File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 437


Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 10:31:24 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: listen, vanguardists!


In message <l03102812b1325a766ff1-AT-[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood-AT-panix.com> writes
>From Judith Butler's "Merely Cultural," published in both the current
>Social Text and the current New Left Review:
>
>"To fault new social movements for their vitality, as some have done, is
>precisely to refuse to understand that any future for the Left will have to
>build on the basis of movements that compel democratic participation, and
>that any effort to impose unity upon such movements from the outside will
>be rejected once again as a form of vanguardism dedicated to the production
>of hierarchy and dissension, producing the very factionalization that it
>asserts is coming from outside itself."

What is so irritating about Butler and the post-modernism she espouses
is the conflation of genuine grievances with a pernicious anti-
rationalism. In this sleight of hand anti-racism becomes inextricably
tied up with the rejection of 'Western' rationalism, women's liberation
with a rejection of phallocentric science, and so on. I really wish that
this was a caricature, but having read in the region of two hundred
books on postmodernism in the last ten years, I'm sorry to say that if
anything I am understating the case.

Years ago racists used to say that black people were too stupid to read
books and that women were too emotional to master technical tasks. The
radical intervention was to insist that human culture was the property
of everyone, not just white men. But nowadays that outlook has been
turned on its head. Instead of right-wingers insisting that science and
reason are the preserve of white men, it is the radicals who are saying
it. Instead of challenging the vicious caricature of emotional women and
irrational black people, the post modernists have turned these insults
into a badge of pride. It really is grotesque that the left should
willingly take on the role of the enemy of reason. With that kind of
strategy we deserve everything we get.

Judith Butler is a very good writer. But her message is wholly
pernicious.

NSMs: A DUBIOUS CLAIM TO DEMOCRACY

The new social movements (insofar as we can bracket them together) have
come to the fore as a consequence of the decline of mass organisations
like mass parties and trade unions. Doubtless these declining
organisations were pretty flawed. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that
they involved a far greater proportion of the population than the nsms
ever have.

To take Britain as an example. The high point of party membership was in
the decade after the war. At that time the Communist party numbered a
quarter of a million, the Labour Party one million and the Conservative
Party two and three quarter million. Labour's lower figure is belied by
the fact that it encouraged affiliate membership in trade unions, whose
total membership peaked in 1979 at around 17 million. That means that
the old mass organisations that the new social movements are displacing
could involve perhaps some twenty million people (Communist Party
members would be counted twice as they affiliated to Labour through
union membership), which is to say about a third of the UK population.

The point is often made that these mass organisations were exclusive,
and they were. Trade unions in the post-war period actively fought to
exclude migrant workers from their rolls, and in maintaining 'last in,
first out' were a barrier to women and blacks joining the workforce and
hence their organisations. Tory and Labour parties joined in anti-
immigrant campaigns, and promoted backward-looking views on women.

Given the degree of exclusivity at work in the old mass organisations,
it is a breath-taking achievement that the so-called new social
movements manage to be more exclusive than the organisations that they
have replaced. A tiny fraction of the numbers involved in the old mass
organisations are involved in environmental, anti-racist and women's
campaigns and groups. Furthermore, the social composition of these is
far more exclusively middle class than even the old Labour Party was,
and certainly the representation of working class people in any kind of
organisations at all has dropped to a minimium.

Furthermore, the membership of these newer organisations, where there is
a membership, is largely passive, and enjoys fewer rights than even
members ofthe Labour and Tory parties. Greenpeace is a campaign with
millions of pounds in its accounts, drawn from subscribers, who are
canvassed for funds on a regular basis. But these subscribers have no
rights whatsoever. In fact Greepeace doesn't have a membership: its
decisions are made by a small executive, without reference to any wider
body.

At the last election 30 voluntary and campaigning organisation joined up
to launch a manifesto: the Politics of the Real World. In their
publicity, the Real World Coalition claimed that their constituent
membership organisations represented mroe people than the main parties
put together. However, this claim was belied by the fact that the
manifesto was entirely the work of a small clique of organisers of these
campaigns, none of whom saw fit to consult their 'members' on any points
in the manifesto.

In general, of course, new social movements do not even have a defined
membership, an informality that is supposed to make them more
accessible. The truth is that that kind of informality makes such groups
accessible to the small numbers of people who are already comfortable
with each other, but serves as a positive disincentive to any wider
involvement. That kind of freemason-style networking is appropriate for
elite or middle class politics, but a turn-off for working class people.

The outlook of the new social movements all too often reflects the anti-
mass sentiments of their narrowly drawn participants. Campaigns abound
against every aspect of mass society: mass transport in the roads
protests, mass consumption in the farming protests, mass housing in the
no-build protests, even the existence of the masses themselves in
'Population Concern'. 

Time and time again the new protests have actively counterposed
themselves to democratic decision-making. In Newbury the local council
was elected and re-elected on a programme of building a by-pass, so that
the townsfolk there could be spared dangerous, noisy and polluting
through traffic. But the protestors laid claim to a higher authority
than the people of Newbury: they represented the Earth itself, and
nobody had the right to vote against nature. Their occupation of the
land was directed against the people of Newbury, as much as it was
against the government.

In Manchester, the local council had pursued a popular policy of
regeneration for many years. Protestors against the Manchester Airport
extension got good press when they announced on April 1st last year that
they would stand in the elections against Manchester MP Graham Stringer,
who led the scheme. But the press men were disappointed to here that
they had been April Fooled. Protest leader Daniel Hooper (Swampy)
explained that of course the protestors would never stand for parliament
because that was a sham. This phony radicalism only served to cover up
the fact that, as evryone knew, Manchester would vote for an airport.

The rhetorical flourishes of the nsms reflect this anti-mass sentiment.
Democracy is derided as 'majoritarian', meaning that it is too
susceptible to popular influence (see Lani Guineir Tyrrany of the
Majority). Mass movements are derided as 'totalitarian' (see Cohen and
Arato, POlitical theory and civil society). The mass of people are
derided as 'apathetic' for failing to respond to the unlovely appeal of
the nsm activist.

Vanguardism was often derided for its supposed 'we know best' attitude.
But no such qualms trouble the nsm activist. The moral fervour of the
environmental campaigner is precisely an attitude of 'I know best', as
in 'I know better than all you ignorant car-drivers, meat eaters' and so
on. The difference is that the politics of vanguardism at least believed
that its programme had to be win the support of the mass of people. The
nsms by and large believe that their politics must be imposed upon the
masses, whether they like it or not.
-- 
James Heartfield


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