Thanks to the Green-Left list, my post on the motion to conference called Living within our Means has attracted more comments than any other. The point of the motion was to stimulate a debate about the relationship between green economics and a policy response to the public-spending cuts so this seems to have been achieved. Those with stomach for more may enjoy reading the longer version of my reasons for proposing the motion, which were published in Green World.
An interesting question raised by some of the comments is whether the Green Party should identify itself as being of the left, and whether it should identify itself as a socialist party. I'm sorry to say that any response to this question leads me to ask what people mean by identifying themselves as socialists.
I am sure there are highly technical answers to this question that inhabitants of the Ukraine more than 30 years old probably know clearly, but which are a mystery to me as the beneficiary of a capitalist education during the Cold War. Being of a similar vintage I can remember in my student days the heated debates in the Labour Club about whether the Labour Party should abandon Clause IV, which dealt with the ownership of the means of production. That seems to me key to being a socialist party, and since it has gone, I fail to see how Labour can claim to be one.
My own sympathies lie with the guild socialists, who lost out in the struggle for power within British 'socialism'. Their vision of self-reliant communities where craftspeople were organised into co-operatives which sold the goods they produced without anybody extracting value seems close to the green vision of a sustainable and just economy. We might argue about which sectors of our national economy are sufficiently important as to need to be democratically managed outside the market - health is obvious agreed by consensus, but what about housing? energy? water? - but beginning with local and co-operative ownership seems closer to the green way than nationalisation.
More generally, my belief is that the struggle between capital and labour that characterised the 19th and early 20th centuries has been superseded. The most important form of emancipation we can undertake today is from what Bob Marley called 'mental slavery', in this case the mental slavery of accepting the capitalist definition of ourselves as 'wage slaves'. We should not march for the right to work or fight for full employment; rather we should understand and challenge the system of money creation and resource ownership that leaves us in the weak position to begin with. Tweet
Hi Molly.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. Funnily enough, I have an article on a similar subject in the latest issue of Tribune - follow the link if interested. http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/09/red-and-green-should-it-ever-be-seen/
My piece responds to an earlier one by Carl Rowlands, who has also written another response beneath my own article. I think his article makes clear the wide differences between Green and the Labour Party - not only does he mis-characterise my argument, but he also continues to have faith in the Keynesian 'full employment' paradigm. In other words, in order to get the economy out of a whole 'the masses' must continue to be beholden to wage slavery.
Unfortunately, though, I differ from you when it comes to the idea that the struggle between capital and labour is over. Believe me, it emphatically is not. As a worker currently on the minimum wage, I can tell you that my family and I feel as though we're fighting a constant battle just to make ends meet. It is surely more productive to argue that we need to shift the focus of the capital-labour battle. Arguing for shorter working weeks, higher wages, fairer trade union legislation, worker ownership and management etc can and should all be part of a Green economic plan. This doesn't mean the capital-labour frontier is the only one of significance - we must fight for better rights for the unemployed, for migrants and refugees etc. But I think we shoot ourselves in the foot - and fundamentally misunderstand society - if we insist that their is no longer a conflict between capital and labour. Fighting the ideas which structure society is important, as you rightly argue, but we can't ignore the material structuring of society and the social relations forged by capital in doing so.
Keep up the excellent blogging,
Dan
you mean supercede (with a c), reckon there's no labour / capital conflict any more and finish with a quote from Bob Marley - a man who smoked so much he talked tripe half the time and followed a misogynistic and homophobic religion? Interesting...
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, carry on...
btw, was Milton Keynes named after Friedman and John Maynard?
I was quite excited with this post, Molly - with the idea that, behind all of the labels, we might actually agree on a very fundamental level.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely that socialism is not just about centralisation - you and I are with William Morris on that one. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that we cannot simply reproduce what Larry O'Hara calls the mistakes of 'The Last Century Left'.
These are, to me, all arguments in favour of regenerating that lost strand of (eco)socialism that you talk about – rather than abandoning its principles altogether, or arguing that we can somehow do without that pesky Left-Right spectrum.
As I say, all of this was rather heartening, until I got to your final paragraph. You state:
'More generally, my belief is that the struggle between capital and labour that characterised the 19th and early 20th centuries has been superseded. The most important form of emancipation we can undertake today is from what Bob Marley called 'mental slavery', in this case the mental slavery of accepting the capitalist definition of ourselves as 'wage slaves'. We should not march for the right to work or fight for full employment; rather we should understand and challenge the system of money creation and resource ownership that leaves us in the weak position to begin with.'
This is an example of how people who argue that there is no Left-Right spectrum (in terms of economics) fall almost without fail into the Right camp. The idea that 'the struggle between capital and labour…has been superseded' is such a weak claim that I'm surprised that you could make it with a straight face. We have more industry in the world today than at any point in the entire history of the planet. Indeed, is this not the cause of climate change? We can only take the kind of 'post-industrial' position you advocate here if we ignore where so much of the stuff we use in our day to day lives - including the computer on which I write this post – actually comes form.
More people are trapped in 'wage-slavery', in this country and around the world, than ever before. Try telling those working 18 hour days in New Economic Zones in China that the main problem is 'mental slavery' and see where it gets you. Ditto immigrant cockle pickers in Morecombe Bay at 2am tomorrow morning. I'm afraid that suggestions that we need to fight ‘mental slavery’ rather than actual exploitation ignore the fact that the world's workers do not have such a privilege.
I guess while you’re listening to Bob Marley and sorting out your mental space, I'll get on with campaigning against the most vicious cuts we have seen since the Second World War.
Having said all of this, it is useful to be having such a debate. If it does nothing else (and I suspect it will do nothing else), your motion has at least done that.
Owen.
I was quite excited with this post, Molly - with the idea that, behind all of the labels, we might actually agree on a very fundamental level.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely that socialism is not just about centralisation - you and I are with William Morris on that one. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it is that we cannot simply reproduce what Larry O'Hara calls the mistakes of 'The Last Century Left'.
These are, to me, all arguments in favour of regenerating that lost strand of (eco)socialism that you talk about – rather than abandoning its principles altogether, or arguing that we can somehow do without that pesky Left-Right spectrum.
As I say, all of this was rather heartening, until I got to your final paragraph. You state:
'More generally, my belief is that the struggle between capital and labour that characterised the 19th and early 20th centuries has been superseded. The most important form of emancipation we can undertake today is from what Bob Marley called 'mental slavery', in this case the mental slavery of accepting the capitalist definition of ourselves as 'wage slaves'. We should not march for the right to work or fight for full employment; rather we should understand and challenge the system of money creation and resource ownership that leaves us in the weak position to begin with.'
This is an example of how people who argue that there is no Left-Right spectrum (in terms of economics) fall almost without fail into the Right camp. The idea that 'the struggle between capital and labour…has been superseded' is such a weak claim that I'm surprised that you could make it with a straight face. We have more industry in the world today than at any point in the entire history of the planet. Indeed, is this not the cause of climate change? We can only take the kind of 'post-industrial' position you advocate here if we ignore where so much of the stuff we use in our day to day lives - including the computer on which I write this post – actually comes form.
More people are trapped in 'wage-slavery', in this country and around the world, than ever before. Try telling those working 18 hour days in New Economic Zones in China that the main problem is 'mental slavery' and see where it gets you. Ditto immigrant cockle pickers in Morecombe Bay at 2am tomorrow morning. I'm afraid that suggestions that we need to fight ‘mental slavery’ rather than actual exploitation ignore the fact that the world's workers do not have such a privilege.
I guess while you’re listening to Bob Marley and sorting out your mental space, I'll get on with campaigning against the most vicious cuts we have seen since the Second World War.
Having said all of this, it is useful to be having such a debate. If it does nothing else (and I suspect it will do nothing else), your motion has at least done that.
Owen.