Independent Thinking (3)
A 'Liberal' Education
This is the last in my series on Independent thinking, which I have delayed publishing due to a reluctance to offer you too much biographical stuff and because I have been really busy. Apologies to those very few who may have been waiting for it. It may be useful in terms of comprehension for some subscribers to study the previous articles in the series. The next series will discuss Dogma, which also impedes independent thinking. In this section, I want to discuss my experience of higher education and the way in which it assisted independent thinking, on the one hand, but also impeded it. Thinking independently can be a little precarious and maybe it is safer and more comfortable to simply conform. A friend of mine from my University days recently chastised me for disputing the legacy media’s account of reality - ‘why can’t you just believe it’ he said, ‘like everyone else’. But I can’t.
My involvement with the ‘left’ began in 1990 when I entered full time education for the second time. I chose to complete a college course that would give me access to University and the only course for which I could get a grant was a Trade Union and Social Studies diploma course in Newport, Gwent. There, I became acquainted with members of the various ‘far left’ parties, such as the Communist Party Of Britain (CPB); the Communist Party Of Great Britain (CPGB); The Militant Tendency (a Trotskyist group within the Labour Party) and The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP – another Trotskyite group). I obtained first hand information on and contact with many of these groups while writing a dissertation on the 1990 campaign against the Poll Tax - entitled ‘Not Paying’. The first two were described as ‘Tankies’ by some of the others1, while the ‘tankies’ would accuse the Trotskyites of being dogmatic and dominated by the middle class (which is true).
This latter claim about the middle class has always bothered me. According to Marx, it is the proletariat working class that is supposed to conduct the revolution; not the middle class. But in my experience, far left parties are dominated by the middle class and historically middle class people have played major and leading roles in the many failed revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. In view of the amount of people going to Universities in the UK nowadays, there are also many working class people who believe that they are middle class.2
I may have three degrees and some diplomas and I may have been employed in many middle class jobs but I am very much a working class individual with working class interests and working class values.
In Gwent, I was introduced to concepts such as Political Economy, Marxism, socialisms, liberalism, feminisms and so. I became aware that there were many injustices in the world and by the time I entered University in Cardiff I reacted as many before me: I joined the SWP. I already had a strong sense of injustice prior to attending college and University as a mature student. My personal life experiences as a member of a dysfunctional family and the working class, had stamped me with this. Ideologies such as Marxism, socialism and feminism appeared to have identified the sources of injustice in the world and appeared committed to eliminating these. I felt a moral obligation to do something; so I became a student activist.
The world as seen through the eyes of a Marxist lefty is quite simple; the bourgeoisie is the oppressor and a socialist revolution led by the middle class Marxist vanguard party would place power in the hands of the proletariat, while taking it away from the bourgeoisie, so that capitalist property (factories, land, shops etc.) would be owned and controlled by the people. Thereafter, the principle of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to their contribution’, which would characterise the socialist state created, would eventually be replaced by the principle: ‘from each according to ability; to each according to need’ in a stateless communist society. This process would allow the productive forces – i.e. industry and technology – to develop so that everyone’s basic needs could be satisfied.
There is much that appeals to me in all this but I no longer believe it is inevitable in the way that many Marxists do. But the SWP was an impediment to independent thinking. The party had its own interpretation of Marx’s writings and allowed very little deviance from this. Members were encouraged to toe the party line on many issues. At some open events, such as the annual educational ‘Marxism’ conference in London, the organisers made sure that the party line was well represented in debates. I can remember a debate comparing the theory of Historical Materialism, which was supported by the party, with the more deterministic Dialectical Materialism (also a theory of historical change propounded by Engels). I watched as the organisers made sure that there were ample party members available to talk in support of the party line. So the ‘outsiders’ who promoted Dialectical Materialism, were in a very small minority and the audience may have concluded that the mass support for Historical Materialism made it the more credible theory.
Dissent among party members was dealt with in a similar manner, but dissent was rare in relation to the more important issues that formed the party line; here everyone was expected to agree. However, people could disagree about whether it was permissible to listen to the music of Wagner (who held anti-Semitic views). Members were not encouraged to think independently on issues that mattered to the party. So if you do wish to think independently, joining political parties, will not be helpful.
After only six months I had quit the party mainly due to a dispute over how the party should ‘use my time’ (this is something I believed that I should decide; not the party). But this was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I am not the type to toe any party line for long and my studies of Marx had revealed cracks in the edifice I had come to believe in. My study of philosophy helped me to analyse everything. Primarily, I became concerned about the role of the vanguard party during a revolution and the role of the workers’ state following it. I came to share Mikhail Bakunin’s3 view that any state, even a workers’ state, would be oppressive. This why I am a communitarian anarchist. This appeared to be borne out by the experiences of the USSR and China. Furthermore, I was worried that following a revolution any vanguard party would become even more authoritarian than it already was – just as the Bolsheviks did.
Leaving the party helped me think more independently but even though I didn’t realise it at the time, simply being on ‘the left’ was an impediment to independent thought. This worked through peer pressure from lefties with whom I was friendly, including some from the SWP and other left parties. When a friend from the SWP heard that I was about to write a Masters Thesis on Friedrich Nietzsche, she tried to reprimand me. Nietzsche was one of many thinkers who lefties were not allowed to engage with because of his alleged influence on the NAZIS. Anyone who has studied Nietzsche would realise that he would never have approved of the NAZIS; he would have found them obnoxious – as most people do. Nietzsche came under the influence of Richard Wagner for a time and Wagner was an anti-Semite. So this association tarred Nietzsche’s reputation as far as lefties were concerned; along with a misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s concepts of Ubermench (overman or superman) and will to power. But Nietzsche was no anti-Semite and soon broke with Wagner. If I had remained in the party, I would have been under intense pressure not to study Nietzsche – so I am so glad that I left the party because I have learned a great deal from him over the years.
Conservative thinkers, along with their works, were frowned upon by the left and any theories that prioritised biological factors over social factors in explaining social and psychological phenomena were to be avoided. I didn’t toe the line completely in this respect, but I did to a certain extent and lost out intellectually in consequence. The theory of ‘sociobiology’ and the conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton are examples of this intellectual ‘boycott’ I felt pressured into. However, I must take responsibility for this; if I had been more independently minded and not so eager to please my peers, I would have ignored them – as I did with Nietzsche who was popular in the philosophy department.
Political correctness was in its infancy back then but it didn’t prevent me from thinking independently. I often challenged it in debates with feminists but I was forced to conform to an extent. For example, in written work it wasn’t acceptable to use the term ‘man’ in a generic sense to represent the human species. By the time I had written my PhD I was beginning to revolt against PC in subtle and not so subtle ways. It should also be said that most tutors in the Sociology and Philosophy departments were ‘lefties’ of various hues and probably influenced me consciously and subconsciously.
In my view, a University education will not necessarily assist people to think independently. Philosophy saved me to an extent but I remained ignorant about certain unwanted influences on my thinking until December 2018.
I have been reluctant to publish this hitherto because I thought it too biographical but it is preventing me from publishing the whole philosophising series - so I had to do it.
Hope you can learn something from my experiences. Rob
1 Possibly a reference to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia – with tanks – in 1968.
Class is a hugely complicated issue.
3 Bakunin was an anarchist who was involved with Marx in the workers’ movement – aka The First International. They clashed on many occasions.
When I was an undergraduate studying Philosophy in the early 80s, there was a very vociferous minority of squabbling leftists, who divided much along the lines you describe - the 'Trots' and the 'Tankies'. They were characterized by an endless shifting kaleidoscope of allegiances and enmities, but what stood out most of all was a complete absence of any sense of humour. This was for me, and in subsequent life, a warning sign. When a political, or any other, view becomes so important that humour is absent, it is unlikely to be a good take on the human condition, and is therefore best avoided.
I was on the council of a large teacher's union, and came across both Trots and Marxists. The Trots were disruptive (to say the least), but the Marxists often had very well thought out positions that they articulated well. I simply listened and adapted their ideas to a more palatable form.
My father joined the communist party back when the world polarised just before WW2. Those old communist were not so dogmatic. What they did have was huge compassion for other people. In those days being a communist meant getting an education in history, sociology, and economics. Ironically, because they understood these disciplines so well, most flourished financially. Independent thought was encouraged, because it meant you were prepared to kick against the pricks.
In our current times, where a controlled MSM pushes the US Narrative, and opinions pass as News, many people ignore facts, and have what Col Douglas McGregor calls "a cocktail party understanding" of current affairs. Their opinions are gleaned from conversations and MSM headlines, rather than research.
I have just seen Prof Geoffrey Sach's address to the EU yesterday. He is strongly urging the EU to STOP being a vassal to the US, and to think independently, to develop an independent foreign policy. He also believes that all nations should train professional diplomats, like Lavrov, who can go to other nations and negotiate around differences, as an alternative to warring.