movements but by a positive program and vision of change. One of the key transformations required is to bring community empowerment to life….help communities to take control for themselves over their lives and economic prospects. The focus of that is through building community enterprise based organisations and there is plenty scope for doing that right now. There are constraints and limits to the extent this can be done but by taking action to bring this objective to life we will discover the obstacles and dealing with those becomes the basic building blocks of further progressive policy formation. I am involved in a project to develop a community owned renewable energy project….its at an early stage but the potential is staggering….tackling local energy poverty, generating income for reinvestment in other community initiatives. As this develops more and more people will learn through participation, develop their skills and their self confidence and involve them in the regeneration of their own community. Community empowerment is the essential ingredient of creating a just and more equal society….one that really could be described as “socialist”.
Jim: I agree with your description above, about communism – we are obviously from the same tradition (I thought so from your previous posts). I also agree with your community empowerment prescription; and the great opportunity we have with LU is to give this a political context. I have spent much of my adult life, paid and unpaid, developing what is now called ‘social enterprise’. Unfortunately, this ‘sector’ has been a refuge for many people burned by left mistakes and failures of the 1980s and early 90s, who have given up and subsumed themselves in the ‘social economy’ and actively resist any politicisation of debate or action (look at how Locality has developed from the more slightly more radical DTA and Bassac, into a craven ‘non-political’ govenrment contract delivery machine, cuddling up to the deeply unsavory ‘Red Tories’ in Respublica, for example). They then select and train a younger cohort of naive followers and hey presto you have a ‘movement’ which could be as you describe but is actually a tragic missed opportunity.
This is not a lost cause and with a good LU (not a useless one that it may become) there can be a new link between community and social enterprise and the vision of a better society you describe so well.
Ray, tend to agree with you as always, but just as you think I scare people away with non-violence (or present ourselves naked, as Bevan would have it, in the face of ruling class coercion!) you may do so with apocalyptic visions of a capitalist bloodbath (forgive me, I exaggerate but you catch my drift). Adam has misunderstood you I think. What you argue for, in my view, is:
We have the opportunity to present a long term vision of a better society run in the interests of all people, not the minority, which is incompatible with capitalism (we do not have to say so, or argue about it, it is just so). We have to get from A to B, which requires persuading people to agree with us. A necessary first step is to root ourselves in the everyday struggles of people, not as ‘special political activists’ but as fellow citizens, as we suffer from the same the same exploitation, cuts, alienation, etc. We also need a set of broad principles we can unite around – and that will inspire people we intend to persuade – to both describe what a better society would look like and some of the steps to get there.
I also agree that the platforms do not help us get there and – even though I may led my name to one, if I broadly agree with it, as they are now here; just as I may join a LU party, even though I argue against forming a party at this stage – it has been a negative and divisive step to take.
Hi Ben, Ray, Jim & Paul,
Yes, I think there’s a bit of crossed wires going on in all directions (which is what happens when there’s barely a cigarette paper between all of our viewpoints), and I apologise if I’ve misread anyone… I have ‘enjoyed'(!) the debating though, not least because I am willing to have my viewpoint changed, and every bit of information helps! – I agree that the platforming might not be helping us at the minute, not least because it frames the debate about what LU might become (when it could have the scope to be much more than any of the platforms offer). I also think it’s putting people off, presenting the image of yet another factional lefty shindig we’ve all seen before.
When I talk about signing the LPP above, I mean that I signed it because it’s the platform that most closely resembles what LU originally offered us – a broad coalition, dealing with immediate problems. As Jim and Ben say, grassroots community action is what is going to set LU apart and what we need – that’s what I was referring to with the “roll sleeves up, put kettle on, crack on with the list of things to do”.
As far as the wider debate of reform vs revolutionary socialism… I’m not convinced either answer our questions or our needs fully. I want the platforming over so we can dust up and move on, but what I don’t want to see is the frame of reference for LU become so narrow that we miss opportunities to be more than just a political party. Another political party, aiming to change one set of centralised power-mongers for another (whatever hue they might be) isn’t enough any more. To complete me original analogy: This is OUR home, and WE can sort it ourselves…
Thanks Ben, though you do not quite understand my intention
I think the LPP should actually be amended to say something like
“Labour governments have always tried to operate within the present economic system and to try to gradually reform it. This has limited them to only doing what the rich and powerful want or allow. A Left Unity government, however, would govern in the interests of the majority of ordinary working people, and would fundamentally challenge the domination of these vested interests which have an undemocratic hold over society.”
If it was amended in something like this manner, I might then be persuaded to support it.
Ben….I agree with your observation about social enterprise and its tendency to capture by new forms of capitalist organisation…that is the consequence of its existence within a capitalist “ecosystem”….but it is the potential embryo for transformation….it requires reconfiguration by a struggle to put it at the service of and under the real control of the community. I dont know if you know anything about fractals……basically it is the repetition of the same pattern at all levels within a structure….the fractal pattern of capitalism is top down command and control power structures and this pattern finds expression in how social enterprise is managed and controlled….the beast is reborn in the heart of what should be a community owned thing. That is the very place where LU needs to be fighting the battle….to turn the power structure upside down and do it from the bottom up. Once communities genuinely do control their own enterprises then that pattern can start to be reproduced at “higher” levels within society ….. a new fractal pattern emerges and that reflects a social transformation going on. This new fractal pattern cannot be created by top down, command and control style leadership as that is the fractal pattern of capitalism. It has to be a selfless leadership that empowers and enables people, a leadership able to learn and also to facilitate learning and exploration, a non-dogmatic leadership, a leadership with a clear vision of where we need to be headed even though we dont know exactly how we will get there. Social enterprise along with a variety of other forms of social and economic organisation need to be re-engineered…the task is to identfy which ones they are and then how to reconfigure them. However, I think we can say with confidence that one common thread to this reconfiguration is to build genuine democratic accountability into the way these structures work and into their “governance” …..social enterprises of various types, banks and the financial system generally, big companies, utilities, the heallth service, local councils, regional councils, national government etc etc.
Adam
I agree entirely that we don’t want to replace one set of centralised power mongers with another, whether they come to power through revoluntion or reform.
I am for the widest possible democracy, taken right down to the grass roots level. For this reason I feel that fundamental change can only come through a combination of political/electoral work and building a mass movement that actually does stuff in communities now, both oppositional stuff and positive initiatives that can build little islands of ‘socialism’, and point the way towards a new way of living. We should be active in all kinds of economic, cultural, sporting areas to change the grip of capitalist ideology.
The important issue which still appears to divide us, however, is that I feel this mass movement will be essential to actually support a Left government when it starts to challenge those who have the overwhelming amount of wealth, power and economic control.
It is not a matter of Reform vs Revolution. That is just a trite over-simplification. I want LU to campaign for reforms every day and in all possible areas. I would much rather not have a revolution if at all possible, but I also do not want a Left govenment held hostage by the rich and powerful and forced to do their bidding, limiting themselves to minor reforms which capitalism can afford. A combination of a Left Government and a huge extra-Parliamentary movement can ensure that the control of the rich over the economy and the state machine can be challenged and ended, allowing real democracy and justice and equality to become possible.
As I say in my reply to Ben above, I could support the LPP if it was amended make it clear that we are not another Labour Party begging for crumbs from the rich man’s table. Hope we can agree.
Hi Ray,
See, I think this might be where I’m still learning… and where we’ve crossed wires. I want the extra-parliamentary bit of LU to be, if anything, more important… so if I’ve read you right we agree on that?
And I don’t want LU to be begging from anyone either – when I use the analogy of the house renovation, I mean it in the sense of us having taken over the house: it’s now ours, and we need to get it sorted. I think this is an attitude we need to foster at grass roots level in order to re-engage all of us with what politics actually is (rather than just voting and then watching what a group of rich people do what they want for 5 years, while we moan about stuff and wait for someone to sort it for us). That this is something we can start work on now, we don’t have to wait for LU to win an election.
As an electoral party though, I agree that the LPP could be a bit clearer on its aims on your point – whether it plans to reform from a position of working with capitalism (for the ‘fairest’ deal for both capitalism and the state – with the citizenry as a group protected and represented by that state), or from a position of challenging and eroding capitalism (for the fairest deal for the citizenry – who are the state). I maybe have put a little ‘faith’ in it being the latter because I hope out of all this we end up with a party that is bottom-up democratic, so that ‘we’, the membership and voters can steward the parliamentary element of LU that way.
I didn’t mean Revolution vs Reform as trite, and I apologise – it was meant as a quick shorthand for how these platforms seem to be panning out online, and I was trying to keep my reply short (the internet’s brilliant and all, but this whole chain of replies could probably have been discussed, turned over and concluded in the time it’d take to have a pint or cup of tea in the real world!).
Thanks for that, I think we are approaching that rare thing on the left, a unified understanding based on thinking through our positions with respect and a desire to understand rather than defeat. We should both be expelled!!
I very much look forward to our having that drink / cuppa one day and sorting this out ;)
Ray, Adam, Jim et al: some of my fave LU geezers. This debate = the spirit of LU!
I hope you are right Ben. Salman Shaheen has also started an important policy related debate with his article on working tax credits and the living wage. It is more important for LU to be debating these practical policy issues and how to build a genuine community based democracy than to expend energy debating party organisation and preparing to be able to fight an election in the short term. I have never been a member of a political party or organised faction because I dislike their tendency towards inward focus and self obsession …political parties create agendas and priorities which are not the same as those of the people.
I think we are starting a more important debate here about what a socialist political program and policies should look like as well as about the importance of focussing on organising in our communities (with the emphasis on OUR, as parachuting into a community we are not part of is no use)in order to build genuine community empowerment and a community based economy and democracy. Fighting elections will come further down the road when through practice and struggle we will have learned and thereby developed ideas and a political program which will have the capability of winning those elections.