Chris Bambery's recent article - see
HERE - is a useful contribution to discussing how to build a new left. I want to think through a few of the issues he raises, but first a summary of the ideas.
Summary of the analysis
Chris Bambery makes the following points:
1) The left does not automatically grow alongside resistance to the system. Growth depends on choices about tactics and forms of organisation, an ability to relate to new movements, and a capacity for fresh thinking about a changing world.
2) There is a gap between the political upturn of the last decade or so and the state of the radical left. Mass movements, political radicalisation and widespread distrust of establishment institutions have not led to growth for the radical left. There are factors beyond our control which influence this, but it's partly because of weaknesses in the established Left. A period bracketed by emergent anti-capitalism and the start of the 'war on terror' at one end and the financial crisis and mass austerity at the other end has not led to a stronger radical left.
3) The radical left in Europe is currently struggling more than it is flourishing. There is unevenness, with the radical left in a number of southern European countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) having greater 'social weight' than elsewhere, though there are still substantial problems in these countries. Italy provides the most powerful example of a mistaken approach and subsequent collapse, but Spain fares little better. Germany's Die Linke is contradictory but relatively successful.
4) There are both similarities and differences between the post-1968 period and the current period. It is not self-evident today that the working class - organised in the trade unions, deploying tactics of mass strikes and rank and file militancy - is central to social change in the way it was to large numbers of young activists four decades ago. The centrality of the organised working class remains a largely abstract argument.
5) Our starting point for analysis has to be the current shape and conditions of the working class. There is an urgent need to engage with contemporary reality. There will not be a simple repetition of historical experiences when new resistance movements develop.
6) Leninism remains marginal. We need a Left that relates to wider layers of the working class in resisting capitalism, but also offers a consistently anti-systemic perspective and articulates alternatives. But while Marx may be frequently cited as an analyst of capitalist crisis, Lenin is more unfashionable than ever. The organised revolutionary left is too small. The anti-socialist backlash following the end of the Cold War has been an important factor in this.
7) We can't have a 'non-ideological Left'. It isn't sufficient to declare ideology dead in the name of 'left unity'. Political questions will always emerge - and need to be addressed. Islamophobia and Libya are good examples. Political and theoretical clarity will always be essential for the radical left.
8) Cadre can be conservative. Lenin's old, familiar warning about the dangers of conservatism in an organisation's cadre is especially relevant now. This is because we've had such a long period of the radical left being on the margins and industrial struggle remaining very low. It is far from automatic that long-time socialists will be able to relate to current problems.
9) The unions remain weak. There is a particular problem with the decline of the trade union movement - with increased bureaucratisation, a low level of combativity and the casework-dominated nature of life for most reps. This inevitably finds expression inside the organised left.
10) Much of the left expresses a mixture of economism and propagandism. In his summing up in the video, Bambery cites Tony Cliff's comment about how Scottish communist Willie Gallacher operated during World War One: for six days a week he was a radical trade unionist and on Sundays he propagandised for socialism. This approach is particularly at odds with a context characterised by a high level of politics but still a low level of strikes, in which trade unionists tend to make an impact precisely when they ally with other groups and address political issues.
11) The radical left in the UK has failed key tests. Specifically, Bambery refers to failures in building out of the student protests of late 2010 and developing a credible response to August's riots. There is a particular tendency to intervene in campaigns and disputes from the outside, reduced to the level of selling publications and trying (with little success) to recruit new members.
12) The left has to relate to the most advanced sections. When new waves of resistance develop, 'revolutionaries have to base themselves within that section of the working class that is in the vanguard of the struggle'. In the early and mid 1970s, for example, that meant orienting on mainly younger militant workers - some of them union reps but some not, many of them in white-collar areas of work not traditionally associated with militancy - who weren't part of the older, increasingly bureaucratised, layers in the unions.
13) In the UK there are fresh opportunities for left unity and renewal. But it won't be done by simply cobbling together the existing fragments of the organised left. Any new electoral formations will develop out of the anti-austerity movement and involve new forces, steered primarily by a younger generation which isn't stuck in the disputes of previous periods.
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