A plea for a new Left thinking - Part 1: Reform vs. Revolution – a false dichotomy

By Leander Jones

The first thing that must be established before I begin is that I regard myself a revolutionary. I consider revolution to mean the fundamental transformation of society, in a way that will end exploitation, oppression, violence, and poverty and will allow for the full self-realisation and flourishing of human beings as individuals and as a collective. I believe that the status quo is fundamentally opposed to these aims, and that the social, political and economic structures that currently reign supreme thus have to be completely overhauled. Now that this is clear I can continue under no false pretences, for I do not wish to trick or deceive.

The reason I chose this title for the article is that this is a debate which has been raging for too long within the left, to the detriment of those on both sides of the divide – it has prevented coordinated action, distracted leftists from more important issues, and generally generated more heat than light. I am going to be audacious enough to argue that both sides in this dispute have got it wrong, each providing important insights into the way forward but neither offering anywhere near the whole truth of the matter. This is not to claim that I know the whole truth, for such claims are ridiculous and lead to the dogmatic dismissal of many aspects of reality that do not fit into one's meta-narrative, but I have some educated suggestions I wish to put forward.

One of the most important leftist thinkers in my opinion, but one which is often overlooked by many (particularly by activists) is Antonio Gramsci. He came up with the idea of “cultural hegemony”: the notion that modern capitalism sustains itself not only through the control of the means of production and the state's institutions by “capitalists”, but through the construction of ideas and norms that support and justify the status quo. He argued that these ideas were so effective at asserting control because of their all-pervasiveness; they infiltrated culture, coming to form the routine practices and conventions that make up every-day life, to the extent that they constitute the very fabric of society – people follow them unconsciously and almost instinctively. Thus seemingly innocent and neutral behaviour is imbued with ideological assumptions and serves to reinforce existing power relations and the system at large. This led him on to argue that to fight and overcome the prevailing hegemonic structures, what was needed was the construction of a “counter-hegemony”. This insight had significant implications. It destroyed the myth that the contradictions inherent within capitalism would lead people automatically towards socialism; simply waiting for conditions to get bad enough would not guarantee that opinions would move in the “right direction”. Rather, people in such scenarios would turn to whatever symbol-system best captured the public imagination – usually what was most familiar to them. It also meant that to change the system it was insufficient merely to seize the reigns of the state, as had hitherto been the focus of left-wing strategy, as this would leave the old hegemonic ideas and practices in place. Legislation by such a left-wing state would fail to transform society in any meaningful way, as the people would have retained their old mindsets/cognitive frames. Their “consciousness” would continue to be based upon the values of the old system. Many previous movements failed to appreciate this, and attempted to coerce people into adopting their programmes using violence – and thus we see a dark history of left-wing “experiments”: the term “Communism” for instance is now synonymous in most people's minds with the worst dictatorships this world has ever seen.

What Gramsci never did sufficiently elucidate – at least in any full and coherent manner – is what concrete steps can be taken to construct this counter-hegemony. This process is obviously multifaceted and complex, and one could think of many tactics which could be adopted without delving too deeply into the matter, for example attempting to influence the education system or the mass media machine. But here I want to focus on one element in particular which I believe is crucial to this process, namely the role of legislative reform. Progressive political, economic and social reforms are useful in themselves because they help people by alleviating their every-day hardships. They are also useful to progressives in that popular reforms popularise the reformers, or those who are seen as responsible for pushing for and winning the reforms. Additionally, success in short-term political battles can engender confidence and generate momentum towards further change. But most importantly reforms can dig institutional paths. There is a political theory known as Historical Institutionalism which explains how institutions (conceptualised broadly as routine practices that are identifiable and widely considered legitimate, both formally in organisations and informally in terms of cultural conduct), once initiated, tend to rigidify into self-perpetuating trajectories, and create path-dependencies which restrict the scope of future decisions. This happens firstly in concrete terms usually because the implementation of legislation involves significant economic costs, meaning that changing paths or reorganising can be very expensive. This therefore creates a “lock in” effect whereby state and societal actors become trapped into certain ways of doing things, corresponding with the rules and constraints imposed by the initial piece of legislation. Secondly, we are creatures of habit, and, as the philosophers J. S. Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville observed, long-established doctrines tend to be accepted as natural and legitimate by the history-illiterate public, regardless of however unnatural or ridiculous they appeared when they were initiated. But thirdly, and most crucially, legislation can shape the very environment individuals find themselves in, and structure peoples' material interests and incentives, as well as direct their social interactions through certain channels and in specific ways which are conducive to fostering particular types of behaviour in the short term, and which over the long term transform people's identities and belief-systems. A good example of this is the massive expansion of home-ownership under Thatcher; a result of her “right to buy” scheme alongside her ending most new council housing projects. While she benignly argued that it gave people a “stake in society” and encouraged model citizenship, what it was in fact designed to do was change people's political behaviour through transforming their material interests. Due to the fact that a large proportion of many people's incomes was now spent on mortgage repayments, increased rates of home-ownership engendered hostility towards “post-war consensus” policies which involved high levels of taxation and public spending. In the long term, as is demonstrated by the “welfare trade-off” theory, this led to an increased proportion of the population identifying themselves as monetary conservatives. We see the same pattern in all countries where home-ownership rates have been expanded in recent decades.

Another example of an institutional path can be seen with the 1977 Bullock Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy set up by Labour PM Harold Wilson. It proposed workers' participation/control in the workplace as a solution to chronic industrial strife. This call for economic democracy was based on a perceived “moral need to extend democracy” in society and in elite circles. Such an argument would be inconceivable nowadays now we have lost our corporatist model of industrial relations (which involved a cooperative relationship between employers, Government and trade unions), our commitment to full employment, and our reasonably extensive trade union powers. For industrial democracy to be the natural step forward in such a context, rather than a radical one, highlights the degree to which institutional pathways determine trajectories and outcomes – particularly now the political paradigm has shifted and such a move is almost unimaginable.

All this means that public policy has a vital role (although by no means the only role) to play in the revolutionary process, in Western democracies at least, if legislation can be used to engender progressive norms and expectations. I stress again that I conceive of revolution as a radical transformation of society, not as a single moment of (potentially violent) upheaval; although I appreciate that in some circumstances this process may culminate in such a moment (usually in more repressive states) – but this is not an end in itself. If violence is viewed as a constructive tool rather than merely a means of throwing off the yoke of the old repressive political system, it is bound to lead to the creation of a militaristic society.

This may lead some “revolutionaries” to argue that I am advocating reformism. Reformism, they say, is limited in scope in that it merely aims to tinker around the edges of what is a fundamentally flawed social and economic system. To achieve any true human emancipation we have to totally transform society, so that all forms of alienation are eliminated, social relations are amiable and really are “social”, and the correct conditions exist for individual self-realisation and the fulfilment of full human potential on a personal and collective level. And I would agree with all of these assertions; but using these against my argument fundamentally misses its point. Reforms, seen as stepping stones towards the attainment of wider goals, are not the same as reformism – which by its nature has limited goals.

The fundamental transformation of society cannot happen overnight. Legislative reforms can play a vital role in directing us through the chaos of the political jungle, digging a path that will lead us to the clearing on the other side.

A plea for new Left thinking - Introduction:
http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/06/plea-for-new-left-thinking-introduction.html

A plea for new Left thinking - Part 2: Communicative Rationality and the new party structure:
http://birminghamstudentbroadleft.blogspot.com/2011/06/plea-for-new-left-thinking-part-2.html