Progressivism vs. Socialism
The big surprise in the English and Welsh local election was not the collapse of Labour, which was widely expected; nor even the growth of the Fascist BNP into a genuine national party with only a few less local councillors than the Greens - that was widely feared, and in fact the BNP does not seem to have quite achieved its goal of forty councillors. What surprised me greatly is the success of the Liberal Democrats, who beat Labour into second place. In spite of a lackluster leader, a tendency to disregard quality for flash (they elected the worse of the two candidates for leadership, and disregarded their own universally admired but ageing finance spokesman, Vincent Cable) and an uninspiring recent history, they have got nearly double the votes they could have been expected, and more than held their own in the face of a dramatic Tory surge.
This is one of those wise-after-the-event things, but I think this success is easily explained - and, if I am correct, very ominous for Labour. The data say that the Lib Dems lost votes to the Tories, but gained an avalanche of them from Labour. And this explains what has really been happening. In spite of the common view, there is not really all that much in common between, on the one hand, the trades union tradition that founded the Labour Party and kept it alive for decades, and what might, according to mood, be called progressivism or the Politically Correct tendency. The latter is largely an upper-class phenomenon, to do with an instinctive rebelliousness, a sense of guilt, and, buried lower than any other level and kept constantly out of sight, an underlying class consciousness that demands that those of us who are born in the enlightened stratum of society should be above the ordinary considerations of commonplace people. Ultimately, PC is the most recent and far from the most admirable manifestation of the theme of noblesse oblige, upper-class class-consciousness. That is not to say that all PC people will be upper-class or that all populists/socialists/trades unionists will be working-class (and where they are, they often tend to be upwardly mobile); but the two tendencies definitely are rooted in different social experiences and different demands made of oneself.
Now, the socialist/trades unionist tradition has long been in crisis. It was hijacked by the PC/progressive tradition because, once you have effectively dragged all of Western Europe out of starvation and degradation, what else is there to do? Socialism (by which I do not mean the degenerate and hijacked Russian Communism, but the tradition that was the majority in democratic Western Europe for most of the twentieth century) was effective and successful as long as there was a real enemy to fight. But by the time that popular housing had been effectively reformed, wages regulated, and poverty of the real, starving kind effectively abolished, what was there left to do? This effective loss of purpose can be seen in the difference between popular housing in London: LCC blocks of the twenties and thirties, though nothing like elegant, are efficient, stoutly built, and still serve their purpose after seventy or eighty years; nobody is thinking of demolishing them. On the other hand, council housing built in the sixties or seventies is hideous, actively damaging in design, and is already crumbling even where its immense unpopularity has led to demolition after only twenty or thirty years of use.
The fact is that the council architect of the thirties, forties and even fifties had a clear and immediate goal in sight to which every personal fancy had to be subordinated: to build, with the lowest possible expenditure and to the best possible standards, housing that would directly improve the lives of local people used to crumbling Victorian rented housing heated by coal-fired stoves, without bathtubs and with privies in the garden. This clear sense of purpose is reflected in the spartan but not altogether ugly design. On the other hand, the sixties architect came to reform a society already prosperous, in which popular housing had long since ceased to be a scandal, and in which central heating was universal and fridges and television widespread. He had to justify his work somehow, and so he misdirected it into dreams of redesigning society by means of architecture, with huge self-enclosed concrete blocks linked by vast passageways, that were to create village-like communities and give people a collective experience. Of course the exact opposite happened: the self-enclosing of the tower blocks and their long walkways made them ideal for thugs and lowlives, and the worst elements of society throve in them.
I say this because it is symptomatic of the complete loss of direction that struck the European Socialist movement between the sixties and the eighties - earlier or later according to when the goals of the movement were effectively achieved. Socialism was the natural resort of the poor in a rich society, but there is no poverty in Europe west of Berlin. Even what I, as a comparatively poor person, experience in London today, has absolutely no connection with the way a really poor person used to live in this town a century ago. In this context, the obsession with poverty - and, to make it sound more pathetic, child poverty - is not only unrealistic, but actively damaging. We are all prosperous, only in different shades. Deal with it. Real poverty is in Nairobi or in the Chinese countryside, not in Britain.
That being the case, the Socialist movement adopted a whole raft of causes which had nothing to do with its historical core, from feminism to greenery to abortion - everything that goes under the label "progressive" or PC. What these things did was to give the movement a surrogate of the campaigning spirit that had been its strength and justification in days past. It became necessary to find ever newer causes to champions, oppressed to defend, progressive ideas to champion - even where these cut right across the interests and traditions of the movement's base. One of the driving motives of socialists and trades unionists across Europe, for instance, had always been to force wages high enough to stop what they regarded as the scandal of women and children working in factories. They wanted families with one breadwinner, and wives at home to look after the house and children. Feminism, of course, wanted the opposite; and one is not surprised to find that the real roots of the feminist movement are in the upper classes, where women confident in their social status and unconsciously stayed by their wealth started making demands that busy working-class mothers rarely shared. Even more astonishing is the case of gay rights. The average union man would be a million miles from the sensibilities of the average homosexual campaigner, a figure if possible even more evidently upper-class than the Pankhursts. The poster-child scandal of homosexual suppression in British history involved an Irish nobleman and a Scottish nobleman; it was received with horror among the upper classes, and with contempt among the working classes. Understand: I do not oppose either. But they never made a natural match for the parties of trades unions and factory workers.
In the sixties and seventies, the Socialist movement, left drifting and directionless by its very success, was effectively hijacked by a largely alien tendency, which promised it to keep alive its native, but no longer necessary, campaigning habit. This was, in the long run, a losing strategy, as the age of Ronald Thatcher abundantly proved. The reaction of socialist parties across Europe was that of Tony Blair, that is, to moderate their more aggressive drive, but, crucially, to neither distinguish between socialist and progressive tendencies, nor to silence the campaigning habit of mind. As a result, this has become the age of soft-spoken, mealy-mouthed, one would say cowardly utopianism.
What is happening now is that the coalition of progressive and socialist is falling apart. Labour has relied too much on the "progressive" PC element. As a governing party, it was bound to disappoint it; "progressivism" is innately rebellious, and cannot ultimately come to terms with reality. But in so far as it is concerned with concrete politics, it will ultimately find its own home. And the Lib Dems may be mediocre in most ways, but they certainly are more genuinely, profoundly and naturally PC than the party of trades unions can ever hope to be. Ultimately, if your taste is for wine, you will not stop at watered-down plonk, but will progress to vintage French Cabernet-Sauvignon. It is not only tastier, but just so much more like itself.
This is one of those wise-after-the-event things, but I think this success is easily explained - and, if I am correct, very ominous for Labour. The data say that the Lib Dems lost votes to the Tories, but gained an avalanche of them from Labour. And this explains what has really been happening. In spite of the common view, there is not really all that much in common between, on the one hand, the trades union tradition that founded the Labour Party and kept it alive for decades, and what might, according to mood, be called progressivism or the Politically Correct tendency. The latter is largely an upper-class phenomenon, to do with an instinctive rebelliousness, a sense of guilt, and, buried lower than any other level and kept constantly out of sight, an underlying class consciousness that demands that those of us who are born in the enlightened stratum of society should be above the ordinary considerations of commonplace people. Ultimately, PC is the most recent and far from the most admirable manifestation of the theme of noblesse oblige, upper-class class-consciousness. That is not to say that all PC people will be upper-class or that all populists/socialists/trades unionists will be working-class (and where they are, they often tend to be upwardly mobile); but the two tendencies definitely are rooted in different social experiences and different demands made of oneself.
Now, the socialist/trades unionist tradition has long been in crisis. It was hijacked by the PC/progressive tradition because, once you have effectively dragged all of Western Europe out of starvation and degradation, what else is there to do? Socialism (by which I do not mean the degenerate and hijacked Russian Communism, but the tradition that was the majority in democratic Western Europe for most of the twentieth century) was effective and successful as long as there was a real enemy to fight. But by the time that popular housing had been effectively reformed, wages regulated, and poverty of the real, starving kind effectively abolished, what was there left to do? This effective loss of purpose can be seen in the difference between popular housing in London: LCC blocks of the twenties and thirties, though nothing like elegant, are efficient, stoutly built, and still serve their purpose after seventy or eighty years; nobody is thinking of demolishing them. On the other hand, council housing built in the sixties or seventies is hideous, actively damaging in design, and is already crumbling even where its immense unpopularity has led to demolition after only twenty or thirty years of use.
The fact is that the council architect of the thirties, forties and even fifties had a clear and immediate goal in sight to which every personal fancy had to be subordinated: to build, with the lowest possible expenditure and to the best possible standards, housing that would directly improve the lives of local people used to crumbling Victorian rented housing heated by coal-fired stoves, without bathtubs and with privies in the garden. This clear sense of purpose is reflected in the spartan but not altogether ugly design. On the other hand, the sixties architect came to reform a society already prosperous, in which popular housing had long since ceased to be a scandal, and in which central heating was universal and fridges and television widespread. He had to justify his work somehow, and so he misdirected it into dreams of redesigning society by means of architecture, with huge self-enclosed concrete blocks linked by vast passageways, that were to create village-like communities and give people a collective experience. Of course the exact opposite happened: the self-enclosing of the tower blocks and their long walkways made them ideal for thugs and lowlives, and the worst elements of society throve in them.
I say this because it is symptomatic of the complete loss of direction that struck the European Socialist movement between the sixties and the eighties - earlier or later according to when the goals of the movement were effectively achieved. Socialism was the natural resort of the poor in a rich society, but there is no poverty in Europe west of Berlin. Even what I, as a comparatively poor person, experience in London today, has absolutely no connection with the way a really poor person used to live in this town a century ago. In this context, the obsession with poverty - and, to make it sound more pathetic, child poverty - is not only unrealistic, but actively damaging. We are all prosperous, only in different shades. Deal with it. Real poverty is in Nairobi or in the Chinese countryside, not in Britain.
That being the case, the Socialist movement adopted a whole raft of causes which had nothing to do with its historical core, from feminism to greenery to abortion - everything that goes under the label "progressive" or PC. What these things did was to give the movement a surrogate of the campaigning spirit that had been its strength and justification in days past. It became necessary to find ever newer causes to champions, oppressed to defend, progressive ideas to champion - even where these cut right across the interests and traditions of the movement's base. One of the driving motives of socialists and trades unionists across Europe, for instance, had always been to force wages high enough to stop what they regarded as the scandal of women and children working in factories. They wanted families with one breadwinner, and wives at home to look after the house and children. Feminism, of course, wanted the opposite; and one is not surprised to find that the real roots of the feminist movement are in the upper classes, where women confident in their social status and unconsciously stayed by their wealth started making demands that busy working-class mothers rarely shared. Even more astonishing is the case of gay rights. The average union man would be a million miles from the sensibilities of the average homosexual campaigner, a figure if possible even more evidently upper-class than the Pankhursts. The poster-child scandal of homosexual suppression in British history involved an Irish nobleman and a Scottish nobleman; it was received with horror among the upper classes, and with contempt among the working classes. Understand: I do not oppose either. But they never made a natural match for the parties of trades unions and factory workers.
In the sixties and seventies, the Socialist movement, left drifting and directionless by its very success, was effectively hijacked by a largely alien tendency, which promised it to keep alive its native, but no longer necessary, campaigning habit. This was, in the long run, a losing strategy, as the age of Ronald Thatcher abundantly proved. The reaction of socialist parties across Europe was that of Tony Blair, that is, to moderate their more aggressive drive, but, crucially, to neither distinguish between socialist and progressive tendencies, nor to silence the campaigning habit of mind. As a result, this has become the age of soft-spoken, mealy-mouthed, one would say cowardly utopianism.
What is happening now is that the coalition of progressive and socialist is falling apart. Labour has relied too much on the "progressive" PC element. As a governing party, it was bound to disappoint it; "progressivism" is innately rebellious, and cannot ultimately come to terms with reality. But in so far as it is concerned with concrete politics, it will ultimately find its own home. And the Lib Dems may be mediocre in most ways, but they certainly are more genuinely, profoundly and naturally PC than the party of trades unions can ever hope to be. Ultimately, if your taste is for wine, you will not stop at watered-down plonk, but will progress to vintage French Cabernet-Sauvignon. It is not only tastier, but just so much more like itself.