These general comments
invite an objection. Can an emancipatory politics avoid entering institutional territory?
Is a politics of pure interaction conceivable? My reply is that, in an institutional
world, institutions and interaction are linked in complex ways. There can be no
question of purity. Of course, in the world as we know it, interaction takes place
in contradictory – institutional and, thereby, alienated – ways. Of course institutions
differ amongst themselves. Of course openings between institutions may come into
being – if only briefly. My point is that, given these circumstances, an order of
priority is necessary. From a revolutionary perspective, the first priority must
be free interaction – since it is there that emancipation lies. The second priority
is deciding on institutional issues. Viewed in such a perspective, an institutional
choice is a choice between least worst options. A “but” must attach to it. What
is decided must be yes but or no but. Revolutionary thinking which idealises a least
worse choice or option loses its way. It loses its way amongst institutions. By
contrast, an emancipatory movement which stays on course formulates its own goals
– the formulation having an interactive character.
What do such reflections
imply in the light of the 18 September referendum? In the weeks building up to the
referendum, grassroots radicalism came into focus. Occupy-style perspectives, including
prefigurative invocations of participatory democracy, seemed not altogether remote
from Scottish debates. Free interaction came to be valued not merely instrumentally,
as a method of reaching this or that constitutional arrangement, but for its own
sake. To hold on to this fragile and tentative beginning is, I suggest, the most
urgent task in Scottish politics today.
To hold on to, and to
sustain, this beginning involves drawing upon the experience of global struggles.
It involves learning from a range of education movements, occupations, climate justice
groups and action groups that is world wide. […]
Regarding nationhood,
there is more to be said. In the aftermath of the September 18th referendum, a mood
of numbness and disbelief and depression prevailed amongst sections of the Scottish
left. This depression was deeply personal and amounted, almost, to a sense of grief.
What had happened? Why was the depression so deep? At the level of individual experience,
why was defeat of the YES campaign so undermining? My suggestion is that September
18th was (or was seen as) a national defeat. In the light of the deeply personal
feelings unleashed by the defeat of the YES campaign, Gordon Asher’s and Leigh French’s
words seem almost prophetic: a struggle for national independence is, they say,
one which ‘maintains a referent to state-foundational individualism’.2
That is to say: an individual
who supports a struggle for national independence finds – and finds all too quickly
– that an institutional component has entered his or her sense of self. His or her
awareness of himself or herself becomes mediated through “national” awareness. When
he or she dreams, his or her dreams take on a national tinge. This point is most
evident when the élan and euphoria that goes with national struggle is considered.
My suggestion is that the point is equally valid in cases of national defeat. In
other words, the depression which prevailed in the aftermath of September 18th is,
in part, institutionally constructed. It is part and parcel not of ourselves as
interactive individuals but of what nationhood – victorious nationhood or defeated
nationhood – means. […]
What objectives should
a post-referendum movement pursue? Unless this question is answered, comments regarding
an interactive movement have an unspecific ring. The question is difficult, not
because answers are lacking but because, in Chomsky’s words, ‘opportunities are
all there’.3
In the closing months
of 2014, a host of issues – ecological issues, issues of social justice, issues
concerning peace – confront the radical left in Scotland. Thinking about how these
issues are interelated has scarcely got under way. So, too, the question of how
campaigning on such issues can retain an interactive centre of gravity has hardly
been posed. In what way can, for example, an eco-social movement become what Raúl
Zibechi terms a ‘pedagogical subject’?4 The question is not merely fascinating,
politically and conceptually. It is urgent as well. […]
What, finally, about the
suggestion that post-referendum Scotland requires a ‘new radical party’?5 I respond
with suspicion. Too frequently, the structure of political parties mirror the structure
of the institutional world. Too readily, political parties – even oppositional political
parties – attempt to play down or diffuse the ‘dance between social movements and
states’.6 In a phrase, political parties tend to blur the distinction between institutions
and interaction. In 2014, founding a party risks moving struggle on to neoliberalism’s
terrain.
My suspicions regarding
a ‘new radical party’ are not, however, confined to general issues. They are based
on points concerning Scotland in the present day. As I write, the Scottish radical
left is taking its first steps beyond despair and disappointment. The movement to
which it has given birth has merely fragile and tentative existence. In this situation,
there can be no question of a vigourously-developed movement which might, as an
expression of its strength, decide upon founding a party. Why found a party now?
What effect would it have on the movement? The left must beware of thinking that
movements without parties cannot exist. […]
'Post-referendum Scotland: New Priorities', Richard Gunn, Heathwood Press, 6 October 2014
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