Here's a dead document. A murmur of the past, a disaffected ghost wandering in a dank and blind darkness.
To secure for all the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.
This is as adeqate a definition of socialism as we have ever had. Marx certainly never came up with anything as adequate as this. And it was once the official line of a party. Stranger still, many of this party's leading figures, and thousands of its workers, actually believed it and worked to make it true. This was once clause 4 of the Labour Party's constitution, adopted in 1918, and axed seventy seven years later by Blairite New Labour. Of course, at one level this was only words. The Labour Party, such as it was, never really lived up to this clause. In practice it was often authoritarian, corrupt, venal and unprincipled. But words, before they're erased, can act as a bad conscience, and in this case the bad conscience of the Party was embodied in people who pushed, tirelessly, for the actualization of these words through lives committed to their organization. People who felt, and had reason to feel, that their party could be different, that it could be what it had promised to be. People who, before they left or were hounded out by Blair's masquerading corporate mafia, represented Left Labour, a fraction that no longer exists.
Labour's been funded now, as we all know, by some of the richest men in the country. The party that was created to represent and fight for an enormous and exploited working class is now run by the purse-strings of Lord Sainsbury. Secret meetings, clinking champagne glasses, deals that are eagerly grasped and signed, old school ties. This is the time for nightmares. Nightmares where the faces of the most powerful people in the world weld into a single face, into a single, grinning, triumphant muscular contortion. Blair. Bush. Berlusconi. Behind the spin doctors, behind the screaming headlines, the same monster of many faces. Blair. Bush. Berlusconi. And so many more.
Two of my closest friends in London spent years working for the Labour Party. Through its compromises and its rightward turns, they found it in themselves to believe that it was possible to make this a party of genuine democratic socialism, that it was worth fighting for, to use a cliched phrase, the soul of the party. And that it was possible to be in this organization while keeping one's principles, personal and political, intact. History was open. The future was open. Through Wilson and Callaghan, through the nightmare of Thatcherism, they worked to give democracy some meaning, to argue, with reason and patience, that being socialist could mean something inside this organization. There was, above all, there must have been, the sense of being within a movement, within something living and pregnant with possibility, despite all the abuses and betrayals and compromises that dogged its history. And there is no headiness to quite compare with that.
Needless to say, the time came when these hopes of the Party died. New Labour had no place for people like this. For visions like this are the most dangerous of all for a party that has decided to move to the Right. Preachy, bombastic, 'loony-left' manifestos can be endured. What cannot be endured by a party like this is people working, strategically and ethically, working responsibly towards a durable justice. There were hundreds, thousands of people in Britain who believed in this vision, who worked to give it flesh. They're gone too, and those that aren't will go. There has to come a point when staying will be impossible, when living with oneself in this organization, in this grotesque parody of social democracy, will be beyond endurance.
Something new will be born from this. Something that's already moving and murmuring, not sure of its shape or its size, its form or its meaning. Something that could be ugly, something that could be beautiful. Something growing from despair, something growing from hope. Something that may be defeated, something that may win. And both the defeats and the victories could end up being reversed. History doesn't die. No, not even when it's been murdered.
This is as adeqate a definition of socialism as we have ever had. Marx certainly never came up with anything as adequate as this. And it was once the official line of a party. Stranger still, many of this party's leading figures, and thousands of its workers, actually believed it and worked to make it true. This was once clause 4 of the Labour Party's constitution, adopted in 1918, and axed seventy seven years later by Blairite New Labour. Of course, at one level this was only words. The Labour Party, such as it was, never really lived up to this clause. In practice it was often authoritarian, corrupt, venal and unprincipled. But words, before they're erased, can act as a bad conscience, and in this case the bad conscience of the Party was embodied in people who pushed, tirelessly, for the actualization of these words through lives committed to their organization. People who felt, and had reason to feel, that their party could be different, that it could be what it had promised to be. People who, before they left or were hounded out by Blair's masquerading corporate mafia, represented Left Labour, a fraction that no longer exists.
Labour's been funded now, as we all know, by some of the richest men in the country. The party that was created to represent and fight for an enormous and exploited working class is now run by the purse-strings of Lord Sainsbury. Secret meetings, clinking champagne glasses, deals that are eagerly grasped and signed, old school ties. This is the time for nightmares. Nightmares where the faces of the most powerful people in the world weld into a single face, into a single, grinning, triumphant muscular contortion. Blair. Bush. Berlusconi. Behind the spin doctors, behind the screaming headlines, the same monster of many faces. Blair. Bush. Berlusconi. And so many more.
Two of my closest friends in London spent years working for the Labour Party. Through its compromises and its rightward turns, they found it in themselves to believe that it was possible to make this a party of genuine democratic socialism, that it was worth fighting for, to use a cliched phrase, the soul of the party. And that it was possible to be in this organization while keeping one's principles, personal and political, intact. History was open. The future was open. Through Wilson and Callaghan, through the nightmare of Thatcherism, they worked to give democracy some meaning, to argue, with reason and patience, that being socialist could mean something inside this organization. There was, above all, there must have been, the sense of being within a movement, within something living and pregnant with possibility, despite all the abuses and betrayals and compromises that dogged its history. And there is no headiness to quite compare with that.
Needless to say, the time came when these hopes of the Party died. New Labour had no place for people like this. For visions like this are the most dangerous of all for a party that has decided to move to the Right. Preachy, bombastic, 'loony-left' manifestos can be endured. What cannot be endured by a party like this is people working, strategically and ethically, working responsibly towards a durable justice. There were hundreds, thousands of people in Britain who believed in this vision, who worked to give it flesh. They're gone too, and those that aren't will go. There has to come a point when staying will be impossible, when living with oneself in this organization, in this grotesque parody of social democracy, will be beyond endurance.
Something new will be born from this. Something that's already moving and murmuring, not sure of its shape or its size, its form or its meaning. Something that could be ugly, something that could be beautiful. Something growing from despair, something growing from hope. Something that may be defeated, something that may win. And both the defeats and the victories could end up being reversed. History doesn't die. No, not even when it's been murdered.
No comments:
Post a Comment