And here we are in 2020 with yet another leadership election. Except this time, it's the unambiguous candidate of the left who's talking about aspiration. In the speech launching her leadership campaign, Rebecca Long-Bailey forcefully argued for the linking up of socialism with aspiration. But not in the narrow, liberal-with-another-name manner the Mayor of Greater Manchester once defined it but in terms that make sense from, well, a socialist point of view. Referring back to the manifesto, she said the key problem was how our policies weren't linked to a notion of aspiration, implying they sort of hung separately. That's all very well, but what does it mean?
Sadly, in Labour's recent history aspiration has been understood in almost apolitical terms. Not that long ago, one of its (former) leading figures defined aspiration as "second home ownership, two cars in the driveway, a nice garden, two foreign holidays a year, and leisure systems in the home such as sound, cinema, and gym equipment." Stirring stuff while prices accelerated and millions of younger people were excluded from the housing market. Their idea of aspiration was entirely individuated, and framed in terms of an escape from working class life. And where are these people New Labour assiduously courted and looked after all through out the Blair and Brown years now? Lining up to vote for the Tories.
New Labour were right about one thing. Aspiration does involve wanting nice things. If aspiration means a nice house (or even a house), kids (and a future for them), a safe community, a life without debt, security, and an existence beyond the workplace grind , then it is pretty obvious the Tories are an obstacle on the road to fulfilling these straightforward desires. The passport to the good life has been revoked in one area after another as cuts have fallen on schools, the meagre supports offered by social security chopped away, and a career is nothing but a fancy name given for a series of low paid and insecure jobs. The government pays lip service to equality of opportunity and levelling the playing field, but refuse to pony up the resources and the legislation to make it a reality.
Therefore, Rebecca Long-Bailey is right to annex aspiration. If the right are willing to mislay one of its ideological weapons, the left are only so happy to take it up and radicalise it. Because the Tories are blocking the working class's right to the good life, aspiration immediately assumes a political character. It is less a matter of the consumerism of lip gloss and mobile phones and more one that takes up the collective means of existence. And no one knows this better than Labour's new base - it's why they support the party, after all.
In this sense, RLB is playing catch up with where our core constituency is at and talking the language of their interests. Meanwhile rest of the field are all at sea, whether misrecognising Labour's old people problem as a towns problem, or having a more conventional leader who'll play the conventional game. They haven't cottoned on to the realities of the class politics of our coalition, whereas RLB has. And there is the very simple reason why you should back her Labour leadership bid. Her talk of aspiration doesn't herald the rebirth of New Labour and its Blairist nonsense, but the maturation of the new socialism.
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6 comments:
You are completely right. I was thinking similar thoughts since her campaign launch speech.
Unfortunately the party seems to swinging behind Starmer due to their continued belief that Corbyn "ruined" the party.
Triangulatory word salad.
Socialists should not 'aspire' to fair wages and decent living conditions, they should expect and demand them as basic rights. We certainly shouldn't aspire to a future in which the seas don't boil.
Aspire to being choked at the point of orgasm by Grotbags the Witch from Emu's Pink Windmill. Demand and expect a better future.
«New Labour were right about one thing. Aspiration does involve wanting nice things. If aspiration means a nice house (or even a house), kids (and a future for them), a safe community, a life without debt, security, and an existence beyond the workplace grind»
But "aspiration" is in practice a deeply hypocritical euphemism for big property rent and price increases. It is not as if Old Labour was against "aspiration" defined properly: old labourists fought hard for the aspirations to have safe jobs with good pay, to have secure pensions, to have reliable health care, a good education for the children.
But if "aspiration" in mandelsonian politics indeed means "second home ownership, two cars in the driveway, a nice garden, two foreign holidays a year, and leisure systems in the home such as sound, cinema, and gym equipment" that is an upper-middle class living standard, and Labour and the trade unions cannot possibly offer that much with realistic wage and public service increases; but for a large minority, a tory redistributive economic policy can generate property profits of £30,000-£40,000 a year on a basic property, an amount of rentier profits that can easily pay for something approaching an upper-middle class lifestyle, for shopping without worries at John Lewis and Waitrose, as Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna argued..
The "aspiration" that the mandelsonians want to sell to voters is that of living large thanks to three-four buy-to-let cash gushers. The problem is that then who are the 3-4 renters vote for.
Damn right. This is the language of conservatism, not socialism.
«Triangulatory word salad. Socialists should not 'aspire' to fair wages and decent living conditions, they should expect and demand them as basic rights»
That's way too harsh, way too "leftoid": RLB's "aspirational socialism" has a more precise name, "socialdemocracy", and “an existence beyond the workplace grind” is what it delivered in the 50s to the 70s; even if the rentiers that "socialdemocracy" created then promptly became thatcherites yearning to vote for the "nasty party". If it takes calling it "aspirational socialism" to get it back, I have no problem with that.
«This is the language of conservatism, not socialism»
That's way too harsh too, if you want the language of conservativism this is the best example of Mandelson's "we are all thatcherites now" type of thinking:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/jeremy-corbyn-admits-failing-to-include-state-pension-income-on/
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/labour-fears-corbyn-will-be-seen-as-unambitious-3tww86v5n
“Labour MPs have raised concerns that Jeremy Corbyn’s rhetoric on tax avoidance could appear anti-aspiration. A senior shadow cabinet source said the party leader was in danger of overreaching himself in his criticism of David Cameron for investing in Blairmore, the fund set up in an offshore tax haven in the Bahamas by his father Ian.”
Apparently for tories who have infiltrated the Labour party as MPs "aspiration" means having a millionaire stockbroker father, being married to the daughter of a baronet, being the leader of the Conservative Party, and having a right to no criticism of an offshore trust created to avoid paying tax.
Aspiration in the Blairite concept is the aspiration to have more than anyone else, it is the aspiration to consume more than is required, it is the aspiration to have plenty while other have nothing.
It is sending out a message to the Middle Classes, don’t worry we won’t be threatening your cushy lifestyles or your kids future cushy lifestyles. You just continue to consume levels that if applied to everyone on Earth would literally require 4 planets Earth’s to live on.
ISIS may chop heads off and allegations of their gang rapes may or may not be true, but one thing is for certain the biggest threat to humanity, planet Earth and the future is not ISIS but is those who aspire. The biggest threat to humanity probably lives on yur street, actually if you go to the bathroom and stare in the mirror you will see the biggest threat to humanity staring back at you!
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