ANOTHER VOICE
It's time for the bourgeoisie to rise up against the capitalist oppressors
CHARLES MOORE
The death of E.P. Thompson makes one realise how few socialist intellectuals now exist. Who, in the next generation, fits the description? There are plenty of people who are vaguely of the Left, but their ener- gies are devoted to the heresies of the socialist religion, such as feminism, multi- culturalism and environmentalism, rather than to the true faith. It is enough to make any peddler of ideas want to step in and help: there is, to use a phrase from the opposing camp, a gap in the market.
The customary explanation for the disap- pearance of the socialist intellectual is that the creed has been discredited. The col- lapse of communism in eastern Europe is supposed to prove that socialism does not work. It is amazing that the Left takes this argument lying down. For to concede it is to admit the one thing that an intellectual must never countenance — that his theo- ries can be disproved by facts. To abandon socialist belief because of the events of 1989 is like Christians throwing up the sponge because of The Origin of Species. Darwin showed that some things claimed by some Christians as historical statements were mistaken as historical statements. Nothing he said could undermine Chris- tianity as a metaphysical doctrine. Social- ism, admittedly, is not metaphysical, but it is much more like a religion than like a statement of facts or a glorified tip-sheet of future political events. From time to time people mine the cuttings of the great Lord Rees-Mogg and emerge with smiles of tri- umph on their sweaty faces to point out that the opposite of what he predicted has invariably happened. This does not discred- it him. On the contrary, it is proof that he is a true intellectual. His lack of practical wis- dom draws attention to the inherent inter- est of his thought. Mightn't the same be true of socialism?
Besides, the curious thing about the dis- crediting of socialism is that it happened after socialist regimes had become, for the most part, more humane. It was at the time of maximum murder, starvation and tyran- ny that intellectuals found it possible to enthuse about the New Soviet Civilisation or the Cultural Revolution. Only when east European governments had become dreari- ly bureaucratic instead of psychopathically homicidal did intellectuals abandon them. Hugh McDiarmid, who joined the Commu- nist Party because of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, was really more logical than E. P. Thompson, who turned against it. A power that believed in itself enough to put the Berlin Wall up was obviously in better shape than one which stood aside and let its enemies pull it down. Socialism was not disproved: it was somehow allowed to get boring.
It is undoubtedly true that socialism is now a very unpopular word electorally, and so the Labour Party is inhibited about using it. The explanation is simple. Most people now pay very high taxes and believe that socialism means higher taxes still. Natural- ly, Labour looks for an electoral future elsewhere, but I do not see why this should bother the would-be socialist intellectual. William Morris, whose life E. P. Thompson wrote, saw no possibility of his doctrines being implemented by politicians, but that was no reason for him not to develop them. Indeed, the history of the 20th century sug- gests that socialism has been corrupted by its association with power. Now is the chance for the thinking to start again.
The thinking should start with a redefini- tion of the working class. Socialists, particti- larly in Britain, still seem mesmerised by the idea that the working class means peo- ple who make things with their hands, and so they have come to believe that their con- stituency is forever dwindling. But why shouldn't the working class mean 90 per cent of those who work or are available for work — the great mass of people who have to live by selling their labour? Many of these people have been turned into what Marx would have called the bourgeoisie in that they own houses and even shares, but the value of these possessions is largely illu- sory, a fact exposed by the booms and bust of the property market. People pay £200,000 to live in houses once rented by artisans for a few shillings a week. They are, in effect, artisans still. Their lives are dictated by the power of capital, much of which operates through the power of the state.
To the objection that these people do not believe this, that they think they are far freer than their grandparents, the socialist answer is easy. Never has there been such a successful imposition of false conscious- ness. Whereas a hundred years ago the people found some protection from capital- ist exploitation in the solidarity of the com- munities in which they lived, today those communities do not exist. International capital has gained the power to enter every- one's home every day in the form of Rupert Murdoch's tabloids and satellite dishes and tell everyone what to want and what to think.
And if a working man turns round in bewilderment at the misery and social dis- integration that confront him in his daily life, the propaganda arm of capital terrifies him with the prospect of losing whatever material comforts he has, if he pursues any other path. The market works, you see, and earlier socialists have been foolish to pre- tend that it doesn't, but it works like regu- lar injections of a drug work, producing an ever greater degree of addiction. This essentially useless form of material wealth, this accumulation of technological gew- gaws, is 20th-century capitalism's replace- ment for religion as the opiate of the peo- ple. When the workers of the world had nothing to lose but their chains it was easier to persuade them to unite. The devilish cunning of modern capitalism is to per- suade the workers that they do have some- thing to lose.
If a rising generation of socialist thinkers believe this, they must then work out how to organise the struggle. They should return to the primacy of politics and the exercise of economic power. The recent temptation has been to fight through chan- nels like the women's movement or black groups or gay lobbies. This has certainly been helpful in demoralising bourgeois society, but, if my analysis of exploitation is right, bourgeois society is now the victim of capital and capital does not care if it is demoralised. Besides, anything related to sexual behaviour or racial identity is too hard for socialism to direct, and raises too many irrelevant questions. The socialist task is to identify with the bourgeoisie (the workers) and explain to them why they are enslaved. History shows that one of the best weapons in weakening the system is the strike. But the old-style working-class strike has been broken by the power of technology. Socialists should find its mod- ern equivalent. I suggest a mass boycott of mortgage repayments. Could the conspiracy of international banks repossess? No! The people would repossess their own. It would be the socialist equivalent of letting people buy their council houses.
Well, there are a few suggestions from an admittedly ill-disposed source. All forms of socialism are mistaken, but I really would be puzzled if what appealed to a mind as power- ful and a spirit as elevated as E. P. Thomp- son's should utterly perish from the earth.
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