ACFM - #ACFM Trip: Unity and Difference

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

In the first #ACFM Trip of the year, Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn look at the conflicting desires and demands that make up a political movement. Is unity possible? Is coalition desirable? Do we need to agree in order to win? The gang discuss the difference between liberal and radical conceptions of identity […]

Hello and welcome back to OCFM with our first trip of 2022. This is producer Matt with your semi-regular reminder about music on the show. As you know, we love music and it's a really important part of what we're doing here in ACFM. But due to licensing laws, we're only allowed to play 30-second clips from all the tracks we discuss on the show. However, if you stream from the Navarra Media website or from our SoundCloud, you'll have access to a longer show with extended periods of music, as well as audio collages and a whole bunch more. It's truly the heroic dose of ACFM.

We also have a Spotify playlist containing all the music we discussed in the show. There's a link for that in the show notes. But of course, if you want to stay here on your podcast feed, you're still getting all the great discussion from Nadia, Jeremy and Kear. It's up to you.

Okay, enjoy the show. Welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left. I'm Nadia Idol and I'm joined as usual by Jeremy Gilbert. Hello. And Kia Milburn. Hello. And today we're talking about unity and difference. So does someone want to kick us off by telling us off by telling us

us why we've picked this or why you want to talk about it at this moment? Well, one of the reasons we'd want to talk about unity is, as we're recording, it's just gone to two-year anniversary of the 2019 general election in which this sort of sense of unity that came about via Corbynism got smashed. It's a good time to think about what was the unity that was developed around Corbinism, and that sort of unity meant that lots of different strands of the of the UK left gained a sense of unity for a common purpose I think so it'd be useful to think about that but it's also true that in the current state two years on the that sense of a united left has fractured to some degree and lots of differences have come out and so I think it's useful for us to talk about you know how do we understand those differences on a more abstract level or how do we think about difference and its relationship to unity

upon what basis can you get some sort of unity? What basis should we try to form a unity? And how can we understand the sort of differences that appear in the country and in the left at the moment? I think that's sort of like the opening gambit or the problem that we want to address. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think what's interesting about what you just said, Keir, and maybe this is too meta for this episode. but I'd like to tackle this, about whether how we measure that unity, as in, is this something where we, you know, can look at certain, you know, belief systems or values or points of action or mobilizations and say, okay, that looks like it's a united left, or is it the perception of unity that matters? And that's something that, you know, is interesting to talk about in terms of Corbinism? Like, is it the fact that people feel like they're part of the United Left, whether or not that left is actually united or not, if you see what I mean? So I guess

I'm interested in that, the difference between whether it's something measurable or it's something that is perceived. Yeah, well, I think the idea of something whether like unity could be measurable, that's another way of putting that question of upon what axis would that unity be formed. What would that unity look like? Would it be unity as in we all sort of start to adopt the same sort of identities, the same sort of outlook? Would it be unity based on, you know, some sort of idea of a common strategy? And so that relates to, you know, what are the benefits and negatives of different types of like unity or like a united left? So one of the one of the reasons people want to feel as though there is some sort of left unity is that the idea that we're

all pulling up in a similar direction. So that sense that there's that that sense of perception that there's unity that gives things such as motivation basically. But it also gives things such as a certain level of discipline where where people will sort of follow a common path rather than just just pursue politics in a sort of expressive way where they just want to express what they feel. I'm not really sure what form of unity was formed around Corbinism. There was certainly lots of expressive politics that emerged. You know, I think in the sort of like the unifying moment of Corbinism, I do think it was related to not so much a sort of shared strategy, but a shared sense of a shared opportunity, something like that. Yeah, totally. So I'm, I would,

I was going to say I dig this idea. I don't know why that am. Americanism came to me right there. But I like that idea of more, I guess, that that would be something that I would believe to be true, a shared opportunity or a shared event. I'm really big on events and tipping points. And I like to be challenged on that. But I tend to fall back into that viewpoint, that it is like an event or an opportunity, you know, or an election or a moment or a deadline that gets people to kind of rally behind something whether or not that is the entirety of their vision of the outcome or not, if you should I mean?

So it might be that, for example, with Corbinism, there are people who really believed electing Corbyn would absolutely bring socialism and that would be it. They can just go home. Or other people that thought it was a stepping stone or other people that thought, you know, why not? And other people that didn't really know necessarily why, but they went along for the ride because it felt like the right thing to do at the time.

So I tend to think that it's because of opportunity. On the flip side of that, I tend to get quite a bad or a negative reaction from people calling for unity. I think once you call for unity, you've kind of lost it. Do you know what I mean? And I don't know. It's a certain kind of left-wing actor, I guess, that says, we must have unity. unity is needed and I just think, fuck off. And I have that reaction, even though, you know, like I like the idea of a shared strategy and a shared movement. I'm very pro that.

But there's something about calls for unity that feels quite artificial. That's my opening gambit. Yeah, well, I mean, that's been an argument going back to the 19th century. I mean, that was one of the fundamental divisions in the socialist movement was over the question of who, what does it mean when unity is called for? Is it a necessary discipline for revolutionary struggle? Or is it an incipian form of authoritarianism, which has to be not necessarily always resisted, but always has to be treated with extreme skepticism?

That's one of the basic differences between the anarchist and communist wings of the socialist movement historically. So, yeah, it's a really, and it's an issue that crops up again and again, intervening period. I think you're right about Corbynism. I mean, I think, I mean, for me, it's quite simple.

There's quite simple what was going on with Corbinism and with the Bernie Sanders movement in the States is there was, I mean, everything you guys have said is true. And also, there was just, there was a very clearly defined short-term goal, which was to try to get those guys elected. And lots of people were able to agree on, at least on the value, and urgency of participating, you know, of working towards that goal.

On the other hand, there was that also necessarily sort of, you know, that meant suspending in practice a whole massive set of analytical and arguably ideological differences over a whole range of things, including like just the question of how likely that goal was actually to be achieved. Yeah, totally. And also, and what it would mean if it was achieved and the means by which it could be achieved. But the fact that there was at least a kind of shared goal meant that there was an agreed-upon set of a shared goal. And it sort of, and it was, I think it is useful. I think it is

a useful historic example because I think it is, you know, it was a, the goal of electing those guys around their programmes, it was able to bring together a set of different sections of the left who, for the previous few decades, had not really been able to agree with each other on whether a desirable short to medium term objective was like total revolution or the abolition of capitalism or just sort of mild restoration of social democracy and somehow a programme sort of emerged which was somewhere along that continuum and in a good place to appeal to and to inspire like quite a broad range of groups and actors and I think that was really important to achieving that sort of unity in action.

I mean, there's a strong sense that that unity has been lost. And, you know, we were talking just before we recorded about this article, just published by Katrina Forrester, where she talks about the conceptions informing Corbinism of like what was the condition of unity for Corbinism. And I think we could talk about that. My own sense is also a little bit that a lot of people, especially people relatively new to engaging in left politics,

I think have a sort of exaggerated sense now of the level of disunity in the wake of Corbinism. You know, at least on social media, you see a lot of this kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth about how it's all fallen apart and nobody agrees about anything, blah, blah, blah. And all those disagreements were always there. And until some common objective reemerges, they're going to be there. And they're going to be the thing people are talking about. So I wonder what we think about, I mean, do we think we're now living through a moment of unusual disunity or what?

Well, I mean, I agree where I think you're coming from with that, Gem, because it's what we're suffering from is an inability to, it's like Corbinist melancholy or something, an inability to move on from the debates around the sort of like 2018 and 2019 debates around Corbinism. And the reason we can't do that is because it's been very hard for anything new to emerge just because of the conditions of COVID and also just that the, you know, the Labour right have been pretty fanatically anti-left.

There's not been an ability to sort of like put those sorts of internal labour debates within their proper box, if you know what I mean, because it's just continual attack after attack. I think it's probably reached the stage now, which those sorts of, you know, the Labour right is so hanging out there. But I think, you know, the question of the Labour Party will recede for a little bit, which I think it probably needs to. It needs to recede so that other sorts of strategies can sort of emerge, I think. I just want to return back to that Katrina Forrester article, because I think that might help us to think through this idea of,

are we living through a period of real disunity? So the title of that article was, by leaps or by federation, two paths to left unity. And the sort of general argument is that that Corbinism was seen as this. this ability to leap over all of the sort of movement building and even party building sort of activity that you would need to do in order to have a viable chance at alter in the world. And there was just this opportunity that was presented and people tried to leap over what you'd normally have to do in order to sort of achieve something basically.

And that basically the opportunities that just seemed possible that opened up both in a UK and a US, it basically seemed a worthwhile strategic wager for a lot of. of different people, I think, to reframe the way that they were seeing the world and to have a go, to try to participate in that. I think that reframing the way they see the world is important, though, because I don't think it leaves us in the same place as it was before 2015, etc. But what Katrina Forrester says, or her argument, is that the conditions for unity were the fact that there were almost annual campaigns, basically, either elections or defences of Corbyn from another leadership attack, right? And those sorts of almost annual campaigns were the sort of, those are the moments where, in fact, there was like another great leap thing.

You know, everybody had to join in for this urgent task. And that urgent task formed a sense of unity. The other thing that formed that unity was Momentum's digital platforms, right? You know, the get out of the vote or the organizing, my nearest marginal app. or the instructions for voting at Labour Party Conference, etc. You know, that meant that you could have a moment of unity but without the structures of a political party whereby you'd have you'd be able to think through these things, etc.

And then the other thing that Forrester points out, the sort of condition of unity was the policy platform that got put together in 2017, even more in 2019, which sort of did seem to speak to contemporary Britain, basically. It pulled in from quite a wide range of these new intellectual sort of institutions and managed to form a sense of unity around the fact that it spoke to the contemporary conditions of the UK. The problem with that is, and as Paola Gabado sort of talks about in his book on digital parties, he says, look, this is a momentum was a digital party, right, as in, you know, it was held together,

a little bit like the five-star movement in Italy and other examples of digital parties, it holds things together through these sort of, these sort of meta, sort of digital tools, etc. It can produce a form of, you can produce mobilisation. But what it does, the difference between like a normal part is it doesn't build up that sort of shared analysis and it doesn't build up that sort of,

it doesn't produce cadre basically, that sort of like middle layer. You have leaders, you have the bottom layer, but you don't have these sort of like movement card rays or party card raise. And so once the conditions of, like, you know, there are no new campaigns by Corbinism. It's been really hard to generate that. Therefore, the sort of digital platforms that Momentum put together have no real purpose to them. And, you know, there's, there seems little point putting together a new policy platform at the moment,

or that's how it seemed over the last two years, because there's no chance of getting them instituted. And so those conditions of possibility for carbonism fall away. And therefore, you know, the differences that that sense of unity covered over sort of reemerge. But I do think Jem's right. I think they reemerge with a much clearer sense of how political change happens than much clearly more unified sense of what political change happened than in 2015 or the years before that, I think. And I think that will be carried through. You know, I imagine that, like, what will have to happen will be, you know, movements coming much far from the extra-parliamentary sort of wing of the movement.

That will generate the sort of new energy. But basically, the hope is that that will not be detached from any consideration of what we might call institutional politics. Or it won't completely leave behind the sort of image of change or the idea of change that Corbinism is sort of formed. which wasn't just, I think, let's get Corbyn into power and introduce mild social democracy. It was more, you know, let's get Corbyn into power, but at the same time, you know, you'll have momentum, bringing together sort of extra parliamentary movements which will operate to, on order to produce the sort of problems and demands that the policy platform will address and these sorts of things. Desmond Decker Unity Classic like really early reggae

appeal to unity A lot of songs I found I was looking for songs with Unity in Difference There's a lot of stuff about basically black unity during the great period of black liberation struggle from really from sort of 67 to the mid-70s But that Desmond Decker track is very evocative This is the time that we all should live as one bubble

this is the time that we all should live us one sisters so come along brothers and come along sisters UNITY is unity so come along brothers and sisters I've not read both of those pieces but I do I do have a response

I think it's a good question Jeremy And I would agree and say, yes, it is exaggerated. I think the main reason for that is you cannot underestimate the change in people's experience of how they experience the world from people, as in we're talking about the left, like the left, which was involved somehow in the election. people's experience from the end of 2019 to a few months later at the beginning of the pandemic you've gone from meeting people building trust very quickly getting into cabs with strangers all of the canvassing which I think is a major issue I actually in terms of an overriding frame I disagree about I mean I see what the person you're talking about says when saying momentum was a digital party. Like I get the argument that's being made there. And to a certain

extent I agree. But I think in the conditions of Britain post-crisis in late capitalism meant that to be talking to strangers and building alliances and finding new friendships and walking in the street and sharing cabs and being in random people's front rooms was a really kind of imagining the future experience. It was people living. in the way that they, an alternative way of how the future could be made. I mean, I agree about the point about the cadre and the political education, by the way, but notwithstanding, I think that was a really, really big deal to how people felt about life, even though, you know, set from where I'm standing now, like, I honestly don't think I'm ever

going to go canvassing again. But it had it, those memories, I'll never forget that. And I'll never forget all of the people I met and the new friends. I made, et cetera. And then going from that to a few months later, being stuck in your house. And I don't think people, and this is hard to say without coming across as patronizing, but I still think in huge sections of the left, especially people of my age and older, there's a huge underestimation of the effect of digital media on your perception of the world. And I think the effect of the pandemic plus people, you know, communicating with each other via Twitter and Facebook, especially older people, because that's where they are, Twitter and Facebook, gave a completely skewed version of the world, which creates a version of the world which includes lots of difference in conflict. Like it does. I mean, that's what happens. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter and or Facebook, people argue, it's not representative of the real world. And I think coming out of the pandemic,

it's no, I mean, obviously we might, we're very much still in it. But, you know, in those times where we had more freedom and, you know, you're right, people have not been able to organize in any meaningful way compared to beforehand. Obviously, there have been very meaningful stuff that's happened, but because of the pandemic, you know, it can't get off its feet in the same way. But because of that, a lot of people are spending a lot of time online and spending time online fucks with your head. I mean, that is what it does. I know. know we all do it, but it fucks with your head and your view of the world and how united or different people are. So that's what I think about that. Yeah, I'm sure that's right. So I guess

I think we should move on from talking about like Corbinism and its aftermath specifically. I just want to check. I think we all sort of agree. We would we all agree that on a certain scale at least, some types of unity or what we might call unity are required like for any sort of successful political struggle. I mean, I would, the phrase I would probably use is functional unity. In other words, people need to be able to coordinate their actions towards a common objectives. But it's then a very open question whether that functional unity requires like unity or homogeneity around a whole set of other things, like a vision of the future, a concrete program, an analysis of the problem, et cetera. So that's what I'm

proposing, but tell me if you think that as a wrong proposition. Yeah, so I'm, I'd probably agree with that 70%, maybe because I'm kind of, yeah, thinking about all of my organizing theory from back when that was a big part of my life. I guess I'm, I'm thinking that there's a shared understanding of what the end point is in this movement, like whether it's getting Corbyn elected or, you know, like stopping this development in your, this like high-rise building from going up in your local area or like, you know, getting like this corrupt official off your council

or like overthrowing a regime. Like those are all kind of very specific things. And I think it is that shared like everyone's rallying behind that one thing or the event. That's the thing that you need. I think a vision of the future world is, is not enough. Yeah, well, that was why, I mean, the proposition I was kind of talking about is that indeed

is that you just, is that we need some ability to, to collectively coordinate towards some objective goals. And the other stuff like vision is what we have to kind of debate. It's like to discuss is that necessary or not is the next question. I don't want to keep talking about Corbinism. But I think there was a lot, I think there were a lot of people, there were definitely a lot of people I know involved in the Sanders movement who had the same attitude I think I had really to Corbinism, which there was no real chance of actually achieving the objective.

There was no real chance that Bernie Sanders was becoming president in like 2020. That was, you know, maybe 15 years will be at a historical moment when somebody like Bernie Sanders could become president, but it wasn't happening. Nonetheless, participating in the common project was necessary. It was necessary to behave as if it was achievable, even if you sort of privately thought it wasn't. So I guess, I guess that is still coordination to a common goal. I guess you're right. There does have to be some sort of common objective, at least sort of functionally, even if in your head, like a lot of you don't actually think you're going to get there. When I think back to the high carbonism, there's also just, you know, the,

the goal was so attractive that and also, you know, the fact that I've been wrong so many times in the past makes me think that it's always worth, you know, it's always worth going for an opportunity if the prize is so big. Do you know what I mean? And so, you know, yes, it seemed unlikely. And, you know, there's been a little bit of debate at the moment. The sort of agro-centurist sort of Twitter and commentators have been going through this very strange thing over the last couple of weeks in which they've been trying, they've been doing this fantasy. Oh, my God. Imagine if Corbyn had been in power when COVID struck.

It would have been an absolute disaster. And people were answering back saying, well, look, I mean, look at his policies. They were all proven right. And then somebody else answers back. and we've looked that he'd have been cooed out of power you know within a minute of of COVID coming along basically because COVID represents a huge opportunity to it to reconstruct things in quite a radical way when we look back at it you know and even at the time you know there was this thing about God yes well you know what would happen if he actually won an election

yeah but I but I think there's one thing I'm not saying that you know I always knew that there wasn't a chance that Corbyn would get in. No, whether I suspended this belief or I actually believed it or whatever, I went for it 100%. Like, you know, I was there in the Momentum Office, like at the moment of hearing the election results. And I put everything into it. And there's no way I'd put everything into it if I didn't think there was a chance.

You know, I might not have like looked at like the detail of what was coming back. But, you know, I threw everything at it. It wasn't like, I was saying, there privately going, we don't have a chance. Because I didn't, like Jeremy, you were saying earlier, like, I didn't, I suspended the analysis and the ideology completely and just like went for it because you've got a chance. Okay, so one song which portrays a sense of unity and difference is the song Melting Pot by Blue Mink. It's from 1969. And the lyrics are hilariously out of date in loads of

different ways. So it starts with this. It says, take a pinch of white man, wrap him up in black skin, add a touch of blue blood and a little bit of red Indian boy. And what we need is a great big melting pot, big enough to take the world and all it's got.

Keep it steering for a hundred years of more and turn out coffee-colored people by the score. I'm pretty sure this is exactly what the far right don't want. It's the great replacement theory, basically, or perhaps it's white genocide. When people talk about white genocide, we're far right people talk about white genocide.

What they mean is that, you know, we'll be turning out coffee-colored people by the score, basically. What a beautiful dream. If it can only come true, you know, you know. What we need is a great big, a melting pot. Big enough to take the world and all it's got. for a hundred years or more and turn out of coffee and cut of feet old to buy the score I think we're all agreeing that there's some form of sort of functional unity

so if unity in action is necessary like even if unity is a weird word for it what we're talking about is sort of coordinated action towards definable goals which everybody can agree would be desirable if you could achieve them So that seems to be a sort of minimal form of unity that we all agree is required for any sort of successful struggle. So then I just want to talk relatively briefly about some of these other things because there's a whole load of other things that some people, I think it's pretty clear from all of our remarks so far on our general attitude that probably not us on most of these things. But some people would definitely say, no, for effective political struggle, you need unity on XYZ. And X, Y, Z includes a vision of the future, a whole sort of coherent ideology, a specific sort of

imagined kind of legislative program, a sort of common identity, a sort of an analysis of the situation, et cetera. And I suppose if we're going to say we don't think you actually need any of those things, or you only need them sometimes or to some degree, I think it's interesting to talk a little bit about, like, each of those categories, like what, what role do they play? So, I mean, in the sense of a sort of common vision, isn't some kind of a common vision generally necessary to animate a shared project, even if it's pretty loose, some sense that, yeah, you want to, I mean, in the case of aggressive or left politics, some sense that you want more equality, more democracy, less of the human suffering caused by untrammeled greed.

But I think, yes, but I do think so. And I think there is some sort of. sort of minimal coordinates involved in that. So one way you could do that, right, is to talk about this idea of a communist horizon, which is, I think it was Badger first, actually, and then Judy Dean takes it up. And it's this idea that, you know, this idea, that the idea of a society of non-domination, right,

where there's broad equality, no one person or group is dominant over another one. It's something that comes up continually through history. and, you know, it's like the Spartacus, the Spartacus is pointed to, et cetera, et cetera. And then Omniusant Communia, you know, in the present Revoltz, in Germany, comes up and these sorts of things. And you could, I think you can make some sort of idea, some sort of politics out of that, i.e. this basic idea of equality as in an equality, not in actuality, but like an equality, of potential, a potential that everybody has a potential

to be able to gain a sort of understanding of the world to get a critical understanding of the world and how they, what, you know, they're positioning it and therefore has the potential to be able to participate in remaking the world and then governing the world, basically. That's sort of like the base need, that sort of agreement that that is possible is what's needed in order to be on the left, I think.

Something like that is that what's needed to be. on the left. But then what happens with that is what we saw when we talked about what was Corbynism possible was, you know, you also need some sort of shared sense of what's possible in the current situation. So that has to be a broad sort of sense of what's possible and the sort of broad sense of the direction you want to move in, which does mean that you don't have to have a shared analysis, but you have to have some sort of shared coordinates in your analysis of what's possible at the moment. I mean, I think the question of shared analysis, I think is, to me, I think it's the most

sort of contentious. It's the one I'm least sure about, I'm least confident as to how far I think people have to have a shared analysis to be able to work together. Because it's quite easy to say, it'll be quite easy to say no, that it doesn't really matter.

You could have like a Christian socialist who thinks that, you know, a Christian socialist who thinks they're fighting against sin and you can have a revolutionary Marxist, who think they're engaging in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and they can both be wanting to sort of they could both be very much in agreement about who they're against why they're against it what they want to do in its place on the other hand i'm just i'm not sure because because i do i do think so i mean i guess

i have a kind of investment as a certain kind of intellectual in thinking that analysis is really important and having a common analysis matters and um i would say that insofar as there's been any genuine fragmentation. So if the post-corbonite left, it really has been around the sort of diagnosis. It's around, and this is always, I mean, this is something that happens historically, not just on the left by any means. This is what always happens in different contexts when there's a traumatic experience of defeat. A traumatic experience of defeat, it always poses the defeated side with the question, why were you defeated? And historically, there's always, there's basically two answers to that question. And one answer is, okay, we got something wrong. We had misread the

situation. We should not have been engaged in that fight because we were bound to lose it. Or we were betrayed. But we would have won, but we were betrayed. I mean, this is by no means just a left thing. This is the genesis of Nazism in Germany. It's like the myth of the great, the Germany would have won World War I, but they were betrayed by Bolsheviks and Jews. And that's absolutely, in Creative Corbynism, this absolutely re-reduces. It's absolutely this narrative of betrayal. The idea, oh, we would have won except we were somehow betrayed

by the Remainers. Like, you know, it was a really popular narrative. Yeah, it's all over. Yeah, that's the dominant narrative. By who? People, things like Tribune. Okay. It's completely dominant narrative. And like, and the counter to that is to say, no,

that's not why we lost. We lost because we were never likely to win. You know, it was never, it was never really, it was never on the cast that winning is very valuable. So, well, so I think, I just think that quite, well, it's its question is what, you know, what is the, you know, how important is it, do you think, to have a sort of shared analysis of the, of the general situation in order to have, have an effective functional unity, or is it just not important at all? Right. Okay. I think I want to, for the same intellectual reasons, I think, I want to think having a shared analysis

is important, but I don't actually think it is to produce unity towards a certain outcome. I think this is the problem that we're dealing with is that we're talking about a situation where we're trying to, what's that hammer the mole game in the, in the arcade, whackamole, that's right, in the, in the arcades. And it's kind of, we haven't, we haven't got one thing that we're pinning down. If we're trying to work from the position of unity and where we've problematized what unity is, right? And then we're going towards analysis. And then it's like, is it diagnosis? And I don't think we have, I think we need to clarify our question to ourselves in the sense, because I want to think that people have an analysis, because I think

it's important to define what the left is. So in a way, like, I'm creating a problem bigger than the question that we're asking. because in a sense, does it even matter if these people are left-wing or not? I think for me, it matters to have analysis, because that defines partly different, both the analysis and the kind of shared vision. I think in the sense that Keir was talking about earlier, are both, it's partly important to define what it is to be left-wing.

And I'm my personal bugbearers, there's like shitloads of people who define themselves as left-wing at the moment, who I think, you're not fucking left-wing, mate, you know. I don't share that kind of vision. You don't have the same vision or analysis as me. However, having said all of that, I don't necessarily think those things are important to achieve unity if we're agreeing

that the reason for unity is to create that kind of mobility or social strength or the numbers to achieve a specific thing. If we're not talking about unity in terms of achieving a specific thing, then I'm not sure that matters. You see what I mean? you see my whack-a-mole analogy here.

I don't know which piston we're working, we're pinning down to work on the other one. Yeah, I think you're right, yeah. Yeah, now I'm thinking about it. I mean, the thing with having a shared analysis, you know, often that sort of moved into, you know, which political tradition are you most familiar with and do you adhere to, basically?

And I think it's a mistake to say that, you know, the left has to be unified. on that, you know, that we need just one political tradition to win in the left and then everything would be okay. It's much more this idea that if there's a common, if you have a sort of like, you know, a common general objective to move society in a more equal and democratic manner, what you then need is some sort of like some broadly compatible analysis of what is possible to do at any particular moment. And with that, we always have to be sort of, very modest in that because, you know, we can get things wrong.

So we can't have like a firm thing that only this is possible and this isn't possible. But I think that's what happened with Corbinism was there was a shared sense of like, this thing is possible, right? And so some people thought, this thing is possible and it'll be great when that happens. Other people thought, this thing is possible now and it'll make all these other things possible in the future. And I think that was the basis upon which you had, you know, the hard left, the sort of like more movementists left, all pulling in a similar direction while Corbinism was going on.

I think that's what's missing now. And so in a way, it's that thing of you don't need a shared, you don't even need a shared strategy, right? But you do need sort of complementary strategies and complementary analyses of what's possible at the moment. That doesn't solve everything because then you fall down to these other things upon on which, you know, what's possible relates perhaps to the sort of key axes upon which you're thinking that through.

And so, like, you know, there's the whole thing about values, about, you know, the key differences in society. Yeah, I suppose that's where unity relates to differences, is, you know, the idea of, like, what you'd form unity upon, a unified or perhaps, I don't even like the idea of a unified direction, but a common direction in which you're pushing things. you know, you need some sort of sense of what's possible, but that sense of what's possible really does come down to which difference you think is important at the moment.

And so on the sort of the centre, you know, there's this whole, people think that Britain is divided along these sort of, along different values, basically. There are certain people who've got some values, other people have got other values, you know, in political science. It's quite a weird sort of framing. it's a framing in which it's a little bit like personality types

these things are almost unchangeable and so that really limits that really limits what's possible we'd love to do this but you know we've got all of these economically left and socially authoritarian people which means we can't do this

but doesn't that sorry to interrupt you care but doesn't that necessarily contradict going back to the vision like a left vision is trying to appeal to all of this social change for the majority of humanity, right? This is what this is what the left is saying, whether that majority is because you've got a majority poor or, you know, or whether it's about inequality or whatever,

but you, there has to be about, this social change has to be about appealing to the fact that it's the structures that are making things so fucked. If you, if you've got a point of analysis where like you're saying, it's, it's, it's basically, it's basically saying that people are stuck in a certain kind of either persona or act or voting pattern or whatever, then you're kind of fucked and that as a point of analysis would never work for the left anyway. Yeah, I think that's right. I think this is really useful. So, I mean, these people, this sort of dominant strain, currently dominant strain, at least in public forms of official political science in Britain. Yeah, it works with this.

Basically, it's all carried out by people who would identify themselves intellectually and politically as liberals. They are liberals. I mean, insofar as they have any conception that it's possible to be a rational human being and not be a liberal, which a lot of them don't have any such conception.

I mean, they are objectively liberals, but it doesn't even occur to them to classify themselves because they think that's the only thing you could be if you're not pathological in some way. And they're liberals, and they present this vision of the world in which, yeah, there is a difference seen left and right, and it's entirely about how much you think

government should redistribute wealth. That's the only thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a more fundamental difference between authoritarians and liberals, basically, between authoritarian personalities and open, they don't use the term liberal. They talk about openness or something. They talk about basically whether you hate immigrant, whether you want open borders or not, basically. That's the thing. And of course, from a leftist perspective, you can look at all this and say, well, they're just presenting a vision of the world, which the only people who can run this society, are liberal technocrats, because it's just too divided between these irresolvable positions for anyone other than a technocratic liberal elite to be able to have a sort of overall view

of the situation and resolve any of the emergent problems. And no more systematic, no more systemic resolution of those problems is possible. And any attempt to engage in a more systemic resolution of those problems will only lead to certain forms of violent authoritarianism, either from the left or from the right. Because of course, that's a big part of the centre liberal conception of the world is they think everyone else, including people on the left, are authoritarian who would put them in gulags or deport them if they got the chance. So, but I think it's really important. I think it is a really important point that, and this is going to come on to what we're going

to talk about like in the second part of the show, I think, that I think you really have both hit on something there, which is fundamental to their conception, is the desire to categorize individuals as occupying the specific points on the left. left-right or authoritarian liberal spectrum. And then absolutely assuming that those people are not movable in any way. Well, that it's nothing to do with the conditions. Yeah, that they're not on it. Yeah, exactly. It's not an effective conditions. And so it is really fundamental to a radical perspective to say, well, actually, look, basically, A, that people are complex. You know, people can believe a lot of different things at the same time. And they can be moved in one direction or another

by political struggle, by actions and by circumstances. So, you know, people might well say in fucking focus groups that, yeah, we're a, I don't, I want less immigration or more spending on the NHS. And then the focus person running that focus group may well say, oh, great, that proves that you, this person, you know, is on the right in some ways, on the left in other ways, therefore only liberal technocrats can govern this society. But, you know, a leftist would say, yeah, well, then the whole job of politics, the whole task of politics is to persuade that person to sort of confront some of their contradictions or to, and to pick a, side, you know, based on some conception of their interests. So what I think is fundamental here is there we have a conception of people as multiplicities, as complex, as themselves entirely variegated. And the liberals never do. Liberals can't work with that. You can't work if liberalism can't sustain itself with a conception of multiplicity. It can only conceptualize people as being sort of individuals as these sort of relatively fixed monads, I think. But I think all this opens up the question, the broader question of how you conceptual, how you do conceptualise

difference. And I think on the question of unity, I mean, just to come back to what Keir was saying, I mean, I think it is probably fairly clear. Well, I think we would all agree on that I mean, the other, I mean, the other, the one of the big problematic issues when thinking about notions of unity and it's an issue that we come back to on the show lots and it relates to the question of people as multiple or people as having fixed state is the question of identity and I think I mean in the case of Corbinism that we've talked about this several times I mean it clearly is a case that was a big cohort of people for whom really what was important to them was their emotional identification with Jeremy as an individual and the fact that being part of Jeremy's

movement, gave them a sense of political and social and cultural identity, and it was expressive of their identity. And really those are the people who now, the issue they're interested in is Jeremy's treatment by the Labour Party, and they're not really not interested in the business, the kind of messy business of, you know, faction fighting in the Labour Party, whatever. And we've said multiple times on the show, you know, there's severe limits to any such notion of identity. On the other hand, the trouble is if you try and get rid of any notion of identity or identification from politics, then It becomes very difficult to do the thing Keir was talking about,

which is to talk about what differences matter. And I think, I suspect we would all agree about this, that on the one hand, any politics based around any notion of identity is really dangerous. On the other hand, you do need some sense of what side you're on. You need some sense of what I call partisanship sometimes. You need a sense like, and what it means to be on the left, it does mean having some sense that there are conflicts in society and we are on one side or other of those conflicts. To me, that is probably the most minimal sort of conception of unity that is

required is some sense that, well, there are sides and you are on one or the other of those sides. Yes, can I just say, I really like that and I agree with it. And I think it's important because it takes a materialist position and forces people to, yeah, to basically hang their mask, is that the right? I always get my expressions wrong. On somewhere, rather than go, oh, yeah, well, everything's fine. It's like, no. And I think the way you put it was really good, Jeremy, because it's not saying that you're against a certain set of people, because we're saying those people, their opinions, the way they think about the world, will change based on conditions and based on what's happening in politics and, you know, the reality of

their lives. But around a certain issue or around a certain piece of analysis, you've got to take aside. That's, it's central to left-wing politics, I think, to unity, yeah, in that sense. Completely, I agree with that. There's really from the, as part of the same history, as the Desmond Decker tune, Brian Morris and Unity, the name of the band. have this track called Reunion on their 1974 album Blowing Through Your Mind which has Jay Clayton is doing the vocal, that's a female vocal

and that is a really great piece of music We're so happy to be together again Playing this tune to show you just how it feels of us people have just got to be real. We hope it'll mind more we follow your time. All we can do is to pay back in.

Like what you're saying, Nadia, is this idea, I totally agree with what you're saying, is that like this I, like basically conservative philosophy is this constant search, various ways of dividing up society so that this base level of equality. And like I say, I think we should probably think about it

in terms of the equality of potential. Anybody can basically get to a position where they can understand themselves in the world and they can act to help govern themselves and govern the world, basically. That's the baseline of democracy. And so the whole of conservative thought is about trying to find sort of differences

which make that not true, right? Which is why identity politics, by definition, for exactly the reasons you said, is conservatism, and essentially. Well, it depends what we mean by identity politics, doesn't it? I think they definitely are, I think identity politics which, identity politics which fetishizes an identity or which regards identities as kind of essential or immovable rather than as the products of historical forces.

Yeah, definitely. That's what I meant. Yeah, that is the case. It might be worth getting a bit, doing a bit of the theory, getting a bit of, abstract on ourselves at the moment because one of the things we could talk about is like why did these things sometimes there's sort of theories that emerge in the 1970s which is sometimes called post-structuralist theories sometimes very badly phrased as postmodernist theories etc but they're also known as like philosophies of difference and it's so it's people like

I suppose Foucaux actually Deleurs, Guitari these sorts of people like why were they so concerned about this philosophical category of difference, basically. And so particularly for Deleuze, the aim was to have difference not subordinated to identity, right? So it's not that you have different identities, and then there's differences between them and within them. But, you know, the idea that identities emerge from, basically emerge from this field of difference, basically. And so, you know, that basically is this project of trying to keep the maximum, field of freedom open at any one point, right? And so Deleuze talks about like anthropological constraints at some point. That's what he's trying to avoid is all of these things in which

people try to put constraints around what people can do, what is possible. That's the reason why you'd want to think about what or really try to try to prioritize difference, to try to keep open this, this idea that, you know, we don't know. Nobody knows what a body can do, right? And that body of body of people, you know, a body in a sort of more general sense, nobody knows exactly what's possible, right? So that doesn't mean that like every person or every situation, anything's possible, right? That's probably not true. You probably wouldn't use the word possible. I would use the word virtual and actual, but let's just be loose for a moment. Right. So it's like everything, you know, you have these sort of structured fields of what potential differences can

emerge. And out of that, you get individuals produced basically. So individuals are produced out of this difference and they retain this possibility to be to be different in various ways. Does that make any sense at all? Yeah, it does. It does. But in a way, like, if you drill down from that onto like policy, like, do you think everyone in the whole country should have free broadband? Like, I'm taking you completely from the point of high theory down, back down to that. Because in a way, I don't care about difference at a certain level, but I do care to the appeal, the generalist appeal to, like, humanity or, you know, for lack of a better word, like citizenship, like, or, you know, at level of policy.

Okay, I can't quite get to policy straight away, so I'll have to go somewhere else first. But, like, if we take that idea, right, and apply it to something like class, you get a very different conception of what class is, do you know what I mean? So then you can start thinking, well, you know, we can start thinking that they're, you know, it's just a working class and then a ruling class, is there a middle, you can just think, no,

look, there are sort of all of these different class fractions in a way, right, where people have this sort of like very similar habitual experiences and then say if I'll build up certain patterns of behavior and certain ways of thinking about the world, et cetera, et cetera.

And within that, those are, those have differently structured fields of what, of possibility. Let's just be loose about it and talk about it in that way. Right. And so the idea is to sort of think, well,

how can you make these things, compatible, right? That's much more of like a class composition analysis where any unity of a working class or move towards unity would have to come from thinking about, you know, what different class fractions, what's their possibility, which directions can they can they move in and like, therefore, you know, how can they connect up with what's possible, the different field of possibility for another class fraction, right? So that's like a class composition analysis, which would be, you know, you have to come, classes have to be composed. It's a political project. I think that's just similar, like, you know, with what we think of as identity politics as well. You know, it's not just that we have to be careful about this idea of experience. Like lived experience is something that's really, really valorized under contemporary politics. And I think it's probably a liberal thing, right?

And it's so like lived experience is a really good place to start. But like basically you then have to think about, you know, what other possible experiences can come from that. What are the preconditions that made that lived experience, that actualised that lived experience? Well, I think the fetishisation of lived experience as a source of authority by certain kinds of identity politics, it comes from the question of what everybody has experiences, and they obviously are important sources of information in making political judgments and forming political alliances. But the question is, well, what kind of datum are each person's lived experiences?

And the liberal, the kind of liberal identity politics we don't like, it treats everybody's private experience as a kind of private property, which nobody else is allowed to trespass on, which everybody has to respect and put a fence around. But also as if no, as if that identity is only created by the individual in a fucking vacuum. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing that is, that drives me insane. And what we would put in, I think, in response to that is to say, well, yeah, everybody has experiences, but everybody's experiences are part of a common stock of experiences, which can be

discussed and critiqued and have to be put into part of a general conversation. And don't necessarily create enough weight in this specific argument, you know, whatever that argument is, completely, yeah. I'm going to tie together some of this stuff. I mean, that's a really good exposition of kind of Deleuze and class composition. I'm going to put this in a context, which is, Firstly, one of the basic claims and assumptions of Marxism is this. The thing about capitalist societies is they produce a great deal of kind of variation and difference in people's everyday experience. They produce a situation in which people experience most other people as a hassle and a problem and as competitors in the labour market. And they experience themselves

as very different from other people because they work in a different place and they have a slightly different lifestyle. You know, they do a different job. They wear different kinds of clothes. And that experience of difference is a problem when you're trying to build kind of a politics of class solidarity. But one of the basic claims of Marxism was that, well, actually, all of those differences are sort of cosmetic and superficial, and they mask the reality. And the reality is what capitalism is really doing is creating a situation where almost everyone has a shared set of interests, because almost everyone is actually a member of the proletariat, and it is creating a situation where there's a very clear difference between the interests of that vast majority

of people who are the working class broadly conceived, and the tiny minority, which is the capitalist class, properly conceived. And the goal of class consciousness, the goal of class politics, the goal of consciousness raising, the fundamental goal of socialism is really nothing but bringing people to the realisation that the differences of nationality, gender, culture, locality, et cetera, that they think are really important are not important at all. And actually, they should recognise themselves as belonging to this one great unity of the international working class. And the real difference that matters is only the difference between that class and its interests, and the capitalist class and its interests.

And then the problem in the 90, for much of the 20th century is, well, the problem is, firstly, well, what are you saying? Are you saying that somehow Marxism knows the truth about people's fundamental nature in a way that they don't know? And that what it's trying to do is like get people to understand that truth. Or is it indeed, as Keir was describing, is it a project to sort of get people to form a unity which doesn't exist before they formed it? It doesn't exist in some abstract way until that unity has been formed. Are you trying to make the working class or are you just trying to reveal the truth of the working class to the working class? And that is a different, and that is a sort of problem,

because there's a certain kind of authoritarian strand, which draws a lot of energy from Lenin and Stalin and says, well, basically, yeah, Marxist intellectuals know the truth of the world and the truth of the essential truth of everybody's ontological reality in the world, and they're just telling them, they're trying to get them to reveal that truth to them. And then there's a more sort of libertarian and democratic tradition which says, we are trying to persuade everybody to create these, unity of the working class, but it's not that we're simply revealing the truth of the world

to them. And then when you get into the six, by the time you get to the 60s, you're in this situation where, well, historically, lots of people have had the experience, and certainly by the 70s, people engaged in women's struggles, people engaged in anti-racist struggles, etc., have often had the experience of people from sections of the Marxist left telling them that their what seems to be their specific set of interests in fighting racism, in fighting sexism and misogyny, etc, really ought to be subordinated to the longer-term historical project of working-class unity. And in fact, they're part of the problem. By whining about racism, instead of just trying to challenge global capitalism and imperialism, by whining about

patriarchy, instead of just trying to challenge capitalism and build socialism, they're part of the problem. They're creating disunity. They're disruptive. the working class. They're part of the general capitalist delusion machine. So by the 70s you get to this situation where people who are kicking against that are saying, no, actually, you sort of have to recognize, you have to recognize different in various kinds of ways, and you have to try to build from it in order to create a kind of common purpose, a common identity, etc. And then there's this whole philosophical tradition. There's also this philosophical tradition which goes back to Nietzsche, really, in the late 90th century. And it thinks that the dominant tradition

of Western philosophy, going right back to Plato, has been dominated by what it called, what people like Adorno, call identity thinking, which is essentially a way of looking at the world, which doesn't really think that change is ever possible. It doesn't think that change is possible. It thinks that everything has a sort of fixed essence, everything has a fixed reality, that the goal of philosophy is to discover the truth, the essence behind the illusion, the illusion nature of material reality. And this includes things like gender, and it includes things like racial hierarchies, etc. But then this sort of counter tradition, which goes through Nietzsche, Dornow, Delaus, etc., into the 70s, this countertradition sees itself as instead trying to

understand the reality of the fact that actually all identities are illusory. Nothing is fixed. Everything is changed, is always changing, and everything is always changeable. And then all these things sort of converge in the 70s around this kind of moment that Keir's talking about, I think, which, and so difference, yeah, becomes this big sort of buzzword, doesn't it? It becomes a buzzword, but it means, and, but difference becomes a kind of key term in a lot of philosophy and theory in the 70s and 80s, but it means very different things to different people. So for Deleurs, it means something very abstract. It means, I mean, you know, his big book, different and repetition. I mean, one of the things it's really concerned with is like the invention of the

calculus in the 18th century, 17th and 18th century, and the fact that, like, why it took Western philosophy and maths thousands of years to get its head around the idea that you could measure velocity, you could measure rates of change, you could identify the reality of change and changeability. And then for other people, the idea of difference is just a tool which they're going to use as part of a liberal critique of all forms of socialism, all forms of collective politics and they're going to use that idea to actually just make the claim yet again that any form of collectivist politics leads to authoritarianism because it necessarily suppresses difference. So it ends up meaning all these different things to different people in a way which

is quite complicated to unpick, I think. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it is. However, again, if I may, kind of going back to the starting point of where we are today, you know, like I think a focus on difference, which effectively, I mean politically, a decision to focus on difference comes from a place of despair because it produces a politics that is not a politics of solidarity. And I'm interested in a politics of solidarity, not a politics of atomisation,

where basically the assumption is that as you were just saying previous to this point, Jeremy, as if every private individual has their own specific experience and unless we hear their specific story, then they can't have any agency and we can't move forward in agitating for their rights on that basis, whereas I fundamentally disagree. I think the human experience is one, and this goes back to the acid, you know, communism part of things, whereas, you know, there are things that we're all experiencing, but what we want to fight is the inequality of people having their, you know, their basic needs met and the injustice of it.

Well, I suppose one way of putting this question is, is it that the experience, the human experience is one, or is it that human experience is so multiple and so internally variegated that there will be points of potential commonality and solidarity between everyone? Do you understand the difference? I'm positing that it's not that the, indeed, another way of putting it is, yeah, it human experience is one, but the oneness is defined by constant change and difference and internal differentiation and heterogeneity. So the point is not that there's a fundamental

human essence or an unchangeable human experience is that, you know, is that despite everybody's experience is being different, precisely because they're so different, because everybody's experience is different, there are going to be points of commonality as well between any two people or between any, you know, any two sets of experiences. But that's why I'm drilling back down to very much down to earth with the broadband for all example, is that I don't care, regardless of all of these different experiences, just taking the UK as a container, of all of these different experiences and all of these different feelings and all these and whatever, it would still be a good thing for everyone to have free broadband.

So the only problem with saying, like it's totally true that this, the reason, you'd want to think about this idea of difference or prioritise difference or whichever way you'd want to put it is this idea that you know that means that at least in principle any person can find a point or any individual can find a point of commonality with any other individual and just it makes it possible you know it makes democracy and equality possible basically the problem is if you just say that any person can create a point of possibility of any other person just because of you know how different we are, how, how, you know, the range of differences that are available to us because we're not reducible to some sort of essence.

The problem with that is that what's the politics that's relevant to that? It seems to remove strategy from that. So what you'd say about that is that, you know, each individual has probably got a field of potential difference. I'm using, really, I'm abusing the terms now because it's virtual, not potential. But like a field of... They do talk about potential. So it's more, it's better.

to say potential. Yeah, okay, great. So there's a field of potential, all right, and that's structured in various ways. It's structured by your past experiences and your habits and the way that you, you know, that those have been being concretized in your brain. That means those things are all changeable, but it's not, there's, there's an element of strategy that comes into it where you think, well, you know, what sets of experiences predispose people towards particular forms of action, make them more likely to embrace particular forms of action or more likely to be attracted to particular policies, such as free broadband, for instance, right?

And so free broadband, particularly pre-COVID, that's something that really, really would appeal to sort of, you know, your younger city dwelling sorts of subjectivities and perhaps not so much to your property retired pensioners, although, you know, now they've got their chance. Sorry, I did massively disagree. I think it's people in the countryside who are cut off for whom free broadband is.

is quite a big deal actually. But yeah, carry on. But that's, I think that's mistaking. Like, it would be very useful for them, right, free board bond, but they may not necessarily be attracted to it. Right, okay, I see your point. Why shouldn't we pay for it, etc.? I think post-COVID, the argument is completely changed.

It just makes absolute sense. It's absolutely obvious that it's a basic service and all basic services should be universal and free, basically, is the argument. So, no, I wanted to add that thing, that idea of like the mutability of human, It doesn't mean that you can just abandon strategy. And I think that's why things such as class composition analysis are useful in that way.

I think of what people are more likely to be attracted to something or what people are less like to be attracted to something, et cetera, et cetera. So what you get with a politics of difference where you just have like, where you basically have like essences, etc, where you think that people are basically not changeable, right? The politics you get from that is a liberal politics of like tolerance. Let's tolerate difference, right? let's tolerate difference.

Why can't we all get, we just get along? So what's the most important thing? To be kind, to be kind online, etc., right? That's the politics of, like a liberal politics of difference, which is like that liberal politics of identity politics.

And so the horizon is let's tolerate other differences and let's make sure that, you know, people have, have, the different identities are represented in whatever structures, you know. Such a crock of shit. That's the politics, if you think that things are...

A lot of those people could call themselves left-wing. A lot of those people. That whole, like, be-kind bollocks. I'm going to have to calm myself down there. I might have to take, you know, some kind of sedative because I don't get me fucking started. Well, I would say, I would even challenge their terms. They don't mean kindness.

They just mean politeness. Yeah. The liberals love politeness. Yeah, you're right, aren't you? You're right. Conservatives love to think that politeness means respecting hierarchy. A liberals mean, think, respecting, think politeness means respecting individual boundaries and venerating individual boundaries at all costs.

I want it on a T-shirt. I want it on a T-shirt. Whereas, radicals know that politeness is only useful as a tool for building solidarity. And where it obstructs the building of solidarity, it is just a bourgeoisie. affectation. Nice. Track from 2018, it's a Demian Galvez remix of a track from

Graham Reynolds album, a kind of experimental electronica and composed music album. And the track is called Difference Engine. And the different engine was the name for one of the, basically the first kind of mechanical calculator. So the first basic kind of

computer. That was built by Charles Babbage, although it's, love lace is often credited now with like some of the, some of the contributing some work to it. I'm forgetting everything now. Ada, that's it. I came wanting to say Edna. And the different, I mean, it's interesting because different, I mean, it's called the different engine because it's supposed to be able to calculate differences like subtractions.

and divisions and in Deleuze is the difference in repetition and in the philosophical tradition that it's drawing on including Leibniz or Leibniz, depending how you pronounce it, then it becomes really important. The ability to calculate differences is somehow associated philosophically with the ability to understand the way in which all unities or are only apparent that only exist at certain levels of scale. You know, the same way every number can be devourable. and you can even have negative numbers. Every individual is only apparently an individual that really is composed of multiple elements. And in fact, everything, you know, from molecules to mountains is, in fact, only achieves a certain

level of unity when viewed at certain scales, you know, that becomes a really important concept in that philosophical tradition. So difference engine is a, as the title for a track, is sort of reminiscent of all that for me. There is a point that I'm that Kier made that I just want to come back on, which in a way is contradictory. to what we've been saying, because, you know, I don't specifically, I don't particularly like to hold up, you know, individual experience for the reasons that we've said. But, you know, if you're

talking about, like, what brings me to this podcast, like, what makes me a potential asset communist? Like, I have a completely different, well, not completely, but a very different upbringing and background to you guys. But I still came to the same politics. Okay, for various reasons. But, you know, there's shit loads of things that I don't have in common with you guys, you know, in terms of life experience, in terms of where I would grow up, in terms of the environment that I grew up in. But I'm still, we have a lot in common in terms of our vision and shared understanding

of what we think about humanity and like what the quote-unquote communist horizon is. Right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But I would say part of what we have in common, well, one of the things which liberals and radicals, I think, do sort of having common with each other. and are engaged in a not very explicit set of debates about over the past few decades is

how do we talk about the fact that in many instances like the one like this one and in many other instances we can find those differences like a non-commonalities productive you know they're interesting yeah they we enjoy them that we like talking about them they make it more fun it's more fun to live in a world and to be in a friend group and to be in a movement where people are coming from different backgrounds and have lots of different kinds of experience. And one useful term for talking about that is cosmopolitanism. It's the idea that there can be a positive value to cosmopolitanism, just meaning a general sensibility which is comfortable with difference and even enjoys difference. I mean, this is in the communist tradition from day one. This is in

the communist manifest in 1848. Markton Engels both acknowledge they celebrate, the thing they celebrate about capitalism more than anything else is that it has the effect of producing cosmopolitan cultures, especially in the great cities. And they are completely convinced that cosmopolitanism, which global capitalism is already cultivating in the great cities, is an absolutely necessary component of a kind of raised proletarian consciousness. And I think, I mean, I think cosmopolitanism, that has been a really fundamental issue over the past decades. I mean, for example, I mean, I broadly, I think that during the New Labor period, for example, and the period of the Clinton and Obama administrations in the states, basically the left and the left's organic constituencies, to a large extent, were brought off by the promise that these governments, although they were obviously doing things, which were pro-capitalist, anti-agalitarian, pro-market, neoliberal policies, they were nonetheless. going to continue to sort of valorise certain kinds of cosmopolitanism. They were going to

create a better legal framework for gay people. They were going to make it at least publicly unacceptable to be explicitly racist in certain contexts. They were not going to punish and victimize, you know, refugees and immigrants all the time, although New Labour did a bit of that. Yeah, but the list that you've made there is all progressive stuff. I'm waiting to see what you say about tolerating, you know, non-progressive behaviour in society? Well, I think you can talk about that. I'm just saying, I think the thing is, cosmopolitan is, there's a section of the left, or the so-called left, there's a small section of it, which thinks fuck cosmopolitanism, it's stupid, it's just a form of bourgeois

consciousness, that actually, like, loving your home and your community is good, it's part of, it's where solidarity comes from, and therefore close the borders, you know, close the borders, denounce anti-racists as just bourgeois, you know, collaborators with Soros and capitalist, etc. I mean, this is rhetoric, you know, certain figures on the sort of orthodox left have used occasionally, and not many, but some in the past few years. And we all know, you know, there's a short step from that to certain kinds of fascism. Yeah, totally. And broadly speaking, I mean, this is why, you know, I mean, my big critique of what the standard left position, coming back to the thing we were talking about at the start of the show,

standard left position about why Corbynism failed. You know, like our colleagues at Navarra endlessly repeat this position is, oh, well, the reason was like Corbyn was kind of pushed into adopting two Romania position and therefore lost the work. It lost the kind of northern working class vote. And for me, the fundamental problem with that analysis is it just dismisses and trivialises,

the extent to which a certain kind of cosmopolitan consciousness which is absolutely incompatible with any sort of endorsement of Brexit of any kind is just part of the visceral culture and politics of people living in cities in Britain. You know, you can't just, people hate, people on the left, a lot of people amongst the left's natural constituencies in the cities, hated Brexit, and they still hate it, not because they were making some rational calculation about how much immigration, you know, people in northern marginal constituencies would tolerate,

but because it is part of our country. It's a visceral part of our culture, and it has been since Marx was writing in the 1840s. And that is a certain politics of difference. And the other thing, and I think, yeah, what the left, I mean, for me, the part of the problem is over the past 40 years, is that the left has tended to allow the liberals, the neoliberal kind of social liberals, to define the terms of cosmopolism. I agree. We've allowed them to say what cosmopolitanism means is, yeah, it means mass immigration, mass migration, mass migration, migration with no attempt really to kind of go into communities that are going to be affected by

it and talk to them. But no attempt really to kind of build cultures of solidarity in places no acknowledgement even that it was going to affect people. Or resources or talking about resources or amenities. Exactly. Exactly. And I think we do need to sort of, we really do need to claim the idea of cosmopolitanism, not reject it, but also claim it back from the liberals, I think. One way of reading what's happened over the last sort of ten years, the rise of the right of the last ten years, is that they've taken advantage of this opening the third way left, that compromise of the third way left in which, you know, basically things would

move in a more neoliberal direction, but they would be, you know, cosmopolitanism or the expansion of rights, etc. for gay marriage, these sorts of things. what that opened up when living standards started to collapse was there was a sort of self-contradictory sort of element to that so that like the cosmopolitanism of like different people meeting etc and all this sort of thing that gets undermined by the brute material realities of how expensive it gets to live in cities and all these sorts of things right and the sort of like the segregation that that take place around that in terms of age for one thing you know where people are staying in cities etc etc

and so basically cosmopolitanism gets mixed up with the sort of neoliberal reforms and they get they get they get glossed over into one another and so that's the sort of these rootless cosmopolitans which is the great antisemitic sort of of slur and then or the what's that um people of somewhere or people of nowhere or something i can't remember what if you're a citizen of everywhere if a citizen as of the world you're a citizen of nowhere that was teresa may yes thank you very much There is a point about Brexit, which is the emotional attachment to the EU was nothing to do with the EU in reality. It was to a notion of cosmopolitanism, I think, you know, amongst Remainerism. I think there's a really big problem with Remainerism after the referendum, which is, it's just a huge cost for the left to be associated with the overturning of democratic decisions, basically. And so all of the conspiracy theories that come along about it was Putin, it did it, etc., etc. I think it becomes a really big problem but we still have to get over, I think. But nonetheless, let's put that to one side.

You know, I agree with your analysis of cosmopolitism and the fact that it's just absolutely rooted in basically what people enjoy about contemporary life, you know, or sections of society enjoy about contemporary life. Yeah, but all of that, I mean, what I was going to say earlier, is that all of that, because when we started this section on cosmopolitism, I was going to out myself as some kind of bohemian tanky oxymoram by saying that the only thing that I like about cosmopolitanism is the cocktail that it created with its name. But I guess my issue is that in practice, I think progressives, I'm trying to find a way of putting this, you have to be pro-progressive things to be a progressive.

and therefore tolerance comes up to a point where if it starts to tip into reactionary and non-progressive politics and especially where my area of interest is misogyny, then at what point do you tolerate it? So what kind of extreme ideologies and behaviours will you tolerate? And this is how I feel about religion. Like, I fucking hate religion and I hate extremist religion. And, you know, I think that the left tolerates non-Christian extremism very well. And I have a huge problem with that. A huge problem with that.

And I think you have to, I'm going to get the expression right this time because I've looked it up, nail your colors to the mast when it comes to, like, your concept of what it is to live in a so-called cosmopolitan or like, you know, spaces that tolerate a so-called, quote-unquote tolerate difference, you know, but if there's, if you're talking about people who won't tolerate you, then how can, like, how do you build society going for? You have to have a, you have to say, no, actually it's not okay. If you, you can't behave, you can't treat women as second-class citizens and expect to, you know, that we're going to support you. Yeah, well, the term, the term cosmopolitanism became really sort of fashionable in certain strands of social theory,

about 20 years ago, partly precisely in an attempt to address that and say, I mean, the way people were used, people like Ulrich Beck and some other people were using the term, it was partly in response to what they saw as a certain kind of multiculturalism, which just promoted sort of parallel cultures existing side by side. And the whole point about cosmopolitanism was supposed to be, but actually it recognises that there's internal differences. There's multiplicity within all cultures, you know, there's no such thing as Islamic culture, you know, there's no such thing of English culture. And that, indeed, you have to have some, you know, you can make alliances. Although the parallels there were Islamic and Christian. That's,

but that's one of the main problems is like even just that term, drive me totally nuts. Yeah, no, that's, I think that's true. Roy Ayers and Felicuti's like amazing track, 2000, Black's Got to Be Free from 1979. I guess that was an aspiration which wasn't fully realised but the bit where Roy Ayers starts singing about unity as well as freedom

is really powerful and I think it's a really I mean it's something we haven't really talked about on the show much but of course one of the fundamental claims of liberalism is you can't have unity and freedom is that any attempt to create kind of commonalities, collectivities

will always suppress people's freedom so the fact that all these songs from the what was referred to as the freedom struggle are also songs about unity, which is basically, in our terms, what they're singing about, solidarity, I think, is really powerful. Think about 2,000 black. By the time the year 2000 comes, I mind you to be as one. We'll teach our people how to come together once again. As we grow as one in unity, all the knowledge which we all contain,

The last thing I wanted to talk about, which I think you can't get away from and talking about the concept of unity and difference and the ways we've been talking about it is the concept of coalition. Yes. I mean, my position, which is sort of a synthesis of Gramscian politics and Delersian philosophy, is, well, all politics is about coalition building. That's sort of that's all it is. It's always about taking sets of people and finding the potential points of commonality between them and building something around that. And so if you're not

thinking in terms of coalition building and in terms of widening your coalition at any given moment, you're just not even, you're just, you're barely doing politics. And I think it's something that really, you know, people really do struggle with. I mean, if you want an example of identity thinking in the kind of philosophical sense, in the sense of just not being able to conceptualise the world in terms of multiplicity, indifference, in the way Keir and I were talking about earlier, you know, it is that attitude to the Labour Party that people developed under Corbyn, and a lot of people have always had that I'm constantly critiquing here and everywhere else. I have any kind of platform, which just can't get its head around the idea that, look,

Labour Party is a complex, multiple thing. It's not a thing that you can have a relationship to even really. And it is itself already a kind of complex coalition, internally differentiated coalition of forces. And any kind of politics is probably going to mean extending that coalition to people, institutions, whatever, which aren't necessarily part of that organization. And that's just one example. But I think it sounds so obvious when you say it. This is what I'm struggling to articulate right now is the fact that it sounds so obvious. Like if I say all politics is about coalition building, obviously, then everyone's going to nod along and say, yeah, of course, obvious. But on the other hand, an awful lot of people

engage in politics in a way which is not at all about coalition building. It's about identity. It's about finding the people who they think are the same as them. Corbyn is like the top one. Jeremy Corbyn, he is the same as me, so I like him. And I want to find all the other people who are the same as me, at least in the ways that we have in common with Jeremy. And that is fundamentally, I understand why people do that and why people want that form of unity, but that is not even politics for me. That's a sort of anti-politics. It's a practice of identity. And you're only doing politics at the point you're saying, look, we've got to find some of the people who don't like Jeremy or who don't spontaneously identify

Jeremy Corbyn, but we might be able to build an alliance with them anyway and start building that alliance. That's the moment when you're doing politics for me, I think. The only problem with that is with that, starting with that and then resolving it with like, you know, an idea of difference is, you know, what is the coalition between? Do you know what I mean? So, you know, so are they coalitions between political identities? You know, does the process of forming coalition and acting in unity? Does that sort of change, that creates things, that changes people and produces something new? I think that's, you'd have to add those sorts of ideas, I think, to a definition of coalition.

Yeah. There is actually one thing that I want to say about difference, which is that celebrating difference is a trap. I'm not talking about acknowledging difference or accepting difference or living with difference or understanding difference, but celebrating difference, which has become rhetoric in popular culture, is a trap and is a psychological and political dead end and takes us away from a politics of solidarity. Yeah, because I think it traps it, it traps politics in a, in a celebrating is another way of sort of it's tolerating difference but turned up to 11

so yeah agree that's not it's not a politics to go forward with but I think perhaps we ought to end of the show by returning to the idea of unity after we've gone through this whole big discussion of difference because I think one of the one of the things that leaves us with is this is this idea of solidarity I you know what we what we really want is people are acting in solidarity with each other,

pursuing compatible sorts of strategies for change within some sort of broad sort of sense of what's possible, but with a large amount of modesty attached to any claim about what's possible, because we're constantly surprised by events, basically. Events come up and we're constantly surprised about that. That seems like the sort of sense of unity that you can get after we've gone through this whole discussion of difference.

This is asking about. Thank you. Thank you.