There has for some time, most particularly among French philosophers and commentators, been an interest in recovering the notion of communism: people like Badiou for example have espoused a ‘new communism’. The rationale for this is generally that throughout parliamentary or other forms of liberal/social democracies in the West the electoral choice is merely between two or more established pro-capitalist parties, all of which work with rather than against the neoliberal status quo. To the ‘right’ of this narrow spectrum lurks the possibility of fascism, to the left the promise of communism. The fascist option offers only dystopias, while the communist option holds out the promise of post-capitalist utopias. This is not to oversimplify, but rather to record and indicate a fork in the road to the future.
This attenuated blog is a personal and provisional one. It frames and situates my own current thinking. In my writings and talks I have for some years – indeed decades – identified as a socialist. I have also commended the concept of permanent reform. How does this play out?
I rejoined the Labour Party when Corbyn was elected its leader and have since supported him vigorously against opponents within as well as without the party. But I have no illusions. The election of Corbyn as PM, which at the time of writing remains a realistic possibility, will not herald an automatic transition to a socialist let alone a communist society, far from it. What the Labour manifesto promised during the last election was however a step in the right direction, that is, part and parcel of a long-term process of permanent reform. The concept of permanent reform acknowledges that achieving transformational societal change will require multiple coalitions of overlapping campaign and interest groups – stretching from macro-environment issues around climate change to consolidating human rights – pushing ‘individually but together’ for rationally and morally compelling reforms that will ineluctably edge us towards, even precipitate, a telling legitimation crisis for the state.
As Ralph Miliband foretold but his two sons forgot (David first, sadly then Ed), parliamentary democracy will not in and of itself deliver a socialist society for Shelley’s ‘the many’. Corbyn and McDonnell recognise this, hence their emphasis on the salience of an extra-parliamentary labour movement, initially represented by a member-led or ‘leaderless’ Momentum, but now compromised by Lansman et al, perhaps fatally.
Gramsci’s ‘optimism of the will’ versus his ‘pessimism of the intellect’; or Tony Benn’s ‘hope is the fuel of progress’!
It is obvious to any sociologist that Corbyn’s problems would only be accentuated if he was to be elected PM. Capitalism is global, as is the ‘transnational capitalist class’ (epitomised in a hard-core of ‘capital monopolists’ in my classification – see other blogs). But small steps. And there is context here: many sociologists agree that post-1970s financialised capitalism is imploding, not least through the rhetoric of TINA. This likely implosion of the existing order makes a legitimation crisis that much more likely, given an appropriate – but unpredictable – trigger.
I have argued that what was lacking in Ed Miliband’s bid to be PM was a narrative to cement what were – at least in the earlier days of his leadership – promising and popular policies. Progress towards such a narrative has undoubtedly been made under Corbyn; but what is required in my view is a ‘communist-oriented’ narrative, that is, an imaginative and effective portrayal of a deliverable ‘better society’ oriented to the many not the few. Badou is right in my view.
So one task facing me and other sociologists (in fact, the agenda of what I have called ‘foresight sociology’) is the imaginative portrayal of better futures. And this task, I want to suggest here, necessarily takes us beyond – and brings us into opposition to – capitalism per se. There is in my view no acceptable form of post-financialised capitalism. So the cranium of the new communism is just visible over the horizon.
So, timid and faltering steps towards socialism do not add up to a new form of communism, but they are steps nevertheless; and ad hoc and piecemeal alliances to this end are critical motivations towards the requisite legitimation crisis.
I have previously termed that type of sociology – one of six in my book – that is: (a) committed to change, and (b) prefigures and anticipates a better society, oppositional action sociology. So here is a challenge to colleagues: what is the point of a (reconstructed Enlightenment) sociological project that is not signed up to a society for the many not the few?
And here is an in-your-face question to sociologists whose heads remain below parapets: ‘how many generations would you advise those born poor and without prospects to await any semblance of HOPE?’ (Oh, and have you read Piketty on the growing and decisive importance of inheriting capital?)
Corbyn is a small but significant step forwards. Don’t be fundamentalist or ‘purist’. But I accept that I remain under an obligation to contribute to a narrative for the future. If you disagree, then reconcile your submission to the pro-capitalist and neoliberal status quo. And to do so is in my view to spit in the face of the (reconstructed Enlightenment) sociological project.