Automnia : Left for dead (2013)
The left is fucked. It has no present, no future and no hope. Despite this, it remains incapable of engaging with the majority of the population, whose lives are defined by the same three realities. The peculiar imagined community around which the left is built coheres with all the tenacity of a spinning lie. The great combined forces of labour and the academy are bound together merely by the stories they weave and the delusions they perpetuate. The closeness is claustrophobic, but instead of breaking for air they huddle ever closer, crushing themselves together out of fear for the dark around them.
We are approaching true dystopia. As the last remnants of the welfare state burn to warm the bourgeoisie, people freeze to death on streets of empty houses. Work is given for free, education for a fee and tax breaks for a kitchen supper. And should the people take to the streets? Well the ambush is well set. The batons that beat them down will be the same ones their taxes provided, the poison pens that libel them the same they paid with the morning paper. In fact, the ambush has already been sprung. They won’t let you find a place to work or a place to sleep. They will shake the trust you put in those you organise with, live with, love. You are no longer a subversive, you are a domestic extremist.
And where is the left? It cowers in half-filled assembly rooms, ossifying to the cracked voices of Labour hacks, petrifying in the flickering light of films of ‘forty-five. In the twilight it may venture out to push a paper at the alienated masses, shout mock defiance at unheeding stone, then march away to wallow once more in existential despair.
And still the left cannot understand the people’s indifference. It has handed out so many papers, held so many conferences, filled a thousand columns with a million words, worn tracks in the paving slabs of London squares. Its petitions could wind around the nation, smother the bourgeoisie in the terrible order of names and addresses. “John Holmes of Milton Keynes”, thanks for aiding the revolution.
Into the rich archives of its failure the left may add the notion of “Left Unity”. Why if only our piteous strength was united, then we could really smash capitalism! Think of the insurrection we could bring with a UKIP of the left! To Parliament, comrades, for I have always wished to sit on one of those green seats!
The left is fucked.
“The Left” is a construct of the 18th century. As the King of France struggled to protect divine autocracy, the Constituent Assembly of 1789-91 split; the radicals moved to sit together on the president’s left whilst the reactionaries coalesced on his right. Over time spatial and ideological positions became interwoven, ideas of an elected legislature, a broad franchise and progressive taxation became the politics of “the left”. It is worth noting that even in its nascent form the left was overtly reformist. Time since has seen the ceaseless agglomeration of ideas to the original core. If the identity was ever cohesive and intelligible, it certainly is not now. When anyone from Bakunin to Blair can look into the same amalgam and draw out their inspiration, the absurdity of describing a human weltanschauung through this concoction is clear. Blair wished to embrace the State and Capital, Bakunin wished to smash both, yet the two of them can fairly be termed to of “the left”, for the only thing the term has rejected from its ever-widening embrace is any real meaning.
The desire to protect or perpetuate such a clear absurdity is perplexing. It destroys attempts at understanding, and instead means that intelligent and pleasant human beings are neatly categorised alongside Stalin, Mao and Harriet Harman. This is clearly insufferable. The USSR was left wing, as are both China and Cuba. If that sentence incensed you, good. Direct your fury at the terminology, not its critic. Under the hopelessly nebulous definitions of the left, all three nations fit into the category; they all pursued a vision of society where the means of production were altered in order to advance a (however deluded) idea of democracy. These are state-capitalist, authoritarian basket cases, but they are also of the left.
These are the bones of the left’s skeleton, an osteological form steadfast in its refusal to be returned to the cupboard. Of course the past is not merely an embarrassment for the left, its obscurity offers refuge too. A leftist can look behind themselves and see Diggers, Luddites, Chartists, Communards, Suffragettes, Black Panthers, Stonewallers, Zapatistas, Pussy Rioters, Occupiers, or the countless millions who were too busy fighting to think of a name. It is an insult, however, to take these human lives, rich in suffering and costly victories, and lump them with some of the very people they were struggling against.
The left today is splintered, yet resistant to disunity. The idea that those who apologise rape for the SWP, torture for the WRP or statism for the SP are part of the same movement which unceasingly criticises them is deluded. The party form upon which the SWP, WRP, SP and all of the other muddles of sovietised letters depends is based on an oxymoron. “Democratic centralism” is a contradiction dressed up an ideology, an impossibility arrogant enough to wear its dissonance as a name. The idea that a narrow party can blossom into a mass movement, then bear fruit as a government for the masses is pure fantasy. The structures of the bureaucratised tyrant lie sleeping within the smallest cadre.
Even in the party stage the organisation of top-down governance is the midwife to authoritarianism. The SWP’s reaction to the rape of one if its members by a high ranking party official exemplifies this truth. The central committee carried out its own investigations, and delivered the inevitable verdict; “innocent”. When faced with criticism from within the party, the committee laid down its zero-tolerance attitude to dissent, which presented an opportunity to compare it to their exceedingly liberal attitude to sexual assault. Comrades were purged for offences as serious as discussing the leadership on Facebook, or forming factions fully endorsed by party rules. The subsequent deterioration of the party is depressing in that those who left in disgust represent a minority. That a section of the left is willing to forget rape in pursuit of party discipline is testament to the necessity of never letting these people come close to power.
Currently the left seeks to reanimate itself though the pursuit of unity. The social democratic wing will continue its deification of the people’s assembly, whilst the revolutionary left experiments with left unity. Though both warrant a full examination, in passing one can remark on the delusions inherent in both. The people’s assembly is formed around a base of Labourites, Greens and Trade Unionists. These groups have relatively little interest in the people, and presumably use the term “assembly” in the primary school, rather than radically political sense. The revolutionary left meanwhile seeks unity. One needs to only look back at previous Trotskyist unity experiments to predict the result.
We need an alternative to “The Alternative”. Unity is a false idol, the desire for “one” in the left is that of the principle of negation;
“the negation of all singularities, of all singularities, of all pluralities. One is an empty abstraction… One is the enemy.”
The pursuit of unity is to desperately chase our own nemesis. Fuck that. There are not seven classes, only two. One is our enemy, and one is us. What more unity do we need? We need solidarity, we need people organising within the struggle rather than trying to organise it into one cohesive whole. The struggle shall be disparate, amorphous, discursive. It will intersect more times than the threads of a spiders web, and find the infinite strength that brings, it will ensnare any and all and care for them despite it. We don’t need parties, we need bodies. We need people willing to stand on picket lines, protect occupations, block evictions but we also need those who can explain why the evictions will continue, why the occupations and picket lines are not actions atomised in history. There can be no struggle without education, but not the teaching of the school room. It is essential we have education as mutual aid, the exchange and sharing of learning without recognising any hierarchy.
“Let a thousand machines of life, art, solidarity and action sweep away the stupid and sclerotic arrogance of the old organisations”.
To progress in the pursuit of the total emancipation of humanity, the left must liberate itself from itself. It is time to free ourselves from the tyranny of obscurity and go forth either unlabelled or more truthfully described. Before the 1780s, “the left” did not exist, yet the world was not one of unquestioning obedience to authority and unchallenged oppression. The old forms which typify the established left will not help us, the war for the future will must be fought against hierarchies, not from within them. We must atomise to unionise, divide to multiply, break apart to discover form with true potential. Friends, let us smash the left, from its rubble we can build barricades.
Originally posted on http://automnia.tumblr.com
We are approaching true dystopia. As the last remnants of the welfare state burn to warm the bourgeoisie, people freeze to death on streets of empty houses. Work is given for free, education for a fee and tax breaks for a kitchen supper. And should the people take to the streets? Well the ambush is well set. The batons that beat them down will be the same ones their taxes provided, the poison pens that libel them the same they paid with the morning paper. In fact, the ambush has already been sprung. They won’t let you find a place to work or a place to sleep. They will shake the trust you put in those you organise with, live with, love. You are no longer a subversive, you are a domestic extremist.
And where is the left? It cowers in half-filled assembly rooms, ossifying to the cracked voices of Labour hacks, petrifying in the flickering light of films of ‘forty-five. In the twilight it may venture out to push a paper at the alienated masses, shout mock defiance at unheeding stone, then march away to wallow once more in existential despair.
And still the left cannot understand the people’s indifference. It has handed out so many papers, held so many conferences, filled a thousand columns with a million words, worn tracks in the paving slabs of London squares. Its petitions could wind around the nation, smother the bourgeoisie in the terrible order of names and addresses. “John Holmes of Milton Keynes”, thanks for aiding the revolution.
Into the rich archives of its failure the left may add the notion of “Left Unity”. Why if only our piteous strength was united, then we could really smash capitalism! Think of the insurrection we could bring with a UKIP of the left! To Parliament, comrades, for I have always wished to sit on one of those green seats!
The left is fucked.
“The Left” is a construct of the 18th century. As the King of France struggled to protect divine autocracy, the Constituent Assembly of 1789-91 split; the radicals moved to sit together on the president’s left whilst the reactionaries coalesced on his right. Over time spatial and ideological positions became interwoven, ideas of an elected legislature, a broad franchise and progressive taxation became the politics of “the left”. It is worth noting that even in its nascent form the left was overtly reformist. Time since has seen the ceaseless agglomeration of ideas to the original core. If the identity was ever cohesive and intelligible, it certainly is not now. When anyone from Bakunin to Blair can look into the same amalgam and draw out their inspiration, the absurdity of describing a human weltanschauung through this concoction is clear. Blair wished to embrace the State and Capital, Bakunin wished to smash both, yet the two of them can fairly be termed to of “the left”, for the only thing the term has rejected from its ever-widening embrace is any real meaning.
The desire to protect or perpetuate such a clear absurdity is perplexing. It destroys attempts at understanding, and instead means that intelligent and pleasant human beings are neatly categorised alongside Stalin, Mao and Harriet Harman. This is clearly insufferable. The USSR was left wing, as are both China and Cuba. If that sentence incensed you, good. Direct your fury at the terminology, not its critic. Under the hopelessly nebulous definitions of the left, all three nations fit into the category; they all pursued a vision of society where the means of production were altered in order to advance a (however deluded) idea of democracy. These are state-capitalist, authoritarian basket cases, but they are also of the left.
These are the bones of the left’s skeleton, an osteological form steadfast in its refusal to be returned to the cupboard. Of course the past is not merely an embarrassment for the left, its obscurity offers refuge too. A leftist can look behind themselves and see Diggers, Luddites, Chartists, Communards, Suffragettes, Black Panthers, Stonewallers, Zapatistas, Pussy Rioters, Occupiers, or the countless millions who were too busy fighting to think of a name. It is an insult, however, to take these human lives, rich in suffering and costly victories, and lump them with some of the very people they were struggling against.
The left today is splintered, yet resistant to disunity. The idea that those who apologise rape for the SWP, torture for the WRP or statism for the SP are part of the same movement which unceasingly criticises them is deluded. The party form upon which the SWP, WRP, SP and all of the other muddles of sovietised letters depends is based on an oxymoron. “Democratic centralism” is a contradiction dressed up an ideology, an impossibility arrogant enough to wear its dissonance as a name. The idea that a narrow party can blossom into a mass movement, then bear fruit as a government for the masses is pure fantasy. The structures of the bureaucratised tyrant lie sleeping within the smallest cadre.
Even in the party stage the organisation of top-down governance is the midwife to authoritarianism. The SWP’s reaction to the rape of one if its members by a high ranking party official exemplifies this truth. The central committee carried out its own investigations, and delivered the inevitable verdict; “innocent”. When faced with criticism from within the party, the committee laid down its zero-tolerance attitude to dissent, which presented an opportunity to compare it to their exceedingly liberal attitude to sexual assault. Comrades were purged for offences as serious as discussing the leadership on Facebook, or forming factions fully endorsed by party rules. The subsequent deterioration of the party is depressing in that those who left in disgust represent a minority. That a section of the left is willing to forget rape in pursuit of party discipline is testament to the necessity of never letting these people come close to power.
Currently the left seeks to reanimate itself though the pursuit of unity. The social democratic wing will continue its deification of the people’s assembly, whilst the revolutionary left experiments with left unity. Though both warrant a full examination, in passing one can remark on the delusions inherent in both. The people’s assembly is formed around a base of Labourites, Greens and Trade Unionists. These groups have relatively little interest in the people, and presumably use the term “assembly” in the primary school, rather than radically political sense. The revolutionary left meanwhile seeks unity. One needs to only look back at previous Trotskyist unity experiments to predict the result.
We need an alternative to “The Alternative”. Unity is a false idol, the desire for “one” in the left is that of the principle of negation;
“the negation of all singularities, of all singularities, of all pluralities. One is an empty abstraction… One is the enemy.”
The pursuit of unity is to desperately chase our own nemesis. Fuck that. There are not seven classes, only two. One is our enemy, and one is us. What more unity do we need? We need solidarity, we need people organising within the struggle rather than trying to organise it into one cohesive whole. The struggle shall be disparate, amorphous, discursive. It will intersect more times than the threads of a spiders web, and find the infinite strength that brings, it will ensnare any and all and care for them despite it. We don’t need parties, we need bodies. We need people willing to stand on picket lines, protect occupations, block evictions but we also need those who can explain why the evictions will continue, why the occupations and picket lines are not actions atomised in history. There can be no struggle without education, but not the teaching of the school room. It is essential we have education as mutual aid, the exchange and sharing of learning without recognising any hierarchy.
“Let a thousand machines of life, art, solidarity and action sweep away the stupid and sclerotic arrogance of the old organisations”.
To progress in the pursuit of the total emancipation of humanity, the left must liberate itself from itself. It is time to free ourselves from the tyranny of obscurity and go forth either unlabelled or more truthfully described. Before the 1780s, “the left” did not exist, yet the world was not one of unquestioning obedience to authority and unchallenged oppression. The old forms which typify the established left will not help us, the war for the future will must be fought against hierarchies, not from within them. We must atomise to unionise, divide to multiply, break apart to discover form with true potential. Friends, let us smash the left, from its rubble we can build barricades.
Originally posted on http://automnia.tumblr.com