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"The victory of ideas needs organising". These are the wise words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Some might, with some justification, argue that Lenin and the Bolsheviks took their own dictum too much to heart. But it's obviously the case that while ideas are necessary, they are insufficient on their own - they need to be battled for and fought for and that requires organisation. As Karl Marx said "'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it".
Let's assume that progressives have some good ideas: wealth taxes, media reform, proportional representation, a four-day week, universal basic income and services, social ownership of water, investment in good public services and mass social home building, would be top of most people's wish lists of the politically desirable. So why does it feel like everything is going backwards?
A big answer is that we're not very good at organisation. And until we are the national populists are going to keep winning. Here are seven problems progressive face when it comes to effective organisation, and by implication how we might start to address them.
A Lack of Vision
First, a lack of vision: progressives have lost their way. In the absence of a unifying theory of change, which Marxism offered, and in the evidential crisis of social democracy, there is no ideological loadstar for progressives, no clear idea of what the good society or the good life might be, just rather bloodless and technocratic small scale reforms to alleviate the screaming reality of another famous dictum, this time from Mrs. Thatcher that "there is no alternative" or TINA as it became known.
If you don't know what you're organising for when you start, well that's a bit of a problem to say the least. Meanwhile the national populists offer rough and ready answers around culture and geography that may lack coherence but speak powerfully to people's sense of loss, grievance and resentment. Neither the opportunities of the 2008 global crash nor COVID created a sufficient opportunity for progressives to reassert a different vision of how the world should be - to build back better. This is by far and away the biggest problem progressive organisation faces.
'The Draconian Anti-Protest Laws That Are the Real Threat to Free Speech in the UK'
A new report calls on the Government to 'look again' at repealing laws passed under the last Conservative Government
Rowan Popplewell
Lack of Long Term Thinking
Second, playing the long game: without a vision it's impossible to play the long game. Instead, we just go for short term managerial reforms which might be good in their own right but don't add up to anything transformative or long term. The new right meanwhile are not just both bold and ambitious but farsighted, seeking to challenge and change the big institutions which once favoured progressives but are now in play, such as universities, the public media and the judiciary. This then chimes with the third problem.
Lack of Resilience
Persistence: "great deeds are not done by brute strength but by perseverance" Samuel Johnson told us. In this I'm reminded of the dogged determination and tenacity of the new right who in the midst with the triumph of the New Deal and the high point Keynesian welfarism in the mid 1940s, committed themselves to winning the battle of ideas for their free market nostrums. It must have felt like an impossible task, but they persisted. It took them three decades to get there but they never once gave up and never stop shooting for the moon. Progressives can learn much from this tenacity.
A Distaste for Popularity
Fourth, the need to be right, not popular: progressives str...
For digital and print editions, packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, features, and columns….
SUBSCRIBE
"The victory of ideas needs organising". These are the wise words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Some might, with some justification, argue that Lenin and the Bolsheviks took their own dictum too much to heart. But it's obviously the case that while ideas are necessary, they are insufficient on their own - they need to be battled for and fought for and that requires organisation. As Karl Marx said "'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it".
Let's assume that progressives have some good ideas: wealth taxes, media reform, proportional representation, a four-day week, universal basic income and services, social ownership of water, investment in good public services and mass social home building, would be top of most people's wish lists of the politically desirable. So why does it feel like everything is going backwards?
A big answer is that we're not very good at organisation. And until we are the national populists are going to keep winning. Here are seven problems progressive face when it comes to effective organisation, and by implication how we might start to address them.
A Lack of Vision
First, a lack of vision: progressives have lost their way. In the absence of a unifying theory of change, which Marxism offered, and in the evidential crisis of social democracy, there is no ideological loadstar for progressives, no clear idea of what the good society or the good life might be, just rather bloodless and technocratic small scale reforms to alleviate the screaming reality of another famous dictum, this time from Mrs. Thatcher that "there is no alternative" or TINA as it became known.
If you don't know what you're organising for when you start, well that's a bit of a problem to say the least. Meanwhile the national populists offer rough and ready answers around culture and geography that may lack coherence but speak powerfully to people's sense of loss, grievance and resentment. Neither the opportunities of the 2008 global crash nor COVID created a sufficient opportunity for progressives to reassert a different vision of how the world should be - to build back better. This is by far and away the biggest problem progressive organisation faces.
'The Draconian Anti-Protest Laws That Are the Real Threat to Free Speech in the UK'
A new report calls on the Government to 'look again' at repealing laws passed under the last Conservative Government
Rowan Popplewell
Lack of Long Term Thinking
Second, playing the long game: without a vision it's impossible to play the long game. Instead, we just go for short term managerial reforms which might be good in their own right but don't add up to anything transformative or long term. The new right meanwhile are not just both bold and ambitious but farsighted, seeking to challenge and change the big institutions which once favoured progressives but are now in play, such as universities, the public media and the judiciary. This then chimes with the third problem.
Lack of Resilience
Persistence: "great deeds are not done by brute strength but by perseverance" Samuel Johnson told us. In this I'm reminded of the dogged determination and tenacity of the new right who in the midst with the triumph of the New Deal and the high point Keynesian welfarism in the mid 1940s, committed themselves to winning the battle of ideas for their free market nostrums. It must have felt like an impossible task, but they persisted. It took them three decades to get there but they never once gave up and never stop shooting for the moon. Progressives can learn much from this tenacity.
A Distaste for Popularity
Fourth, the need to be right, not popular: progressives str...
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