Dear New SPACE organisers,
Thank you for your invitation to contribute a think-piece to your pluralism page.
From some of the e-mails I am picking up, it seems that if you are happy, a few other guys will be unhappy. It is a sad reflection on the left’s current state that an initiative which cannot but increase discussion and participation should be viewed by anyone as a negative development. I think it is indicative of what appears to me as a siege atmosphere in parts of the US left at this time.
This is understandable but I don’t think it’s appropriate. It’s true that the right is on the offensive, but it’s not true that the left is shrinking or facing annihilation. If parts of it feel that way, then my guess is they should look more critically at their own practices, and ask why they aren’t linked up with new radicalising forces because, for sure, these new forces exist. The size of your classes is a part of the proof of that.
Many practices that the left has until now taken for granted are cutting it off from a very real, very general and worldwide radicalisation that is going on in response to Bush’s offensive. The real problem is that this radicalisation is taking very new forms. Embracing it requires new ideas, a new openness, and most of all a clear understanding of how to combine diversity with unity – a challenge that calls both for new thinking, and for clear thinking. I think The New SPACE represents a part of this process and I hope it continues to do so. I wish you every success in this respect.
I think The New SPACE is part of a general renewal of the left which perhaps reached its height at the huge conferences of the World Social Forums, particularly Porto Alegre (www.forumsocialmundial.org.br) this year and Mumbai last year, and at the London-based European Social Forum last year which, as London’s Mayor pointed out, was the biggest conference in Britain ever held, on anything.
This movement is diversity incarnate. The traditional left has learned a lot from it, and has a lot more to learn. The Social Forum movement has taught us that diversity does not have to contradict unity. It has created a way of working together for a hitherto inconceivable variety of ideas, of groups, of forms of organisation which didn’t stop it, nevertheless, calling the biggest demonstration for peace in the history of the world and led to the New York Times proclaiming world public opinion to be one of two superpowers on the planet.
Fortunately the movement by and large has understood that this diversity is something to celebrate, not decry. I hope you will in future carry links to Social Forum sites, not least to those containing its guidelines – the Porto Alegre Principles.
I’m glad that you have featured the scholarship guidelines of the International Working Group on Value Theory (http://www.iwgvt.org), a group which was set up to discuss questions very similar to those that you cover, which I see as an important component of the same process of renewal, and which received and published 180 papers between 1994 and 2004 at its US-based mini-conferences. My first suggestion to anyone that wants to explore what pluralism means in practice, is go check out the IWGVT website.You will find not only the guidelines but papers from just about every conceivable viewpoint, and where you will see from the conference agendas that speakers from these different viewpoints shared sessions, worked as discussants on each other’s stuff, and that the conferences were as a result very productive of ideas.
Amidst all the flak I’ve seen denouncing The New SPACE in general and Andrew Kliman in particular, not one person has found anything negative to say about the IWGVT. In fact, most of them haven’t found anything at all to say about the IWGVT which seems to me a useful indicator of where your critics are at. The IWGVT is after all the biggest thing Andrew has been doing for the last dozen years, so surely if your bent is to check out some kind of Kliman conspiracy, the IWGVT should be the first place to go look to see what the results might look like.
Maybe now I’ve mentioned it, a few people with nothing better to do will rummage around in their recycle bins to find some way to run down the IWGVT. I think they’ll have to dig deep to find anything. I’m not arguing the IWGVT conferences were perfect pluralism. We were learning. Nevertheless, in ten years we had a total of one complaint (in 1996) about exclusion, and when we got it, we totally changed our procedures to make sure it never happened again.
I hope your critics also notice that Andrew Kliman worked with me, and dozens of others worldwide to run the IWGVT, was central to the organisation of it, and that he at all times based his involvement in it on our common commitment to discuss value theory and, as the discussion developed, on a common conception of what pluralism actually means in practice.
I would say it is a testimony to the robustness of the concept of pluralism which Andrew, myself and numerous others evolved through the IWGVT’s experiences, that in twelve years we have never witnessed a single conflict between the IWGVT’s pluralism and Andrew’s political views and affiliations. I should add that my own political views are completely distinct from Andrew’s, as are of course the views of each and every one of the other dozens of people involved in the IWGVT.
It is the right of any individual to choose whether she or he wishes to publicise, mention or disseminate their political involvement. I have quit email groups on which this right among others was violated and I will never return to them. This basic right of privacy is fundamental to the integrity of the left and it’s extremely sad that there are still people on the US left – of all places! - that just don’t get this. If you want to know why this matters just ask anyone who’s been blacklisted. Go Google ‘McCarthyism’ and while you’re at it stop off at ‘Rosenbergs’. Then come back and say it is an ‘oversight’ to publicise someone’s affiliation or activities without asking them.
What we are talking about here is a conception of pluralism, not a Jacobin conspiracy. The fact that the people in the IWGVT who differ so widely on politics (and theory), worked out common practice for organising discussion in which everyone’s view was respected – that’s the real experience that needs to be examined.
The key thing which I think has to be assessed, in the light of these experiences, is the relation between two views of unity, one which conceives of it as based on personal loyalty and the other of which understands it is based necessarily on formal rules, which have to be respected in order for the unity to have a real existence.
I think the Social Forum has taught the traditional left a particular lesson in this respect. It has shown that organising a discussion is not the same thing as organising a demonstration or a strike. It has reminded us that debates and discussions themselves require rules which are distinct and are different from the rules for organising unions, campaigning organisations, or political parties. And also, which should not be forgotten in the present context, they are different from the rules for organising academic conferences, because they have a different constituency and a different function.
Of course we have to be permanently inventive and critical about what these rules actually are, but nevertheless the popular view of the anti-globalisation movement as something formless, anarchic and chaotic is quite false. Actually, there are very clear guidelines for the Social Forum movement which are called the Porto Alegre principles. In its organisational debates people constantly refer to these rules as the basis for decision-making, get very angry if they are violated, and discuss procedures at enormous and at times tedious length.
These rules are not ones that the traditional left is very used to. For example decision by consensus is a very different principle to decision by vote and caused enormous reflection on the traditional left. These rules may not be appropriate for every circumstance. Nevertheless, they are rules and without them the Social Forum movement certainly would not exist in anything like its present form.
In my view this is what pluralism is ‘really’ about. It’s about a clear set of procedures and rules which are collectively determined and worked out, but which are applied very systematically and consistently to get the results that the collectivity wants.
With that in mind I will say a few words about what I’ve seen on your site and about the e-mails I have received relating to it.
I am always cautious about commenting on events I have not been directly involved in. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s possible to address the question of pluralism in a way that will promote dialogue on the left (which is what, I think, we all want) without making some initial assessment of the circumstances that led to your creation on the basis of the evidence you have made available to the public.
First, I think it’s clear there has been a clash about rules—the Brecht Forum administration felt entitled to substantially edit your course description without your consent or even knowledge, while you wanted them to consult with you first. Basically as far as I can see, there was a disagreement between the Brecht Forum administration on the one hand, and the course presenters and students of the Capital class on the other. Instead of applying or evolving formal procedures to deal with this, respecting both the self-determination rights of the course participants and the integrity of the Brecht Forum as a whole, the Brecht Forum administration seem to have made a number of things up as they went along without consulting the course presenters, ending with denying them facilities.
Thus the difficulty – and the difference with the Social Forum – is that in its way of organising and preparing, the Brecht Forum administration seem to hold that adherence to and respect for proper rules of conduct which safeguard pluralism, were an inessential aspect of their organisation. In my view, they are wrong in this. All my experience tells me that rules matter, rights matter, and if you don’t stick to them, you don’t get pluralism. It also tells me that if you don’t have pluralism, you don’t get an audience, because the people whose rights you have denied, have to go elsewhere. Any other way of looking at it gets things upside down, in my opinion. It is not an option to demand that people should only hold discussions in sanctified Left Places. They will hold their discussions anyway, and the issue facing the Left Places is whether to facilitate this or make them happen elsewhere. The one option not open is to stop people discussing what they want to discuss.
Under these circumstances, evidently the Capital class had to be organised elsewhere and it was entirely right to do this by establishing a proper institutional framework for it, precisely in order to guarantee pluralism in the way you conduct your own business.
I don’t see that you had a choice about this. The events were provoked by the unilateral decision of the Brecht Forum administration not to provide facilities for self-determined classes. I’m not sure I agree with your characterisation of this as a “purge,” because “purge” refers to the expulsion of a whole group. In your case, the seminar leader was expelled. Nevertheless the whole class, as it conceived itself, could only continue doing what you were doing, outside the Brecht Forum, as a result of the Brecht Forum’s decision. You did not split; you were expelled.
In the case of such clashes what always matters is to try and identify the underlying question, so that procedures can be worked out constructively which get over the problem in future.
Here, it seems to me the underlying question is pretty well central to pluralism, and is that of self-determination in discussion. The left still has to get to grips with this but the right already has – basically, they are against it. So what should the left do?
We had to grapple with this in the IWGVT over such question as ‘if two people that disagree are debating each other, how should they refer to each other?’ There is actually an IWGVT rule you will find, rather important in our history, which sets forth that contributors should refer to opinions that they oppose using the characterisation which their opponents themselves have adopted.
Thus, for example, we persuaded (all but one of) our contributors to stop using the derogatory term ‘neo-Ricardians’ and instead use one or other of the terms which this intellectual current used to designate themselves: either ‘surplus school’ or ‘physicalism’.
This may seem a minor point. In fact without it real engagement is impossible. Instead of reasoned assessment of what a particular viewpoint actually asserted, contributors to the value debate have – if one reads the material of the past thirty years – actually wasted most of the time calling each other names instead of discussing each other’s ideas. Rhetoric has substituted for discussion.
What’s at issue here? It’s that, if you want to have a real debate between conflicting views, you have to let the proponent of each view present that in its own terms, in their own language, using their own methods. And moreover, having done that, if you really want the discussion to move forward, you have to try and understand what they are saying in these terms, in their framework, and not force them into your own framework.
That may sound simple but it’s turned out to be a very new and difficult idea, at least for Marxist academics and particular for Marxist academic economists. What everyone wants to do instead, is simply present their own ideas and say what they like about everyone else. We said ‘no: you are entitled to describe your own ideas exactly as you choose, but we aren’t going to have a common forum unless you also concede that same right to everyone else.’ Most academics aren’t prepared to do that. They aren’t prepared to read and understand other people’s ideas in the terms in which those ideas are presented, and least of all are they prepared to engage with and debate with these ideas in those terms.
Thus there is not a ‘simplistic’ resolution to self-determination in discussion. It does not reduce to ‘let everyone do whatever they want’. It required a carefully formulated procedure worked out by thinking hard about what we actually wanted to achieve. We may have got it wrong. Maybe there is a better rule. One thing I am certain of is, however, there has to be a rule. It cannot be left to chance and caprice, because that produces the same shit we have seen for the last thirty years, which has led the discussion of Marx’s economics and of value theory into a sterile dead end.
This is why I do agree that the issue of changing the title of a course presented within the Brecht Forum is a substantive one. It wasn’t the right thing to do, and it was not a minor inconvenience, nor was it an unconditional prerogative of the Brecht Forum administration, but was a matter of principle which interfered with and in fact violated the course presenters’ right to organise the discussion which their audience wanted to have.
The purpose of a discussion forum on the left is to create a space within which two things must be reconciled. On the one hand, different views need to engage with one another instead of talking past each other. But on the other hand, these views must have the absolute right of self-expression, subject only to restrictions designed to ensure that they respect the same right for others.
We are all struggling to work out how to hold discussions in what is actually quite a new environment. The most successful at doing this are completely new institutions such as the World Social Forum, probably because they have least baggage. The least successful seem to be the traditional left, of which the Brecht Forum is a part. In some cases such institutions will adapt, in some they will not. What will determine whether they survive? Essentially, whether they serve the needs of the radicalising community. As Brecht himself pointed out, you can’t elect a new people. It’s quite surprising that the Forum that bears Brecht’s name should forget this.
In reading the reactions to you, one theme I do notice is a generalised fear that The New SPACE will be simply a forum for the promotion of the views of one political group. I’ve already explained, in talking about the IWGVT, why I think this fear is completely misplaced and I am sure in a relatively short time you will dispel this fear because it is simply not true.
Behind this fear is a real problem, which however has been in this case, I think, inverted. There is a tendency for political groups to dominate discussion agendas in ways that interfere with debate, and this has to be acknowledged and its sources analysed. It arises in my opinion not so much from the fact that these groups are small, large, sectarian or non-sectarian but from the conflicting nature of political organisations and discussion forums. The purpose of a political organisation is to promote a set of policies. The purpose of a discussion forum is at most to assess what those policies should be or indeed, to first discuss not the policies themselves but their theoretical foundation.
Anyone who comes into a discussion with preformed ideas, be they a party or simply a left veteran, places individual new participants at a disadvantage since they come to the discussion with a clear conception of what they want, and the experience of arguing for it. A task of this specific period in the left’s evolution is to take care that this does not cut across the rights of the much larger body of people for whom it is more important to think things through than to win support for a particular view.
Evangelising, of all types, whether by sects or by self-appointed organisers, doesn’t work any more. The problem is however that evangelical conduct is not a monopoly of small leftwing organisations. These often do have an evangelical discourse – some are starting to unlearn this discourse, and that’s a useful consequence of the Social Forum process – but they are not the only source of such conduct. Actually, evangelical conduct arises when anyone on the left seeks to communicate by Telling People What They Ought to Know, instead of Finding out What they Think.
To present this as a conflict between ‘sects’ on the one hand, and ‘sensible organisers’ on the other, is to misunderstand the problem. Organisers are just as capable of evangelical conduct as any sect. Tertullian first defined a sect as a group which puts its own judgement above that of the Church, or which deviates in its teaching from the doctrines received from Christ. That should give us pause for thought.
Evangelical conduct begins when anyone acts on the assumption that they necessarily have a better view of what people need to know than the people themselves and that on this basis they have a right to determine what the people should think about and discuss.
Again, this causes me considerable difficulty with the fact, as presented by the Brecht Forum’s administration, that they seemed to feel they had the unconditional right to change the presentation of your course and its aims.
A left Forum is not a Church. It is not an academic institution. It’s a special kind of place in which movements of struggle and debate come along, and when they get there, they say what the damned hell they want to say, and if you are unhappy with what they say, you deal with it by talking to them, not by telling them what they can and cannot say, how they can say it, or how they should describe themselves. The role of a Forum organiser, or organising body, is to facilitate the discussion that people want to have.
This certainly does give forum organisers certain duties and, in order to fulfil these duties, they have to have certain rights – for example to decide on the allocation of space, on timetabling, on overall balance, on which sessions are parallel and which are in plenary, all that kind of stuff. It also does give them the responsibility of taking the broad view over the whole picture and ensuring that voices which should be heard are not suppressed – particularly black voices, women’s voices, voices from the Global South, from sexual minorities and from the disabled.
Nevertheless, the way to guarantee the above, particularly in the present climate, is I think to give more or less absolute priority to the principle of self-determination in discussion. It looks to me as if the Brecht Forum administration failed to do this and it certainly looks as if sectors of the traditional left haven’t really grasped the importance of the question. I hope they rethink, because I hope that all Forums for discussion learn and grow. But this doesn’t alter the basic fact: The New SPACE exists because it was the best, and the only way, to secure one of the fundamental principles of pluralism.
I’ll finish by considering an alternative approach to pluralism which emerges from the torrent of e-mails that I have been studying relating to this matter, which is for me profoundly wrong and a further indicator that the old left may be creating more problems for itself than it actually needs to.
A refrain emerges: The New SPACE is nothing more than ‘Kliman’s friends’, Kliman’s students, Kliman’s this, that, the other. In consequence, runs the refrain, it cannot be pluralist.
This view of what pluralism consists of is based, I think, on a misunderstanding, characteristic of the worst and most cliquish aspects of the Anglophone left. Pluralism is not about people. It is about Ideas. If two people are involved in a discussion about one topic, and in the course of that discussion they consider the full range of relevant ideas about that single topic, then that is a pluralistic forum. If ten thousand people sit in a room and discuss any number of topics, but on each topic they consider only one viewpoint, then the result is neither pluralistic nor scientific but amounts to a religious ceremonial, since it merely involves the repetition of what everyone already believes.
The reason is quite straightforward. Science, bless it, is a process humans have evolved for getting at truth. It may not be perfect but it’s the best yet. What you do in Science is, you take a body of evidence and you confront it with theories that explain the evidence. Which theories? All theories. If you miss one out – to take a favourite of mine, if you try to understand planetary motion, but refuse to consider the idea that the Sun and not the Earth is the centre of the universe, then you cannot possibly arrive at truth, no matter how many learned people discuss it, no matter how many Universities they have been to and no matter how long they go at it.
Movements of the oppressed, liberation movements, movements of resistance, are among the most inventive and creative forces currently at humanity’s disposal, in particular for ideas that will allow us to understand how society really works. To harness this creativeness, it has to be able to express itself. Creativity cannot simply be Told What Is Good For It. Movements of opposition possess, in their experience of the world, insights and knowledge that are not in anybody else’s hands. That is why they are oppositional.
The reason for organising discussions on the left in this period is not simply to prepare for action. Action has its place, but generally speaking it takes care of itself, once people have decided what they want to do. Right now there is a burning requirement for a clear emphasis on renewal and reflection. One might say, the problem is to ensure that when our movement does decide what it wants to do, that it does the right thing. After all, what precisely was the point of spending forty years building the Second International only to launch World War I?
There is no historical continuity in the workers’ movement, for the first time since probably 1789 if the thing is considered as a whole. There is a tremendous break in thought. An aspect of this that is good is that there are no Messiahs, no Saviours, and therefore, Hallelujah, few Prophets. Amen. But an aspect that is terribly bad is that the rising new generation is being denied access to its own past.
Pluralism has the job of making sure that the full range of ideas and views available to such movements, are given expression and also that this full range of ideas are considered by each part of that movement. The reason is not one of individual rights but of a responsibility to the whole movement to ensure it has the maximum information at its disposal to take the right courses of action when the moment arrives.
Thus the task is not simply to have workers discussing trade unions, women discussing feminism, environmental activists discussing sustainability, etc. but to provide the means for each to learn from the other.
But oppositional movements also have geographical extent, and they also have history. Therefore it is not simply the ideas of the present moment which need to be considered nor the ideas of a single country or continent. The problems faced by today’s liberation movements are many of them new, but they are also many of them old. People have been fighting capitalism since 1789. People have been fighting imperialism in its modern classic form since 1873. Their experiences and their ideas come down to us in history through the great thinkers of the age, who were in their turn active participants in and shapers of these great movements. To learn from the past we have to make these voices available. This accumulated historical tradition is part of today’s debate. That is why, therefore, your contribution is so essential, to ensure that the ideas of Marx, and indeed of the other great thinkers of his time and after, are a full part of that debate.