Pandering To Backwardness

For the last few General Elections, there has been concern at the poor voter turnouts. It has caused some discussion as to why turnouts have been declining, and has led to various suggestions to be made of how to reverse it. There has been proposals to follow the Australian solution, and make voting compulsory; there have been proposals to make voting easier, such as the introduction of postal voting for all; and there has been proposals to allow people to vote at the supermarket and so on. The various gimmicks etc., that we see introduced by the politicians themselves, whether it be in some novel advertising, or use of celebrities and so on, all fall into the same category.

Yet, none seem to work. On TV over recent days, a succession of vox pops have shown just how dire is the level of political culture in Britain, the home of what is supposed to be the oldest democracy. People of all ages seem to almost glory in their own ignorance of what is the most important thing for them to understand - how the decisions that affect their lives, and how and who the people who make those decisions are arrived at. It appears that people can spend plenty of time finding out the most intimate details of the lives of various "celebrities", whether to be able to vote them off some mind numbing "unreality" show, or just for the hell of it, but cannot be bothered to find out anything about how their lives will be governed.

That is not to blame such individuals; we are all what society makes us. People are not born able or unable to participate in political life, any more than people are born theives or criminals. But, that understanding does not lead Marxists to simply pander to criminals, still less to simply ignore the affects on the lives of ordinary workers of those criminals. We are keen to explain the social causes of crime, and to seek to address those causes, but in the meantime our main concern is with the class conscious workers who are the means by which those social conditions will be changed, not with the criminals that are an obstacle towards it. In the same way, it should be no part of a Marxist approach to pander to the backwardness of those who simply cannot be bothered to involve themselves in politicals life. We should oppose the further dumbing down of politics to accommodate them, we should oppose making it easier to vote, which only devalues each vote. Yet, at the same time we should address ourselves to those causes of that apathy.

In a similar vein, watching the news tonight, I was struck by the response on the street to the release of the Tories manifesto, and, in particular, its proposals for enabling ordinary citizens, and communities, to take control of various aspects of their lives. I have already written, in my blog "Red Tories", about the limitations of the Tories proposals in that regard. Gordon Brown is right to say that the Tories proposals substitute form for content. Yet, that should not lead us to reject that form, only to fill that form with our own content. Many of those same people, who cannot be bothered to find out, about the politicians whose decisions control their lives, were the same ones who also voiced the idea that they could not take over the running of schools or other facilities in their area, that it was the job of the politicians to do that - the same politicians, who on other occasions, they will accuse of being all the same etc - that it would "never happen", and so on.

Of course, its not surprising that many people have such ideas. Capitalism and bourgeois democracy have conditioned people into such a belief, into the belief that, just as society cannot function without bosses, who own the factories, and manage them, so society cannot function without professional elected politicians who look after that side of workers lives, and all they have to do is vote every few years, just as all they have to do is turn up to work and do what they are told every day. And, as I've written here many times, the Left also falls into that category. Most of the Left, itself completely tied to statism, agrees with those interviewed, who said that it was the responsibility of the Capitalist State to run things, like schools, and not for them to concern themselves with such functions. That Left argues that otherwise it would be to "let that State off the hook", that its necessary to demand that it does so that workers lose their illusions in it, and so on. None of it arguments that demonstrate any faith in the working class being able to actually run these things for itself, which is the bedrock requirement for Socialism, none of them arguments that actually address the needs of workers here and now, for effective, efficient provision of these services.

Last week, I attended a Compass Meeting called to discuss the "Way Forward For Labour", and found myself feeling as though I were talking a different language. In fact, so much so that I didn't at first realise that this was the reason I was not being understood. Whereas, I was talking about the need for LP members to act like shop stewards or TU activists on the shop floor, acting as facilitators to encourage rank and file organisation by workers in their communities to control and struggle to change their own lives, it was some time before I realised that some of the LP members, and Councillors to whom I was speaking understood this to mean simply them dealing with ordinary problems in those communities. Of course, as some of those Councillors pointed out, here and now, there are some things that simply cannot be controlled by groups of self-acting workers in the community. If you want to oppose a particular type of school organisation, such as the Academy, then, as things stand, that can only be done at a political level. But, nobody says that everything can be done immediately. The point is how can a bedrock be created that facilitates bringing about those higher level policy changes?

And yes, listening to those workers on the TV who cannot see how it would be possible for them to set up and run their own school or other Public Service, does play into the idea of simply leaving it up to the Capitalist State, leave it up to the professional politicians. But, our experience of that ,be it under Western Capitalism, or Eastern Stalinism, shows that, if you settle for that, you will get a deficient service, and the growth of a self-serving bureaucracy that eventually will collapse the whole provision. We should remember that those backward workers who cannot be bothered to find out anything about what they are being asked to cast their vote on, cannot see the possibility of being able to have any control over their services and lives, and who can see no alternative to the State doing that for them, are the same people who cannot be bothered to go to their Trade Union meeting if they can be bothered even to join a Trade Union. Such people are not the basis of transforming society, and creating socialism. We cannot pander to such elements, and we cannot limit our forward march to their speed.

To the extent that the Tories have opened the door on groups of workers being able to take power back into their hands, Marxists should support it, and push it forward as far, as fast and as widely as we can. We should not be concerned that those groups of more advanced workers, who do organise themselves, to establish their own Co-operative and Mutual organisations, may gain advantages over those who do not, anymore than we argue that advanced workers should not form Trade Unions, and win for themselves better wages and conditions for fear that less advanced workers, who do not, will suffer relatively. On the contrary, we argue that the former show the way to the latter. It requires a completely different mindset to that which most sociaalists have operated for the last 100 years. As I said at the meeting last week, it is the mindset which says, "I don't give a shit who the Councillor is or who the MP is, because its all about what I do as an individual socialist, and individual LP member to encourage other workers to organise themselves. Get that right, and we'll get the Councillors, the MP's, and the Party we need."

Of course, that's a bit of bending the stick. We are concerned whether its a Labour or Tory who is elected, whether it is a right-wing or Left-wing Labour candidate. But, for too long the Left has operated the same kind of Parliamentarism that it criticises reformists for. It has operated thaat mentality in its Trade Union work as much as in its political work. But, the reality is that winning positions, getting "Left" policies adopted means absolutely nothing if it is built on sand, if it does not reflect a massive level of rank and file, active support. That is why "Left" policies won at Conferences can be ignored by leaderships, for instance. There is no shortcut to the task that Marx set out, to win the battle of democracy.