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My exchanges with Richard Seymour continue. He has replied twice now. I am still very chuffed about that. We can all do with an ego rush now and then and being engaged in debate by one of the contemporary greats on the Left has me grinning with delight. I cannot though get into the tweets what needs to be said. It is not that kind of medium. But what is at issue is the notion of concrete utopianism. I follow Bhaskar here. He always used "concrete" before Utopian to distinguish his ideas from compensatory utopian fantasies. Like Fourier's notion of the sea turning into lemonade. For Bhaskar "concrete" meant that there had to be real possibilities in process. Sea is never going to turn into lemonade. It is never a real possibility in process. (Though Bhaskar did in a brief remark acknowledge the positive role of fantasy in utopian imagining). Now what I think is that it is indeed concrete utopian to dream of a Labour victory. I will have no talk of pessimism. For Richard that would appear to mean that I am burying my head in the sand. We tweeted *Me: I spent yrs in ISO. I 2 no the pseudo Leninist b/shit. But Traverso says we've a generation without a Utopia on the horizon i.e. sans hope.* *Richard: We're not gonna develop new utopias by burying our heads in the sand about the state of the real world todayMe: Love ur work Richard. Love ur books. Even love u. BUT pessimism=low turn out. Tory win. Optimism=high turn out. Labour win. 4 me that's it* I work in very remote Indigenous communities and there is no head in the sand. I have seen people choking under despair and my task is to bring hope. I approach the task with the Bhaskarian conviction that the actuality of what I see does not encompass all the reality. There are underlying mechanisms especially the urge to absent the constraints on the ills or absences that afflict the lives of Indigenous people. The pulse to freedom is strong everywhere and I seek to assist its triggering. I cannot do that with pessimism. But to return to the UK electoral context. The Tory project is in trouble because neoliberalism is in trouble. They have also campaigned badly. I have reconstructed what I think lead to the disastrous decision to call an early election. First observation: The parliamentary Labour Party had settled on the strategy of driving down the Party's poll numbers to pile so much pressure on Corbyn that his supporters would peel off. It already worked with Owen Jones apparently. They got the Party down to a disastrous 24%. The traitors reasoned that Corbyn could not take three more years of this. Guess: The Tories looked at the numbers and thought Xmas had come. A snap election would wipe out Labour. May calls election. Mistake: Poll numbers do not necessarily reflect all of the underlying tendencies. E.g. Corbyn's enemies inside the Party became muted or muzzled. Continued criticism during election would be seen as overt treachery. 2nd Corbyn is most effective away from Westminster. Out in the streets is his milieu. It makes him look responsive. Moreover, Corbyn's supporters in the part , all 500k of them suddenly had something to do - get out there and campaign. They love doing that. They are good at it. Oops Tendencies: Discontent is very real and widespread but in the absence of hope it has fed into despair and apathy. Also the National Executive of the Labour Party let Corbyn have his left wing manifesto around social welfare, abolition of student fees, minimum wage and re-nationalizing water, rail, and power etc. This was the most radical manifesto since 1945. I think they did it to exorcise the "poison" of Corbyn's leftism. Mistake: National Executive miscalculated as manifesto proved popular. Labour found itself on the moral high ground and it surged in polls - Oops! Mistake: Tories under Crosby decided to campaign depicting Corbyn as anti-Christ. That made him like Shelley's Lucifer. He became interesting. God ,as Shelley pointed out, is boring. Corbyn became the bearer of negation. Suddenly, all those who counter-identified with the system had a pole of attraction. The counter identifiers, the primitive rebels, were driven into the camp of the dis-identifiers. Mistake: Tories decided not to do debates with Corbyn as this would boost him. The line then emerged that May had run away or did not care. The election became about her being missing in action. Mistake: As her leadership came under question May resorted to talking about her "team" She sent members of her team to debates and that made her look even weaker. She keeps saying she is being "responsible" but the public want responsiveness. Oops. What happens now? The system has contracted the Volatility Virus because of the underlying crisis of the neoliberal centre. A new centre has not emerged but Corbyn has put forward a possible one with his manifesto. All this is totally unexpected. No one knows what happens now. But I am convinced that we are close to a historic moment - a Badiou type event. A Corbyn victory would mean that it would be impossible to do politics in the same old way. A terrible beauty might be about to be born. I know Richard (bless him) wants "sober and serious" and I am so much better at delirious and drunk, but I might be right. As always we shall see, comradely Gary _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
