politicking
A new article of mine - does this lay down the Theory too heavily, or is it ok to understand? I don't want to alienate people, but nor do I want to talk down to them.
The Phantom of the Monolith
When we think of politics, and how we can change the system, we must be broad-minded. It's easy for the word 'politics' to call to mind the static, monolithic 3-party (1-party?) system that supposedly rules over us here in this country; and when we think of it - how changeless it is, how often it is governed by idiocy (either that of individuals or the system itself) - it's very easy to become apathetic.
Rightly so. This is not another article trying to recall the youth to vote, to get interested again in party politics. Eventually that system will need to change, but for now, our common-sense, intuitive understanding of the situation is completely correct - our votes have very little power to change the government, while getting actively involved in a party requires fitting in with a towering structure way beyond our control (i.e. if we try to join the lib dems and canvas for them, what we say would be dictated by the party). Then there's the deadening, apparently insurmountable effect of the media on public opinion... I'm not trying to say, 'don't vote'; you may as well. But it won't have much effect - our apathy is understandable.
But what if we expand our idea of politics? What is politics? How about - 'the systems by which a group of people organise and regulate themselves'. If we think of politics in this sense, the situation looks rather different. Sure, the government organises and regulates us - but so does the University, so do bouncers, so do teachers, so does the corporate system. And so does our language and behaviour. Look at the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s. Women were fairly clearly oppressed - but they did not lift this oppression by voting in another party, and they only partially changed it by protesting against specific laws. What really changed was the way women were related to and treated by men, and how they treated each other. This was achieved throughout society; each woman had a part to play in what happened, each has (hopefully) felt the effects, and each man had to reconsider his relationship to women. The gender revolution had its effect through freely changing our words and behaviour - i.e. through 'political correctness'.
The political tactics open to us are, then, as many and varied as the different ways in which we are ordered and regulated. The government certainly has a lot of power over what we can do due to its enforcement and invention of laws, but our flexibility still extends far beyond its boundaries, as the feminist movement shows - a cultural revolution is often as effective as a state revolution (and likewise a state revolution can simply not change anything). One such non-state revolutionary attempt is happening right now - the consumer revolution (organic, fairtrade, ethical foods, clothing, etc.) - but while this is cool and all, our powers lie far beyond this.
For instance, the student Union is an organisation with huge potential power, it's just that currently it generally doesn't use it very effectively. Of course, being a political 'structure', the unions will be frustrating to try to act within, but we can change them far more easily than we can anything else. At the risk of losing your favour, we've got to look at the French as an example of how effectively students can act if properly organised - they've managed to change governmental policy after a month of serious protesting (the 'CPE' law which would have allowed organisations to fire people under 26 in their first two years of employment without reason was scrapped). This is the equivalent of us stopping tuition fees. (what did we do about that anyway? A few marches? The French students occupied their universities, blockaded railways and roads and disrupted airports.) I don't know the intricacies of French politics, but I bet that student unions play a large part in mobilising large numbers of people. Besides our student unions being often simply devoid of radical elements (easily fixed by the radical people having the will to go to council meetings), in some cases they're directly, though silently, held back from their rightful power. The union at my university, Bradford, is not allowed to email its members en masse. We are unjustly restricted from this tool that would allow us to attempt to unify and inform the student body as a whole (as of now this is being worked on).
It often seems in this country that the 'consumer revolution' (the most boring revolution in history, necessary as it is) is the only political action we can effectively engage in - and even this is not directed towards our own political welfare, but that of others. The marches we engage in, which have an apparently minimal effect (see the events of 2003), are also directed towards others. It's true that there are people across the world that need our help and aid - but how are we to give it to them when the political structures around us ignore such basic acts of democracy as a 2-million strong march? Our own country is in need of reform - sometimes it seems as if we're heading dangerously towards a dictatorship of spin, closed doors and opinion control.
How to do this requires experiment and creativity as well as organisation. We've got to strengthen the avenues available to us - the Unions being one of these - and at the same time attempt to find new ways of affecting things, or simply more radical ones. This article has tried to suggest a few, but really we can only discover by acting. Our generation does have the power to change the government and its policies, but to do so we need to work around and outside it as well as in it.
The Phantom of the Monolith
When we think of politics, and how we can change the system, we must be broad-minded. It's easy for the word 'politics' to call to mind the static, monolithic 3-party (1-party?) system that supposedly rules over us here in this country; and when we think of it - how changeless it is, how often it is governed by idiocy (either that of individuals or the system itself) - it's very easy to become apathetic.
Rightly so. This is not another article trying to recall the youth to vote, to get interested again in party politics. Eventually that system will need to change, but for now, our common-sense, intuitive understanding of the situation is completely correct - our votes have very little power to change the government, while getting actively involved in a party requires fitting in with a towering structure way beyond our control (i.e. if we try to join the lib dems and canvas for them, what we say would be dictated by the party). Then there's the deadening, apparently insurmountable effect of the media on public opinion... I'm not trying to say, 'don't vote'; you may as well. But it won't have much effect - our apathy is understandable.
But what if we expand our idea of politics? What is politics? How about - 'the systems by which a group of people organise and regulate themselves'. If we think of politics in this sense, the situation looks rather different. Sure, the government organises and regulates us - but so does the University, so do bouncers, so do teachers, so does the corporate system. And so does our language and behaviour. Look at the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s. Women were fairly clearly oppressed - but they did not lift this oppression by voting in another party, and they only partially changed it by protesting against specific laws. What really changed was the way women were related to and treated by men, and how they treated each other. This was achieved throughout society; each woman had a part to play in what happened, each has (hopefully) felt the effects, and each man had to reconsider his relationship to women. The gender revolution had its effect through freely changing our words and behaviour - i.e. through 'political correctness'.
The political tactics open to us are, then, as many and varied as the different ways in which we are ordered and regulated. The government certainly has a lot of power over what we can do due to its enforcement and invention of laws, but our flexibility still extends far beyond its boundaries, as the feminist movement shows - a cultural revolution is often as effective as a state revolution (and likewise a state revolution can simply not change anything). One such non-state revolutionary attempt is happening right now - the consumer revolution (organic, fairtrade, ethical foods, clothing, etc.) - but while this is cool and all, our powers lie far beyond this.
For instance, the student Union is an organisation with huge potential power, it's just that currently it generally doesn't use it very effectively. Of course, being a political 'structure', the unions will be frustrating to try to act within, but we can change them far more easily than we can anything else. At the risk of losing your favour, we've got to look at the French as an example of how effectively students can act if properly organised - they've managed to change governmental policy after a month of serious protesting (the 'CPE' law which would have allowed organisations to fire people under 26 in their first two years of employment without reason was scrapped). This is the equivalent of us stopping tuition fees. (what did we do about that anyway? A few marches? The French students occupied their universities, blockaded railways and roads and disrupted airports.) I don't know the intricacies of French politics, but I bet that student unions play a large part in mobilising large numbers of people. Besides our student unions being often simply devoid of radical elements (easily fixed by the radical people having the will to go to council meetings), in some cases they're directly, though silently, held back from their rightful power. The union at my university, Bradford, is not allowed to email its members en masse. We are unjustly restricted from this tool that would allow us to attempt to unify and inform the student body as a whole (as of now this is being worked on).
It often seems in this country that the 'consumer revolution' (the most boring revolution in history, necessary as it is) is the only political action we can effectively engage in - and even this is not directed towards our own political welfare, but that of others. The marches we engage in, which have an apparently minimal effect (see the events of 2003), are also directed towards others. It's true that there are people across the world that need our help and aid - but how are we to give it to them when the political structures around us ignore such basic acts of democracy as a 2-million strong march? Our own country is in need of reform - sometimes it seems as if we're heading dangerously towards a dictatorship of spin, closed doors and opinion control.
How to do this requires experiment and creativity as well as organisation. We've got to strengthen the avenues available to us - the Unions being one of these - and at the same time attempt to find new ways of affecting things, or simply more radical ones. This article has tried to suggest a few, but really we can only discover by acting. Our generation does have the power to change the government and its policies, but to do so we need to work around and outside it as well as in it.