Wez
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‘ When people recognize great orators, great writers, great educators, great debaters, those possessing such talents become the focus of the media, turning them into “leaders” because of the interviews and attention. A election candidate will receive more credence than a branch member. We all tend to defer to the authority of knowledge and communication skills.’
Primarily leaders are those who do your thinking for you – a kind of parental substitute, which is why the need for them is a sign of political immaturity. The talents of oratory, knowledge in certain areas and writing skills are just that – they are not ‘leaders’ in the political sense. We may defer to such people for inspiration and information but they do not make our decisions for us as that’s what democracy is for. People quite often confuse such talents with supposed ‘leadership skills’ but if they really know what they’re talking about they themselves will reject any such description.
‘However, why is it that individual thinkers and writers can make an impact and be influential?’
Who have you in mind here? There have been many writers who burn brightly for a while, courtesy mainly to marketing, but their ‘impact’ and ‘influence’ have changed nothing. Rarely , if ever, do these writers possess anything approaching socialist consciousness – which is presumably partly why they become popular (for a while). There is so much ‘reinventing the wheel’ out there that is marketed as something important and new. I agree it is not what we say but how we say it and who we say it to. I’ve always thought it a mistake to assume that those on the left are more likely to hear us since they too can represent reactionary authoritarianism just as much as the right. I believe our contempt for leaders is an important barrier for most people because of their political immaturity. What to do about this has obsessed socialists for a hundred years without a consensus emerging.
The psychological conditioning in capitalism goes much deeper than is implied by your outline of George Lakoff’s theory (which I have not read). Here’s what I believe to be one of the definitive works on the subject: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/eros-civilisation/index.htm
I think that Dave B’s quotes above settles the matter. The ‘Diggers’ of the English revolution prove the Marxist case that you cannot impose an idealist form of communism on an economically underdeveloped culture/system. That it was attempted at all by Winstanley and his comrades emphasizes the Bourgeois nature of the revolution. Marx was definitely a man ‘made by history’ in the sense that he represented the confluence of three traditions: German philosophy, French politics and British economics – that is what makes him so fascinating. He also represents the decisive break with socialist idealism which you would seem to be undermining. The fact is that we live now in a global capitalist system and that is precisely because once exported from Western Europe that system inevitably became ‘universal for all parts of the globe’ – as predicted by Marx.
I would need more than that letter to convince me that Marx didn’t believe that socialism was only possible, both in terms of production and consciousness, in a society which had experienced mature capitalism (wasn’t this the Menshevik position?). If he did believe that then history has proved him profoundly mistaken. Haven’t we always maintained this position? – and as one advocated by Marx?
Was Marx the first to insist on the full development of capitalism to make socialism possible? If so we owe to him the theory as to why all the leftist Bolshevik regimes failed.
That’s precisely the question the Socialist Party has been trying to crack for the last 100+ years! Obviously we have not found the answer although some of us have various theories to explain it. Let me ask you what was your route to consciousness? Do you feel you are somehow different from your fellow members of the working class? If there is an answer to this riddle it might be found within the psychology of socialists like ourselves. Instead of always looking for answers to the reasons for the lack of class consciousness in others perhaps we should ask how we acquired it – insight might be the route.
‘They’re not interested in even considering small lifestyle changes, let alone sociopolitical revolution’.
But you are – and you have to ask yourself what makes you so different from the rest of your species?
I didn’t say politics wasn’t about rational analysis – that would be absurd; but reactionary ideology e.g. nationalism, fascism etc., are all based on emotions (the irrational) and the process of such identification with value systems based on authoritarianism has to be understood. We’ve all attempted to communicate rationally about the need for socialism when our opponent gets increasingly frustrated and angry the more rational we attempt to be. This is the nature of 99% of the objections to socialism and why I claim that it is not only the intellect that is involved in polemics.
‘Dave, can it really be that simple though? If it were as simple to understand and as intuitive as you say then surely the SPGB would be doing a whole lot better than it is. I certainly don’t mean that as a snarky comment.’
Politics has always been about much more than merely an intellectual grasp of concepts. Most get their opinions and information from the media, family, education and peers and this is ‘ideological’ i.e. it is the result of emotional as well as intellectual conditioning. Intellectuals always make the mistake in thinking that politics is purely an intellectual riddle that can be solved by intelligence alone.
Capital is only a ‘torture’ to read for those in our culture because of the lack of dialectical knowledge and approach (something I hope to be addressing in next month’s Standard). Marx was an extraordinary polymath and since the dialectical approach to knowledge is holistic many find the multiplicity of historical/economic/philosophical/artistic references in Capital very confusing. Socialists believe in ‘from each according to his talents’ and so some have the interest and capacity for abstract thinking while others do not – but in socialism there is no hierarchy of talents so there is no danger of ‘undermining the masses’ with elitist intellectual double talk (as there is in Bolshevism etc.).
