Wez
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Many have spent years trying to figure out why there at not many more socialists and trying to find out what to do about it with the assumption that we must be doing something wrong. What is much more productive is to attempt to answer the question: why am I a socialist? Assuming that we’re not an alien species what is it about us that makes us so different politically? Answers to this question have been proposed but instead of constantly assuming we’re doing something wrong or that we could do something different ask yourself why what we do was sufficient to make you a socialist. As with so much in life the answers begin with such an insight.
I’m surprised at being the ‘anarchist guy’ having joined the Socialist Party in 1980! Actually I thought Alan was talking about you EM.
Erich Morris above is typical of the elitist approach to socialism – he knows all of the answers but somehow ‘the workers’ need some kind of transitional education programme before they can achieve his lofty level of consciousness. What is his background – probably one of the lowly workers to whom he now condescends. As for that old ‘maximum and minimum’ programme nonsense – it’s been tried and has failed time and again. The consistent failure of reforms only leads to political cynicism.
‘ We won’t be able to throw off such accusations so we will suffer the slings and arrows of left-wing criticism.’
If we didn’t suffer left-wing criticisms then we wouldn’t be doing our job and the Party would have no point to it.
‘ When people recognize great orators, great writers, great educators, great debaters, those possessing such talents become the focus of the media, turning them into “leaders” because of the interviews and attention. A election candidate will receive more credence than a branch member. We all tend to defer to the authority of knowledge and communication skills.’
Primarily leaders are those who do your thinking for you – a kind of parental substitute, which is why the need for them is a sign of political immaturity. The talents of oratory, knowledge in certain areas and writing skills are just that – they are not ‘leaders’ in the political sense. We may defer to such people for inspiration and information but they do not make our decisions for us as that’s what democracy is for. People quite often confuse such talents with supposed ‘leadership skills’ but if they really know what they’re talking about they themselves will reject any such description.
‘However, why is it that individual thinkers and writers can make an impact and be influential?’
Who have you in mind here? There have been many writers who burn brightly for a while, courtesy mainly to marketing, but their ‘impact’ and ‘influence’ have changed nothing. Rarely , if ever, do these writers possess anything approaching socialist consciousness – which is presumably partly why they become popular (for a while). There is so much ‘reinventing the wheel’ out there that is marketed as something important and new. I agree it is not what we say but how we say it and who we say it to. I’ve always thought it a mistake to assume that those on the left are more likely to hear us since they too can represent reactionary authoritarianism just as much as the right. I believe our contempt for leaders is an important barrier for most people because of their political immaturity. What to do about this has obsessed socialists for a hundred years without a consensus emerging.
The psychological conditioning in capitalism goes much deeper than is implied by your outline of George Lakoff’s theory (which I have not read). Here’s what I believe to be one of the definitive works on the subject: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/eros-civilisation/index.htm
I think that Dave B’s quotes above settles the matter. The ‘Diggers’ of the English revolution prove the Marxist case that you cannot impose an idealist form of communism on an economically underdeveloped culture/system. That it was attempted at all by Winstanley and his comrades emphasizes the Bourgeois nature of the revolution. Marx was definitely a man ‘made by history’ in the sense that he represented the confluence of three traditions: German philosophy, French politics and British economics – that is what makes him so fascinating. He also represents the decisive break with socialist idealism which you would seem to be undermining. The fact is that we live now in a global capitalist system and that is precisely because once exported from Western Europe that system inevitably became ‘universal for all parts of the globe’ – as predicted by Marx.
I would need more than that letter to convince me that Marx didn’t believe that socialism was only possible, both in terms of production and consciousness, in a society which had experienced mature capitalism (wasn’t this the Menshevik position?). If he did believe that then history has proved him profoundly mistaken. Haven’t we always maintained this position? – and as one advocated by Marx?
Was Marx the first to insist on the full development of capitalism to make socialism possible? If so we owe to him the theory as to why all the leftist Bolshevik regimes failed.
That’s precisely the question the Socialist Party has been trying to crack for the last 100+ years! Obviously we have not found the answer although some of us have various theories to explain it. Let me ask you what was your route to consciousness? Do you feel you are somehow different from your fellow members of the working class? If there is an answer to this riddle it might be found within the psychology of socialists like ourselves. Instead of always looking for answers to the reasons for the lack of class consciousness in others perhaps we should ask how we acquired it – insight might be the route.
