Talk Politics and Join Demonstrations

We live in paradoxical times. You don’t have to convince many that Trump is terrible or the planet is burning or about the gross inequality in the world. Yet there is often a fatalism, a feeling that we cannot do much about it.

How often have socialists heard the phrase ‘I agree with you – but what’s the point of protesting - they never listen?’

Sarah Stein Lubrano has written a book entitled Don’t Talk About Politics: How to change 21st century minds which addresses this issue.

The title is deliberately provocative and somewhat misleading. Lubrano talks politics, a lot of politics, but she argues that people do not change their minds because of rational discussion.

She claims that demonstrations have no long-term effect, because our rulers ignore them, and have no lasting impact on public opinion. Her alternative is to encourage us to join friend groups, to focus on ‘action possibilities’ and to do ‘deep canvassing’ where we start with ‘non-judgemental’ conversations.

The positive message is that ‘change in our interpersonal relationships, or our own action, does change our politics, sometimes powerfully.’

Let’s start with demonstrations. After marching for four years against Israeli genocide, many might indeed conclude that ‘protest movements had essentially no effect on people’s long-term beliefs’.

Yet this is to fall into a trap. Traditionally, our rulers have two ways of dealing with opposition. They can either make concessions and seek to co-opt some sections – let’s call it the social partnership method.

Or they can play hardball, denouncing ‘moderates’ in their own ranks as wimps, whose concessions only embolden opponents. When you hear Donald Trump attack the Democrats as ‘radical communists’, you get the idea.

The pendulum has shifted in ruling class strategy. Trump, the tech bros and the far right suggest that any concessions to ‘woke’ movements like Black Lives Matter will only encourage them to look for more.

Israel is also at the forefront of a new period of reaction. Its strategy is to grind down Palestinians to convey a message that we can kill with impunity, and you can do nothing but submit. Their example is being copied by ruling classes everywhere, which is why there is a turn to authoritarianism in so-called Western democracies.

There is little point in echoing the ruling class message that protests do not work. Instead, we need to escalate and move beyond one-off protests.

In 1989, in East Germany, protests against the regime began in Leipzig on 4th September. But it then escalated and continued each week until eventually the Berlin Wall fell. In Egypt, thousands poured into Tahrir Square on January 25th, 2011 to denounce the 30-year Mubarak regime. But the regime only fell eighteen days later when the protests grew.

Escalation and revolutionary patience are required to beat hardnosed rulers – not psychological advice about why protests do not work.

But the pessimists will reply, look at the outcome. Instead of Mubarak, you now have Sisi, who is an even worse tyrant. Instead of communist East Germany, you have free-market capitalism, which makes many unemployed.

Here we need to make a distinction. Mass protests can, under certain circumstances, achieve reforms by the sheer power of numbers. The reason why we have no nuclear power station in Ireland is that a mass movement between 1979 and 1981, culminating in Carnsore Point, frightened our rulers.

Or consider why we do not pay for water? It was because a mass movement was so big that it forced the government to give back cheques to those who were silly enough to have paid.

Does anyone seriously think that we would have won limited abortion rights or marriage equality without the huge demonstrations in favour? To take only one example: Leo Varadkar, leader of Fine Gael, opposed marriage equality before the movement on the streets grew. Afterwards, he changed his mind.

Demonstrations can be combined with other tactics – such as having TDs in the Dáil who introduce legislation – but ‘people power’, evident in the huge mobilisations, plays an important role in the process.

Political consciousness

Overthrowing a system or even a particular regime, however, requires something else. You need political consciousness as well as people power.

Not everyone may realise that one must overthrow a government, but a minority needs to. This minority can be shaped beforehand by decisive struggles or, on rarer occasions, could be formed in the process of these struggles.

Moreover, that minority needs to be sufficiently aware to see through spurious ‘revolutionaries’ who use militant rhetoric to hide their intention to step into the shoes of the old regime. In Romania in 1989, a mass movement overthrew Ceaușescu but was then duped by a pseudo-alternative hatched by the secret police, the Securitate.

That self-conscious minority needs to be organised in a party to convince others, and the outcome is by no means guaranteed. In the 1920s, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, such minorities existed across the world. Today, they are only in an incipient phase, but they need to grow and spread.

Lubrano, however, suggests more innovative methods. Drawing on her PhD and insights from psychology, she claims to have found such a method.

Her first step is to reject the claim that one can rationally convince others of the need for change. Following the anarchist writer, David Graeber, the case for ‘rationality’ is linked to a ‘controlling force’.

Lubrano claims it is manifested in two main forms. First, there is ‘reasoning as commerce’ which proclaims a ‘marketplace for ideas’. Quite correctly, she critiques the assumption that the best ideas win out, noting instead how ‘the market’ can marginalise ideas considered too extreme by the establishment. Think only of how RTÉ uses its philosophy of ‘balance’ to put down radical views.

Second, Lubrano suggests there is ‘reasoning as war’ whereby an argument culture implies one can beat down opponents.

Instead of reasoning, she favours the formation of friendship groups which motivate people to action. Deploying terms like ‘cognitive dissonance’, she explains that people often act first and think later. She urges people to look for ‘action possibilities’ which spring from such groups.

Here Lubrano strikes the right chord – but not exactly the one she thinks sounds the best. A feature of bourgeois thought is an image of the isolated, rational individual who can convince others. This image is at the core of modern liberalism.

In reality, there is not an easy separation of body and mind, social position and thought, idea and action. Marxists agree with Lubrano that there is an intimate link between theory and practice.

But this does not mean that friendship groups or community networks can change the world. For one thing, it is a bit like the Christian philosophy that if one loves one’s neighbour, eventually we will get a better world – or, more hopefully, get to heaven.

Friendship groups can degenerate into cliques which define themselves against the outside group. You can be friends with people who do not share your politics. And they may be simply too small to effect a system change.

Moreover, Lubrano’s emphasis is on ‘one’s own’ action. If you bring your own bag to a supermarket or join a community garden, you are more prone to seek sustainable solutions for the planet. Maybe.

But we have moved well beyond this slow, mechanical approach of patiently convincing individuals. The planet is burning and, after this summer, many realise this and see that our rulers no longer care.

Sometimes, conjunctures arise which help convince masses of people of the need for change. The issue then becomes one of confidence or fatalism. Do we think that together we can mobilise ‘people power’ to force a change or do we sink back into a belief that ‘nothing can be done’.

Lubrano’s book misses one central point. The crisis of democracies and insights from psychology shape her framework. There is little discussion of the economic features of late capitalism.

It does not refer to the possibility of war between geopolitical rivals or to how a few giant corporations deploy global investment. It is as if the future will meander along, interrupted only by small-scale actions which might eventually convince people of the need for change.

We need a different strategy that starts from the contradictions thrown up by the current phase of capitalism.