When your esteemed
editor requested an article from me on the subject of 'being a Christopher
Hitchens Marxist in the Liberal Democrats', I wasn't sure whether to chortle or
bridle. Clearly I was being set up for a fall.
Still, it does no
harm to have to set out one's first principles and intellectual roots
occasionally, and while 'a Christopher Hitchens Marxist in the Lib Dems' is a
terribly reductive description of my political position, it's hardly an
inaccurate one.
And how does a
historical materialist find himself marching behind the tattered banners of
Comrade Clegg, fighting (and losing) local government elections in the
tribalist borderlands of North London? Good question.
I have always been a
man of the Left, steeped in and supportive of its egalitarian traditions. Not
uncommonly, the appeal of Marxism made itself felt when I was still in my
teens.
And, like so many
who feel that pull, I had my period of hammer-and-sickle-waving zeal. In truth
- and tellingly - my hammer and cycle was wrought from gold, suspended on a
fine gold chain.
Yet I was never a
dogmatic communist.
For me, the
explosive and truly revolutionary aspect of Marx's thought was not in his
narrow predictive abilities or even his political programme, but in his
exposing of the link between technological and societal change.
Along with
contemporaries like Freud, Marx demolished the narrative of an organic society
that had been so central to all previous ideologies.
Which is not to say
that this demolition has had the profound consciousness-raising affect on human
society that it ought to have done.
I am often reminded
of a killer question posed by my bearded and twinkle-eyed Sociology teacher.
He had instilled in
us the well-evidenced understanding that nurture is more important than nature
in determining social outcomes, an understanding accepted as fact by almost all
social scientists.
But which two
groups, he asked, hold on to the organicist illusion?
His answer has never
left me (and may have influenced my occasional tendency towards intellectual
elitism): a) the media, and b) the public. False consciousness has deep roots.
Thus for me the
attraction of Marxism was always more intellectual and academic than, shall we
say, 'party political'.
I considered myself
an extension of the old joke about there being three Trotskyist parties for
every two Trotskyists - I wanted no party at all.
By temperament I
remained sceptical of the call to submit myself to the rigours of 'democratic
centralism' or partake in interminable debates about the futility of
parliamentary democracy.
And anyway, I was
and remain really rather fond of parliamentary democracy, despite its cracks
and flaws and farcicalities.
The warnings of
Orwell cut deep, too. Whatever our egalitarian sympathies, however obvious the
need for radical or revolutionary change (and however pressing the need for one
to have that unfettered and unrestricted power in one's own hands, in the
interest of the public of course, along with the right violently to purge one's
foolish enemies at will), the seductions and temptations of authoritarianism
and totalitarianism must always be fiercely resisted.
Indeed, in truth I
was as enamoured with the tradition of Locke, Mill, Bentham, and Kant as I was
that of Marx and his fellow critical theorists.
For what are
equality and fraternity without liberty?
And not just liberty
from the undue encroachment of the state (though the importance of that cannot
be overstated), but the freedom from the insidious oppression of society
itself: the poison of patriarchy and machismo, the straitjackets of gender and
sexual norms, the crippling parochialism of nationalism and xenophobia, and the
intellectual bankruptcy of anti-intellectualism, of organicism, and the
wearying, mind-numbing crassness of so-called 'common sense'.
And so onto the
late, great Christopher Hitchens, a man utterly alien to such restrictions.
Though I only
discovered his work in the last decade or so of his life - when he noisily
joined Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris in their public roles as
the 'Four Horseman of the Counter-Apocalypse' - his fierce writing and furious
public personae had a profound influence on me.
I saw him speak in
person but once, but I will never forget his fearsome oratory.
He was a titan of
the humanist, anti-totalitarian left. It was as though the man could articulate
my own thoughts before I had even thought them.
A Marxist who
favoured Trotsky over Lenin, and Luxemburg over both. A devotee of the
enlightenment, who confessed to a "sort of Whiggish" belief in human
progress, but retained a profound scepticism concerning the promises of
demagogues and authoritarians.
Not merely a
secularist or atheist, but an anti-theist, who out-Orwelled Orwell in his
understanding that religion was the seed of totalitarianism.
I was profoundly
influenced by his loss, and it is rare for a day to go by without my wishing I
could hear his articulate rage at the latest gross injustice.
Like The Hitch, I
remain a historical materialist with a penchant for the dialectic.
Hitchens said of
himself that he was "a Marxist who was no longer a socialist" - I'm
fond of the term Marxish - and like him I find myself part of that long
line of people and parties who struggle to balance and reconcile the
egalitarian principles of the Left with the critical safeguards of the Liberal
tradition.
Marx believed that
capitalism would not be replaced until it had exhausted its ability to adapt
and renew itself. In retrospect it is easy to see that he somewhat
underestimated capitalism's ability to do just that.
Hitchens recognised
that capitalism, especially in its latest hyper-globalist phase, was
"innovative and internationalist", and rather convincingly noted that
those parts of the world that are the most oppressive and authoritarian are
those where the bourgeois revolution has stalled.
And, to stick with
historical materialism for a moment: among the most important lessons of the
20th century is that in a world of boundary-dissolving globalisation you cannot
build 'socialism' in one country. Poor Trotsky was proved to be right about
that in the end.
The global movement
of capital, of people, of culture and ideas, are rapidly dissolving the
socioeconomic foundations of the seventeenth-century sovereign state model and
its bastard eighteenth-century offspring, the nation state.
We can learn the
lessons of the past to look ahead - in my view a globalised world requires more
than feeble and anarchic global governance, it needs global government.
It needs
transnational, cosmopolitan, democratised institutions in which we can rebuild,
safeguard, and underpin the social democracy that we see being eroded at the
level of nation state.
This idea, with its
routes in Aristotle, Dante and Kant, has been renewed of late in the work of
democratic cosmopolitan writers as diverse as Danile Archibugi, David Held, and
George Monbiot. There is much more to be done.
This is not a
trivial matter – technological progress and the gradual dissolving of the old
social order mean that we are just as likely to end up in the authoritarian and
impersonal grimness of Mega City One than the post-scarcity utopia of Star
Trek.
We must not abandon
Marx's exhortation to think ahead, and think radically. To shed old narratives
and intellectual shackles.
Nationalism is just
as much an opiate of the people as religion was (and in some places still is).
Like Hitchens, I like to recall the neglected follow up to Marx's famous opium
dig:
"...the
criticism of religion … has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not
so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation but so that
he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower."
And yet it's nice to
have people to cull flowers with, and to plant them, too. Am I a socialist libertarian? A social liberal? A
social democrat? Labels matter less than ideas, less than practice (or,
to utilise the delightful Marxist term, praxis).
Marx said that we
should seek not just to understand the world, but to change it.
In my own small way
I have being trying to contribute to my community as best I can - a little
volunteering here, a campaign or two there.
Nor am I still
immune to the pull of party politics and the grubby realities of elections. But
what party could accommodate an eccentric like me?
It would have to be
pluralist rather than majoritarian. Anti-nationalist, cosmopolitanism and
transnationalist rather than merely internationalist.
Committed to
egalitarianism - and showing an understanding of the societal harm that
inequality causes - but hesitant to be over-reliant on statism to achieve its
goals.
Deeply sceptical of
social conservatism of any kind.
It would need to
abhor the shambles of our outdated constitutional arrangements, and see the
folly of entrenched perma-failure policies such as the 'war on drugs'.
It would need to be
a contemplative and rationalist party, rejecting tribalism, indifferent to
emotional reasoning, and cognisant of the dangers of identity politics.
This, dear comrades,
is how I find myself in the Liberal Democrats.
Not always an easy
place to be, especially in these interesting times. But, for all their flaws,
they are a thoughtful and indefatigable bunch.
And I tend to think,
in my Marxish way, that they are on the right side of history.
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