Bashing the Bishops

If it is true, as I think, that the class struggle is the revolution - not just a means towards it, but the thing itself - and if it is true that the Christian gospel of love is incompatible with this, then quite evidently the Christian gospel is incompatible with revolutionary liberation: one of the few positions shared by the International Marxist Group, Mrs Thatcher and Joseph Stalin.

Thus the late Dominican friar and socialist Herbert McCabe sets up the position he will argue against in his wonderful essay 'The class struggle and Christian love' (published as part of his book God Matters). Of McCabe more later. For now we must turn our attention to less sublime intellects. I refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury who, along with his fellow Anglican hierarchs, has offered his lucky flock advice on the coming General Election.

The earnest, aphorism sodden, tract will not be remembered as a great moment in political thought, and I would not trouble you with it - dear readers - were it not for the following  passage, which a friend draws to my attention:

Parties of the extreme right and extreme left have sometimes sought to rekindle the language of class – but by trying to tap into class resentments rather than speaking of the warmer virtues of mutuality and solidarity. Stirring up resentment against some identifiable “other” always dehumanises some social group or people. Ethnic minorities, immigrants, welfare claimants, bankers and oligarchs – all have been called up as threats to some fictitious “us”. They become the hated “other” without whose presence among us all would be well. It is a deep irony that the whole political class is often regarded as an alien “other” by many sectors of the population.

Where to start? Well, I'm very much in favour of extremism, and to that extent thankful to their Lordships for putting it on the political map - the no doubt thousands upon thousands of eager readers who download  "Who is my neighbour?" from the internet will know that there is such a thing as extremism. Like the Tree of Knowledge it lurks beyond the bounds of the permissible and is therefore tantalising. For this publicity for my political creed, I am profoundly grateful to the authors. It is curious that people, who presumably subscribe (as indeed do I), a religion brimful of claims about the eschatological overthrow of the existing order should think extremism a bad thing; refusing to stay dead when the State have killed you is, by anybody's standards, fairly extreme. But we'll allow these matters to rest there.

I must confess to being confused about which parties of the extreme right are rekindling the language of class. I must further admit to being surprised that TUSC and/ or Left Unity are even on the radar. Although perhaps  Ed Miliband is the 'extreme leftist' foremost in the mitred minds; he did after all appeal to the transnational unity of the working class in his bid to persuade the Scots to stay in the Union. Clarification would be welcome, but never appears.

The action is elsewhere in any case: for we are bidden to think of the victims of the world. Those castigated and ignored; those persecuted, slandered, and outcast. To such the Kingdom belongs. Lest we not be able to identify these abandoned souls, a list is provided: "Ethnic minorities, immigrants, welfare claimants, bankers and oligarchs".

Yes, the oligarchs. Will nobody think of the oligarchs? In the spirit of this admirable solidarity, one assumes, all of that awkward stuff about the rich being put down from their seats will be excised from CofE bibles for the duration of the election season. Anyhow. 

It is all too easy, if fun, to mock this tripe; and it wouldn't matter too much were it not for the fact that the pious appeals for class peace find echoes far beyond the walls of Lambeth Palace. Many people who want the world to be a better place, many who hate capitalism, many even who would describe themselves as socialists draw the line at the language of class struggle. It all sounds rather violent, and isn't there something worrying about picking out one section of society and blaming them? Anyway, surely bankers aren't evil ? So, with variations, I've heard numerous thoroughly sincere and committed political activists, amongst others, argue.

Well, yes. Class struggle isn't particularly nice. It would indeed be better if human beings lived alongside one another peaceful and united, were this presently possible. But here's the thing - capitalism is premised on conflicting classes (and for that matter on conflicting corporations and - as it progresses - on the bloody conflict of nation-states*). The form of society we inhabit is one in which the bulk of the population are devoid of the means to produce the goods necessary for their existence and are compelled therefore to work for others, who do own those means. There is, as an immediate consequence of this, a basic conflict of material interests between these two groups. That this is the case is a fact about our society, it is a fact that obtains independent of anyone deciding to dislike people in another class, independent of some group of conspirators sitting down and deciding to have a class struggle. This is why, amongst other reasons, the comparison between appeals to class and politics which demonises immigrants and welfare claimants is dishonest.

Nevertheless, the report is correct in at least one thing that it seems to imply. Bankers, oligarchs and the rest of the ruling class are generally not uniquely dreadful people. They no doubt love their families, help elderly people onto tube trains, listen to their friends' problems, and give money to charity. Conversely, some members of the working class are bastards. The point of class politics is not that of finding a moral scapegoat for society's ills. That is not to say there isn't an ethical imperative behind it. For the commodity trader who kissed his kids goodbye fondly before setting off to work, when he arrives at that work starves hundreds of other peoples' children with the click of a mouse. The CEO of the 'ethical' food chain, who prides herself on the work her business is doing with women's co-operatives in the developing world holds down the wages of her already hard-up staff to face down competitive pressure. The pensions of those of those staff lucky enough to have them are invested, amongst other things, in a firm that makes a good living supplying the bombs that rain down not far from some of those co-operatives. In these, and a myriad other ways, the lives of people who are in many senses morally unremarkable are tied up with carnage, oppression, forced starvation, and every other imaginable form of avoidable human misery. So talk of "dehumanisation" is profoundly applicable. It's just the dehumanisation is real rather than imaginary - the point is not, as Welby et. al. seem to think - that the cruel propaganda of extreme leftists dehumanises an otherwise saintly bourgeoisie. No, the dehumanisation is implicit in the very workings of capitalism itself. Real alienation, real constraints on human flourishing are necessarily features of the way we currently live as a species. The banker is dehumanised simply by being a banker. He is fortunate in being dehumanised in such a slight way; capital dehumanises many others in a quite literal sense, by robbing them of life.

This hellish reality deserves all the condemnation it can get. More than that, it needs to be done away with. Then we will be rid of class struggle. As McCabe put it, "the only way to win the class war is to win it".

And to do that one needs to choose sides. Failure to do so is simply to side with the currently dominant, exploitative side. That is the path the Church of England's leaders have chosen.



*An attentive reader adds: " conflict between people for work, within the working class itself."