Whither goeth the left in 2025

Whither Goeth the Left in 2025 A persistent theme of 2024 has been that it has been a year of multiple crises. I have no need to elaborate upon these crises, we are all very aware of them. The one crisis that is not mentioned is the crisis of the left. It has been a year of great activity, organised and led by the left in combination with other groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stand up to Racism, and Stop the War. But this activity has, to my mind, obscured the classical, Marxist, view of what is our aim. The fundamental view of Marxism is that there is a Class War between the owners of the means of production and those who are engaged in the actual production of value. Class is the basic division within Society. Our aim is a classless society in which all peoples on earth are equal in the sense that they are able to live fulfilled lives, being subject to no form of domination, contributing to the well being of all people. The sense this year, certainly on large sections of the left, has been to concentrate on differences in race and gender. These are of great importance to many people. One major advance has been to place the issue of slavery as a very important factor in the development of capitalism. However, there has been a weakness in this in that stressing the role of slavery has to an extent undermined the role of the working class in the developed countries. Slavery is an aspect of the class struggle. The same can also be said of the other issue that has aroused great passion amongst comrades , that of transgender. This is a complex matter and I have tried to understand the issues involved. There are two approaches that can be adopted. One is that which I believe the SWP (the Party of which I am a member) takes, that is to declare that we have to accept fully all the rights that the transgender seek and that to question any of this, even from the perspective of women who seek to maintain their own space, even in sports where it has long been accepted that masculine strength overrides that of women, is unacceptable.. The other approach, the one I take, is to recognise that certain groups have a different relationship with their own bodies and with the prevailing society norms. There is a difference between fully accepting and acknowledging these different relationships. We are all bound by our own experiences (Being determines Consciousness). Having grown up in a strong family, with a good mother, father, sisters and extended family, and having developed what I consider to be normal relationships with women and men, being married, having a family, having faced a marital breakdown and then finding a long lasting, loving, relationship with another woman, all this leads me to value the man woman relationship. In another aspect of my life, I have always enjoyed friendships with women. I have, in the main, found women to be more intelligent than men, and to have a far better perspective on life. I accept that this is my personal experience. I have always valued women as women and find difficulty in understanding why women wish to be more like men. This is not to say that I do not recognise that women have, by and large, been oppressed in a society where men dominate. I can give examples of women whom I have known, whose position in relation to men has been inferior yet whose ability in terms of intellect and understanding has been superior to the men placed over them. Our Society is full of contradictions. My experiences are different to those who have a different experience. Many people look back on their early family life and find it very different to mine. Life is a complex matter. Many factors affect how one views our own lives and that of others. Much of my reading this year has been concerned with these matters. I am grateful to my granddaughters who have helped guide my thinking on these matters. In all my reading this year nothing has changed my belief that the fundamental problem we face is the economic structure that determines, overwhelmingly in the end, the lives that we lead. Biological issues also have an impact on an individual level. Until we change that economic structures we will not resolve these problems. There in lies our dilemma. The simple solution to this dilemma is the belief that what is needed is a revolution in which the class of people, who operate but do not own or control the means of production, take over those means of production and remove the capitalist class. That is true, but how do we reach the point where that is possible? Do we even believe that it is possible? In recent times we have seen a strike wave, which was hailed as ‘the return of class war’. But this affected only sections of the working class and, despite what victories that were achieved, the standard of living of working people continues to decline and the growth of the far right continues apace. I do not want to give the impression of pessimism. I believe in and have faith in my class. I have always believed that the quality, strength, understanding of the working class is superior to that of the ruling class and indeed of the middle class. What they have lacked is the collective understanding of their power to change things. There is a reason for this. It is not what Lenin implied when he made the comments about ‘no ideas coming from the working class, but that ideas had to be taken to them’. It is this idea, in a different form, that governs much of the activity of the left at the present time. As we recognise the danger of the Reform Party, with it’s far right and neo fascist views, we seek ways to combat those views. Our approach is as anti racists. We are convinced that the appeal of the far right is due to the fact that the working class are adversely affected by the propaganda coming from the main media that immigration is the problem and that it has led to all the other problems that working people are facing. We believe that we have to tackle the issue of racism head on by challenging these ideas and telling the working class that they are wrong to blame their problems on those people of different colour in their midst. I believe that we are right to oppose racism in all its forms and to oppose fascists whenever they seek to march on our streets. I support Stand up to Racism and am utterly opposed to the actions of Israel regarding their activities in Gaza, on the West Bank, in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. I am opposed to the Zionist State of Israel, but I value the role that many Jewish people have played, not least in developing the ideas of socialism and communism. Where I do believe we have gone wrong is in our attitude to the working class. Two factors bear this out. First, all of the political parties in this country of whatever shade, from the extreme right to the extreme left, are led by people who can only be described as ‘the new middle class’, that section of the working class who have benefited materially in a way which the majority of the working class have not. In saying this, I am implying that their interests are different from those of the majority of working people. We live in a literate society, the only knowledge we accept is the written word. The practical knowledge, diverse, different and of value, possessed by large numbers of the population, workers by hand as opposed to workers by brain, is largely ignored. We assume that these workers are completely influenced by outside, literate, factors and that they are unable to reach their own conclusions. Thus minded, we approach the problem from the wrong direction. One fact that we ignore is the basic fact of biology, that we are all animals. Animals have basic needs: food, shelter, companionship. These are fundamental. In our modern society there are far too many people who are denied these basic requirements. These requirements can be extended and involve the whole of what we call social welfare. Unless we address these requirements, and are seen to be doing so, everything that we say or do is of no consequence. The basic situation is very neatly summed up by a Railway Engineer, Gareth Denis in his book ‘How the railways will fix the future. I quote: [please forgive the use of a certain word, it is not one I would normally use, but the whole paragraph fits what I want to say] ‘Our last sleight of hand is a fun one. It’s the “AM versus FM” ploy: that’s “Actual Machines” versus “Fucking Magic”. Public transport, real engineering, vehicles, in short anything that actually exists has to do so within the AM world: it’s messy, it’s full of compromises and it costs money up front to get it to work. Meanwhile, in the world of politics and tech utopianism, it is very easy to get proposals that are decidedly fictional pretty far along. This is true across policy domains — in the UK, there is political agreement across both main parties that, rather than address the chronic underfunding of social care, which is applying enormous pressures to the National Health Service, it is in fact “reform, innovation and artificial intelligence” that will reverse the upward trend in waiting times and the haemorrhaging of staff. This is Fucking Magic. The same applies to climate solutions that include any form of carbon scraping from the atmosphere — it sounds like a wonder solution, because it is Fucking Magic. Likewise any plan for the future of transport that relies solely on the conversion of all road vehicles from internal combustion to battery electricity: Fucking Magic’ (page 82-3). There is no doubt, that as Marx said, the dominant ideas of any society are the ideas of the dominant class. The working class are affected by the views of racism and such like of the ruling class. But I do not believe that the vast majority of the working class are racist. My experience has always been that people accept other people as they are, as long as they are consistent and return respect for respect. They are able to judge their own circumstances. They understand their own struggles. The fact that 40% of people (largely working class) take no part in the democratic process ( membership of political parties, elections, demonstrations, union activity) reflects their experience that such activity is of no avail, it is not related to their basic needs. There are problems with housing, education, transport, health. These are not due to immigration but to the lack of investment and, more importantly from a lack of concern shown by Governments. The answer is AM not FM! We have to pose the real answers to these real problems. Simply opposing racism and preaching revolution is not a realistic solution. We have to get our hands dirty and be involved in the bread and butter issues that affect each and everyone of us, we cannot stand on the side lines preaching, This does not make us reformists. By standing shoulder to shoulder with our class in all of their needs, challenging any false ideas they may have, but identifying ourselves with them and being identified by them as part of their communities, we rebuild the solidarity that once existed to a greater extent than it does now. In this way we will all, the active left and the, at present, inactive but repressed majority, will see the need for a complete transformation of society. Then the working class united will not only be not defeated but will eventually be victorious. Scribar