why the Left can't define itself in terms of 'collectivism'

Soundings magazine is currently hosting an online debate called Left Futures, organised around a series of article-blogposts. My two-pennyworth has been posted up, entitled 'What does free market collectivism mean for the left?'. It's summarised as follows:

What model of capitalism has emerged out of the ashes of the 1970s? While 'neo-liberalism' is the rhetorical answer, it is clear that something more subtle took hold over the 1990s. New types of collectivities were being pursued, resting on new types of market logic. Two in particular are worth thinking about: the neo-classical paradigm of 'market failure' and the Schumpeterian emphasis on innovation  and 'competitiveness'. It may be easier for the Left to continue pitting itself against the Gordon Gecko ideology of individual greed, but responding to the market's own preferred collectivisms is the more complicated challenge. ......

I'm not sure if 'free market collectivism' is quite the right term (and certainly won't have anyone running for their intellectual property lawyers) but I feel there is something in this, at least as a corrective to some of the most unthinking traditional leftisim. The notion that the Left stands for cuddly togetherness, while the right stands for nasty selfishness makes no sense for two reasons. Firstly, it fails to address the question of why individualism holds the appeal that it does. Contrary to the notion that capitalism is an out-and-out scandal (and here I follow Boltanski) surely it's worth thinking about what promises it makes to people and the extent to which it does regularly deliver on them. Surely the whole basis of the Marxist critique of market liberalism is that it promises to enshrine individuals as legal-rational autonomous entities... and at least to some extent, the Left might benefit from accepting that it makes good on this promise with positive consequences.

Secondly, in what sense is 'collectivism' automatically better than 'individualism' unless one specifies some ethical or political goal? Fascism is a glorious example of collectivism in action. The point about the early Labour movement was not simply that it involved collective action but that it developed a clear set of objectives that were of material (and to a lesser extent cultural) benefit to its members, without significantly harming its non-members. Clearly nobody has a clue what the Left is actually about right now. But the notion that it stands for togetherness while the Right stands for loneliness and fragmentation, while being useful for Labour politicians at conference, sounds suspiciously close to the entirely uncritical, 'social capital' philosophy of Robert Putnam.

Comments

[Kate]

I'm not sure anyone actually claims that the right doesn't believe in collectives - just that its collectives were 'traditional,' the nuclear family, or at worst, the 'race.' The left orginally developed its collectives on class lines - then abandoned that for the swamps of identity politics from which it is yet to emerge. The right has found it much easier to update its collectives (gay parents as well as straight ones). The left lost its rationale for the collective - either to oppose or reform capitalism, depending on what sort of leftist you were. And now it is just left with an argument that says that the value of community is.. er ..community.

[Will Davies]

"I'm not sure anyone actually claims that the right doesn't believe in collectives..."

Obviously it depends which people and which variant of the right. Many Leftists and New Labour types regularly make the claim that they stand for community and/or society, while the right stands only for individualism and self-reliance. In the US where there is a libertarian tradition, this charge successfully sticks quite often.

Obviously in the UK it depends whether you are thinking Edmund Burke or Friedrich Hayek, who pull in quite opposite directions (I thought John Gray's False Dawn did a very good job of explaining how the Tory party pulled itself in two). There does exist a tradition - which might include people like Karl Popper as well as Hayek - who believe that the worst crimes in history have been committed in the name of collectivism, and that collectives (or at least very large scale collectives that go under the name of 'society') must be constantly placed under suspicion, or even dismantled.

[Phil]

Many Leftists and New Labour types regularly make the claim that they stand for community and/or society, while the right stands only for individualism and self-reliance.

I'd put it a bit differently - I think the watered-down appeal to "community and/or society" is only associated with the Left because it's invoked for that reason by New Labour. I wrote something along these lines back in 1997:

"Yes, there is such a thing as society; yes, a sense of community is important; yes, it is good for people to be active in their communities. There’s nothing there that wouldn’t be endorsed by Women Against Pit Closures or the anti-roads protesters, or for that matter by the BNP. The hard questions - what kind of society, what kind of community, what kind of activity - are never addressed."