New Left Manifesto part 1

Preface

What should the left mean today? A well known question, one that has been asked repeatedly, especially since the collapse of the USSR. A question for which, I contend, there is no single answer. Much of the left have retreated into the safe haven of the academy. This has been positive, as left wing ideas have been developed and have become more sophisticated than ever. This has however been to the determent of the left as a political movement. The left is now so intellectual it ceases to able to engage with ordinary (non-academic) people. This has allowed a bourgeois hegemony (in the sense of the expansion of ‘common sense’) to take a very strong hold in much of the popular imaginary. This hegemony must be challenged by the left. Not in terms of a complicated theoretical critique but in the form of rhetoric. However we must not seek to over simplify our arguments and must retain the theoretical sophistication that has resulted from the left’s long exile in the academy. This manifesto hopes to be a first step in this direction. It is a skeleton. The bear bones of what I feel the left should be about today. We should not be ashamed of being radical for radicalism is what we need. It is not a set of concrete proposals nor is it a theoretical paper. It aims to draw on the theoretical complexity of the new left in order to make a statement of intention for how the left should proceed today. First and foremost it is a discussion piece. It is not and can never be a finished work. It is instead an opening move to invite others to criticise and comment. All statements in this pamphlet are contestable simply because all social facts are contestable and are thus not really ‘facts’ at all. Our argument and discussion is the basis for determining what may count as a ‘fact’.

This manifesto is most of all influenced by Marx and Engels’ famous 1848 manifesto. It could be seen as an attempt to update this project for the 21st century. The 1848 manifesto was a product of its times (it could be nothing else) and requires rethinking in a modern context.

This manifesto also takes on board critiques of Marxism at the level of ontology. I am thinking here in particular of deconstructivist readings of the Marxist tradition such as Derrida’s Spectres of Marx and the works of Laclau and Mouffe (1985; Laclau 1990, 1995). There are however a number of ways one could proceed form these insights and this manifesto represents but one of them and thus there is no reason to expect authors such as Derrida or Laclau to subscribe to the (ontic level) arguments in this pamphlet.

This manifesto seeks to construct equivalences across national boundaries and for a common construction of ‘humanity’ as equal. It is a call for a new internationalism that seeks to limit suffering and challenge current liberal conceptions of ‘globalistation’.

I

There is a spectre haunting the world. This is the spectre of globalisation. It is one of many spectres. The spectre of communism still looms large and this is evidenced rather than dismissed by those who declare the Marxist project dead or that there is an ‘end of history’. However the spectre of globalisation is the closest to assuming a body and incarnating itself as a ‘fact of life’. Indeed it is presented as such. Governments are prevented from progressive tax policies that attempt to re-distribute wealth due to the ‘fact’ that the rich will leave the country to avoid tax. National governments have little power to limit the international flow of capital. However as capital and the owners of this capital enjoy a free movement across national boundaries we see nationalist parties (in the West especially) call for border control and limits to immigration, not to the rich but to the poorest, to those whose suffering has been the greatest – to refugees and asylum seekers. These parties gain more and more support, it would seem. They are often successful in constructing national populist frontiers based in the contingent historicity of the nation state. This history, this recent history at least, is a bourgeois history. These nation states are owned by the richest, by big businesses, capitalists and in short the rich privileged few that surpass their boundaries and to whom they depend on for their very existence. Business is beyond the scope of any nation but every nation feels the weight of its debt to business and the rich. They own its land, its services and its workers. These groups - call them the ‘bourgeoisie’, call them ‘big business’, call them ‘capitalists’, call them by whatever name, are who these nations protect. The police and the army are not there to protect the poor. Their purpose is to protect business interests or the interests of capital and only when the interests of the poor coincide with (or at least do not contradict) those of the rich do the army and police protect the poor. They would never protect the poor against the rich, at least I can think of few examples of them doing so. Have no doubts about this – Marx was and is still correct, capitalists are the creditors of the nation state. This is not an equal democracy where the poor have an equal voice within national boundaries. Poverty exists even within the richest nations. These nations may not be simply the puppets of big business, things are more complex than this and I demaractye between rich and poor for clarity whilst accepting that the picture I pain is somewhat simplistic; but it is not however at all inaccurate. It is primarily the interests of big business that Western nations defend, one need only look at USA or UK tax policy to see the truth of this. Tax breaks for business, tax breaks for the rich, oh but this is not to help the rich (or not only to help the rich) so they say. They do this in the name of the poor. This is the most insidious aspect of the modern Western nation. ‘Big Business’, they say, are the ‘great givers, they provide jobs and improve the economy to the benefit of all’ – well all those within the nation. History as well as the continued poverty of many within these nations betrays the fallacy of this ‘evident truth’. If the wonders and generosity of big business cannot eliminate child poverty (for example) in the most ‘advanced’ countries (Like the UK and USA) after over a century, then we must ask ourselves if ‘big business’ is really for the benefit of all? They have been given all the chances, tax breaks and benefits of the doubt, they have had every opportunity to fulfil the role one may even think is governments’ - to help the poor Have no doubts – they have failed. They have failed within the boundaries of the richest nations and failed even more spectacularly on the world stage. The nation state is not a necessary evil, but for many – the many poor -it is still an evil albeit contingent evil. We must expose this contingency as contingency! Expose the lies that masquerade as common sense, facts or evident truth. For example the ‘fact’ of globalisation could lead to tighter borders and re-enforcing of national boundaries as a result of the increasing scourge of national populism. We must control big business at its worst and the nation state as the principal worshipper of big business can never be in a position to do this.

Nationalism must not be our response to globalisation. Worse they mask over a history of imperialism and bloodshed – of violence and conflict. Our great western peaceful nations such as the Lady Britannia are like Lady Macbeth, never able to clean the blood from their hands. Nationalism and patriotism are also out dated and not suited to the future of an increasingly globalised world. It is the wrong response to the challenges of globalisation. Instead we need to think of globalisation not as the liberal model of global capital but as a political construction of the international as a community. Technology makes this easier but is not available to all as is often forgotten. We need to take control of capital and its movement in order to best look after those who are suffering most.

Those who are suffering most, indeed. There have never been so many of them! Poverty, war and famine all rage rampantly across the globe. National leaders profess impotence when faced with global problems of capital. They must become the past. International strategy to combat this suffering cannot be constructed only through the coming together of national leaders but must surpass the unit of the national. Organisations, individuals communities must unite to face these problems. There exists the technology and wealth to feed everyone in the world. The ‘reality’ of the spectre of globalisation must not blind us to this. We must not be constrained by it; but think outside of it. Nations are the principal barriers to this.

We must come together, not as nations but as the people of world, people who can no longer tolerate bearing witness to the greatest degree of suffering in our history. We must fight for a minimum standard of living for everyone on the planet. It is a simple but noble goal that is enabled rather than foreclosed by globalisation.

Nations must be the other. The other of which we are the ‘we’. We must construct a frontier against the very notion of nations. The popular international ‘we’ must cry out so loud as to shake the historical foundations of the nation state. We see you leaders for what you are, it does not have to be like this and we will not let it continue, your laws, your words, your sham democracies are illegitimate when faced with the democracy that is always to come and justice as deconstruction. The suffering of others must not be dismissed as the fact that hides national interests or as the will of the great God that is capital.

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part2 to follow