HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
Their secret hearts
Inside, against and beyond the Labour Party: Thoughts for the Left post-GE
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Shamless repost from Angry Workers of the World, they're basically dead on....
"There’s a lot of people out there despairing – hoping for struggles for a better world, but feeling isolated and unsure of where to focus their political action. We think we have to dig in and reach out, grow roots and branches, mix and mingle in the daily grind, while keeping a hot heart and cool head, looking forward…
* The tension between what society could be like and the ruling reality of divide-and-rule is gonna increase and kill. There won’t be no soft cushions, no popular short-cuts – the crisis won’t be voted away. It’s working class self-defence and organisation from now on.
* Large parts of the current ‘revolutionary’ left have no roots. We are caught in a cycle of reactions. We debate revolution in a bubble, while bumping our heads against single issues. The latest campaign. We’ve got no class and think that’s cool.
* We can’t just ‘start where we are’, we have to move our ass. It’s only a few of us, we have to be where it’s at. For us that’s where working class people come together, day-to-day, and face capital and each other. Big workplaces are central, neighbourhoods are not irrelevant.
* Dig in, get a job and learn. Or go to new places and ask. Discover how people organise and why they don’t. Slowly help build structures. Our SolNet is getting off the ground. We meet weekly, at McDonalds, in an Indian tea house, in the 24h Asda cafe. Form small gangs at work.
* Keep all this together in a regular publication for the area – this is central! Become a mirror for the class, help to look ahead. Forget about Twitter, create working class papers. Pick up the small stories of resistance from the packaging department, write about our wish and reasoning to fight for a classless society.
* Let’s share these experiences and link up. Forget about the shiny surface of organisations, let’s be open and share what works and what doesn’t.
What does that mean?
* We aren’t calling for a new organisation, but for a new political practice and coordination.
* As an individual or a group: analyse your local working class surroundings. Look for concentrations, conflicts, current divisions. In these days, low-waged jobs, employing many migrant workers at central points of exploitation will be decisive locations. But there are others. Let’s share reports of what we find.
* Settle down. Start small, but start. Workplace groups and solidarity networks in the territory are starting points. From there we can learn. Let’s share regular reports, about flops and all.
* We can work on the newspapers together. Circulate workplace reports from the same industries or companies, but different regions. Share research on the plans of the pigs and the global connections of our class. Discuss editorials on working class nationalism and its dead-ends, on the pitfalls of working class family life.
We will need this rooting process, headless chickens will get eaten. The days after the election will be a big come-down, either way. Historical lessons and positions for a fundamental social transformation can’t just be poured into the working class. Or screened into it on YouTube channels. These positions have to be lived and fought over within the class. We want to link up with comrades who think similarly. We want to document this process centrally and self-critically – as a coordination of working class initiatives. We want to meet face-to-face in future."
Angry Workers of the World: for working class inquiry
"There’s a lot of people out there despairing – hoping for struggles for a better world, but feeling isolated and unsure of where to focus their political action. We think we have to dig in and reach out, grow roots and branches, mix and mingle in the daily grind, while keeping a hot heart and cool head, looking forward…
* The tension between what society could be like and the ruling reality of divide-and-rule is gonna increase and kill. There won’t be no soft cushions, no popular short-cuts – the crisis won’t be voted away. It’s working class self-defence and organisation from now on.
* Large parts of the current ‘revolutionary’ left have no roots. We are caught in a cycle of reactions. We debate revolution in a bubble, while bumping our heads against single issues. The latest campaign. We’ve got no class and think that’s cool.
* We can’t just ‘start where we are’, we have to move our ass. It’s only a few of us, we have to be where it’s at. For us that’s where working class people come together, day-to-day, and face capital and each other. Big workplaces are central, neighbourhoods are not irrelevant.
* Dig in, get a job and learn. Or go to new places and ask. Discover how people organise and why they don’t. Slowly help build structures. Our SolNet is getting off the ground. We meet weekly, at McDonalds, in an Indian tea house, in the 24h Asda cafe. Form small gangs at work.
* Keep all this together in a regular publication for the area – this is central! Become a mirror for the class, help to look ahead. Forget about Twitter, create working class papers. Pick up the small stories of resistance from the packaging department, write about our wish and reasoning to fight for a classless society.
* Let’s share these experiences and link up. Forget about the shiny surface of organisations, let’s be open and share what works and what doesn’t.
What does that mean?
* We aren’t calling for a new organisation, but for a new political practice and coordination.
* As an individual or a group: analyse your local working class surroundings. Look for concentrations, conflicts, current divisions. In these days, low-waged jobs, employing many migrant workers at central points of exploitation will be decisive locations. But there are others. Let’s share reports of what we find.
* Settle down. Start small, but start. Workplace groups and solidarity networks in the territory are starting points. From there we can learn. Let’s share regular reports, about flops and all.
* We can work on the newspapers together. Circulate workplace reports from the same industries or companies, but different regions. Share research on the plans of the pigs and the global connections of our class. Discuss editorials on working class nationalism and its dead-ends, on the pitfalls of working class family life.
We will need this rooting process, headless chickens will get eaten. The days after the election will be a big come-down, either way. Historical lessons and positions for a fundamental social transformation can’t just be poured into the working class. Or screened into it on YouTube channels. These positions have to be lived and fought over within the class. We want to link up with comrades who think similarly. We want to document this process centrally and self-critically – as a coordination of working class initiatives. We want to meet face-to-face in future."
Angry Workers of the World: for working class inquiry
krink
I'll do it this afternoon
JoBoxers are looking rough these days.Pfwc. Look at the hats.
Lauren?
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
‘The working class, runs the argument, is rooted in communities and cherishes values of family, nation and tradition. It has little time for liberal individualism or for the language of diversity and rights. That belongs to the “metropolitan liberals” and to a different political tradition. Indeed, many argue that if Britain’s electoral system were not rooted in a first-past-the-post system, the Labour party would have already broken into two, one part representing the socially conservative but economically leftwing working class, the other liberal metropolitans. Labour now faces a choice: either accept that its traditional working-class voters are gone forever or abandon liberal social policies.
The trouble with this argument is that the key feature of Britain over the past half century has been not social conservatism but an extraordinary liberalisation’
Kenan Malik’s brilliant article should be tattooed onto Owen Jones, Paul Mason and Novara media types heads:
The idea that the British working class is socially conservative is a nonsense | Kenan Malik
The trouble with this argument is that the key feature of Britain over the past half century has been not social conservatism but an extraordinary liberalisation’
Kenan Malik’s brilliant article should be tattooed onto Owen Jones, Paul Mason and Novara media types heads:
The idea that the British working class is socially conservative is a nonsense | Kenan Malik
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Proper Tidy
Arsed
It's a good piece (they usually are) but would have thought it's the likes of Goodwin who should be getting it tattooed on them. Malik's argument is that adopting 'leftwing' economic policy + social conservatism is no route to gaining working class support
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Or indeed Malik's former comrades, although I suppose they've gone full rightist headbangers now
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I’d be happy to also see it tattooed onto the heads of the spiked nutters (my own view is that it would be waste of ink however).
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Perhaps with a 400mm drill bit
brixtonscot
Well-Known Member
Very good post and what the Left should be doing - and what some are maybe already doing ( quietly ), particularly some anarchists .
Did IWCA adopt similar approach with some (limmitted ?) success ?
Somebody posted something recently ( on this thread or on another ) on this approach by Sinn Fein in 70's & 80's , with a good degree of success.
It could be said SF built one of the most successful popular resistance movements in western europe , at that time.
One aspect that SF could draw on , was a collective sense of being Irish nationalist/republican , which IMO , helped to build that movement around
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Some interesting thoughts here on the unravelling of the collective social and industrial institutions and the consequences in former mining and steel towns.
The article suggests that Labour's defeat was the culmination of the 'unmaking' of working-class political culture over 50 years and that Johnson's triumph is a forward march of Powellism.
Fully agree on the former point but the latter point is overemphasised. Whilst votes in some, but not all of these constituencies, have been for successive right wing formulations the point is that these have been contingent. In that sense it’s largely a symptom of the lack of political representation from the left and not the political incorporation of these communities by Johnson. It’s also the case that the political vacuum in these places is not a new argument. In fact some of us have been warning about this for years. But, the suggestion that the vacuum has been filled by the Tories and a Powellite settlement is a step too far. They are and remain contestable for pro-working class politics. I do not sense a filling of the vacuum as a result of the GE. Quite the opposite. There is a widespread sense that the vote is a loan to ‘GBD’.
This oversight leads to the serious flaw in the analysis - it overlooks the abandonment of these communities by the left over the last 50 years. As the IWCA used to say ‘as the left turned its back on the working class, the working class turns it back on the left’.
The Unmaking of the British Working Class: A Highly Provisional Thesis
The article suggests that Labour's defeat was the culmination of the 'unmaking' of working-class political culture over 50 years and that Johnson's triumph is a forward march of Powellism.
Fully agree on the former point but the latter point is overemphasised. Whilst votes in some, but not all of these constituencies, have been for successive right wing formulations the point is that these have been contingent. In that sense it’s largely a symptom of the lack of political representation from the left and not the political incorporation of these communities by Johnson. It’s also the case that the political vacuum in these places is not a new argument. In fact some of us have been warning about this for years. But, the suggestion that the vacuum has been filled by the Tories and a Powellite settlement is a step too far. They are and remain contestable for pro-working class politics. I do not sense a filling of the vacuum as a result of the GE. Quite the opposite. There is a widespread sense that the vote is a loan to ‘GBD’.
This oversight leads to the serious flaw in the analysis - it overlooks the abandonment of these communities by the left over the last 50 years. As the IWCA used to say ‘as the left turned its back on the working class, the working class turns it back on the left’.
The Unmaking of the British Working Class: A Highly Provisional Thesis
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LDC
On est tous des pangolins
A contribution on the Plan C site from someone someone in London Renters Union, mentions the reality of the long hard graft that much of this kind of organising is...
Organise Your Life to Organise
It mentions funding, and there's also something from the Asian Youth Movement in Bradford that talked about the risks of funding and it greasing the paths away from radicalism but I don't have it to hand atm.
Organise Your Life to Organise
It mentions funding, and there's also something from the Asian Youth Movement in Bradford that talked about the risks of funding and it greasing the paths away from radicalism but I don't have it to hand atm.
whats GBD?
The thing is, if they have abandoned them, and i would say since the Poll Tax, then the question is what have( a much reduced) wider left been doing, and that can open up some very uncomfortable possible answers.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Get Brexit Done
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Uncomfortable is both deserved and necessary.
The brutal reality is that never mind filling the vacuum the left hasn’t even been competitive or attempted seriously to do so. For 44 years - I date the moment of departure much earlier than you. In 1976 James Callaghan stood up at LP conference and announced the adoption of monetarism by Labour. Labour would no longer govern with the priority of full employment and partnership with the unions. Start there.
Now the top down social democrat corbyn project has run its course there is a chance to learn lessons and think about some of the types of question being discussed on this thread. I’m not optimistic however. Now the shock has worn off the return to default assumptions and positions seems to be returning
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Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
ACG contribution, more an "outside and against" position:
Corbynism after Corbyn: Bankruptcy of Electoralism – Anarchist Communist Group
Corbynism after Corbyn: Bankruptcy of Electoralism – Anarchist Communist Group
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Sorry, but this is deluded.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
...but still a damn sight more preferable than the "nothing can be done, ah well, may as well line my own pockets and screw everybody else" option of voting Tory and pointing out others' failures eh?
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Seeing as it's coming from you, with arguably the shittest politics on Urban, I'll take your dislike as a massive complement
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
I don't know how old you are, but I've been hearing this crap from the hard left for five decades. Yes, fifty years.
So, after fifty years, how much further forward are they in terms of numbers and influence? The square root of fuck all.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Seeing as it's coming from you, with arguably the shittest politics on Urban, I'll take your dislike as a massive complement
I'm a realist, not a hard left fantasist. (On the hard left there are only fantasists.)
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Like I said, the shittest politics on Urban.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Wow! What a cogent and persuasive argument, you have really won me over.
The hard left have never prospered in Britain, and never will.
If you are a Labour party member, please vote for Long-Bailey.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Ok boomer (as the kids are wont to say).
Wash your hands and pocket the cash, whilst sneering at those at least trying for a better world.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Wow! What a cogent and persuasive argument, you have really won me over.
The hard left have never prospered in Britain, and never will.
If you are a Labour party member, please vote for Long-Bailey.
Clearly didn't bother to read what Serge said before starting your sneering.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
So, although you said the article was deluded, your "if you are a Labour Party member" comment clearly shows you either didn't read it or understood fuckall, you balloon.Wow! What a cogent and persuasive argument, you have really won me over.
The hard left have never prospered in Britain, and never will.
If you are a Labour party member, please vote for Long-Bailey.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Weird how loads of people say hard left now, even though this is an internal labour thing and nobody said it between about 1984 and 2015, nonetheless the old colonel has been hearing it 'for fifty years years'
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