Recently, at a celebrity-studded publishing party, I met a beautiful busty blonde who looked as though she had just stepped off the cover of Playboy magazine. “Are you a model?” I asked. “No,” she purred, “I’m a Marxist.”
Later that evening she said: “Would you like to come up to my place and see my collection of Marxist literature?” I thought she was joking – until, back at her flat, she took me by the hand, led me to her bedroom and showed me her secret passion: 40 volumes of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was when she began to explain the intricacies of dialectical materialism that I made my excuses and left.
I was telling a friend about my strange Marxist encounter when he told me his. In May he had attended a private meeting of about 50 British academics at King’s College, Cambridge to discuss the events of May 1968. (King’s had been a hotbed of Marxist agitation and student radicalism in 1968.) My friend was shocked to find among the group a collection of hardcore, unrepentant believers whom he dubbed “the time-warp Trots”. “‘They were all old, but still had that scruffy student dress sense and scraggily beards, just like in ’68,” he said. “One poor bloke was banging on about the revolution as if it was still actually happening.”
I was surprised to hear this, for I was under the impression that Marxists were the lost tribe of British politics. Once a proud and mighty people, they had been wiped out by the virus of neo-liberalism in the 1980s.
But the marginalised and melancholic Marxists of yesterday are feeling very upbeat today. Why? It’s the economy, stupid – or should that be the stupid economy of capitalism? The credit crunch, the decline in the housing market, the Northern Rock crisis, the rising cost of fuel and food, the spectre of recession, inflation and high unemployment have highlighted crucial flaws – to their eyes – in the free market.
Even among sections of the conservative-minded middle class one hears the kind of language and anticapitalist sentiments once found only in Marxist circles. At dinner parties there is resentful talk about City “fat cats”, the “ridiculous” sums earned by venture capitalists and the growing inequalities of wealth.
Could it be that the Marxists are ready to make a comeback? This may sound like an absurd suggestion, but there was a time in the 1950s when the free-market philosophers – Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek et al – were considered to be a spent force. Then the postwar consensus with its belief in welfare capitalism collapsed in 1979 and the winter of discontent and those thinkers made a dramatic return in the 1980s.
A good place to see the current state of British Marxism is the annual Marxist “festival of resistance” that takes place in London. It has become the radical left’s very own Glastonbury, a place where Marxists can plan revolution and let their hair down. Organised by the Socialist Workers party (SWP), it’s a five-day think fest featuring 200 debates and events. You can discuss everything from Marx’s theory of capitalist accumulation to “queer theory”.
I went to the very first Marxist festival back in 1977, more out of curiosity than any real conviction. At that time lefties seemed to be the chosen people; Vanessa Redgrave was the poster girl of revolutionary politics. I was an idealist looking for a Big Idea and Marxism seemed to offer that. So I was curious to see how things had changed in more than 30 years: back then Marxism was in its heyday, at least among a generation of young intellectuals and academics. It was the era when sociology ruled the humanities and pot, radical politics and sexual promiscuity were all the rage – or so Malcolm Bradbury’s 1975 novel The History Man suggested.
Set in a fictitious university in 1972, Bradbury’s novel tells the story of the trendy and faddish Marxist sociologist Howard Kirk – self-appointed champion of the oppressed and the campus lothario. To many on the right, Bradbury’s novel was proof that Marxist academics were subverting the minds of the young.
But the power and prestige of Marxism quickly faded as the Kirk generation grew older and gave up dreams of revolution for careers in academia. Then came the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself in 1991. Marxism was officially dead and Francis Fukuyama, in his book The End of History and the Last Man, claimed that liberal capitalism had won the great ideological battle. So when I arrived at the opening session of the Marxism 2008 festival I expected to find only a dozen ancient Marxists raising arthritic fists as speakers denounced the evils of capitalism.
But no. The opening rally – at the central hall of the Friends Meeting House – was packed with more than 2,000 people. The audience was a mix of young and old; mature Marxist puritans from the public sector unions and punky and pierced antiglobal protester types. From all over the country they came, clutching sleeping bags, babies and their programmes to hear the likes of Tony Benn and Tariq Ali denounce capitalism.
Across walls and balconies were colour-ful banners bearing such slogans as “People, not profits” and “Renationalise now”. At one point the crowd broke out into a loud and spontaneous chant of “The workers, united, will never be defeated!” It was like stepping back in time and hearing the true believers of a forgotten faith.
The mood of the festival this year was optimistic. After all, there’s nothing like a crisis of capitalism to gladden the heart of a heartless Marxist who has been waiting for the return of class war since the winter of discontent. Tony – a lifelong trade union activist – was an old-fashioned Trot “and bloody proud of it” he told me with a smile. He was rejoicing that the Marxists’ moment had come. “The present crisis is a vindication of what we’ve been telling people for decades – capitalism is unfair and it doesn’t bloody work.” continues here
Did they ever go away, the Marxists those most reprehensible of creatures, on a par with avaricious capitalists, both seek to exploit and both undermine, each a virus with only one known cure, nationalism. Yet nationalism at least for here, for now, is a spent force, hidden, cards held tight to chest, anger tempered and words well measured, it is not in ones interest to declare ones views, not in this environment, not whilst the thought police prowl and the ever watchful eye observes. No far better to remain in the shadows well away from the citadels of power, impotent and raging, we have not the moral authority of Marxism nor the glamour, we cannot claim the throne of internationalism, cannot pretend at humanity, compassion nor intellect. You see they have that, they have taught their message well and the students have learned, the gifted young fight us in the lefts name, till common sense prevails or age steps in.
To them, we of the right are lacking in intellect, without compassion and devoid of moral authority, again truth has been turned on its head and the children believe, they live convinced, that the right feverishly sketch plans for camps whilst fashioning yellow stars with scissors, meanwhile in the background, an oven warms. Money brings out the Marxist self-loathing its cue, whilst others steeled in poverty bathe in glowing envy, each adopt their cause through difference one easily swayed, the other a harder case. Both are used, foot soldiers of evil, pressed into action by a creed of malignancy, Marxism uses, it is all it is good at, when use is served, on to another grievance stricken soul, another tumbling round and round in a universe of anger. Then onto humanity and Marxism’s defence, friend to all in furtherance of its aims, defender of the weak until the strong are conquered, passion of the thinker till re-education kills, ally of the worker until slavery wins through, advocate of freedom until the gulags are built, such a well-loved fraud, a predator disguised, a belief adopted by the fool.
Fools they are with their egalitarian stupidities, their fair-trade consumables and their stricken consciences, how stricken, as they stand before the wall, looking then upon the true face of the left, how stricken, as they watch the people toil beneath the glaring state, how stricken as they peer through the wire, or tap on pipes in hope of response. How stricken, as despair grips their heart and they long for deaths embrace, as their stupid dreams of utopia crack as egg-shells falling finally to reveal truth, as they stare compelled to look but filled with such revulsion, as the malignancy takes the people by the hair of its head and has its way. Some so consumed with evil become it, savouring each tasty morsel of human misery, relishing the power, the job of executioner, sweeping away all thought of god whilst adopting such power as their own, the dead litter history, skulls lay heaped in time, no tongues now to warn us, no voices to plead, just the constant fight against this creed, the constant fight for freedom. 14
Later that evening she said: “Would you like to come up to my place and see my collection of Marxist literature?” I thought she was joking – until, back at her flat, she took me by the hand, led me to her bedroom and showed me her secret passion: 40 volumes of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It was when she began to explain the intricacies of dialectical materialism that I made my excuses and left.
I was telling a friend about my strange Marxist encounter when he told me his. In May he had attended a private meeting of about 50 British academics at King’s College, Cambridge to discuss the events of May 1968. (King’s had been a hotbed of Marxist agitation and student radicalism in 1968.) My friend was shocked to find among the group a collection of hardcore, unrepentant believers whom he dubbed “the time-warp Trots”. “‘They were all old, but still had that scruffy student dress sense and scraggily beards, just like in ’68,” he said. “One poor bloke was banging on about the revolution as if it was still actually happening.”
I was surprised to hear this, for I was under the impression that Marxists were the lost tribe of British politics. Once a proud and mighty people, they had been wiped out by the virus of neo-liberalism in the 1980s.
But the marginalised and melancholic Marxists of yesterday are feeling very upbeat today. Why? It’s the economy, stupid – or should that be the stupid economy of capitalism? The credit crunch, the decline in the housing market, the Northern Rock crisis, the rising cost of fuel and food, the spectre of recession, inflation and high unemployment have highlighted crucial flaws – to their eyes – in the free market.
Even among sections of the conservative-minded middle class one hears the kind of language and anticapitalist sentiments once found only in Marxist circles. At dinner parties there is resentful talk about City “fat cats”, the “ridiculous” sums earned by venture capitalists and the growing inequalities of wealth.
Could it be that the Marxists are ready to make a comeback? This may sound like an absurd suggestion, but there was a time in the 1950s when the free-market philosophers – Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek et al – were considered to be a spent force. Then the postwar consensus with its belief in welfare capitalism collapsed in 1979 and the winter of discontent and those thinkers made a dramatic return in the 1980s.
A good place to see the current state of British Marxism is the annual Marxist “festival of resistance” that takes place in London. It has become the radical left’s very own Glastonbury, a place where Marxists can plan revolution and let their hair down. Organised by the Socialist Workers party (SWP), it’s a five-day think fest featuring 200 debates and events. You can discuss everything from Marx’s theory of capitalist accumulation to “queer theory”.
I went to the very first Marxist festival back in 1977, more out of curiosity than any real conviction. At that time lefties seemed to be the chosen people; Vanessa Redgrave was the poster girl of revolutionary politics. I was an idealist looking for a Big Idea and Marxism seemed to offer that. So I was curious to see how things had changed in more than 30 years: back then Marxism was in its heyday, at least among a generation of young intellectuals and academics. It was the era when sociology ruled the humanities and pot, radical politics and sexual promiscuity were all the rage – or so Malcolm Bradbury’s 1975 novel The History Man suggested.
Set in a fictitious university in 1972, Bradbury’s novel tells the story of the trendy and faddish Marxist sociologist Howard Kirk – self-appointed champion of the oppressed and the campus lothario. To many on the right, Bradbury’s novel was proof that Marxist academics were subverting the minds of the young.
But the power and prestige of Marxism quickly faded as the Kirk generation grew older and gave up dreams of revolution for careers in academia. Then came the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself in 1991. Marxism was officially dead and Francis Fukuyama, in his book The End of History and the Last Man, claimed that liberal capitalism had won the great ideological battle. So when I arrived at the opening session of the Marxism 2008 festival I expected to find only a dozen ancient Marxists raising arthritic fists as speakers denounced the evils of capitalism.
But no. The opening rally – at the central hall of the Friends Meeting House – was packed with more than 2,000 people. The audience was a mix of young and old; mature Marxist puritans from the public sector unions and punky and pierced antiglobal protester types. From all over the country they came, clutching sleeping bags, babies and their programmes to hear the likes of Tony Benn and Tariq Ali denounce capitalism.
Across walls and balconies were colour-ful banners bearing such slogans as “People, not profits” and “Renationalise now”. At one point the crowd broke out into a loud and spontaneous chant of “The workers, united, will never be defeated!” It was like stepping back in time and hearing the true believers of a forgotten faith.
The mood of the festival this year was optimistic. After all, there’s nothing like a crisis of capitalism to gladden the heart of a heartless Marxist who has been waiting for the return of class war since the winter of discontent. Tony – a lifelong trade union activist – was an old-fashioned Trot “and bloody proud of it” he told me with a smile. He was rejoicing that the Marxists’ moment had come. “The present crisis is a vindication of what we’ve been telling people for decades – capitalism is unfair and it doesn’t bloody work.” continues here
Did they ever go away, the Marxists those most reprehensible of creatures, on a par with avaricious capitalists, both seek to exploit and both undermine, each a virus with only one known cure, nationalism. Yet nationalism at least for here, for now, is a spent force, hidden, cards held tight to chest, anger tempered and words well measured, it is not in ones interest to declare ones views, not in this environment, not whilst the thought police prowl and the ever watchful eye observes. No far better to remain in the shadows well away from the citadels of power, impotent and raging, we have not the moral authority of Marxism nor the glamour, we cannot claim the throne of internationalism, cannot pretend at humanity, compassion nor intellect. You see they have that, they have taught their message well and the students have learned, the gifted young fight us in the lefts name, till common sense prevails or age steps in.
To them, we of the right are lacking in intellect, without compassion and devoid of moral authority, again truth has been turned on its head and the children believe, they live convinced, that the right feverishly sketch plans for camps whilst fashioning yellow stars with scissors, meanwhile in the background, an oven warms. Money brings out the Marxist self-loathing its cue, whilst others steeled in poverty bathe in glowing envy, each adopt their cause through difference one easily swayed, the other a harder case. Both are used, foot soldiers of evil, pressed into action by a creed of malignancy, Marxism uses, it is all it is good at, when use is served, on to another grievance stricken soul, another tumbling round and round in a universe of anger. Then onto humanity and Marxism’s defence, friend to all in furtherance of its aims, defender of the weak until the strong are conquered, passion of the thinker till re-education kills, ally of the worker until slavery wins through, advocate of freedom until the gulags are built, such a well-loved fraud, a predator disguised, a belief adopted by the fool.
Fools they are with their egalitarian stupidities, their fair-trade consumables and their stricken consciences, how stricken, as they stand before the wall, looking then upon the true face of the left, how stricken, as they watch the people toil beneath the glaring state, how stricken as they peer through the wire, or tap on pipes in hope of response. How stricken, as despair grips their heart and they long for deaths embrace, as their stupid dreams of utopia crack as egg-shells falling finally to reveal truth, as they stare compelled to look but filled with such revulsion, as the malignancy takes the people by the hair of its head and has its way. Some so consumed with evil become it, savouring each tasty morsel of human misery, relishing the power, the job of executioner, sweeping away all thought of god whilst adopting such power as their own, the dead litter history, skulls lay heaped in time, no tongues now to warn us, no voices to plead, just the constant fight against this creed, the constant fight for freedom. 14
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