...In this young millennium, the problem for those of us who still, probably a bit forlornly, consider ourselves left-wing, maybe even Marxists, is not that some gobshite whose funniest joke is that he thinks he’s the new Dudley Moore wrote a book filled with political Tourette’s. No, it’s that what now passes for the left has abandoned what we might describe as the two core ideas of one-time radical thought: that ordinary people are capable of running not only their own lives but society itself, and that the problems facing mankind are social ones, not natural ones. The left once embodied a faith in mankind to use his mind and his hands to create a world of plenty, to exploit nature’s resources in the name of creating what Sylvia Pankhurst described as ‘plenty for all… a great production that will supply all’. Not anymore. Now the left demonises production (it harms the planet) and consumption (it makes us mentally ill) and has embraced the very naturalistic nonsense about scarcity and limited resources that a cockier left once explicitly challenged. And the left once trusted that the man in the street (and woman) was capable of determining his destiny without requiring the scaffolding of state or the moral hectoring of priests to constantly guide him on his way. Not anymore. From Brand’s concern that corporations have captured our minds to other leftists’ bleating about the brainwashability of the tabloid-reading hordes - whose minds are ‘orchestrated from the shadows’ - the left now libels the little people, believing they must constantly have their awareness raised by experts, celebs and advertising-immune Occupiers...
