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  • Frank Furedi Midnight in The Century Living Marxism Dec 1990

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    182342717 Frank Furedi Midnight in the Century Living Marxism Dec 1990

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    Frank Furedi Midnight in The Century Living Marxism Dec 1990

    Uploaded by

    kollectiv

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    ee ee) cen Frank Richards takes a hard look at the unprecedented problems facing Marxists in today’s dark age, and points towards a possible way to speed the dawn here are no historical precedents forthe situation facing Marxists in the 1990s For the first time this century there is no real sense of a working class movernent wit identity anywhere in collapse of Stalinism in the East, and the defeats of Labourism and its variants in the West, have seen to that. Not only has Marxism been diseredited, but so too has any notion fa collective solution to the problems of capitalist society. Thus the capitalist lass, despite all the difficulties facing its system in the ‘more confident ofits ability to rule than at any time since the challenge of labour first emerged in the mid: hineteenth century, The apparently Universal consensus that th system offers the only concsi hod of organising society reflects sdancy of capitalist ideology hese are pessimistic times, in whieh low expectations have hecome common sense. A lack of confidence about the future is experienced as ear about the present. Concepts like change, progress and social, transformation have aequised negative connotations. The politica spectrum has narrowed: what used t0 be the centre now constitutes the let. ‘And what has happened to those who idemttied with traditions such as Marxism, socialism, or communism? Nothing left ‘The let, as a force that represents something in society, no longer ists. To be sure, a fae fe individual left-wing activists have survived the events of the past decade, They are invariably refugees from the past with no politcal connections to the present. That is Wy their activities resemble the politics of exile. An inordin yount of time is devoted to inventing new names and new images. Every communist party attached (othe old Stalinist. movement is experimenting with a new name, Other left-wing veterans are looking for new ideas to rein their eroding sense of political identity, There are half-hearted attempts to pick up on issues such as environmentalism, to pr sensible and inotfensiv image. The PREY cecemaer 1990 34 more radical activists are waiting for the sort of elass struggles which ‘occurred in the seventies to make a comeback, in the hope that their day will come. Te decline and defeat of the left is often blamed on real changes in the way that society works and the lives which people ead. The word ‘post” hhas become a regular prefix used to substantiate this idea of abjective change: ‘post-industrial’, post Fordist, ‘postmodern’, to name a few, In Britain the left produced the xy of Thatcherism to show how ing material circumstances led to the ascendancy of the right. Yet the multiplicity of these explanations based on objective circumstances calls into question their arguments. It Js far from clear why change as such should always benefit one side and rot the other. And if the isue was so self-evident, there would surely be no need for so many conflicting points ‘of view 11 seems to us that the attempt to hold the decline of the cloth-capped proletariat, a the growth of information technology and the setvice sector, responsible for the — huge statue of Lenin erected q ¥ Scintea Square, Bucharest: is Romanian workers remove a ~ ; a Dae ten a crisis for marxists, too present state of politics is an evasion of the problem. The key difference between today and the past has little to do with the objective reality of capitalism; that i still a crisisridden, exploitative system. The difference hhas a lotto do with subjective politcal factors; primarily, the defeat of the working class. This defeat was consolidated through the political, ideological and ultimately moral collapse of what was publicly considered to be the left. The inrelevance of old-fashioned left-wing ideas has been discussed at length in previous issues of Living Marxism. It Js worth adding here that today, perhaps for the first time inthe two centuries sine the French Revolution, even the bulk of the intelligentsia has become estranged from the left Same old crap The experience of working class ‘defeat and the ideological collapse of the left have become the decisive ‘theme of the present conjuncture ‘This theme, and this theme alone, is responsible for boosting the image hich capitalism has of itself I is important to emphasise that, in the sphere of art, culture, ideas or ‘morality, capitalism is at an impasse There is no big idea mobilising millions, and certainly nothing to inspire the youth of today. In every respect capitalist thinking remains, as Marx would have said, the same old erap. ‘The only positive claim which capitalism can make is that it works better than the disintegrating societies of the old Stalinist world. Those seeking a plausible justification for capitalism now have to fall back on the idea that itis the only alternative, It has no special merits other than the abilty o survive. In this way capitalism becomes eternalised into a kind of erypto-religious human fate that we have to put up with, rather than a way of life with promising connotations, In such a bleak politica landscape only irrationalism, apathy and fear ccan flourish. The new subjective outlook which has developed out of the experience of defeat immobilses ‘those with the potential to change the world. A new mood of resignation pervades the whole world, from Brazil to South Africa through to France, Germany and the So Union, It is 4 mood which owes more to the collapse of the left than to any Positive triumph for the right. Nevertheless, the capitalist clase enjoys the initiative against its ‘opponents. Or, we should say, potential opponents; for the time being at least, the working class has ‘no political existence Recent events have destroyed the traditions and organisations that gave the working class coherence. That is ‘why even major events which provoke important class struggles are leading nowhere at the moment. The poor state of class polities means that, when workers do struggle, they do so as a collection of individuals ‘They will almost certainly draw conservative, atomised conclusions {rom that experience. Thus in East Europe, the grim reality of the new ‘market economies has not led to & questioning of capitalism. Instead ‘workers are blaming the old Stalinist regimes even more forthe situation produced by market economies, Parallel fo the atomisation and fragmentation of the working class runs the collapse ofthe radical inteligentsia. There is now litle to distinguish the different wings of the intelligentsia from each other. They have all resigned from playing a role in society, and sought temporary relief by escaping into theit narrow sphete of specialisation, They tend ta view the future with the conviction of the eynic and to treat any ‘manifestation of optimism with contempt. Beneath this ostentatious cynicism, the underlying dynamic points towards the mass reconciliation ofthe intlligentsia with the status quo. In their own way, the obscurantist, aristocratic and introspective fragments of intellectual work being produced today correspond to the system's need for encouraging an end to reasoned, critical though. Darkest days To put matters bluntly, it seems that the prospects for human Drogress are worse than at any time this century, Not even in the dark days of fascist triumphs did the prospects for social transformation and the creation of a new society appear so remote. Marxism and working class politics are temporarily of no consequence to the flow of history. The firs task of those ‘wishing to uphold the principle of ‘human emancipation is to understand the cause of this irrelevance. There are, of course, many previous examples of setbacks suffered by the elt Inthe thirties, the showtrals in the Soviet Union and the many other sordid actions of the Stalinist and social democratic partes caused a major ersis on the left, The mood of the moment was captured in the title of novel by revolutionary Russian writer Victor Serge—Midnight in the Century. However, this malaise of the let did not directly boost the position of capitalism. In the thietes, the VING DECEMBER 1990 36 deradicalisation of the working class ‘movernent coexisted with a crisis of confidence in the eapitalist class, Even Stalin's showtrials could got reaffirm the legitimacy of capitalism Many of those who were repelled by Stalinism dropped out of political life altogether rather than switching to the side of the capitalist system. Indeed, even the capitalist class had litte faith in its owe society, and conservative politicians were known to speak out against the free market. ‘The traditional values of laissez-faire capitalism were in disrepute and the demand for curbing the market was near-universal. Even the Economist, the traditional promoter of free enterprise, was forced to concede that ‘market forces’ alone could not restructure industry, and that ‘a very wide measure of public control will be necessary if the badly needed work of rationalisation is ever to make any real progress’ (24 August 1934) Capitalism was so discredited that, to many liberal thinkers, even Stalin's Soviet Union looked like a legitimate alternative. Leading British Labour thinkers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, notwithstanding their deeply held anti-Marxist prejudices, became supporters of the Soviet system after a visit there in 1932. The Soviet bureaucracy, they argued, was ‘the unavoidable apparatus of any highly developed industrial community” (Soviet Communism, 1937, p805) ‘Since capitalism scemed to be associated with depression, mass ‘unemployment and, in eeriain quarters, with fascism, it faced a isis of confidence. This iss of confidence was so profound that it could not really benefit from the Geradicalisation of the working class ‘movement, Ironically it could not even dismiss the Stalinist Soviet Union as an irrelevant developmental model ‘An example of the defensiveness of ‘Western thinkers was the ‘convergence theories’ they developed, which suggested that both the United States and the Soviet Union would converge and adapt a similar social structure due to the exigencies of industrial society. Even in the period of capitalist boom after the Second World War, Western intellectuals lacked the confidence to ‘mount a full-blooded defence of the free market against alternative ‘models. Symptomatic ofthis lack of belief in the virtues of capitalism is the view held by the conservative sociologist Raymond Aron that “doctrinal disputes’ were a thing of the past. In an article published in 1961, Aron argued that al "regimes are imperfect’ and that neither the USA nor the USSR was all that bad: “The most fervent opponents of communism do not deny the rapid growth of the Soviet economy and the rise ofthe standard of living of the masses. The most fervent ‘opponents of the liberal West or of. ‘capitalism admit that there has been no serious economic erisis since 1945 and that the exploited proletariat live better than ever before." (Politics ard History, 1988, p228) “Live and let live" was about as far as ‘many bourgeois thinkers were able to 0 in defending their way of life Today the situation is entirely

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