An overview
- Vision and narrative: Sure, capitalism sucks – but what is our alternative and what’s our story about how we got where we are and could get to a better future? Can we unite around an emotionally engaging story that inspires people, rather than just rationally persuasive critiques and policy proposals?
- Subjectivity: The ways we think, feel and act – the kinds of people we are – have been deeply shaped by capitalism. What does this mean for our strategy? Can we embrace the goal of collective ethical transformation without slipping into intrusive authoritarianism or counter-productive moralising?
- Organisational form: Organisations can be more or less democratic, centralised and hierarchical. Different forms have strengths and weaknesses. What kinds of organisation should the left use to pursue its goals?
- Unity: The left’s tendency towards factional squabbles and splits is so established as to be a cliché. Why does this happen and what can we do to overcome the barriers to unity?
- Internal left culture: The left is too often an unfriendly, unwelcoming place, in which newcomers and fresh ideas are treated with suspicion or disdain. What can we do to make our movement an attractive, enjoyable place to be?
- Political education: To change society, more people need to understand how it works, why it’s unjust and how we might best go about changing it. People need to learn this stuff – whether by themselves or through formal education. What should the left do to help people develop their political understanding – should it teach more? If so, what should it teach and how?
- Organising: Building the power we need requires more than mobilising people who already support us and speaking on behalf of people whose interests we seek to serve. It requires doing the slow, hard, complicated work of organising ordinary people to fight for their own interests and integrate them into the broader struggle. Many are doing this important work in workplaces and communities but we need much more for it.
- Strategy: There are many ways to pursue power – elections, culture, protest and direct action. We can also pursue socialism through gradual reform or sudden, revolutionary change. And we can focus on the short-, medium- or long-term. What should our strategy be?
- Leadership and accountability: We need leaders. But we also need mechanisms of democratic control and accountability so that the movement itself can decide when pragmatic compromises are needed. And we need to harness charisma and personal ambition without letting powerful individuals have too much influence.
We’ll discuss these challenges separately here, but they’re almost all interwoven – we hope later to explore some of these connections. We begin by presenting them in a clear and relatively neutral way so as to establish common ground upon which the radical left can collectively try to address them. We then want to analyse them in more detail and think and talk with others about how to solve them.
The New Common Sense 