Here are some suggestions from Andrew Burgin/Kate Hudson of the November 14th Movement for Left Unity. Engage. I have missed off the preamble on the crisis we face in the interests of brevity.
On what basis can this discussion begin?
Basic principles and common practice:
1. A self-definition as Left; presenting an alternative set of values of equality and justice, not constrained by notions of ‘revolutionary’ left; informed by Marxism but not a pre-condition to engagement.
2. A broadly conceived opposition to capitalism, imperialism, war and racism, understood in a popular sense; defence of the welfare state and advance of redistributive social and economic policies.
3. A democratic, diverse and inclusive political practice; open dialogue and new ways of working; mutual respect and tolerance of differences of analysis; rejection of brutality and distortion of traditional left structures and their frequent reproduction of the gender domination of capitalist society.
4. International solidarity; working with other left organisations in Europe and internationally to build coordination, strategic links and common work.
5. A recognition that the situation is so urgent that sectarian interests must be abandoned which means compromise and a willingness not to be ‘in the lead’.
Organisational options for discussion:
1. Coalition model: e.g. Syriza – electorally-based coalition uniting over a dozen smaller groups around larger Synaspismos (from communist tradition).
2. Coalition model: e.g. Front de Gauche – electorally-based coalition of a number of groups around larger PCF (French Communist Party) and newer Parti de Gauche, originating in left social democrat split from French Socialist Party (Melenchon). Both Syriza and F de G are similar in many respects to Izquierda Unida in Spain and Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal.
3. Party model: e.g. Die Linke (German Left Party) – development from former ruling East German Socialist Unity Party, via PDS, encompassing WASG (left social democrats – Lafontaine) and revolutionary left groups; political differences articulated through Platforms.
Issues:
1. The political future for the left in Britain cannot be resolved by sticking together existing left groups; there are newly emerging and evolving groupings and individuals that want to be part of the process.
2. The lack of serious electoral possibility owing to ‘first past the post’ system means that an electoral coalition would be putting the cart before the horse.
3. No single party exists that could play the role of a PDS or Synaspismos in creating a new organisation or coalition.
4. How to simultaneously develop individual participation as well as organisational participation?
Steps for facilitating this discussion:
1. Setting up a website to pose such a united left option; publishing and commissioning broadly representative articles and debate pieces to explore willingness to take a new approach.
2. Organising series of discussion meetings on key topics, looking for common ground, such as: attitude towards Labour Party and Labour left; relationship with trade unions; relationship with social movements and anti-cuts groups; posing alternative economic policies; addressing gender and race balance in process; relations with European organisations. To publish the discussion at these meetings.
3. Convention to take further steps towards establishing a Left organisation.
Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin
One of the major issues that is not mentioned is the extensive presence of private industry PI’s / contractors plus security service within the UK left.
Another is the fact that the Labour Party is still not recognised for what it is: The ‘left’ wing of the class enemy…
Comrades prepare your armchairs and laptops. The future is ours.
Okay, it’s well meaning and shows a suitable and long overdue sense of urgency but…not a single mention of the working class. I don’t doubt the sincerity of the sentiment behind this and recognise the need for a new movement to emerge but unless there’s significant grassroots working class involvement at a street / neighbourhood level, this bid to forge a new movement will sadly be going nowhere.
The more I think about the shite that’s coming our way this year, the more I think that grassroots organising for community resilience has to be a key part of building militant resistance to a system that’s already screwing us over and when the next phase of the economic shitstorm hits, will be using that as an excuse to screw us over even more. Already we’re hearing about people having to walk miles to the JobCentre because they can’t afford to use public transport, the same goes for foodbanks where people have walked ten miles or more to get a parcel of food. As more jobs are lost, more people face hardship and homelessness. If you’re disabled and having to deal with ATOS and all the related shite that goes with it, you face having your life totally wrecked to the point where suicide becomes a serious option.
I could go on but for an increasing number of people, the name of the game is survival. In working class communities where an increasing number of people are facing hardship, what’s needed first and foremost is the means to survive. The only way that’s going to happen is through mutual aid and solidarity. Okay, I know it’s a slogan that’s been used so often it’s losing any real meaning. The point is that in our communities, we need to work out a way of sticking together, looking out for each other and staying united just to survive what’s coming. If we can start doing that at the level of our street or neighbourhood and succeed in not only surviving but asking some hard questions about the system that dumped us in the shit in the first place, then you have the building blocks for a movement that can sweep this rotten system aside and put something far better in its place.
It’s not as if we have to re-invent the wheel on this one. In times of extreme stress, working class communities have pulled together and shown some amazing feats of grit, determination and above all, solidarity. The problem is that once the cause of stress has passed or the fightback has been defeated, things fell apart again and the solidarity dissipated. Two classic examples that spring to mind are the resistance to the Poll Tax and the miners’ strike in the 1980s – obviously there are other examples. Also, in terms of community organising, it’s worth looking at what did and didn’t work for the Independent Working Class Association and drawing some lessons from that as well.
As for the urgency of this, the banking crisis of 2008 and the subsequent economic crisis was merely a taster. There’s worse to come, considerably worse if this is anything to go by: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-14/it-begins-bundesbank-commence-repatriating-gold-new-york-fed If this one plays out as I think it could, then 2008 will look like a tea party compared to the economic chaos this one could bring about…
As a fingerpost for the working class the IWCA failed to convince. The Oxford example basically demonstrated that Targetting drug dealers and organising Saturday pictures for kids, no matter how popular locally, is no road to political and economic power. The working class is one thing today and another tomorrow, manipulated but inconsistent. The “Left” is just more rules and obligations.
Yep, I know of someone who has opted to register as self-employed and scrape by on about a tenner and -as he puts it – his ‘wit and imagination’, rather than jump through the increasing amount of hoops the dole are raising, and save himself the petrol on a regular twenty mile round trip to the Jobcentre to have jobs foisted on him he doesn’t want. I know what you’re saying about ‘working class communities’, but in a lot of cases there’s just isolation and desparation, and ‘community’ seems an idealised abstraction. I’m not saying that to pour cold water, it’s just that the baseline we’re starting from may be even lower and more dispersed than the level of the readymade, homogeneous community(that may exist in certain pockets) that only needs to “unite” or “fight back” (as a lot of ‘our’ earnest literature used to say). I’m not saying that nothing’s going on, mind…
‘Working class geographical areas’ may be a more accurate (but cumbersome) term and possibly what thualtmedia was getting at; building a sense of community has to be our first step.
I agree that I think we’re a lot further away in terms of militancy from where we think we actually are and in many respects I think the (non-) events over the past few years have shown that we could really do with working as though we’re starting from scratch … as though trade unions or community associations don’t even exist. A lot of the left (anarchists included) are fooling themselves that we can run before we can walk (or even crawl!).
So – has anyone self appointed themselves to lead this yet ?
Who do you think will be the first group to try and wrest control and dictate what can and can’t be done ?
This is Britain and not France/Greece/Spain
Can we start by being honest about the nature of the self styled ‘revolutionary left?’ Nearly all of these organisations (SWP, SP, CPGB) are essentially lobbying groups within the Labour party. I suspect the Hudson statement is really a reiteration of the same policy – lobbying within the same institutions, calling on trade union leaders, building relationships with the ‘labour left,’ forging links with Euro Stalinists, focusing on identity politics, lunch with Mark Serowokta, etc
In other words it’s the old ‘left’ principle of ‘conducting the struggle within the existing institutions.’ Fair enough, but it’s middle class politics with a vengeance, and a dead end for any live movement.
“1. The political future for the left in Britain cannot be resolved by sticking together existing left groups; there are newly emerging and evolving groupings and individuals that want to be part of the process.”
Read as: the left parties are irrelevant and don’t have enough members, we need to recruit ‘the new groupings’ into our new revolutionary party. UK Uncut, Occupy etc., they’re coming for you!
I’m only working class with a basic secondary school education. I can read but the following types of things just make my eyes glaze over, does this make me thick? This is why getting involved is something I would never do as it means mixing with people who talk like this –
“…distortion of traditional left structures and their frequent reproduction of the gender domination of capitalist society…” WTF.
“…electorally-based coalition uniting over a dozen smaller groups around larger Synaspismos (from communist tradition)…” Now you lost me completely, I really must be thick.
“…electorally-based coalition of a number of groups around larger PCF (French Communist Party) and newer Parti de Gauche, originating in left social democrat split from French Socialist Party (Melenchon)..” I’ll get my coat.
Lots of talking, lots of long words, lots of meetings with social worker type people, long words, lots of discussion on long words, lots of talking about dead men with beards, lots of long words.
I think I will sit this one out (as always).
Have fun though.
Same. Stopped reading after the first paragraph. Good grief what was the preamble like ? Bash the Rich is a good manifesto though…
What do you read, Max? Sun headlines and nursery rhymes?
Actually, I’m glad you’re not getting involved. Maybe the people who care can save a little of the time they would have wasted explaining all the long words to you.
“2. The lack of serious electoral possibility owing to ‘first past the post’ system means that an electoral coalition would be putting the cart before the horse.”
considering the suicidal tendencies of the lib dems, and the fact that ukip are now the third party – both polling single digits – plus the fact that the tories and new labour are about to fight to claim the rights to presiding over a UK in depression, id say the possibilities of electoral ‘victory’ are higher than in a long time.
Other european countries seem to be able to have left, ‘non-revolutionary’, coalitions, i cant see what makes the UK so unique that it is incapable of it.
I hope that “Tolerance of differences of analysis” includes the freedom to call the Morning Star a Scab for supporting South African scab miners.
Interesting, do you have a source for this?
I remember reading in the Morning Star about how tewwibly violent the pickets were being to the poor stwikebweakers. Can’t find the article I was thinking of but here’s a report:
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2012/09/04/morning-star-weasels-marikana
good on ‘em for trying.i say. lets have some positivity for a change as we’re not achieving much at the moment
“A broadly conceived opposition to capitalism, imperialism, war and racism, understood in a popular sense; defence of the welfare state and advance of redistributive social and economic policies.”
I agree with the sense of urgency, and with avoiding sectarianism, and am not in a mood to pick any holes in what’s said here. But why not mention, like, you know, class? How about defending and if possible advancing working class living standards, against what stands against us? What stands against us is the rich, and what the rich want and need and enforce, using their government, private companies, etc. And what the rich want and need and enforce is lowering our living standards, making us insecure, shitting on us, lying to us, driving us crazy, ruining our health, etc. etc. Why do the rich do what they do? Because they’re money-grabbing cunts who get off on exploiting the rest of us and having better living conditions than us. They run the show and they aren’t going to change. Why is this obvious stuff so difficult for some people to say?
Fucking well said ‘b’!
So, those left groups are really dying because we live in a post industrial age ?
And their revolutions never really took off in industrial countries, but rather in pre industrial ones, and those have become industrial capitalist societies.
And now, if they dream of huge state run utilities and factories in which to place their working class they can’t, because the fossil fuels to create all that are maxed out – and it’s not clear how the necessary supplies can be got by anything other than imperialist type military adventure, because if it were left up to the people who live in the lands from where we get our stuff they may not want to sell to us ?
How DO you go about gaining the resources for the lifestyles we have without forcing yourself on foreigners ?
Surely the front for the left isn’t here anymore, they have nothing to get their teeth into, it’s at places like the foxconn factory, or the coltan mines in Central Africa where all our electronic shit comes from ?
If there is to be any real unity – it won’t really be established around a position paper or platform – because in practice there are too many areas of disagreement. Unity has to forged at a local level – in action around an issue that everyone can agree on. It has to be a class-based issue which deals with real problems – like housing ever-rising rents, class “cleansing” and increasing homelessness – and it needs clearly defined objectives.
There’s a big round of local government elections coming up in April this year which can be politicised and polarised around housing. Here’s a chance to combine a community struggle with an electoral campaign if people think such a strategy might work and are genuinely interested in Unity.
The quicker a new real Left wing party emerges-the better! LETS FOCUS ON WHAT WE AGREE ON-AND STOP FINDING FUCKING PROBLEMS WITH WHAT SOMEBODIES PUT FORWARD!
The question is do we need another left wing party? If its a question of compromising why not simply join and work within one of the existing left wing parties? My hunch is that the need for a new party is to meet psychological needs of revolutionaries, not the class they aspire to lead. Surely after seeing all the sell outs, the splits, and disillusionment, we need to go beyond party thinking. Or is Leninism still the ideal for the 21st century? I am not in a hurry to raise funds for a new party and pay its leaders to go off on jollies to sunny Greece or Germany and Spain to meet with failed politicians there.