Apolitical Corbynism

It looks like a good deal of Corbynistas are voting for Keir Starmer. I won’t recite why this is bad, or mount a defence of the only candidates in each contest worth voting for, but I do want to unpick briefly a bit why it’s happening.

The left populist movements in Europe have all been historically contingent and have their own nuances. They have all, however, been opportunistically apolitical. In the case of Spain, this manifested in the now elected Podemos, who consciously stripped their outward political communications of traditional class antagonism, instead referring to ‘the caste’ and seeking a broad alliance of working, lower middle classes who were economically aggrieved. In Greece, SYRIZA formed its popular coalition from various specific struggles under one, blanket label devoid of typical party political definitions. In Britain, Corbyn did not gain his leadership on a promise to eat the rich but of “straight talking, honest politics”. Each of these instances were in their own way successful but each, with the exception of Podemos, had a shelf-life.

In the case of Corbyn, he inspired people who previously hadn’t been involved in parliamentary politics and who certainly had no interest in the intricacies of left factions and alliances. That appeal was largely to“graduates without a future”. There’s a big chunk of these people who were very happy attending Occupy, the demonstrations orchestrated by XR, and needless to say were proud to march for a ‘People’s Vote’. Each of these moments were, in their own way, apolitical insofar as they were attempts to ditch the constraints of parliamentary politics and appeal to something ‘beyond’. In XR’s case, this was completely explicit in their calls to establish ‘citizens assemblies’ (which under scrutiny turn out to be panels of wonk NGO experts). The Marxist critique of these forms of politics are well-documented and I won’t rehearse them here, the point for me is that in the absence of anything else they were the only game in town. The generations that attached to these political modalities did so out of the wreckage of the end of history, the failure of New Labour, the failure of social democracy in the 20th century, which occurred inextricably with the collapse of the labour movement and its institutions. Corbynism aspired to rebuilding these things, but was always just aspiring, was always in lieu of them, and therefore was in fact closer in its origins to these forms of apolitical populism than I think has previously been acknowledged.

The merits of this form allowed us to function and work as organisers without the usual baggage, and at its height produced the hysterical joy of the 2017 election. That election feels dream-like in hindsight, precisely because it did seem to actually achieve what apolitical moments always claim to be able to achieve: transcending the parameters of ideology and politics as such. Could such a colossal upheaval have happened without Corbynism’s broad, moralistic appeals to decency, change, standing up for “the many”? I’m not sure. However beneficial, though, it was precisely this strength of apolitical Corbynism that, in part, engineered its downfall. This downfall came chiefly from the despicably vain, juvenile remain campaign, indulged by far too many people who in a state of flailing panic should’ve toughened up and known better. But also, I’d argue through a specific political-cultural tendency that emerged under late-Corbynism; self-flagellation and capitulation. Taken together, these outcomes have now engineered a situation where Keir Starmer is seen by many Corbynistas as the right successor to whatever Corbynism was about. It’s worth emphasising how absurd this is. Starmer is utterly archetypal of everything that Corbyn was supposed to replace. He is a character-less centrist, interchangeable with any prominent man among the liberal professional managerial class. If someone showed you a picture of him and said he’s the head of Save the Children, or an investment bank, or the Liberal Democrats, you’d have no difficulty believing them. His appeal to exhausted, depleted, Corbynistas comes from the same empty, directionless desires of apolitical populism. Just as Occupy never articulated a demand, just as XR was somehow apocalyptic without being antagonistic, just as People’s Vote wished away 17.4 million people; so too Starmer, by looking nice and sounding posh, will alleviate Labour of its existential contradictions.

Apolitical modes of politics are easily beaten down into capitulation. During any number of the crisis inflected on Corbyn and his team, the response where it ought to have been to fight back was to surrender in the hope of it all just blowing over. This ultimately became a form of constant self-flagellation, something those on the left do particularly well. Always it seems in the hope that just one more performance will make our enemies stop and say, “Ok, you’ve suffered enough”. The function of this is to bully the left into a corner, to make us know our place.

And it is effective. Despite winning the leadership twice and bringing the party within a whisker of forming a government, Corbyn was not only opposed for having particular views, he was never accepted as a legitimate political actor. It’s this fact which allowed for the hostility of the Guardian and the BBC to be indistinguishable from that of the Mail or the Sun. Momentum, which has laudably become an effective vehicle for organising mass canvassing sessions and phone-banks, has otherwise failed in its founding purpose: democratising the processes and cultures of the party, precisely because it has played into the game that lead to Corbynism’s de-legitimisation. Pursuing such democratisation seriously would have required enthusiastically making enemies, something the apolitical nature of Corbynism couldn’t accommodate. It feels sometimes that Momentum is flirting with exactly how middle class and inoffensive it can be in its sentiments (exhibited in its social media content) in the hope of impressing the establishment within Labour and the liberal press. As if Wes Streeting or whoever else will turn round one day and say “all is forgiven!”. An instance of how entrenched a culture of permanent capitulation now is in Momentum can be found in their endorsement of Angela Rayner for deputy, despite there being a candidate in that contest explicitly calling for open selection, a cause which used to define the organisation. Understanding Momentum’s shortcomings in this way, as forms of begging for a seat at the table, I think illuminates why and how its former highest paid member of operational staff can float seamlessly into supporting Sir Keir. All of the above is made possible by apolitical-ness because it always wishes away conflict as something we can just be above, just operate outside of, just move away from. When of course, if we have even a tangential association with class struggle, we can’t.

The difficulty for many of us is that deviating from the slickness of apolitical modes of politics, and embracing politics as necessarily antagonistic, brings up its own set of problems, like crankery or sectarianism. But in hindsight, I’ve come to appreciate how often the observations made by ‘cranks’ were actually constructively superior (if wildly unsophisticated), when compared with the constant attempts at appeasement, apology and grovelling from the ‘McDonnell wing’ of LOTO, Momentum and those adjacent to them. Tom Watson was a bastard, the People’s Vote campaign was actually about destroying Corbyn and, yes, sometimes it really was all just a smear. More broadly, I think this speaks to precisely the necessity of left politics being (by capitalist realism’s standards) uncool and shaggy. It can be those things if there is working class political substance behind it, where in parallel it doesn’t matter how spotless your aesthetic is if there’s no actual cause you’re fighting for, beyond being ‘in favour of niceness’.

The summary lesson of this is that the ugly work of politics isn’t something that can be avoided; or rather, Corbynism has shown that it can be, but with a price. If Starmer is going to win we can only expect that he will learn this lesson himself through not winning leave seats, not knowing how to fight Tories who have ditched austerity, and not appeasing anyone he wants to despite being really lovely and having nice hair. All the while, I hope, the actually existing left gets on with the work of working class organising and making enemies.