BEYOND the Fragments is likely to be received by most of the organised left with a sigh of irritation and treated outright hostility. It would be a great mistake to react in that way.
The three essays in this questions and criticisms which we can no longer afford to ignore. Even if the answers suggested here are inadequate or inappropriate, it will no longer do - as it önce might have — to treat them as closed questions, settled long ago in the formative years of the Third International:
We seem revolution than we were a decade ago. Are the sir part to biame Are they based upon a in part to manipulative politics which is doomed to fail? blame?
What Hilary, Lynne and Sheila share is a conviction that the experience of the women's movement in particular over the last ten years can point to new ways of organising and, more broadly, to new ways of being a socialist. I shall concentrate here Sheila's which tries to focus the experience in a sharp critique of the practice of the left, though I shall return to the other two later.
For Sheila the traditional Leninist (and Trotskyist) approach is bound to fail. It must be challenged in a whole number of ways — in terms of how it conceives assumes that consciousness changes; how the party is seen to relate to other movements; how the scope of politics is defined; how individual socialists relate to themselves and to other people.
Underlying all these points is, Sheila believes, a manipulative politics, springing supposedly superior knowledge that leaders of revolutionary groups presume to possess. Theory Drawing on the Lenin of What is to be Done? Sheila sees theory for Leninism as a knowledge of truths brought discoverable by a purely cerebral activity -"thought comes (p. 63). It makes theory above experience rather than an integral part of it. It ought to be, Sheila puts it, a little elliptically perhaps, the attempt to sum up the relationship of what we have travelled to the whole journey' (p. 27).
There clear weaknesses approach both philosophically and politically. All forms of knowledge can't be reducible to direct experience. How for instance could you explain the making of Marx's Capital in this wav! And could you economic theory is irrelevant to grounding revolutionary political other than a purcly subjective preference for one kind of world rather than another?
But the view that cheery has to connect to experience has a real strength when we turn to Sheila's second theme about consciousness and how it changes. Here her critique hinges on the criteria used to distinguish between advanced and "backward' consciousness. Those elements with advanced consciousness tend, inevitably, to be those who find their way into the party. But it is only the party's prior "theory' identities self-justifying circularity is introduced, one which blinds us to the consciousness in daily life.
Vanguard The contrast is posed acutely. approach to consciousness perceives its growth as many faceted and contradictory. of the vanguard doesn't fit into this way of thinking. It's not even like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It's like dropping Up. since just a little earlier Sheila stresses the dang rintorical and social estimation ing historical different kinds of consciousness' (p. 56). But at the same time it is of tremendous value stressing how uneven consciousness how individuals can be advanced and backward at the same time, how consciousness spills over boundaries describing this, experience of women's groups, and an insight, grasped abstractly perhaps by many on the left comes across tremendous vitality. The left has too easy a hierarchy of disdain collection raise goal of socialist based upon contribution, lessons OI this theory; how from the Tone outside, from thought in Leninism' this argue that Marx's activity in anything which advanced. Thus real ambiguities of "The feminist The model issues, 59) Exaggerated, certainly, estimation can be, ments' Sheila draws on the force and desire questions raised by the essays. ' NOTES arenas of struggle (factory struggles, near the top; struggles over schooling or community way down). The way consciousness emerges out of an understanding of the intertwined nature of power relations in of social life is something the various space left is often blind to. The left prefers to seek the key link and pull in the hope that the rest of the chain will follow. Maybe, Sheila is suggesting it isn't a chain at all...
Sheila's third theme is about how the party relates to other movements. argument dislodges 'the superior relationship of the party to the movements of the working, class and other radical autonomous (p. 64). It is hard to see how she establishes this point. movements have taught us to contest the 'lived relation of subordination' wherever it is to be found and requires that changes in feeling and become part of the movement 'BEYOND the Fragments', a pamphlet by Hilary Wainwright, Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal, raises a number of points of controversy on the left. We have invited a number of contributors to give their views on the This is the second one to be published by Socialist Challenge, and is by RICHARD KUPER, a member of the International Socialists Alliance.
to Being.
WITH THE suggests. which consciousness She believes her the party).
Even if autonomous But of resistance' this does not imply what Sheila Somehow the various understandings exploitation, oppression, domination and so or be synthesised and generalised. Obviously thi to some within (and in this does not have to be spills over boundaries establishe this point, which regrettably still needs arguing (there are still Neanderthal men who would sonial rehe and make polio the presente confine the autonomous is no synthesis needed? Can an utonomous movement (or indeed a number ‹ them), depending on circumstances, the vantage point from which all the relations of power and domination in society can be destroyed by her argument.
Labels reformist as ing lems of challenge 41).
pre-Leninist and any obviously flawed.
(rightly) to explored Both practical choice. Leaming For Hilary, Lynne of ifferent reas society.
criticisms and questioning provide grasped? Having a party is no guarantee l this will happen. But unless Sheila denies d need for such a synthesis she must face up to d concrete problem of how and where happen. The need for a party in this sense is 1 Her fourth theme is the need to extend concept of the political. She highlights 1 dangers of using labels like centrist, uitra-le substitute for cogently the actually responding formal grafting of women's caucuses Leninist party need in reality change little if t content of what people do remains unalter What is involved is indeed not a conflict on political line, but over what politics is about This leads straight into her concern with need for 'a politics which enables people different relationships' Sheila attempts to recapture the concern o movement Britain "brotherhood', 'solidarity', "fellowship'. W clearly limited, bound up as much of it was assertions of masculinity and craft pride stressed the importance of values and cult women s movement recently discovered for itself.
All these arguments and insights are I th of great importance to all of us on the i questioning in fundamental ways what it is But there absences in Sheila's work. Themes like seizure of state power, the smashing of state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat vital in understanding how the Leninist cor of the party arose. They cannot be wished a critique which ignores them In Sheila's concern — with the means modes of relating — the ends can get lost fr of the values which she wis foster compatible reformist practice. How they can be integra into a total revolutionary practice has still to Hilary's introduction and Lym discussion of 'A Local Experience' contril to the beginnings of such an exploration. On their experiences with local socialist centre Newcastle and Islington, they are able to r They are neither of them blind to problems and limitations of what has achieved. But at the same time they restor proper respect for learning from forms organisation and struggle which have evol the local impetus will be crucial.
up against eyond the Fragments, then, is an atte oint the way out of the morass in whi sections of the left find themselves, Approach which fails to connect to to needs and desires of real individuals, exp nd oppressed in a myriad of differen nd trying to find their own defences the batterings they are subjected to in capi excuse for not facing up four square Beyond the Fragments, Feminism 8, t Making of Socialism by Sheila Rowbot Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright Socialist Challenge 23 Argast 1979
Socialist Challenge •PRITAIN FIGHT NEEDS INEMPLOME CRAFTSMEN SHORTER REWARD WORKING THE WEEX SKILLS
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CONCLUSION I EYE DO UNITS THE SKRA CORRECTION TO "WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
and Organization of Revolo FOR AN ALLRUSSIAN POLITICAL
WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Burning Questions of Our Movement" strong by purging inself.. strength