Reply To: Satire and counterpropaganda.
“Get involved with people who share similar base belief systems like getting rid of Capitalism and proposing a resource-based economy with communal ownership.”
But, Covvie, these beliefs are quite alien to what the Labour Party stands for – whether in the past (Old Labour) or the present (New Labour).
Those (few) people left in that organisation who still talk in terms of “getting rid of capitalism” as opposed to reforming or modernising it, generally have in mind, by “capitalism”, merely private enterprise. They equate capitalism with private enterprise and the free market and imagine that nationalisation etc is somehow non-capitalist or even “socialist”.
But it’s not. Nationalisation, state interference in the market economy and state welfare have also been closely associated with the (explicitly anti-socialist) Political Right – historically speaking. Look at the example I earlier gave of Bismarck; there are many other such examples. State capitalism is not the province of the Left only and, in any case, it’s got nothing to do with socialism as we are using the term here in its classical Marxian meaning as a synonym of communism – a stateless moneyless wageless and non-market alternative to capitalism. Or what you call a “resource-based economy”.
This is the frustrating thing for us as socialists. I can appreciate the point you make about the need to approach those who see themselves as socialists (but don’t hold our definition of socialism) in a positive and constructive manner. Unavoidably, however, the interactions between us and them will have to eventually boil down what Schumpeter called (in relation to the market econony) an element of “creative destruction”. We cannot pretend that we share the same objective when we don’t. One of us has to give ground if the other viewpoint is to prevail.
What you might be thinking of is that we share much the same values and have the same broadly pro-worker outlook. I can go along with that and this might indeed be a useful basis for a fruitful discussion with such people. But we have to be honest and open about where we differ.
The socialist movement, in the sense of people wanting to establish the kind of society we are talking about here, is indeed small and has made little progress in all the years it has been operating. But is not going to make more progress by accommodating itself to a conception of socialism that is, in fact, a form of capitalism, however humanised or reformed that capitalism may be.
All that is going to achieve is to change us from an organisation advocating for socialism in the explicit sense that we are talking about here, into an organisation advocating something else. We may attract more members but it won’t be for the cause we currently espouse.