Economics and Apologies and That

My previous pondering on matters economic did not deserve the generous response they received: I begun with my usual attempt to grapple with serious ideas, only to surrender and retreat into a mystical parable. That I have readers who are willing to pay attention to my rambles – and I must give a special tip o’ the hat to my erstwhile ally on Avengers Alliance Kenneth Davidson for his willingness to suggest further reading – is a blessing. Anytime that I become nihilistic, their grace reminds me that the world is not hopeless, and that my circle includes spirits of tremendous generosity.

However, I am shamed enough by their kindness to make some kind of apology for my attitude towards Marxist theory. Given how often I make use of it, and how it provides a far more coherent analysis than anything I can find in right wing descriptions of what is and what ought to be, it is time I admitted my debt to the tradition.

Like an inversion of the usual Christian injunction to “love the sinner but hate the sin,” my attitude towards Marxism has been to fall back on particular disappointments inflicted on me by Marxists and abuse the system for the failure of functionaries. I could appeal to the egregious examples of history – Soviet Russia didn’t look that great, even taking into account the USA’s propaganda that informed the journalism of my childhood, and I have never subscribed to the enthusiasm for Castro’s Cuba (it might have had its amazing properties, but there were more than a few issues with the State’s attitude to dissidents and homosexuals).

But I think it is more likely that I was scarred by the failure of the SSP to develop a mature parliamentary presence. Watching I Tommy some time ago, I was taken aback by how personal the drama felt. The caricature of Sheridan on stage was barely recognizable from the firebrand who had inspired me during the Govanhill Pool Occupation: the history he lived through, however, had been part of my life.

There have been incidents in my own political past where I have felt Marxists have been more concerned with the dream of their utopia than the care of their fellow protestors: my retreat from active engagement in demonstrations comes from a worry that some people would happily betray each other if they felt it served their agenda. Adding that I find the chanting boorish is trivial, and exactly what would be expected from an aesthetic dilettante, which is what I am.

Every time I complain about “the opportunistic left,” this is what I am talking about.   More than that, I can’t do anything other than express admiration for those groups who are keeping alive the protests against ATOS. I share their frustration and disgust at the behaviour of a Conservative government, which maintains the ruthlessness of Thatcher, yet lacks the moral convictions that drove her.

I don’t want to be another apologist for Thatcher, although I don’t like the misogynistic language that surrounded her death. And I can see that she believed in something – something I don’t support, but it meant that it was possible to resist. When Cameron makes a half-hearted statement like “we are all Thatcherites now,” he is simply trying to avoid committing to any belief at all, and implicating everyone in his vicious dismantling of the common institutions that are what held Britain together.

In a time when actual belief is a rare commodity (and this extends beyond the decline of religion – belief and faith are associating with a lack of reasoning), Marxists make an easy target for my ignorant rants. There are plenty of articulate expressions of Marxist thought, and they give me a basis to work against. Compare this to my attempts to get hold of the ideas behind the culture minister’s speech about arts’ need to be useful. Maria Miller’s words are a bizarre mixture of dominant preening and unfounded assertions.

There are specifics in contemporary Marxist thought that I cannot accept – for example, the nature of the demanded boycott of all art and culture from Israel. But it is time that I started to show as much respect for the movement as it has shown to me.