Does socialism need a new name?

Socialism. The word used to strike fear into the hearts of the rich and privileged. It is the patient insistence that everyday people would someday seize the excess of the wealthy few and spread it around more fairly. It has been the foundation of nations and political movements. Leading right-wing politicians and economists have spent enormous amounts of effort convincing the poor they would be worse off if the wealth was distributed more evenly. Socialism was a banner under which large sections of the left were happy to assemble.

Today socialism has little traction. Few, if any, British politicians openly identity as socialist and not even the most easily rattled elements of the right wing press feel the need to argue against it. No one seems to take socialism seriously anymore. If someone identifies as socialist it gives the impression of either being chronically out of touch with current political debate or being a generational throw back who is still fighting the miners’ strike.

This seems strange if you read the news. Unemployment is high, The gap between rich and poor is widening, class mobility is at an all-time low, private utility companies are making huge amounts of money while ordinary people are having choose between food and warmth. Global inequality is reaching crisis point, as the 85 richest people in the world now own more wealth than half the population. Oxfam has expressed concern about the massive inequality of wealth.

The current situation appears to be the perfect breeding environment for socialist ideas. 
However, the political establishment is yet to be rocked by hordes of people assembling outside parliament singing Billy Bragg songs and demanding the renationalisation of the utility companies. Instead politicians continue to cut benefits and the media stereotypes the poor as criminals and scroungers on shows like Benefit Street.

So if we accept that the time is right for socialism but nothing is happening is the problem socialism itself? Does the public feel the socialism has been given its time and has failed? Given a low level of interest in socialist ideas it is a plausible explanation. This means that ideas of wealth redistribution and public ownership could be revived under a new banner, one which brings in modern ideas of environmentalism and multiculturalism and combines them with old values like full employment and progressive taxation redistributing income.  

Giving the old ideology a fresh coat of red paint and send it back out into the world to frighten the rich all over again is a tempting course of action. The problem is this has not happened. No new movement has emerged as a successor to socialism. Occupy packed up and went home. The trade unions occasionally try and launch a new left-wing party but nothing comes from it. Even the Green party can barely get a representative on the news despite having more MPs and more supporters than UKIP.

At this point is helpful to take a look at feminism, the only left wing ideology making any form of progress right now. Campaigns such as No More Page Three or Lose the Lad Mags are getting media attention and have genuine grass roots support from activists. On top of that there is the growth in feminist groups at universities and colleges, successful social media campaigns such as Everyday Sexism and young rising star MPs such as Stella Creasy openly identifying as feminist. It would be nice if socialism had this level of exposure.

However, it was not always this way. In 1998, Time magazine proclaimed that feminism was dead. Feminism had a poor public image and was losing support amongst young politically engaged women, the key group it needed to be successful. It was argued that the word feminism was too inflammatory and had the wrong image. It was said that women’s rights needed a new movement to reach out to young women and get them interested in gender politics. This did not happen and eventually the old movement rose again with young feminist thinkers of today drawing their ideology directly from the last hey-day of feminist activity in the 1960s.

So what happened? Mainly a core group of activists remained loyal to the ideology and continued to work hard keeping the movement alive. Feminism adapted to a new political environment and used modern resources such as social media to unite a divided movement around important, clearly stated goals such as making The Sun drop Page 3. Successful campaigns have built momentum and encourage others to be active in the movement. The evidence is against dropping the old ideology and reinventing. Stay true and wait for the world to take notice again.

The good news for socialists is that there are places where this already happening. The US has seen a growth in socialist movements as liberal voters becoming increasingly dissatisfied with how similar the two main parties have become. It seems unlikely that America could the basis of a socialist revival, a country where the mere accusation of being red can ruin political careers. Although socialists have yet to have any impact on the political establishment there has been a growth in Marxist and left leaning journals such as the New Inquiry. As the notion of liberalism is watered down in America, the genuinely progressive need somewhere else to go.

A political party with a commitment to socialism in the UK seems a long way off, but that does not mean socialism is dead. A revival will come, partly because the current state of the economy and the growing wealth inequality proves that the ideas are still relevant. Socialism does not need a name change, what it needs are activists that can keep the struggle going  and adapt to new opportunities as they come along. The sun does not set on ideologies; they just go out of fashion temporarily before being popular again.

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda and the important of strong beliefs

It is one of those strange footnotes to history that there were still Japanese soldiers fighting World War Two up until the mid-1970s. It seems almost farcical and would doubtless make the subject of a great comic tragedy, a cross between Blackadder Goes Forth and Letters from Iwo Jima. This bizarre occurrence is back in the public’s perception with the death of 91 year old Hiroo Onoda.

Hiroo Onoda was a Lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War 2. He was ordered not to surrender and was cut off from the main Japanese army when they surrendered on 15 the August 1945. Lieutenant Onoda continued to hold out on the jungle island of Lubang, part of The Philippines, until 1974 when his elderly former superior officer was dispatched to rescind the orders he had been carrying out for three decades. 

It is easy to mock Lieutenant Onoda as someone who ignored the blindingly obvious truth that Japan had been defeated and that continued resistance was futile. It seems logical that after ten years with no word and no one sent to relieve his position Lieutenant Onoda would give up, which makes it is easy to dismiss him as crazy, deluded or fanatical but I admire his strength of will and refusal to give up despite very difficult circumstances.

This not to say that I condone the killing of up to 30 other inhabitants of Lubang through raids and skirmishes with Lieutenant Onoda over the 29 years where he kept fighting the Second World War but his circumstances are clearly extraordinary, which is why The Philippine government pardoned him when he finally did surrender to Philippines President Marcos in 1974.

The story of Lieutenant Onoda, and the humour which usually accompanies it, is a reminder that it is easy to scorn and mock people of strong, sometimes unmovable, beliefs. Many people believe that an ideological flexibility is superior to the petty squabbles of politics and look down on those who identify as belonging to either side of the spectrum. A lot of the time this is just aggressive centrism and a healthy sense of self-superiority but it indicates a marked distain for anyone with strong principals. I for one prefer identifying as belonging to an ideology and having a set of principals which I can be held to. It makes it easier to tell who has genuine principals and whose beliefs are mutable to whatever is fashionable.

In my life I have been accused of a certain ideological Onodaism; not changing course, denying plain evidence and refusing to accept when I have been proved wrong. I believe having strong beliefs is not a character weakness, I believe it shows strength of character and courage of conviction. Having strong beliefs gives people courage during hard and testing times; as I am sure Lieutenant Onoda’s belief in Japan gave him the strength to continue to carry out his orders. Sometimes it seems easier to flip-flop in the face of great opposition, but the most interesting and courageous people are the ones who stand by what they believe in.

This is not to say that it is acceptable to be aggressive towards people who have less strong or different convictions to yourself; just as it was not acceptable for Lieutenant Onoda to kill those people. However it should be remembered that what is a plain and obvious truth to one person can be opaque to a different person in different context. We can see that in the leaflets dropped on Lubang to encourage Lieutenant Onoda to surrender. He later said in an interview: "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans". A simple fact can be viewed differently by different people. This is why we need a spectrum of political debate to ensure that different interpretations are taken into account. Ideological flexibility or aggressive centrism can be bywords for letting the majority always have their way.

It is easy to laugh at Lieutenant Onoda and his three decades of personal warfare but I feel it shows exceptional strength of character and determination to continue for so long. I hope these are characteristics we value as a society and aspire to individually. I hope we can all show some of the determination of Lieutenant Onoda.