New Series on Marxism

"Do something useful", is the advice I'd give someone looking to get more involved in politics and wondering what to do. I've been reviewing my own political commitments and, with a relatively small amount of time on my hands, less than brilliant health, and a capacity to be sometimes not terrible at writing, I've decided to take my own advice and start a series on Marxism on this blog.

Why, sceptics will rightly ask, does this constitute doing something useful? The British left needs more blogposts like British pig farms need more visits from David Cameron. Perhaps. But the British left certainly has a problem with ideas and tradition. There has been a resurgence in participation in left wing politics since Jeremy Corbyn's first campaign. There has not, on the whole, been a revival of interest in socialist ideas, still less in the historical thought of our tradition. 

To the extent that the new generation of activists bring political ideas with them, they are the default US-imported identity politics of present day university campuses. Do not misunderstand me being critical of 'identity politics' here: it is of paramount importance that socialists fight oppression on the basis of gender, race, and sexuality. The problem with the kind of individualistic moralistic finger-wagging which increasingly passes for left-wing politics is that it actively damages this fight, both by making it the preserve of a 'woke' elite and by disentangling it from the politics of class.

Marxism, a collection of doctrines whose central claims I am unfashionable enough to believe to be true, offers an alternative, putting class in a central analytic position and looking forward to a politics of the "immense majority" acting in their own interests. As a tradition which has developed over a century and a half of working class struggle it, as embodied in those activists who understand the world in terms of it, serves as - in the old phrase - the memory of the class.

And we need a memory. I think that many of us on the Labour left have been so impressed and surprised by the new intake that we have, with misplaced modesty, thought that we have nothing to offer them. The enthusiastic Corbynite teenager can teach the retired lifelong activist to send tweets; that activist, we seem to believe, has nothing to offer. On the contrary, ideas and experience will prevent us from making mistakes which could prove fatal for our movement in the next few years.

So, a series on Marxism is my attempt to make some contribution to fill this gap. There will, over the coming months, be seven posts on these themes:

1. Marxism in outline

2. The centrality of class - exploitation

3. The centrality of class - history

4. Marxist politics

5. Marxism, gender and race

6. Marxism and the New Left

7. Marxism and the Labour Party

Statement on the Labour left slate for the NEC

This was sent to me and I agree wholeheartedly with it. I'll be voting for the Momentum slate in the interest of left unity, but we need to do much better in future.

We feel that there should be a much more transparent and democratic process engaged in for the selection of the NEC Left Slate in the future. It is no longer sufficient that a handful of Executive members of Left organisations meet as the CLGA and choose who we are told to vote for: the grassroots members of these organisations should have the ability to choose who they want on this slate. Having the Executive members of the CLGA organisations select members to put forward for these positions excludes ordinary members from the process. The current system whereby a small group comprising the CLGA decides the final slate by “consensus” is no longer representative of the grassroots Left.

We are proposing that Momentum lead the democratisation within the Left by putting in place the following system for choosing the next NEC Left Slate:

Anyone who is a member of any one of the CLGA organisations and who is eligible to stand for the Labour Party’s NEC is able to put themselves forward for election. They must submit a brief bio and at least one nomination to indicate support from either a branch (or another local organisation) or the Executive of one of these organisations. To facilitate a fully democratic decision-making, all the CLGA organisations must circulate the details (bios & nominations) of all the candidates to all their members, as it is not simply the ability to vote for these candidates, but the opportunity to have full knowledge in which members are making informed choices.

The selection of the final slate is compiled by allowing each member of all the CLGA organisations to vote for the 9 candidates, using a Single Transferable Voting system. Since individuals may be a member of more than one Left organisation within the CLGA, the ballots are issued to members based on Labour Party membership numbers, so that an individual only gets one vote. The 9 candidates receiving the most votes are deemed to be the “left slate” and will be advertised by all the participating groups as such. This selection process should ideally be run by an independent scrutineer such as the Electoral Reform Society.