In France, reactionary thinkers like Marie-Pauline
DESWARTE (http://bit.ly/1E4XdWY) fight individualism.
They criticize people who want rights without duties.
Mme DESWARTE insists on the importance of
relationships.
A lot of citizens may agree with that.
Nevertheless, Mme DESWARTE explains other things too.
She says that traditions should bind us all.
For this author, the religious past of Occident has
created habits rooted in French people.
The division of society between the aristocracy who
fights, the clergy, committed to prayers, and the peasants, condemned to feed
the elite, is natural in the eyes of Mme DESWARTE.
In her opinion, French
people have been genetically changed by this past. Everyone can guess that Mme
DESWARTE is not really in favour of immigration, because immigrants don’t have
this culture and these habits passed on in their genes.
Are those who fight individualism obliged to agree
with Mme DESWARTE on everything she says ? Certainly not !
In England, prominent thinkers fight individualism
without wanting an omnipotent elite linked with a reactionary church.
Blue Labour, for example, is “the Labour Party
pressure group that aims to put relationships and responsibility at the heart
of British politics” (http://www.bluelabour.org/).
Critiquing the dominance
in Britain of a social-cultural liberalism linked to the left and a free-market
liberalism associated with the right, Blue Labour blends a ‘‘progressive’’
commitment to greater economic equality with a disposition emphasizing personal
loyalty, family, community and locality.
The prominent thinker of Blue Labour is Lord Maurice
GLASMAN.
An informal Blue Labour group exists within the Labour
Party and is led by four MP’s (Jon CRUDDAS, Tom WATSON, Frank FIELD and David
LAMMY).
Blue Labour often argues with the Red Tories (http://labourlist.org/2015/02/why-we-need-blue-labour/).
In 2010, there was an interesting public exchange of
messages between Lord GLASMAN and the Red Tory Philip BLOND (http://bit.ly/1c9H9gH).
Blue
Labour point is to reassert the place of reciprocity, solidarity and, above
all, friendship and conversation in British politics.
We no
longer have sense of being able to shape, collectively or individually, our own
destiny.
The
Blue Labour argument is that you can’t have collective action without
conversation. Constructionists say exactly the same thing and the LGOC,
who’s the author of this blog, clearly approves this trend.
Blue Labour preaches a complex gospel, rooted in
Christian socialism, urging greater understanding of Labour's working class
roots and lost supporters while rejecting big state solutions in favour of
community co-operation.
Blue Labour has a
strong sense that politics is a struggle between right and wrong, and that love
and work are more important than economic reward.
Blue Labour doesn’t want to cater for
the freewheelers, rather than hard-working families. The refusal to
reward unwanted behaviour is also one of the fights of LGOC.
The solution is not a cosmopolitan disdain for patriotism and the
endorsement of a social allocation system that favours the newcomer over those
who exhibit decades-long civility and good behaviour.
Despite convincing
ideas, Blue Labour is accused of being of a much darker hue than blue (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31729729)
about immigration.
This accusation is
unfair. Blue Labour MP’s have never said that immigrants will automatically be free riders.
If free riding is avoided, citizens will be more tolerant and trustful about
new immigrants, especially toward asylum seekers who want to fight for
democracy too.
The
Red Tory Philip BLOND exposes the true weakness of Blue Labour. Perhaps what is
most of all lacking in the movement is any operational idea of an economically
self-empowering society (http://bit.ly/1DwpcOA).
“Few
on either side of the political divide think that the public-sector union model
in teaching or council services works well. In the eyes of the successful,
organised labour doesn’t reward talent and allows free-riders to benefit from
others’ hard work. For the unsuccessful, organisation alone will not solve
their chronic problems. The unions won’t raise workers’ wages or skill levels
and they won’t embrace their wider needs.”
If creating co-ops
means giving public money to rotten lobbies, that won’t help those who worked
hard but were ruined by free riders.
We must define
empowerment in order to help the victims of free riding. If we manage to do
that, once again, a common destiny will be visible for all.
Then, reactionary thinkers
will not remain the only known opponents to individualism.
