Call me a cynic if you wish, but try as I might I could not keep one overwhelming feeling out of my mind as my holiday began to draw to a close and I faced the seemingly inevitable return to commenting on the UK, its politics, economy and taxes (as if I ever stopped). It is the feeling of near certainty that sometime soon (which may just be measured in years but will In some cases definitely represent a period of months) that up to 300,000 people are going to feel pretty disappointed with their engagement with the UK political process.
Why do I say this? Because, much as I'd like to say otherwise, I know three things are going to happen soon.
First their hero's UK summer tour is going to come to an end and next summer he secretly fancies a holiday. Gigs are going to be in short supply soon.
Second, there is the nightmare second album scenario to face: having played every variation on 'an email from Jo in Southend' during the last parliamentary session what's the new season going to bring?
But third, and most importantly, the reality of bottom up politics is going to hit home in a number of ways.
In the first instance that will be the result of the rapid realisation that what is on offer at present is nothing like as radical as the new social movement is demanding. In fact, it's not just pretty tame, it feels remarkably like 'back to what we had in New Labour days'.
And then there will be awareness that trying to do anything to change this will mean giving up every Tuesday evening to meetings, and every other Thursday as well to the resolution drafting sub-committee you daftly agreed to serve on, plus Sundays at last once a month for a local general assembly where your carefully clause construction is torn apart by those who never bothered arriving on Thursday's although they always said they would.
After which the decimated motion, that now looks nothing like the sentiment you were so sure everyone had apparently agreed upon in advance, is sent to regional conference, to which you must give up a weekend every three months, after which it, along with fourteen other broadly similar mashed-up motions is passed to a composite committee, none of whose members you have heard of and you aren't to sure about because no-one can be quite sure who nominated them, who then send it to annual conference, where the process is restarted and the only bit left that you can recognise at the end of the day is the statement that ‘Conference agrees' and the fact that the clauses are still in numerical order. Worse, the debate at Conference is then guillotined because the first morning session over-ran and so discussion is reduced to just 30 minutes after which conference does indeed agree, but to refer it back for further consideration. In the meantime the leadership feels free to say what it wants, and has to, because the world cannot wait for the report back to take place.
Yes I know this sounds horribly cynical but this is the real world of bottom up politics, which Labour has actually had in something like this form for decades. And it's been dull, alienated all but the very willing, and decimated membership over a long period.
And I have heard nothing that says how this is going to change, or if it will at all. After all, how can national policy ever emerge from local parties without something like this happening, with continual rounds of compromise, negotiation, hair splitting and hours of frustration all being inevitable? I think someone had better be able to answer that question pretty quickly or 300,000 is very soon going yo be something considerably smaller.
That then creates the real possibility of even more intense mass disillusionment in no time at all. Avoiding seems to me to be pretty key. But can anyone really explain how that is going to be prevented? Because I am really keen to know. The success of a whole social movement on the left is dependent upon someone having an answer and on this occasion I really do not have one to offer.
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What you describe makes me (a new member of A Party On The Left… but not Labour), as you correctly surmise, recoil — but is there not a flicker of hope that the internet might be able to provide a partial alternative, by allowing mass participation outside the constraints of time and space of the doubtless essential schedule of physical meetings?
Although there’s much talk of crowdsourced politics / policy, I haven’t yet come across a convincing-looking tool, which might make one doubt the feasibility… but equally, until someone built the services, who on earth would have believed that an encyclopaedia could be crowdsourced, or that online petitions would have any effect on the behaviour of governments or corporations, or that a peer-to-peer currency would take hold, or even that drug-dealing would move off the streets and onto the net and the postal service… let alone that you’d be able to do as much as you can on gov.uk?
So I wondered if one could build a several-stage-something online:
1) forms (more like a dating site, or 38 degrees) to help unearth the practical, personal, low-level (and cross-ideological, non-partisan) priorities that people have, in order to see what is common, and to perhaps define ranking of importance of issues for the group as a whole.
2) multiple proposals for what outcomes (i.e. Rail nationalised; Grammar schools abandoned; Trident renewed, etc) should be aimed for in each of those issues – suggested, then voted on / rated
3) suggestions of policies that attempt to achieve each outcome – [shudder] commented on / discussed / supported / dismissed by experts / pundits / public (which in turn might need to expose what each participating person’s expertise / qualification / leaning / respect-ranking is, and in the case of the latter, what the inherited meta- leaning / expertise / ranking of their supporters or denigrators is)… with some anti-troll magic.
4) version-control-enabled iteration to reach “compromise” policies for each area, subsequently voted on until it reaches some agreed level of consensus
5) networking / interlacing of individual policies to try to see what overlaps, what rules out or contradicts what else, what is economically / socially viable, etc…
and an output that’s a sort of best-attempt at a cross-ideology manifesto for society as a whole, rather than for a single party.
Would that (if it existed) do what you ask, do you think? Any improvements to the dream in this pipe gladly accepted 🙂
I think this is OK for very high level issues but inevitably it grants power to the person who writes the question, which is then top down, and makes the decision if not binary then very granular
It’s a long way from bottom up however looked at
Probably only a mixture of top down and bottom up could work, genuine (inspired & caring)) direction from the ‘top’ and genuine (enthusiastic & rewarding) input from the ‘bottom’. Isn’t that how most successful organisations work? Especially if the ‘top’ is open to restructuring when demanded by ‘the bottom’… flexibility must work both ways. I think Thomas’ idea is very possible (maybe likely in the long term), how many paradigms have we busted before breakfast?
But this will require the top to be allowed quite a lot of control
That is not the model being sold
anyone can start a page on any trivial subject on wikipedia (although the editors can strike them too, and from what I gather, the process there is almost as soul-crushing as the political process you outlined); anyone can start a petition (however small / local / personal) on 38°; I’m curious why you think it would necessarily be top-down, or even have to follow a party structure? Granular – yes, that might be one of the benefits, to my mind… small groups could be discussing ramifications of ideas on very local levels, on which they have expertise / opinions, rather than on the macro policies that the layman can’t really begin to grasp?
Please don’t confuse a petition with reality
Over 3 million signed a petition against Brexit
How does a local idea become national policy is what I am asking
And who does decide those macro policies? They matter, a lot
Who does them?
These are serious questions and someone needs an answer
That would be better than the current system which has been corrupted by wealthy donors and far right media barons.
The hundreds of thousands are not. And they will not until matters get much worse.
We are in the midst of a war of ideas.
All wars have to end eventually – but only when enough people have died. That may still happen if we descend in to a form of revolution (hopefully not) but what I really mean here is that as our middle class begins to erode (as it is in America) only then will people really start to question what is going on. Maybe then they might wake up. The pressure of exporting jobs as well as developments in technology that make people redundant are real. Yet somehow we don’t want to deal with this head on.
I don’t know about anyone else but I’m digging in, reinforcing my borders, trying to be as flexible at work as possible (taking on new roles), staying healthy, getting my kids ready for a nastier world and hopefully then – emigration to somewhere else for them – if somewhere else actually exists (as painful as that will be).
I’m reading Gramsci at the moment and he says that eventually all peoples reject their leaders as the parties the leaders belong to so often become separated from the people they supposedly represent by distance and hierarchy and becoming part of the ‘furniture’ of the establishment.
This has happened to the Tories too, but because they are prepared to get into bed with business they can survive; Labour has prima facie better principals but then ends up contorting itself by trying to balance that which cannot be balanced because it is still even now trying to appear to be ‘business friendly’ as well aware of social justice. Corbyns’ advisors seem intent on him and the party playing to the crowd. I still say though the Labour has lost faith in the British people. It under estimates the strength of feeling out here and in doing so leaves UKIP to fill the vacuum.
The result is timidity – to the point where the word ‘radical’ is now employed by the Tories to describe the creeping privatisation of the NHS for example.
In the mean time business still treats people like muck, ,millionaires raid pension funds and the economy is to go under again. So you are right disillusionment will happen because the basis for it is still there even before the Labour party messes it up.
I think you will find that many of us in Labour are not going to follow the presecription described above. Just as with austerity, there is an alternative. We are looking for new, more interesting ways of making our voices heard within the Labour party, and, thanks to the influx of new members we currently have and the organisational expertise of Momentum, we may well have the clout to see this through this time.
That’s interesting
But in reality, how is that going to happen?
I genuinely want to know and think lots will
I can’t imagine another way: what is it?
You sound very sincere Ann and I have no reason to doubt that you are but the key phrase for me is:
‘We are looking for new, more interesting ways of making our voices heard within the Labour party..’
This is worrying because really you and the Party need to be getting yourselves heard in the country and in parliament itself, never mind within the party itself.
I interpret Gramsci as saying that an inherent risk in any party system is that if those who run the party have a different idea of what their objectives are to the core supporters, the party can actually retard any popular sentiment that could lead to better outcomes for society.
This I feel is true of the PLP BUT could also be true of Corbyn himself as well as Momentum. I say this because some of his recent policy ideas are the right thing but with very unsound mechanics.
Please try to see the online documentary ‘Obama – Lifting the Veil’ in which it is posited that the increasingly neo-liberal American Democratic Party has effectively neutralised the many social causes that it used to take under its wing.
This is why the USA now has Bernie and Donald. And this is what happens when a socially concerned opposition tries to ape a prevailing political wind like neo-liberalism. People get confused, then disenchanted and then fall into the arms of factions and nut cases in equal measure.
Maybe we worry too much. “Relax. Nothing is under control.” (Adi Da Samraj)
According to Margaret Hodge interviewd on Radio 4, McDonnell, Livingstone and Corbyn want the Labour Party to be a movement and are interested not in reforming capitalism but in overthrowing it, keen to make transitional demands that put the responders in an impossible position.
That would certainly explain the nice words but inactivity on any real political manifesto. (Presumably they won’t tell us what post capitalism is going to be like till the revolution happens.)
Now for me Livingstone didn’t do badly in London – and was, I think, helped by McDonnell. So Corbyn seems to be the odd man out and there we have lots of discussion and what little policy there is seems to shift. Maybe it’s shifty.
If Margaret Hodge is right and Momentum is really radical it will show it by trading Corbyn in for another model.
I am going to try to listen to the his tonight
At 68 I’m suddenly hopeful that things are going to change for the better. I have been a LP member for many years but gave up door knocking because I was embarrassed about the policies. I know that when the time comes I will happily push leaflets through doors and welcome doorstep discussions on rail nationalisation, free education, free childcare, a well-funded ationalised NHS and many other socialist policies. I am proud to be a member of a true socialist party.
But it won’t be just at election times. There will be tens of thousands of us out on the streets, running stalls in town centres, handing out leaflets, talking to our workmates and neighbours about the exciting prospect of a socialist government. Social media has its place in bringing us together online but political campaigning has to be done face-to-face.
What has to come before though is political education of the members. That does not mean just getting speakers in to teach us. We need to do some of our own research and discuss what we’ve learned. Co-operation.
But what does socialism mean?
None of those things require a socialist government
So what else does it mean?
It is probably open to interpretation. But my favourite definition of Socialism is the one found in the book “Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.” It is a long time since I read it but I believe that it says something like this, that socialism was “giving everyone equal access to the benefits of civilisation.”
That includes inclusion in the democratic process. If this is denied, the political class become more and more complacent, and become arrogant and self serving, only listening to the elite lobbyists. The most extreme form of this is found in the USA, where both sides of the house are fully bought up by Wall Street and other corporations.
Chris Hedges has got a series of very interesting lectures on youtube where he describes the situation in the USA as so entrenched that the only remedy is a social and political movement.
chris hedges america is a tinderbox – chris hedges on reality asserts itself (2/7)
But that is very clearly not what Marx meant
So who was the socialist?
To me it means the recognition that labour is the only factor of production that is active and warm-blooded and thus earns its return (wages). This leads to the acceptance that the ownership of land and capital should be by those that use them and thus they receive the inputed rent and the return on capital. LVT would achieve the former in a very simple way, but the latter is much more difficult, because it challenges the basis of capitalism, i.e. that money makes money. It is not only the fairest but also the most efficient economic system. And it’s perfectly achievable.
And where does private business fit into it?
Worker-owned co-operatives are private.
I know quite a lot about co-ops
I like them
But they are not for everyone
And there are size constraints
And John Lewis is not a co-op
LVT and worker-owned co-ops were in the LEAP Red Papers.
The Mondragons have managed ‘size’ quite well.
And how much say does a member have? As much as a John lewis ‘partner’?
Is that a rhetorical question? I’ll take the bait and wade in nonetheless.
Of course it means different things to different people – depending on whether it is starts with an ‘s’ or an ‘S’. But, by any definition, it’s NOT solipsistic neo-liberal Capitalism.
To save others the bother, here’s a political definition – http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/socialist-principles-explained
For further info check out the 11,700,000 Google search results for ‘the meaning of socialism’.
Less facetiously, herein lies the problem. Because it’s much easier to say what it’s not. And also much easier to define its nemesis, the bottom line of which is whatever it takes to protect an individual’s assets.
In the UK and USA I fear the ‘S’ word has become so toxic with a sufficiently large percentage of the electorate that it inhibits the Labour Party’s potential trajectory to government. Hence the perennial search for a new generic definition of ‘progressive’ policies. Regrettably the word ‘Green’ also has a limiting effect in England, with connotations of unrealistic idealism yet with actual policies that resonate positively with millions. As with the new economics, ‘framing’ is everything in this media-driven age. It’s a conundrum, that’s for sure.
Socialism to me means sharing the world with others (all species) which includes sharing wealth, health, space and resources.
It means accepting that some people will have more and others less but there will be a maximum and a minimum for both that will be tolerated.
The term ‘socialism’ needs to be rescued from its history. It needs to be brought in from the realms of theory to do what I have always felt: that it reflects how human beings are very different to other animals in the way that we work together more successfully than other species to survive and be the dominant mammal on the planet – well dry land anyway.
The notion that we have competed our way to the top is rubbish. We have also co-operated our way to the top and this to me is a social phenomenon – not a market one.
These are some of the things I think define socialism in a modern context – it must become more humanistic as a concept and less of a machine of politics.
Thumbs up PSR 🙂
I suspect that, until our children grow older and begin to ask why their lives are so impoverished by reference to what their baby boomer parents experienced, in other words, until they become totally disillusioned,the masses will not reject neo-liberal economics.
For once I hope you are wrong
Let me try to tackle this as someone involved in building a city-wide Momentum group and trying to work through where we go after the election. But let me clear up some misconceptions you seem to have, I guess because you are looking at this from the outside.
First, this is not about hero-worship. Sure, I’ve been at events where people queue for selfies with Corbyn but that’s amusement. I was at a meeting of over 70 people last night discussing and organising the election campaign locally and there were no eulogies. In fact, Corbyn was scarcely mentioned. Instead people were interested in the relationship with MPs, the role of unions, the NEC election, court rulings, the behaviour of party officials, etc. Everyone saw Corbyn’s re-election in the context of the broader struggle to win the party to some kind of socialist direction. Indeed, a notable difference with last year is how many people now realise that this election is a beginning rather than an end.
Second, this election is not about specific policies, at least not on the economy. It’s about power and the possibilities that power creates or destroys. The significance of Corbyn’s election last year was that it opened a breach in the neoliberal/austerity wall through which people can pass. That’s why most of the anti-austerity organisers in my city have joined the Labour Party over the past year, and they are of course all behind Corbyn. You will struggle to find local campaign, community or workplace activists anywhere who back Smith. They simply don’t believe a word he says. We all know we have a long way to go on policy but we also know that if Smith wins then his backers will close down any radical policy debate and purge socialists from the party. That’s why it’s incomprehensible to us when you or others argue that weaknesses in the policies Corbyn’s team has so far developed justify supporting the candidate of the very people who obstruct change.
A ‘bottom-up’ approach to politics does not mean discarding knowledge but it does mean that we are no longer going to be told what to think by the self-appointed ‘great and good’ of MPs, policy gurus and corporate lobbyists who have got us into today’s mess. Policy formation is a complex process which is why we need an interactive approach across communities, activists and experts, learning from each other, within and beyond party structures. I’m well aware of how soul-destroying the process of creating and fighting for resolutions can be. I’ve been there. It’s unavoidable if we are not to surrender policy to careerists and apparatchiks but I agree there has to be more. People will only tolerate the tedium of this if they clearly understand it as an element within a broader involvement.
My next comment looks at some of what we can do to keep the movement going.
I didn’t want this election campaign but it is revitalising the left within the Labour Party as people realise what is at stake if the centre-right of the party retakes control. Our city Momentum group has tripled or more and we are now starting to organise at an individual constituency level, with a mixture of experienced activists and those, of all ages, new to organised politics. The enthusiasm of the new people is keeping me going through the mundane tasks of managing data and organising phone banks when I would rather be studying policy. We have to win this first to keep the socialist policy debate alive but it is a real concern to me how to keep going afterwards.
First, we have to make everyone welcome. The slurs MPs and journalists cast on Momentum are the reverse of the truth, as least locally, and people have appreciated an environment where they are listened to, in one case after being shouted at by a Labour councillor (a Smith supporter, naturally) at their first ever party meeting. I and others are spending a lot of time just listening and talking, with the post-meeting discussion and socialising as important as the formal meeting itself. We want this to become a fulfilling part of people’s lives, so that they want to be involved. Then the party policy arguments will become more tolerable. This is something that social media alone will not achieve.
Second, we need to encourage self-education (with mentors as required) so that the debate is informed. There is an appetite for this. Whatever one might think of McDonnell’s policies, his New Economics tour has done a public service in opening up discussion to a wider audience. I was asked last night by a new member who had come across one of the sessions on YouTube where she could find out more. My CLP will soon discuss Trident; again people wanted to know where they could go to get informed before the meeting. Once we’re over the grind of the campaign, then I want to encourage groups to form on whatever issues interest them, to learn, to study policy proposals and to contribute their own knowledge and experience. Then people will want to engage in party debates.
Third, not all policy is national. My city, like many others, has elections next May. That gives us an opportunity to consider what we would want a Labour council to do, working towards a Momentum manifesto, developed through activist and community discussions and containing policies that we can then propose into the local party structures. This will be much more tangible and engaging for many of those without much political experience than the more distant national debate. We also need to demonstrate that we can offer implementable policies that could make a real difference to local life, even within the budgetary and other constraints faced by local government.
Finally, politics is not just about agreeing policies. It’s also about organising and campaigning in our communities. Many people find this satisfying, particularly when real engagement can be achieved, sometimes over very local issues such as planning applications, or workplace disputes and personal cases, as well as national or international campaigns. Breaking from neoliberalism needs a lot more than good research papers. The old slogan ‘we are many, they are few’ remains as true now as it ever was and without popular support we will be powerless. This kind of involvement is also essential for evolving policies that reflect real experience and which citizens will support, in elections and beyond. So activism is another way of keeping new party members engaged.
Sorry for the length of these comments but I wanted to show that some of us are thinking about this. None of it will be easy. A couple of months ago we didn’t have the ‘critical mass’ or interest locally to make this possible but now I think we do.
So what is the sicialist agenda?
I don’t know
I know JC does not know
What do you say it is?
I wrote Corbynomics
I do believe a great deal Owen Smith has to say
I am fundamentally anti-austerity
And Jeremy Corbyn will never deliver any policy
Explain
Apologies for a long reply but you’re asking important questions I cannot answer in a few words.
Your question “what is the socialist agenda?” would need a lot more space. Clearly it’s not the same as it would have been a hundred years ago but now as then it involves shifts in the relations of power: from capital to labour, from managers to workers, from landlords to tenants, from states to citizens, from producers to consumers, etc. The interpretation of that for the 21st century, internationally as well as in Britain, is work in progress. In a sense it always will be as the world changes but neoliberal dominance has held it back for a generation.
Where does that leave the Labour Party today? Do we have a set of policies that are sufficiently worked out that the next Labour government could implement them with immediate start? No, we don’t, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons for frustration among many left-inclined commentators. I’m less impatient. If we are still in this position in 3 years’ time, then I will be worried but I always saw getting to that point as a 5-year project: ‘The Economy in 2020’. May is unlikely to call an election before then, unless a sizable part of the PLP splits the party, which would make Labour’s prospects negligible.
What we have today is a direction and a framework. Corbyn’s ten pledges offer that, although there are gaps. The challenge after his re-election will be to fill that out. Some of it will emerge in the response to events. But working up a socialist programme that could seriously shift the balances of power and improve the lives of ordinary people will not be a simple matter of copying from a book or paper. It will require interaction and engagement across the party, supporters, sympathetic advisors, communities and workplaces. A left government in one of the core countries of global capitalism would be a fundamental challenge to elites and would come under attack from the first days. So we need a process through which wide sections of the population can take ownership of the programme and be prepared to defend it. That’s why a top-down approach won’t work.
Can Corbyn deliver? I don’t know, but I know Smith won’t. For 30+ years Corbyn has campaigned for our causes, marched on our demonstrations, stood on our picket lines. We can’t say the same about Smith. We know he was a corporate lobbyist, so when we see a radical-looking agenda we suspect he could easily shift his position yet again. Then we look at his backers, who for decades have tried to eradicate socialism from the party. We look at the hostility directed at members and know what will happen if Smith wins. That’s why the vast majority of grassroots activists back Corbyn. It’s up to us to make this work.
I’ll ignore your trite comments about Smith
What I will say is that if JC and JM have not worked this out after 30+ years campaigning for it they’re incompetent
After all, they’ve failed to do any of the other jobs expected of MPs like sit on committees of oppose in parliament
In fact, you could say the one thing they have mastered is free riding the system
But thinking? No, that they’ve not go to
Unlike Smith who has done the job paid of him
And will
Oh, and I worked for KPMG. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do
Richard, I don’t know why you find it necessary to adopt this tone. You asked a question about how to keep hundred of thousands involved, which I took in good faith and tried to give an honest answer based on practical experience.
I don’t have any personal gripe about people working in the private sector (I did so myself for over 30 years). The worry about Smith is that we cannot assess how much of what he says is real conviction and how much is – as with a corporate lobbyist – simply presenting a public relations case aimed at a target audience. I know, again from personal experience, that many of those backing Smith do not believe in either him or the policies he is presenting – they would prefer, say, Tristram Hunt or Chuka Umunna. So worrying about this is not trite.
I adopt the tone because you do not use anything approaching rational argument and I do not suffer fools gladly
If you’re stupid enough to believe any politician believes all they say
And of course some backing Smith are more right wing. So what? He isn’t based on five years of conversations
But go and fail those Labour is meant to care about by all means, because that’s what you’re doing and as somoen who cares about social justice that offends me deeply, and I reserve the right to say so
I get the feeling from these interactions above that the Momenetum movement is a very putative one and that it may in time grow into something more effective.
The problem is however that we do not have the luxury of time.
Smith said yesterday that we should seriously consider sitting down with members of IS one day. Corbyn and Co then belittled this intent. Why? When they have advocated and justified doing the same in the past?
Silly and very immature.
Sooner or later the penny may drop and the Labour Party will realise the harm it is doing but it will make their task even harder should they ever get back into Government.
There will never be peace without talks
So he was right, of course
Just as JC and JM once advocated talking to the IRA
Which Smith actually did
Again, the insults are just unnecessary. Just because I have identified myself as a Momentum activist does not justify slurs.
I have presented reasoned arguments both for how to keep people involved and why many people on the left of the party have doubts about Smith. You might not agree with those arguments but that does not make me ‘stupid’. It would be more constructive to explain why you disagree.
If you insist on writing nonsense I will point it out
And you are writing nonsense
So I will say so