That's Maeve's main point there. New must mean new. I think as we saw, a lot of the rhetoric around the student protests, not necessarily generated by the protesters themselves, but a lot of the rhetoric of it was as if a lot of anarchistic ideas were completely new and never been heard of before. And this was supplemented by a kind of technological rhetoric, which those of us who lived through the cyber culture of the 90s would find not new at all, at least 20 years old. And it seemed that the problem with this model of new
was that it doesn't provide sufficient critique of neoliberalism, to say the least. In many ways, its idea of new is still a neoliberal idea of new. And I think the challenge has to be to break down precisely the temporalisation, or the control of history, or the control of historical narrative that neoliberalism has managed to impose. Such that, practically as Maeve said, to be left is to be left is to be old, according to this temporality almost. And I think Maeve highlighted some of the problems
with this kind of anarchistic network model. One of the foremost of which is kind of institutional memory, really. that if these things are managed rapidly, quasar spontaneously, how do they sustain themselves? And secondly, how do they learn? If there's no institutional memory, or no mechanism for maintaining institutional memory, how can struggles be learned from, as it were? Because, I mean, part of the things that, I think, that the capital is quite happy for, lots of this network rhetoric, and horizontal rhetoric to proliferate.
Because, whilst at the level of ideology, neoliberalism is opposed to the top-down, to the bureaucratic, to the centralised, and to the state, of course, in effect, it has used all of those things itself. So in this kind of impasse, where it's quite happy to use all of that. The impasse for us, rather, is a very happy situation for it. Where, you know, the dominant ideology is so anti-top-down, anti-statist, yet, you know, that default situation, obviously, serves the neoliberal consensus, which is ruthless to employ all of those means, to put forward this project.
So, I think, new must actually mean new. Not some, kind of, not some sort of rehashed cyber network rhetoric, plus lots of, kind of, standard assumptions of anarchism. And, of course, there's a justified fear, I would think, of rhetoric around the new, after new labor. Where, you know, new there simply meant, an acceptance of what I call capitalist realism. Like, the idea that, you know, capitalism is the only game in town, all that we can do is adapt ourselves to it. And, to be new, meant abandoning the idea of overtone capitalism.
And, you know, that is, flat with this, the overall neoliberal meaning of the term modernization. You know, when, typically, when the term modernization is used in news stories, it's used synonymously with neoliberalization. You know, when one sees the coverage of the royal mail disputes, or whatever, it's always that the workers are said to be fighting against modernization. And, where modernization simply doesn't mean neoliberalization. Or, you know, especially in this case, you know, you know, if you're fighting against modernization, that's a bad position to be forced into, really.
Of course, the reality is they're not fighting against modernization, they are fighting against privatization and neoliberalization. But, you know, it's important that we be able to articulate an alternative modernity. You know, if neoliberals have control of them, the dominant sense of the modern is the neoliberal one, what would be the alternative model of modernity? And, you know, this question has a particular sort of purchase and attraction at the moment, when the right has really lost control of its narrative of history. And, never has there been a more spectacular discrediting of a political ideology
than we've seen with neoliberalism after the back-prime season, the ongoing crisis of capitalism that we're right in the middle of at the moment. So, they've lost control of it. But that doesn't mean, of course, that, as we've seen, that their stories and their narratives, their way of framing what history is, will collapse overnight. Quite clearly, that doesn't happen. But it doesn't mean there's a space for contestation of what modern modernity might be. So, I'd like to sort of outline sort of four elements of what the new left would include. And I think one of them is anti-authoritarianism. We had a discussion of that in the previous time. We don't want to go back to that.
There are reasons from within the left itself that authoritarianism, Stalinism, was rejected. It's both oppressive and undesirable, those kind of structures. We simply don't want to go back to that. But, that doesn't mean that. The struggle against authoritarianism shouldn't necessarily mean libertarianism, of course. But, the question is how do we constitute authority collectively and democratically? And, what's crucial here is that the opposition of authority to authoritarianism. I think it's absolutely important that we have a leftist account of what authority is. Because, well, what standard, what standard happens is that when any discussion of authority
immediately slips into authoritarianism and, of course, the right has control over that discourse, and we don't really associate with that anymore. So, anti-authoritarianism would be one and one. Technology, as Mabel talked about, must be crucial. We've seen this week in some of the backlash to the Occupy Londoners. Look at these protesters. They're anti-capitalists but they've got iPhones. But, I mean, why does that ludicrous critique seem to make sense? It seems to make sense because of some of the political aesthetics that surrounds something like that Occupy London. Whereby it's local, it's organic, it's all kind of, you know.
But, I mean, I think we should hold on to the sides of Marxism which stress kind of the good sides of things like mass production, etc. And technology. No, Marxism is technology positive. And, you know, it's not capital that makes iPhones just workers, is it? Quite clearly there's no intrinsic relation between something like an iPhone and capitalism. Okay. I feel a fairly steady problem with those two. But the other thing is more controversial but I don't think they ought to be. Bureaucracy. Okay, now, part of one of the characters that I've pointed out in my book is the way in which there's a relentless anti-bureaucratic rhetoric of neoliberalism.
Okay, but there's a rhetoric of that but the reality is it massively increased bureaucracy. It's as familiar to practically anyone working today. That the nature of bureaucracy has changed, is no longer imposed on us, what was no longer just imposed, is also imposed on us from outside. That we're increasingly required to do our own self-surveillance as part of work. And, you know, particularly working in public services. Absurd levels of, you know, if you're a teacher, like a kind of thing, long books. You know, absurd kind of inventory of self-surveillance which is now accepted as part of work. So, I think this form of bureaucracy is really bad.
But, if we're in a modern, technologised society, if we want things like the NHS, you know, and I think the NHS is a problem example for many of the sort of libertarians or anarchistic currents that are out there. If you want something like the NHS, you need bureaucracy. The question is what kind of bureaucracy do you have? And, also alongside that, management. I think, you know, we need to be positive about management. If you want a sort of more professional, planned society, we need management. But management, just as bureaucracy doesn't have to be either kind of old style, centralised, or, you know, stalinist bureaucracy demonised by neoliberalism.
Nor does it have to be the absurd kind of market stalinism that we found under neoliberalism. And, in the same way, management doesn't have to be an interiorism. You know, management should be there to make workers' lives easier. You know, to coordinate things. Not the opposite, but I'm sure that all our experience is where basically, you know, you find that our jobs are somehow there to justify the jobs of managers while the other way around. So, the question is, I think we have to think of, again, what kind of management do we want? Given that, you know, if we're not managers, we don't believe that necessarily people can spontaneously self-organise into the most rational and effective units.
Then it's a question of thinking about management in a left-wing way. Okay, so I'll leave it there. It seems that there is sufficient agreement here that we can move forward, only thought, that what we think in Europe can look like. And, you know, with practically everybody, really, that the reason why things are moribund in Parliament is not down to Parliament itself. It's down to the space outside Parliament. The fact that, you know, the forces of society aren't there, aren't there putting pressure on Parliament, putting pressure on decision makers. So, even if you're a reformist, even if you're a reformist, you'd have to accept that it's the space outside Parliament where things need to be happening there.
And, you know, it is that space of, it's a space between the private realm and the state, isn't it? That's the space that we need to occupy. And that's what, you know, one of the good things about trade unions is that they could occupy that space. Because it's making the link between, you know, people's everyday life as a worker and the broader political sort of programme. And so, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in order to kind of shift things forward. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space. So, you know, that's the space that we need to be occupying in the space.