If you would like to upset and confuse a room full of leftwingers, try introducing yourself as a ‘pragmatic socialist’.
There will be people that accuse you of trolling them with a ridiculous and impossible concept. Socialism, they will tell you, is an ideology. It is a set of values, like a faith – to call oneself a socialist means to accept without question all of the ideas that come with it. Pragmatism is the opposite – it is the absence of a set of values, it is the practice of questioning and selecting whatever ideas best suit you. They will be the people that completely misunderstand you and assume you have tempered your socialism with capitalist ideas – because, apparently, the only way one can be pragmatic and sensible about socialism is to throw some capitalism in there. What will often ensue is a discussion of why principles are more important than outcome, why it is more important to adhere to a doctrine you believe in than to do something that works. What you will hardly ever see is any concern that they are championing an ideology that they have accepted does not work.
These people are the antithesis of pragmatism – the True Believers. You probably know someone that subscribes to this political ideology with an unquestioning religious fervour. The ones that choose what they agree with based on what is most ‘socialist’. The ones that have immovable ‘faith’ in their leader. Those that say they choose equality over success. Socialism is not unique in this, but to some it is as much an identity as a set of ideas.
The problem I have with these True Believers is that they have made concessions that I do not agree with – and in doing so they have damaged the movement they care so much about. They have assumed that in order to make my socialism workable I must have watered it down. They have conceded that if something is the most efficient, effective or popular policy it cannot be truly socialist. They hear it as, ‘I’m a socialist, but we have to be pragmatic’ as opposed to ‘I’m pragmatic, therefore I am a socialist’.
I do not accept the idea that a ‘successful’ society can be measured purely by how much money it has. For a society to be successful the people in it must also be free to pursue their own happiness, achieve their own personal potential and live free of fear, prejudice and exploitation. Anyone that demands of you, ‘Is success more important than equality?’ has already fallen victim to a false idea that we cannot have both. This is a premise far more favourable to conservatives than the truth – that we can only have both. If a nation is only as successful as those at the bottom of its society, then we cannot choose between equality and success – that would be like choosing whether you want to keep living or keep breathing
To assume that ‘pragmatic socialism’ means watering down my lofty ideals with evil capitalist logic is to concede that capitalism is sensible and socialism is not. As it happens, there is less capitalism in my ideal society than in the utopias described by the leftyist of lefties. This is not because I was born into the Church of Socialism, nor have I had a divine vision of Keir Hardie. The reason I am a socialist is because, after evaluating everything objectively, I concluded that it works. The reason I do not include many capitalist ideas is not because I think they are evil, but because I think they are daft.
Funnily enough, you do not see a lot of ‘free market capitalism’ running amok within a business. Very few major corporations allow their different departments to operate without internal monitoring and regulation in order to facilitate ‘freedom and enterprise’. Very few bosses allocate each individual employee a budget and tell them to buy their own office chair and keyboard. Very few companies will pay another company to do something they could have done in house, better and cheaper. Why? Because that makes no business sense whatsoever.
I am in favour of renationalising the railways because it makes sense. It would allow the most investment to be most efficiently allocated, and provide better access and services for everyone. I support council housing because it makes sense. It allows us to buy in bulk, provides a central way to regulate and cuts out the middle man that is the landlord. I am in favour of state-run education and healthcare for the same reasons. None of these policies are ‘Tory’ policies. And I am fed up of accusations that I am a ‘Red Tory’ simply because I made an economic argument in favour of a policy – from people that did not listen to what the policy was.
Somewhere along the line, someone – I will suggest a political opponent on the right – insisted on a false dichotomy and framed the whole debate as business sense vs social sense. I know what a conservative would have to gain from this falsehood. What I do not understand is why the left accepted it.
We have really got to stop asking people, ‘Would you rather be happy, or be right?’ and not just because it is up there with ‘Cake or death?’ as far as obvious answers go. So, when someone says they are a ‘pragmatic socialist’ the response should really be: obviously. If you are basing your decision on logic, what else could you be?
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Steve Doran is a Labour party activist. She tweets @GirlSteve