Collectivism? - 1 comment
Via Stumbling and Mumbling, wherein you will find (as usual) a fine selection of recent posts, I discovered an interesting article from Potlatch, a blog I don't think I've happened upon more than once or twice.
Apparently, Soundings magazine is currently hosting an online debate called Left Futures, organised around a series of article-blogposts. Sounds great. Potlatch's contribution is entitled What does free market collectivism mean for the left?, challenging the collectivist left to explain the appeal of individualism, and to justify the idea that collectivism can be judged (how?, when?) superior to individualism, without some particular, stated ethical or political goal.
Political discussion certainly would be more interesting, and less divisive, if we all thought about fracturing 'left' and 'right' into, at the very least, and for example:
- Free-market/Non-free-market
- Capitalist/Anti-capitalist
- Individualist/Collectivist
I wonder: is the contemporary 'collectivism' of 'shared national vision' any substitute for the collectivism of the pre-industrial village, the terraced street, or the pre-Thatcher trade union? Building communities from scratch is hard: is it possible to construct them (without extensive individual rights) outside of deprivation or oppression? Are nationalism and regionalism the communities of last resort? How comfortable can the political left be on this territory, and how much more careful should it be to protect the individual rights of those who have, throughout the ages, been terrorised within groups they cannot escape because of their difference, or refusal to conform? And if the left of 2007 has moved on from the left of 1967, can collectivism be any more than a buzzword?
Labels: Collectivism, Individualism, The Left
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1 comment so far...
The "decent left" has moved on from the biggest form of collectivism and has embraced Thatcherism in a massive way - NAtionalisation is the elephant in the collectivist room.
Everyone is a stake holder and the price of the good or service recieved reflects that of cost plus upkeep.
After the Macro-Thatchernomics were embraced by New Labour that was very very very old hat indeed -they did not reverse failed privatisations and they privatised more (PPP on the tube and Air Traffic COntrol in the first term). Collectivism has become a filthy word in the upper echelons of what passes for the Economic left of center these days - and the baby has gone out with the bath water to a super-massive degree. In running desperately from non-profitable enterprises and non-corporate model entities Blair/Brown have lost what was possibly the greatest remianing hope for community in this country - time unions or local labour credit schemes.
I remember studying models of these schemes in the mid-nineties (under a conservative government) these things had sprung up on small scaels in different areas around the country and i remember a level of buzz around the theory. It could have sprung from desperation about the neglect felt by innercities from the Tories - and then subsided again once Labour got in promising various new forms of social equity and justice.
THat has fizzled out miserably - the gap between rich and poor in this country is worse than almost any Westren NAtion and rising faster than any aswell. It maybe up to the Old Left or the Liberal Democrats to pounce on a localism bandwagon and kick start schemes like this again.
It will not work from the top down, no two communities are identiocal and the amount of paperwork and time required in atracting centralised attention, or even complying with rules from the center are off putting in extremis when the time and money is better spent organising locally.
Time banks will not win an election - and it looks dangerously old hat for the "decent left" who care but like Ruth Kelly or worse the "right-on left" who want to worry more about driving their Porsche Caynnes and running their Polit Buro residents groups in middle class ghettos (i see it every day).
It is upto individual communities at the very bottom to organise (with poking and prodding) baby sitting shares, car pools, time credits and the like - because otherwise the only effort going on in most communities will be to stop a mobile phone mast or try and keep property prices up
W
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