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/318/ The Dead Left ft. Steve Hall & Simon Winlow (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-31 07:01:00
Imported:
2026-06
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On the death of the left.

We talk to Steve Hall and Simon Winlow, social scientists in the northeast of England, about their new book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin From the Beginning Again.

Is the left indeed dead, and what killed it? The turn to culture undoubtedly plays a part, but was the left wrong to turn to liberty, as Hall & Winlow argue? How can we turn back to political economy and what would that politics look like? And if there is to be a future radical movement for and by the working class, would social democracy be its lodestar?  

Links:

/65/ Bunga Gets Ultra-Real ft. Steve Hall

/111/ Big Money Talk: The Case for MMT ft. Bill Mitchell

/68/ Big Money Talk: The Case against MMT ft. Doug Henwood

Files

Comments

Blake

Hall and Winlow sound almost regretful about the "Wokeification" of Lockheed Martin and the like. Couldn't it be said that by making all ruling class institutions extremely alienating to the average person, critical theory is actually fulfilling its original purpose of destroying false consciousness?

Eris

This is like listening to some yammering old racist grandpas, except they're leftist. If cultural issues aren't important, why are you obsessed with business people reading about decolonization. I want to hear about building a left that cares about economical issues, not crackpot theories about too many people with blue hair.

jkjkjkj

The past few episodes debating the changing (or unchanging, depending on how you look at it) nature of the left have been great. Next, I’d love to hear the Bunga boys do an episode on the future of separatism in the world and it’s place as a political project (Phil has hinted at it in past episodes regarding the lefts views on fourth world independence movements), but a more comprehensive discussion seems best, particularly given how central separatism is to key issues such as Ukraine, Taiwan, West Papua, Iraqi Kurdistan etc

Carson H

While I share many of these guys' antipathies, listening to this, I get the sense that their disappointment with the past few decades has curdled into the kind of bitterness that invariably makes for weak criticism. For all their resentment of the "turn toward culture," "postmodernism," "post-structuralism," etc., they have virtually nothing to offer in the way of an historical-materialist analysis of what got us here. In so many ways, they seem to think that what killed "the left" was its own bad ideas, or at least those of its putative intellectual leadership. Hall's closing words in this recording sum it up: "We need a cultural narrative first. We need to hook people into this and say, 'Look, bad things are going to happen if we don't do this and good things can happen if we do this. So we need a complete fundamental change of the cultural narrative and our economic position.'" I don't really disagree with this sentiment (though I don't share their interest in MMT, specifically), but how is it supposed to square with the aforementioned hostility to "cultural" critique? The PMC stuff is also contradictory, setting aside the tiredness of "PMC" discourse as such. Would it not be members of this group—which includes both these guests, the hosts of this podcast, and (presumably) the vast majority of its audience—to whom the task of articulating such a cultural narrative would likely fall? That seems to have been largely the case throughout the history of the modern worker's movement. Instead of this (ironically moralistic, crypto-identitarian) hand-wringing over the social positionality of the leftist intellectual, etc., how about we try to comprehend our situation rather than sulking over reality's failure to meet our expectations.

Dead Flag Blues

Platypus has been proclaiming the death of the left since 2006. How come you don’t engage with them on this podcast?

Martin Hall

I find the idea that the left is dead very hyperbolic. I reminds me of the claim that Elena-Louisa Lange made that the Left is the new ‘ruling class’. Both claims speak to a frustration at the contemporary left, but I think both positions are incorrect and unhelpful. However, I thought Hall and Winlow’s attempt to define the left and historicize it was, on the whole, quite useful. Their discussion of the ‘institutions of the left’ and the achievements of the ’45 Labour government really highlighted what’s been lost, and why the contemporary left’s acquiescence to identity politics and representation has had such a limited appeal to communities that have lost everything. I think that their analysis of the Left’s history would benefit with more a of a focus on the question of leadership. Going back at least as far as the German SPD, and the founding of the Labour Party, the majority current has always been reformist, in the sense that they believed Capitalism could be reformed and lead toward a socialist society. Likewise, there have been Marxist currents that see the need for overthrowing Capitalism, perhaps the most successful of which was the Militant Tendency in the 1980s. As the reformist current has adapted itself to capitalism, it makes sense that reformism during the post-war boom could offer so much (NHS, Welfare State) than the reformists of our current era, who have completely bought into a stagnant capitalism, where the only reforms they can offer are largely identity based and have no bearing on raising material conditions. The last point I wanted to make was on the Corbyn movement. Rather than being a last gasp of life, with both Winlow and Hall declaring the Left to now be thoroughly dead, does it not indicate that there is a desire for socialist ideas? They characterized the whole movement as PMC which, if true, is still in keeping with the history of the left. After all, one of the main thing keeping working class people out of politics is time. The students, lecturers, podcasters generally have more time on their hands so are often overrepresented in these movements. The problem is that the ideas and demands of the PMC are so often at odds with the working class. So, this again comes back to a question of having the right leadership with a program that can speak to the masses on questions of political economy rather than cultural issues. So, to sum up, I think the Left is not dead but has always been frustrating, contradictory and plagued by bad leadership. Surely that’s a better starting point than a position of defeat?