My predilection for solitary reading and writing, which doubtless has its pros and cons, is in all likelihood associated with other personality traits. Over a period of decades I have moved ‘leftwards’ politically. There was no sudden lurch towards Marx and Marxism, though I came gradually to the view, articulated in an earlier fragment, that any account of any of the phases of capitalism, including the present era of its financialisation, must be ‘in the spirit of Marx’. In fact I would consider any accusation that I am ‘a Marxist’ to be a compliment rather than an embarrassment. But back to my solitariness and the temperament that gave rise to and sustains it.
Over the years decades of the nudging forward of my thinking and theorising, have I become an activist? I must record two strains of thought here. First, I confess that there are forms of activism to which I seem to be peculiarly unsuited; but second, and to mitigate the worst effects of this, I not only suspect that a division of activist labour is possible, but am hopeful that there may even be a route to personal redemption.
I don’t baulk at giving lectures, talks, even speeches, and I continue to do this locally, nationally and internationally; but I don’t like going up to strangers in the street or banging on their doors any more than I like strangers coming up to me in the street or knocking on my door. This makes me ineffective in these forms of campaigning. Nikki, my eldest daughter, is a natural, Annette gets stuck in too; but I simply retreat into myself and yearn to escape. Whence my ineptitude (who but an academic could phrase it that way)? It suggests that my early only-child shyness has only been overcome or set aside in specific contexts or roles. Maybe this alone of all its varied aspects has been unwittingly ‘protected’ all these years. Well, that’s one for the psychologists.
What about my redemption? I have attended protests and marches on and off, especially in defence of students and the NHS, as well as opposing the Iraq war of course. I also feel that through many years of teaching I have opened a number of eyes to the how and why of contemporary social institutions in the UK. Happily, some ex-students, many now GPs or hospital consultants, have confirmed as much on social media. I have also published a number of texts oriented to understanding and explaining social change. More recently (post-retirement) I have written blogs with a far greater readership than has been accomplished via academic publications (www.grahamscambler.com/blogs). My writings have become more ‘polemical’, less compromising and more engaged.
I have in all probability – inconspicuously, indirectly – occasioned more rethinking about society, politics and change than I could conceivably have done by years of challenging people on street corners, delivering leaflets and banging on doors. A better grasp of ‘the social’ leads naturally enough to ‘ideology critique’ and a desire for change and, ultimately and necessarily, a post-capitalist social formation. I still feel guilt about my limitations, but … (I should note here that I have so far lived in Worthing, Epsom and Mickleham (the last in Mole Valley, mid-Surrey), so I have yet to ‘have a parliamentary say’ in a local constituency.)
As a sociologist I must add a few more comments on context. First: members of the working classes have a stand-apart ‘authenticity’ that I aspire to grasp sociologically but obviously cannot accomplish experientially (I’m still working on it). Given (the limitations of) my background, anyone other than a full-time extra-parliamentary activist who espouses socialism, or what Badiou has commended as ‘the new communism’, is inevitably compromised by his or her placement in financial capitalism.
I personally enjoyed (for the most part) a secure, comfortable career at UCL; a pension based on my final salary; and we were able to purchase our present house, if in part to accommodate my ailing 90-year old father, through capital released by the sale of his previous accommodation. Were these compromises too far? What can be said is that the division of activist labour I have cited, as it were in my defence, has left my comfortable bourgeois lifestyle essentially intact and undisturbed. Moreover, whilst eschewing schemes for tax avoidance, I/we intend to underwrite my/our daughters’ and grandchildrens’ security in precarious times via my/our wills (do I/we in fact have any right to decide compromises on their behalf?). So I have to acknowledge that my political engagement has been circumscribed and biased towards personal and family security and wellbeing. That I am unexceptional here is irrelevant.
The notion that our families deserve to be privileged over other people’s is in my view understandable psychologically, and to a degree functional socially, but it is indefensible philosophically. And for family we might substitute nation, class, gender, race, sexuality, age, and so on. People are first, foremost and ‘uncompromisingly’ people, and people of equal worth, whoever and wherever. Query that proposition and all else begins to crumble; the slope is slippery indeed.
Compromises with capitalism are of course all but unavoidable for its citizenries and can take multiple forms: directly and indirectly, most straightforwardly via ‘innocent’ consumption, or renting or buying a house. Personal thresholds of the acceptable and unacceptable vary. I have a preliminary trio of conclusions to draw. First, one should be as reflexive as possible about one’s compromises (which is possibly easier – and therefore a stronger obligation – for sociologists than for most). Second, any compromises should be owned up to and explained when challenged rather than ‘rationalised away’. And third, one should sign up to a moral commitment to re-address and, whenever possible, reduce one’s compromises over time.