Anger is rational in this economy, but it will take working class militancy to prevent this anger hardening into a politics of hate, writes Jim Slaven.
Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo likes to drop a pebble from one hand to the other. This is used to show us that Galileo observes, in a very simple way, what is actually happening in the world. Brecht is contrasting this with others, such as theologians, who learn through theory and reasoning alone. Galileo drops pebbles to remind himself that pebbles do not fly, they fall. By trusting the evidence of his senses, he gains knowledge through his experiences as well as theory and reasoning.
There has been much discussion over the rise of what has been variously described as Fascism or far-right or anti-migrant politics in working class communities. I am old enough to remember the National Front and the BNP and the battle for control of the streets. The situation today is very different. It is much more dangerous.
It is different and more dangerous because of the material conditions on the ground. Across the country we have seen working class institutions destroyed and our culture denigrated. After decades of underinvestment the physical and social infrastructure in working class areas is near collapse. There have been huge cuts to vital services, and displacement, deindustrialisation, privatisation, a mental health crisis and drug addiction (prescribed and not) are through the roof. We have Victorian levels of inequality with people unable to get a decent job, or a house, or even a medical appointment.
Recent life expectancy data from the National Records of Scotland shows that women in the most deprived areas can expect to spend 26.7 fewer years in good health than women in the least deprived areas. With men, the difference is 25.6 years. This system is literally killing working class people. None of this is inevitable. It is not the result of natural phenomena. It is a wrong actively done. It is the result of choices made by the political class. In their class interests, not ours. If you live in working class areas anger is not the sign of a racist person, anger is the sign of a rational person.
And what is the response from the dominant classes? They demand more of the same. More growth, more cuts, more bullshit. And yes, more cheap migrant labour. The capitalist migration system does not work for what Alain Badiou calls the ‘nomadic proletariat’. There is nothing progressive about exploiting migrant workers. This system does not work for working class people. Whether they be migrant or otherwise.
These material conditions, as they are lived, by people, are driving the politics. They have created a powder keg because the political class, and the left, abandoned the working class. This created a vacuum that is real and dangerous. Reform and others on the right are trying to occupy that vacuum. They are exploiting people’s legitimate concerns, and disgust at the system, and yes, they are also scapegoating migrants and stoking racism. There is a battle for hearts and minds going on in working class areas.
So far, the left has not engaged in the battle. Preferring to respond, from a distance, to the echo of the battle, with slogans not solutions. The multiracial working class are sick of moralising and performance. We have had enough of the political class shouting No Pasaran! before going back to the suburbs. Such interventions might make the participants feel better (and superior) but they exacerbate the problem. If the left is to play a meaningful role it must stop talking to itself and start listening to the working class.
In reality the political solution lies within our areas and within our class. To win this battle we must devise a strategy to replace the politics of hate with a politics of solidarity. To do that we must correctly analyse the problem and its political content. The immediate task for working class anti-fascists is to disentangle the racism from the other causes. Not to engage in what Pier Paolo Pasolini described as ‘facile anti-fascism’, which serves a political purpose for the dominant classes by portraying working class anger as motivated, not by their material conditions, but by hate. The working class analysis of our situation is then silenced and delegitimised. We hear a lot about the importance of lived experience, until the working class speak up.
The crises we face in working class areas are multifaceted and extremely serious. They were not caused by migrants. They were caused by fifty years of neglect and greed. The political class who created these crises cannot be the political beneficiaries. Only working class anti-fascists can win the battle of ideas within our areas and our class. Nobody can do it for us. Least of all the political class and the State. Just as experience shows that pebbles do not fly, they fall, experience shows working class militants there are no shortcuts and no saviours.
Jim Slaven is an activist and writer based in Edinburgh. He is a member of the James Connolly Society and his Substack is @SolidarityNotCharity.