For a party. For Autonomy.
Dear All,
I’ve been meaning to write to my friends and comrades in the anti-authoritarian/autonomous left about my engagement with Corbynism for some time now. I’m finally undertaking this exercise in an attempt to demonstrate how a pivot toward a phenomena hinged so squarely on electoralism can still be comprehended inside the frameworks of a libertarian socialist politics and that this move is not the result of some ‘road to Damascus’ conversion to social democracy or the result of me losing the power of critical thought.
I’m undertaking this exercise in the hope that some of my thoughts may help give shape to an intellectual current I know to exist within Corbynism, a libertarian socialist current that has so far failed to cohere into an identifiable tendency. The reasons for this failure are many but in part are due to the nebulous and multiple comprehensions of ‘autonomy’ that exist within the movement itself. I hope my initial thoughts can go some way toward providing a shared lexicon through which an outward facing tendency may finally take shape.
Thirdly I hope that these ideas may aid younger comrades to articulate their own motivations for engaging in Corbynism, aware as I am, that many of them have struggled to defend their motivations for joining the movement in the face of ideological barrages from older and more experienced comrades within the anti-authoritarian milieu.
To explain myself I need to return to the politics of autonomy, a concept that has underpinned and informed my 20+ year of activism within the extra-parliamentary left. To be clear, when I speak of Autonomy, I am doing so from a partisan perspective, one that gains its empirical authority from two interrelated currents inside Italian Marxist thought, Operaismo and Autonomia. This tradition has held a small, yet significant influence over the UKs extra-parliamentary left since the late 1960s; notably in the analysis and activity of organisations like Big Flame and Plan C and in the output of journals like Rednotes, Endnotes and Notes from Below among others. Despite the differences that exist between these projects all of them owe an intellectual debt to the theoretical work undertaken by the early Operaisti.
A nuanced account of the peculiarities of Operaismo’s intellectual development is beyond the scope of this letter. However, a brief overview is necessary if you are to follow the logic that underpins my move toward Corbynism.
Broadly speaking Operaismo emerged within the lively intellectual life of Italy’s two dominant worker’s parties, The PCI (Communist) and the PSI (Socialist Party). In the early 1960s militants from within these organisations sought to comprehend a wave of working class struggles emerging around the factories and communities of Northern Italy, that on first appearance appeared to be outside of the logic and control of either party or their affiliated unions. Turning towards sociology, the early Operaisti conducted inquiries into Northern Italy’s factories that sought to establish the ‘workers point of view’ from which it was reasoned, a better understanding of the new and ‘autonomous’ forms of political action could be made.
As such, Autonomy was initially deployed descriptively, it was literally the militant forms of activity emerging away (or autonomously) of the party and its procedures. For many workers, the old parties were experienced as monolithic blockages on revolution. Their experience of their unions and of their parties was one of compromises and disappointment, they were tired of strike action being ‘sold out’, they were tired of their leaderships returning them to their position within the production process as exploited labour. As the Operasiti discovered, the workers in Italy's new powerhouses of industry were not content with better wages and conditions they wanted a break with the logics of capitalist production itself. As such official strike actions were often joined by other forms of activity, such as sabotage and occupations, that pointed toward the workers desires to ‘refuse’ the world of work in its entirety.
At this stage Autonomy would take on a double (yet interrelated) meaning in Operaisti writing- not only would it indicate the political character of these actions (organised as they were outside of the official organs of working-class representation) but would also be used as shorthand for the potential dislocation between labour and capital itself. For while capital needed Labour, Labour did not need capital.
However, these early inquiries also recognised one important fact- that political autonomy was rooted in the material conditions of the production process the workers were actively organising against. Their Autonomy (both in the present and in a potential future) gained its strength and ‘universal’ capacity from the knowledge and shared conditions experienced by workers of their workplaces and communities. Their shared experiences with the rhythms of work, their proximity to one another inside the factory and their intimate knowledge of the production process ensured that if a new ‘political solution’ was to emerge from within the social body of the ‘mass worker’ it could easily grow, virilising across the workforce through shared experiences, comprehensions and oppositions to the production process. However, their commonalities didn’t stop at the factory gate. The growing workforce needed to be housed and as such new municipal projects erupted around the Northern cities in order to house workers and their families. This meant workers shared a technical composition, but also a social one. They shared bosses and they also shared landlords. They shared conveyor belts and they also shared washing lines, shops, utility bills. These shared conditions, the technical and social cohesion of the working class in Northern Italy, its relation within and against the PCI/PSI nexus ensured that ‘political autonomy’ had a possibility to scale, one that could grow and find widespread support among workers, their friends and families.
If we are to extend Operasimo’s logics to contemporary Britain, where are the possibilities for a militant working class autonomy and under what conditions would this grow? The fragmented technical and social conditions of our class, the multiple and myriad experiences of work and housing are an impediment to autonomy’s development at scale. While we do see small amounts of political autonomy, such as the self-organised struggle of Deliveroo riders, or in the struggles of housing campaigns led by the E15 mothers , these forms of action cannot generalise to the whole of our class, nor can they scale to the heights once experienced during the era of the mass worker. As such they remain partial, if inspiring affairs.
In an era of mass technical and social fragmentation it appears logical to assert that the party form presents itself as a viable vehicle to aggregate the multiple and different forms of class struggle into a force capable of combating multiple crises; a means to unite different forms of political autonomy into a coherent revolutionary voice, finding a common language for our antagonisms, despite the stratified (gendered/racialised and specialised differences) experiences of our class.
It just so happens that at in this moment of recognising the extent of our social and technical fragmentation that the Labour Party (and the Democratic party in America) present themselves a viable vehicles for social democracy. The instincts of comrades to rush toward these parties, is I believe the correct one. I believe material conditions in this cycle of struggle dictate the party form as the only organisational form able to unite our class into a coherent and combative force. The question is are these parties the ‘right’ ones? My instinct is to say ‘no,’ it is the Labour Party after-all.
However, if you accept the logic of my argument, that we need a party to aggregate workers autonomy, then what is our current alternative? It’s fair to say that the revolutionary left has minimal influence over society and appears incapable of coordinating a mass membership party on its own terms. Even If all the revolutionary organisations were to put aside their differences and converge, they would still number less than 5,000 people.
As such the social movement around the Labour Party, if not the party itself, presents revolutionaries with the greatest (and only existing) opportunity to regroup and build something to a scale that is adequate to the task currently facing us. Regardless of the success or failure of this project one thing is for certain, those militants who have joined the thousands inside the LP (or moving in the adjacent Corbynite movement) will not be content to return to a life in the minoritarian left, they’ve tasted the possibility of a mass socialism, one that can reach outside of the radical left echo chambers and its intoxicating.
The World Transformed (TWT), an annual fringe festival attached to the Labour Party conference is an interesting case in point. It has created a vibrant space to the left of the current leadership, one attended by thousands of people active in social movements, unions, community campaigns and activist groups. This space has created productive conversations with the base of the Labour Party (its rank and file members). Exchanges like these extend the reach of revolutionary ideas and practice, extending our influence throughout society in ways that would currently be impossible if Corbyn hadn't won the leadership battle (No Corbyn, no TWT). The recent eruption of regional events now utilising the Transformed moniker provides a further opportunity for serious revolutionaries. These events are inspiring, educating and creating socialist cadre across the country, cadre whose baseline politics exists way to the left of the current leadership. As counterintuitive as it may be, If you want to see a growth in working class Autonomy you’re going to need to build a party. This isn’t and cannot be the Labour Party, but its a good place to start.
This could all tank of course, Corbyn could go under, be replaced, be defeated and the question is then, can Corbynism (and the current crop of ‘autonomists’ within it) survive Corbyn? I’m uncertain, however I’d rather take a roll of the dice with this movement than sit back and do nothing out of adherence to revolutionary purity or the certainty of history or theory. Given the time-frames attached to runaway climate change its a dereliction of a revolutionary’s duty not to try something on this scale. We mustn't squander this opportunity because it isn't the ‘correct form’ or saying all the right things all the time. To paraphrase comrade Marx, humanity doesn't make history in conditions of its own choosing. I hope to see you soon.
In solidarity and in friendship,
S.
This letter is abridged extract from research conducted in my PhD thesis.