Socialism, ethics, and humanity (III)

(Last in series here)

Socialism could provide us with a chance to flourish, to fulfil our natures, in a way that is not possible under capitalism. There's a bitter irony about this, since capitalism itself is responsible for transforming both what it is to be human and the capacity to realise the possibilities inherent in this far beyond the imaginings of any previous age. Technology has stretched our potential for creativity, communications have broadened our imaginations and deepened our needs, and labour-saving innovations offer us the hope of producing all that we want in a fraction of the time and with far less effort than could ever have been contemplated. All of this has been conjured up by the very same capitalism that stunts its potential, producing as it does for profit rather than human need. The task of realising capitalism's potential falls to socialism. More concretely, it falls to another of capitalism's creations, the working class.

What does this picture mean imply about our politics, which was after all where this series started? Socialism, as I've sketched it, is about the big picture. It concerns how we organise the world in a way that our lives can be good. This is not the fare of those who for whom the horizons of politics do not go beyond marginal tax rates or urban traffic schemes. The picture is not naive; contrary to almost every textbook portrayal of Marx's thought, socialism is not inevitable. It might not even be particularly likely; still we socialists, with a cold hardened realism, think that it is the only option for an unfulfilled and divided humanity threatened with environmental catastrophe. The diagnosis becomes even more severe now that capitalism cannot afford social democracy.

This picture has to be communicated. In our conversations, not least with all those new Labour Party members, at meetings, in print, we should be talking about socialism. It is a persistent temptation for the Left to play its ideas close to its chest, keeping a conspiratorial silence about its thoughts on the means of production and preferring instead to talk about the minimum wage and Trident. Delicate judgements need to be made here, of course. There are times for forming broad alliances, and no profitable conversation has ever been had by not meeting somebody where they are at. Yet, meeting somebody where they are at is one thing, leaving them there something altogether.

Now is a time for laying out the socialist stall. Thousands of people have wandered into a place where they can inspect its wares, because of the so-called Corbyn surge. Contrary to all that excitable stuff about entryism, the politics of this group are mixed, and often vague. Retaining these people will need something that warrants commitment: we have that and we should share it. This is the case not least because there is a rough road ahead, the present purge being one intimation of this, and without a framework within which peoples' experiences can be situated, a good number are likely simply to walk away. Even if the party bureaucrats tire of purging, the initial enthusiasm of Labour's new members will either fade away, or worse be converted into the reality-denying optimism that pollutes too much of the Left: the stable alternative lies in the realm of ideas.

The mention of optimism leads me to another aspect of this understanding of socialism that deserves mention. A political outlook that recognises the animal, embodied nature of human beings, as this one does - it is this nature to which socialism speaks - can be far more nuanced in its view of our prospects and more sensitive to our fragility than is often the case on the Left. One popular story goes as follows: conservatives have a dim view of human nature, which is enmeshed in Original Sin, or held back by genetics, depending on the conservative account in question. Humanity's grand projects are doomed to fail; society will not improve, at least not consistently, and the best that can be done is to insulate ourselves from violent motion with a generous layer of tradition and order. Progressives meanwhile (note the word) see human beings as perfectable. With a good amount of social progress, and perhaps a bit of luck, the New Jerusalem can be built on earth.

There is a very obvious sense in which human beings are not perfectable. People are not going to stop dying, or mourning. No matter who owns the means of production, it is likely that couples will still have acrimonious break ups, people will be thoughtless, and lives go inexplicably wrong. It is certainly true that human history is littered with progress and triumphs, and to be a socialist is not least to hope for a good deal more progress. It's just that a genuinely radical, rather than deludedly progressive, outlook recognises that progress is itself not without ambiguity, tragedy even. The capitalism that lends substance to the hopes I have been describing also led now forgotten children to deaths in hellish mills. The 20th century witnessed victories for women's liberation and anti-colonialism; it also saw the doctrine of human rights that had motivated many participants in this struggles used to justify brutal wars. The light-headed and cheaply upbeat attitude that has, unfortunately, followed in the wake of the Corbyn victory, if it is to give rise to a sustainable socialism, has to mature into a more sensitive and ambivalent take on our species and its history.

Stripped of unwarranted euphoria, counting the costs of struggle, the aim of this politics is to allow us to be ourselves. That is what the emphasis on fulfilling our nature amounts to. Ours is not a programme for angels or robots, but for the wonderful, tormented, ageing, animal beings that we in fact are. It cannot offer us limitless possibilities, because our possibilities are not limitless. However much the Situationists asked us to demand the impossible (and there is a sense in which that is the right thing to demand), we cannot travel faster than light, live a thousand lives, resurrect the dead, or do more than our energies, physical or emotional, allow us. Fashionable though it is in millenial circles to talk about 'self-definition' I cannot define myself, and much unnecessary anxiety has been caused by suggesting otherwise. Nor does our politics promise to do away with flaws, mistakes, irritations, or limitations. Socialism is a politics of human frailty: its simple suggestion is that we live in the world as the kind of beings that we are in fact. To make this more than a pipedream would indeed take a revolution, but perhaps one a good deal more compassionate in its aims than many think.

If we think this it should affect the way we conduct and understand ourselves. There is a relentlessness and puritan earnestness about parts of the Left, the latter being a correlate of underestimating the scope and difficulty of transformation. Taking frailty more seriously would be an important counterbalance here, and is one of our most urgent tasks.

Socialism, ethics, and humanity (II)

(First in series here)

So socialism demands a fundamental change in the way the world is run, the establishment of which will be costly and will inevitably go beyond the current boundaries of political acceptability. People might therefore reasonably not want to sign up for it. Indeed this is the case. Most of the time, most people are not socialists. What will cause a fundamental shift here are not arguments but material circumstances: there is a lot of truth in the saying that any society is only one meal from revolution.

Admitting this much oughtn't to make us think that it is not important that we are able to provide reasons for being socialists. Quite apart from it not generally being a good idea to commit yourself to a cause without a good reason, that way lies the path of cultists and Justin Beiber fans, the extent to which socialist politics is able to take advantage of material circumstances depends on their being a critical mass of convinced socialists with the capacity to intervene in society and politics. The alternative to socialists being able to do this is, ultimately, what Marx and Engels called 'the mutual ruination of the contending classes', and penultimately what Luxemberg called 'barbarism'. This matters, then.

I've suggested that capitalism is inimical to human flourishing. This looks like a good reason to want to do away with it. In particular, it is inimical to human flourishing because - leaving aside the poverty and environmental degradation it has brought in its wake (I think, most of the time, we can just about imagine a capitalism without these) it prevents us individually and collectively from realising our positive capacities. It robs us of control of our own lives and destinies, and crucially of control of our own creative abilities. This, one might imagine, is more than enough reason to get rid of it, at least given the availability of an alternative lacking these faults (which, almost by definition, is what we mean by 'socialism').

This is, in very brief outline, an ethical case for socialism. Much of the Left is wary of ethics because it confuses it with moralism (which Marx rightly condemned, tending to call it simply 'morality'). Yet ethics, by which I mean an account - however implicit and untheorised - of human flourishing and how it might be achieved is unavoidable. We may as well be conscious and critical in formulating our ethics. Howewver from the point of view of many leftists, there is a lot more wrong with the position I've described than the venial sin of being ethical. It is, I claim, committed to a view of human nature.

Talk of human nature is, in some circles, slightly less respectable than necrophilia. So why burden ourselves with it? Simply because the question "why is not being in conscious control of one's capacity to work creatively inimical to human flourishing?" demands an answer. If that answer is to be one which isn't unacceptably subjective - "I just feel it is, that's all" or "It is for me, that's all I'm saying", making socialism a matter of taste, the political equivalent of adding the milk before the tea - then it needs to be potentially subject to public scrutiny. On the other hand, if we're not to be led off on an infinite regress of 'why' questions, we also want the answer to be a stopping point, or at least point to one. The answer "Because that's just the kind of things we are" fares well in both respects. We can test it, through attending to the universality of certain experiences within a given society, or - more carefully, the universality minus explicable apparent counter-examples of certain experiences. And somebody who asks "why" in response to it simply hasn't understood it.

Human nature has a bad press on the Left. No doubt because of the recent unfortunate episode called 'postmodernism' and the persistence of a certain kind of libertarian anthropology especially amongst the younger, more activist-orientated, left there is a suspicion that any concept of the human is inherently oppressive. The word "essentialist" often gets wheeled out here. Essentialism is a Bad Thing. It is, nonetheless, not entirely clear why admitting that water essentially contains one oxygen atom per molecule places one on the wide road to fascism. But perhaps it is being essentialist about ourselves that is a Bad Thing. Well, it is undoubtedly the case that ideas about human nature have been used to reinforce sexism, homophobia, racism, and numerous other oppressive and hierarchical doctrines. It simply doesn't follow that the thought that there is something common to human beings, or even to all human beings in a certain form of society, is itself culpable. Nor does believing in human nature commit one to the idea that human nature is static. In actual fact, it is deeply plausible that certain of a biological features are (to use another Bad Word) transhistorical, along with such characteristics as language use. Still, much changes about what it is to be human. We develop new wants and capacities as the societies in which we are formed themselves develop. It is simply confused to think that this presents a problem for the claim that there is any such thing as human nature. To say that something changes is not to say that it doesn't exist. If it did not exist, there would be nothing to change. Needless to say, it follows from this that we shouldn't assume that human nature is reducible to the biological.

Fine, but how do we tell if something jars with our nature, that in virtue of the kind of things we are it is incompatible with our flourishing? The process is drawn out, fragmentary, and draws on our nature (again) as experiencing and social beings. I catch a glimpse of what it is to be happier than I usually am, in a sense of the word "happy" that isn't simply a matter of fun but of a deeper contentment: perhaps in performing some craftwork or reading a poem, or through a relationship or tending a garden, I notice something that is missing in the rest of my life. I notice an agency, a capacity to relate to other people, a creativity and capacity for conscious directed projects that does not get used during the working day. Talking to others I notice that they feel the same. The process is negative, based on contrasts with partial hints of something better. It is an important part of the Left's task to collect and articulate these contrasts.

This is sketchy in the extreme, written hurriedly and compacting into a blogpost what would take a book to even begin to argue adequately (what, for example, are our 'positive' capacities, and how do we identify them?). But the position is recognisably continuous with Marx's thoughts in the 1844 Manuscript 'On Alienated Labour', read as part of an ethical tradition going back to Aristotle. It has a lot to commend it. What it's deeper implications are, and how we might communicate them, are another matter altogether.

Socialism, ethics, and humanity (I)

Owen Jones, you will remember, claims that Jeremy Corbyn lacks a clear vision. This was utterly confused, and therefore considerably better than the rest of Jones' now infamous article, which wasn't confused but just wrong. In spite of this, like the proverbial stopped clock, Jones was accidentally onto something true. There is something in the region of vision that the Left around Corbyn does lack; and this is a problem.

We fail in not having a clearly articulated long-term goal, nor any kind of strategy for getting there. By any criteria this is a pretty big absence for a political party. It is, in this particular case, a problem not just for our day to day political activities and ability to communicate our politics, but also for our culture, individual lives, and thought. In is in this last area that it might be thought that a remedy could be found, but here the historically anti-intellectual Labour Left, steeped in a pragmatic empiricism suspicious of anyone who knows too much about Adorno without a concomitant experience of housing committees, is at a disadvantage. Why theorise when there are leaflets to be delivered?

But what do I mean by saying that we, as a movement, I mean the pro-Corbyn Left particularly as grouped around Momentum, lack a goal? Surely we have one that can be summed up with pleasing economy in one word: "socialism". Well, yes, perhaps. But if that word is to serve as anything other than a synonym for "social democat" or a placeholder for vague thoughts of niceness and community, the problems have only begun when we claim an allegiance to socialism.

Scour the blue skies thinking documents of contemporary political parties and you will find affirmations of fidelity to the free-market economy, working families, home ownership, economic growth and various other unremarkable desiderata designed to please the perennially sensible occupants of Middle England. This wish list, which reads too much like the contents of a Telegraph columnist's wet dream to be entirely comfortable reading, is unified by the fact that meaningful steps can be taken towards realising each strategic goal by government policies implemented during the course of a five year parliament. Or, to put the point more carefully (with "economic growth" in particular in mind), it doesn't seem implausible from the perspective of dominant schools of thought to suppose that such steps can be pursued. Crucially, policies directed towards these ends will in no way threaten prevailing structures of economic power nor the organisation of the state. They could be implemented at the level of the nation-state, possibly in concert with other nation-states acting through bodies like the IMF or the EU, or through trade agreements or treaties.

Contrast this will the goal of socialism. This has none of these unifying features. Socialism is a much bigger deal than increasing the number of households with mortgages. As I understand the word it involves the human race moving beyond capitalism and replacing it with collective ownership and control of the earth's resources and our creative activity with them. This is a more ambitious project than improving recycling facilities. It can, in my view, be established only internationally and through the collective action of the mass of working people. As such it does not sit comfortably with the view that political change best happens by parliamentary vote or ministerial announcement. Marx described the institution of socialism as the beginning of human history. The Diggers foreshadowed the modern doctrine with their talk of the earth as a common treasury. None of this would fit well in an election manifesto.

Socialism simply doesn't accommodate itself to the norms for political strategies. This is one excellent reason that those committed to those strategies think that socialism is unrealistic, as indeed it is within the confines of politics-as-usual. Those of us who are socialists think, conversely, that socialism is the only reality-based response adequate to a world which combines starvation with plenty, industrialisation with slums. We also take the cautious view that it will probably be centuries before the issue is decided to everyone's satisfaction. For these reasons socialism is automatically disadvantaged by any approach to politics which demands results within five years, directed towards goals within the remit of government policy. The entire set-up of the political game functions to preserve the status quo.

How to break the impasse? It is undeniable that in order to win the enthusiasm and allegiance of millions for socialism we need a goal that inspires. Yet this can't be provided in the terms that we have grown to expect in Western democracies. And even if it could, oughtn't we to be wary? The history of blueprints for socialism is hardly auspicious. As I see it, the problem is urgent, and only not seen as such because there is not nearly enough clarity around as to what we ourselves mean by "socialism" (and, after all, if the issue does dawn, there will always be an opportunity to put off thinking about it with a clear conscience: let's sort out this immediate crisis first...). In the next post in this series I'll suggest - no doubt to howls from some of my comrades - that the way forward requires us to have a more substantive ethical basis for our socialism.