Beyond the margins

I have not read Laurie Penny's latest book. This blogpost needs to start with that disclaimer. Nor do I have any interest in giving succour to the Penny-bashing industry. I was, however, intrigued by this review of Unspeakable Things.

This passage in particular captures well the attitude of much of the new Left:

...Her constituency, she says, is the underclass – gay and transgender people, goths, sex workers, rioters, anarchists – arguably the people with the most to lose from the neoliberalist (sic) agenda. 

Now, I would want to quibble with this reckoning of late capitalism's worst victims. I severely doubt that anyone ever finished a sixteen hour shift in a Chinese factory only to sigh "well at least I'm not a goth anarchist, that would be really terrible". But what is striking is the gap between this view, that sees the margins as the most politically fertile site, and the view of a Marx, who viewed socialism as "the movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority". Marx was, on this as on much else, correct. Any socialism which does not arise from, and engage with, a social majority will end in either failure or tyranny. The 20th century gave us plenty of experience of both.

To say this is not for one moment to downplay the role of marginalised groups and cultures in the formation of a viable Left. As I see it, though, the role of socialist politics is to forge bonds of solidarity between these groups and a movement of the immense majority (not least, of course, because the groups are not disjoint: some workers are LGBT etc.). The margins are not a great place to be. They are, well, marginal. In fact, one of the worst features of capitalist patriarchy is its continual creation of margins, of new ways of excluding people.

All of which, given capitalism, is a roundabout way of urging that we don't ignore class. The working class, in all its diversity, fragmentation, and recomposition, remains the only collective agent with both the potential strength and the interest to move humanity beyond capitalism. Much though it might be easier to win a collective of student activists over to anti-capitalism, the task that matters is winning over the people on the tube, most of whom are not signed up leftists, and many of whom are not really that marginal. All of this requires patient, hard work, and isn't the least bit exciting or sexy.

Anyway, here's Herbert Marcuse on the old new Left. The first time as tragedy: