Cooperation and the Role of the Left

June 27, 2008 Next Page »

Some time ago we discussed the importance of co-operation as the basis for a fair society. We used the example of a local village shop because the first Welsh co-operative store was established near Aberdare by working people.

Today we experienced something of an epiphanic moment reading the views of Paul A. Baran in his essay entitled “Better Smaller But Better”. It was published in Monthly Review in July 1950, originally under the pen-name Historicus.

Baran discusses ‘Co-Operation on the Left’ in a post-war American society where capitalism seemed unassailable and omnipotent. He discusses the methods used to preserve and strengthen capitalism in America as it was then, 1950.

Here’s how Baran puts it, any emphasis in the text is ours …

“The impotence of the American left cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the ideological stability of American capitalism. We have to understand the ideologically overpowering impact of bourgeois, fetishistic consciousness on the broad masses of the working population. The still-vigorous belief in the possibilities of individual advancement within the framework of capitalist society. The deep-seated acceptance of bourgeois values, especially the desirability of reaching the status of the next-higher group. The supremely streamlined, multi-pronged manipulation of the public mind. The heart-breaking emptiness and cynicism of the commercial, competitive, capitalist culture. The systematic cultivation of devastatingly neurotic reaction to most social phenomena (through the movies, the “funnies” etc.). The effective destruction in schools, churches, press, everywhere, of everything that smacks of solidarity in the consciousness of the man in the street. And finally, the utterly paralyzing feeling of solitude which must overcome any one who does not want to conform, the feeling that there is no movement, no camp, no group to which one can turn.

Is this going to last forever ? Social psychology and political experience alike suggest that the prospects are bleak. Quite possibly major changes will come only as the result of shocks; in the humdrum of slow evolution the status quo reproduces itself continuously with only such changes as the manipulative machine wishes to induce. The outcome may be fascism, but there seems to be hardly a chance of anything progressive growing in such soil. The ruling class knows this. It is aware of the fact that it does not face any serious dangers in the absence of shocks. It knows that the result of shocks is unpredictable. It will do everything within its power to avoid them….

Where does the Left and its cooperation come in ? Not very much, not very broadly, not very obviously. The main avenue of activity is to attack the ideological front - by clarifying the issues, by trying to cut through the cultural fog of capitalist society, by trying to break the notion of the “identity of interests” of the ruling classes with those of the working masses. This is not a program of mass politics, nor should it be the program of a sect. It is blueprint of intellectual activity, of enlightened economic, ideological, political thinking and discussion that should be free of dogmatic fetters and petty political considerations. It is a program of building cadres, of what Marx used to call Selbstversta:ndigung..

There is hardly any room for political cooperation on the Left at the present time because there are no politics of the Left. The time will perhaps come, possibly sooner than we think. But just now the issues are ideological problems, and ideological problems cannot be solved by organizational makeshifts. To the extent that so-called liberals are themselves fully and unreservedly subject to the prevailing obfuscation, to the extent that they serve as faithful soldiers of the Cold War army, to the extent that they debase themselves to the function of informers and stool-pigeons, to that extent “cooperation” with them can only be of the same nature as such cooperation between the murderer and his victim. Nor is such cooperation desirable. What is needed - let us say it again and again - is clarity, courage, patience, faith in the spontaneity of rational and socialist tendencies in society. At the present historical moment in our country - “better smaller but better”.

- Paul A. Baran, this essay is included in the ‘The Longer View’, a collection of Baran’s essays, first published 1969 by Monthly Review Press

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