A world of my own

Tim wonders if my discussion of the Euston Manifesto was “wilfully ignorant.”

Well spotted – it was. The thing is, I regard politics in a different way to the signatories of the Manifesto.

For me, politics is not about the actual discussions between “real people.” Many such people – I exclude the Euston signatories - are cretins, power-fuckers and tyrants. There’s no more point in talking to them than to a mad dog.

Instead, I think of politics in two ways. One is as an idealized debate among intellectuals. For me, the question isn’t: what is Bunting / Galloway / Blair etc saying? It’s: what would Mill / Hayek / Nozick / Rawls / Elster / Roemer / Sennett / MacIntyre etc say?

Politics today is so degraded that we’ve got to reconstruct the debate about what it should be.

Secondly, political thinking, at least on the “left”, should consist partly in contrasting actually existing institutions to theoretical possibilities.

Of course, I know that a basic income, smaller state, market socialism, free immigration and direct democracy have little hope of being implemented in my lifetime.

But this is not the point. The purpose of discussing such possibilities is to remind us that real utopias are logically possible, and that the many sins of existing politics include a terrible lack of imagination.

What I was trying to do, then, was to interpret the Euston Manifesto into a form I could support – as an endorsement of a feasible utopia. If it's just an exercise in kicking the village idiot, I’m not interested.

Yes, I know, what I doing here is impractical. It’s a retreat from the real world. But when the barbarians are ruling over us, with no prospect of being overthrown, what’s the alternative?

Comments

[dearieme]

"..I know that a .. smaller state... [has] little hope of being implemented in my lifetime". Oh we'll get a smaller state all right, though I'm not too sure about the timing. I begin to see who'll play the roles of Angles, Visigoths, Vandals etc though.

[Matt M]

"Yes, I know, what I doing here is impractical."

I don't know about that.

Perhaps if people started focusing on the greater ideals, rather than bickering about who said what in this week's Guardian we might start to see some progress. Or at least politics would start to seem less squalid.

I for one will at least attempt to follow your example. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try and dig out some Mill and Orwell for my bedside reading.

[Tom]

Thats nice to hear. I am a student of political philosophy (in Norm's old department at manchester, nonetheless) and as a result, perhaps unfotunately, find myself thinking in much the same terms.