I should have mentioned it before but a passage from Reidski's recent blog on the Gang of Four got me thinking big time:
"Well, I came to my keyboard and came to my computer a few times up til now to write something about it, but I just couldn't. Not cos it was so totally mindblowing or that I went into some sort of weird psychotic episode about this being the "gig of my life" or anything like that. But, rather, I just didn't know what to write."
Maybe I'm reading too much into it but it is what I've been increasingly thinking about when trying to update this blog. The original reason for starting this blog was to get in the habit of writing regularly, to develop a discipline for it and it was also supposed to be specifically about politics but as time has gone on, and it is self evident from anyone who reads more that a few pages of this stuff, that the political commentary has become increasingly rare of late and has been much too frivilous and shallow in nature.
What does this all mean? It can be interpreted in a number of ways, and I'm not sure at this point myself to properly pinpoint it exactly. There are times when I talk about nothing but politics - sometimes hours on end - that will touch on current affairs, history, economics and philosophy but you would never glean that from reading this blog recently. Am I burn out politically? Have I just become too jaded by it all? I think about this increasingly, examining why I got into politics in the first place and whether or not I've just reached the stage where I am now just going through the motions, mouthing the old platitudes and falling back on stuff that I had read in the past, old verities and secondhand rhetoric (even the language in this post is an expression of that).
And then I think: of course I feel this way. It's understandable. I've placed myself in a rut these last few years and those things that first got me interested in politics, that got my impassioned, angry and motivated to do what small part I could do to contribute to the popularisation of socialist ideas were put to one side for the bullshit of attending meetings that no one is interested in attending, writing reports and minutes that are nothing more than sawdust prose on the page and just a case of going through the motions. Half recognising that people coming into contact with our ideas can smell that stench of political defeat and failure a mile off, and knowing that in the short turn there is fuck all one can do about it. It doesn't matter how many leaflets are delivered, how many meetings are attended and how many marches are gone on that sense of impotence pervades at every turn. Becoming a sad karaoke version of some vanguardist who waits patiently for the upturn whilst thumbing through their old copy of State and Revolution. Impossibilists don't have the false succour of failing back of the self-delusion of the Generals Without Armies who kid themselves on that their dance card will soon be full with the working class wanting them to engage in the revolutionary two step.
I'm all too aware that the political burn out is coupled with my personal burn out. A friend recently perceptively noted that there was little about myself on this blog, and getting back to Reidski (you owe me a pint for everytime I've mentioned you today ;-), I replied that they were right and that the best blogs like Reidski were able to couple the personal and the public. In my usual lame arse way, I mentioned that I would seek to shift the blog in that direction but part of me knew that I couldn't at this point because I knew that it would result in a blog that would be a variation on this post. Pissed off, wondering what to do and where to go next with things.
I just know that I have to break out this rut, to stop being bored with myself and that means many changes. Does that mean I junk the politics? No, fuck that would be the equivalent of amputating a limb. I still have the same anger in my belly from the time that first made me a socialist but I know that I have been my own worse enemy these last few years. But I also know my politics are all in the air at the moment: Not a rejection of the politics I hold, just a realisation that they have become too stale, and if you want to become all pretentious about it, it has resulted in me being one of those types that Vanneigm was referring to when he wrote: "Those who speak of revolution without everyday life have a corpse in their mouth."
I need to sort things out.
Sorry if anyone reading this has reached that the conclusion that this is let more than a self-piting whinge. I hold my hands up to the solipcism but that is characterstic of the rut I'm in. This is just a rant to get this shit out of my system - there are no links, no puns and no lame jokes in place in this post. It's been written off the cuff, and I'm not backtracking to check for spelling mistakes, repetition or the clumsily constructed phrase. I know that they will be there.
Keep smiling ;-)
7 comments:
Join me in the campaign of the left who hate the left!
Hey Reidski,
Don't mind me. I was just having one of my periodic rantathons. The only difference this time is that I blogged it rather than muttered it under my breath. ;-)
Just need to get my head sorted.
We live in fucked up times, Darren. You're not the only one who needs to examine, re-examine and analyse their personal lives and political beliefs. Some of us have been doing it for years.
So take it easy, have a pint and sell those newspapers!
Darren--
Couldn't agree more with what Reidski says. I've been going through the same process of re- and self-examination (urgh) myself in recent years, especially as it became increasingly clear to me that the old shibboleths simply were either not true or not applicable. It got me reading Castoriadis, Gorz, Autonomistas, and made me realize what they realized 30 or 40 years ago, namely that the Marxist parties have lost the plot and that the rules of the game have not only changed, they never were what we thought they were in the first place.
Much of the time I don't know what I think anymore, but I also find it invigorating to think the unthinkable, break off a few mental shackles, and ponder a few 'what ifs'. Hasn't made me any less of a socialist, just one more sceptical of any party line.
Now if you really want to get depressed, check out Norm's 100 greatest songs of all time. Not a Go4 track amongst em.
Hello John and Reidski,
Thanks for the considered words. I guess the post was more a rant against myself than the politics I hold. As I mentioned, it's a case of me in recent years losing sight of what politicised in my first place and putting to one side those political activities that I've always enjoyed and considered important in the mistaken belief that admininstration/bureaucracy was somehow more important in the great scheme of things.
The retreat into administration, or just going through the motions in recent years is kind of understandable for the SPGB. It's never been an organisation that has subscribed to the view that hyper-activism will somehow make things right - "just sell enough papers and the upturn will come". Always found it weird that the groups who have berated us down the years for being undialectical or lacking in praxis have always fallen back on the belief that if they fill out enough bogus petitions; pass enough strongly worded resolutions at inquorate union branch meetings and sell their quota of papers, then somehow that will propel things back on some revolutionary path. ;-)
I used to get into heated discussions with old comrades who would explain that in these difficult times all we can do is seek to keep the ideas alive: Waiting for a time when people would show interest again in greater numbers. I always thought it was an attitude that smacked of defeat and desperation, and which would serve little or no purpose in making socialist ideas attractive to people coming into contact with the ideas for the first time in such a difficult period. "Sorry, you're a bit early for the upturn, but if you grab yourself a seat, I'll bring you a cup of tea and a biscuit and we can wait for it together." Gives a whole new meaning to 'socialism in an age of waiting' ;-)
It's a bitter irony but the greatest single event in recent years to affect the fortunes of the political tradition I subscribe to - I'm calling it impossibilism, 'world socialism' gets on my nerves - was the tearing down of the Berlin Wall: what with the SPGB being one part of that very small contingent of groups that from the very onset criticised the Bolshevik Revolution and all that came after it from a revolutionary socialist standpoint.
I take your point about examining old shibboleths, but I guess that my worry in looking too closely at the shibboleths that I've always held central to my politics would result in my junking politics full stop. I mean by this my commitment to a majoritarian view of socialist revolution, and a rejection of any notion of leadership. That was what initially attracted me to the SPGB politics all those years ago, and what I still subscribe to today. I've was never one of those lefty types that had a rose tinted spectacle view of the working class and blamed everything on the wrong leadership (you know the type), and I don't now want to go down the road of doing what I've seen a few politicos doing of blaming the working class for the failure in the growth in socialist ideas (Tressell hit the nail on the bastard head all those years ago with that scene from the RTP, where the former socialist propagandist lets rip with his dismissal and contempt for the working class for failing to take up the ideas.)
So I have a rant and a moan against myself instead ;-), knowing that I will be moaning against something completey different tomorrow. Today's moan is why the second series of Shameless is such a bastard let down - I loved the first series. What the hell happened? ;-)
I take on board your point about writers such as Gorz and Castoriadas (I preferred when he called himself Paul Cardan - it's easier to spell), and the need to read those writers and other writers, and to compare and contrast your views with changing events. Would you be surprised to know that the average SPGB member has always been up for for reading different traditions, and considering those viewpoints in contrast to our own? I know that from the outside looking in, the SPGB has this monolithic image, and some members down the years have even basked in the daft notion of 'ourselves alone', rejecting out of hand any ideas or individual that doesn't come pre-packed with the Declaration of Principles tattoed on their arse, but ideas are always being discussed. We are own worse enemy at times in letting other people know that. Maybe that will get turned around, maybe not but as I'm just rambling for the sake of it now I'll sign off by saying that time will tell. ;-)
Darren--
doesn't surprise me at all that SPGBers read dissident material. I always got on well with them in Manchester when I lived there, despite my anarchist loyalties. What struck me about such reading, though, was that I had to re-read Castoriadis twice, with a gap of 15 years in between, before I was genuinely open to his ideas. I just think that at different times of your life you can be more or less receptive to alternatives, just because, you might, for instance, have less emotional investment in seeing the world in a particular way. It became less important for me to score points against various Trots when I came to the conclusion that the Labour Theory of Value was both unverifiable and pretty much illusory. It didn't mean I abandoned socialism, but it did mean I looked at non-Marxist left theorists in a new light and gave them more time to convince me.
Anyhoo, it can help stave off depression when you see things in a broader way, in terms of the sweep of history and so on, instead of petty squabbles.
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