A brief flitter of a long-lost independence surfaced in the ranks of Labour MPs this summer when over 120 of them signed up to a proposal for a windfall tax on energy companies, led by the think tank and pressure group Compass.

“The government could raise around six billion pounds to help people in fuel poverty this winter, but also invest the big bulk of that money into a mass national programme of home insulation,” Gavin Hayes, General Secretary of Compass, tells me enthusiastically. “Windfall tax has the support of sixty-seven percent of the population.” A progressive idea indeed, and one with huge popular and parliamentary support. Gordon Brown naturally ruled it out a few days later, after meeting with energy company executives.

But the temporary stirring in the midst of Labour by support for a progressive windfall tax was interesting even for those who are too cynical to ever find anything interesting about Westminster politics. This had a different air to the usual stench of career politics. For the first time in years, it almost felt like the Labour benches in the Commons seat real, compassionate people – those who might care about the many who couldn’t afford to pay their huge, and rising, bills. And it started here, in the tiny Compass office in Vauxhall, where the corridors of the shared building sometimes slope dramatically downwards, and an exposed iron lift shaft rises obtrusively through the stairwell.

The building is a huge nineteenth century Royal Doulton relic, which now houses a multiplicity of local businesses. The gaudy entrance has undergone an uneasy modernisation; blue neon is recessed into the ceiling, and a surly security guard insists I wait in a velvet sitting area. We are meant to have our interview in a small communal room, shared amongst the buildings tenants, but a woman is stretched out across the seats sleeping. Her sonorous presence gives it the look of an airport waiting room. “Hmm,” says Gavin, looking slightly put out. “That’s not very considerate.” Instead, we head through winding corridors to the Compass office itself – a small and bright room, with a view of the Thames, crammed with a few desks, newspaper cuttings on the walls, and one staff member typing away. As we talk, she often answers the phone, at which point we compete to be heard.

Yet this small office – itself, born of a single desk at the wealthier think tank Demos – is deceptive. Since its foundation in 2003, one could almost say that Compass has been the only serious countervailing force to Labour’s inexorable swing to the right. Sure, others have talked and complained. But with influential backing, Compass has put out nineteen publications, organised high-profile conferences, and enjoyed a steady stream of press coverage – all based on the idea that, as Gavin tells me: “We want to create a more equal society, and a more democratic society.” There’s more, too; phrases which sound terribly radical this close to Westminster. “I think Gordon Brown needs to put a stop to this ‘marketisation’,” for one, and: “You need greater redistribution – you can’t just leave it to the market”, for another. The Compass ‘Programme for Renewal’ (titled ‘The Good Society’) also states in no uncertain terms that whilst “New Labour has achieved important reductions in poverty, and has managed to implement a number of socially liberal measures”, it “has never made a serious challenge to neo-liberalism by seeking active political support for an alternative, democratic – and hegemonic – vision of the good society, because it has only ever wanted to ‘modernise’.” Thus, “unaccountable and unacceptable concentrations of wealth and power have therefore not only remained untouched, but have been encouraged.”

The economic crisis is an opportunity, says Gavin, to build a new progressive economic consensus. “It is now profoundly clear that all the answers to the problems in the world today demand collective state intervention,” he says, “be it the massive failure of the banking system we are witnessing before our very eyes or climate change.” Echoing what some have been saying for decades – and what many have realised only recently – he tells me that “all of these problems have been magnified as a result of unregulated financial markets, fuelled by the sorts of obscene bonuses paid in the city. Of course, the real people who pay the price for the actions of reckless and thoughtless bankers are the every day person on the street – through higher mortgage rates, living costs and job losses. It is clear that neither New Labour nor the New Conservatives have the narrative or the answers to any of these problems.” It’s almost like Labour – with substance. Dare we even say ‘Old Labour’?

“We’re not affiliated to the Labour Party,” Gavin insists. “We are a progressive organisation which works with people on the centre-left. Yes, we try and influence the Labour Party, because they are the only party in this country that subscribes – in its constitution at least – to democratic socialism. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work with other people outside of the Labour Party.”

The point is not that Compass occasionally thinks or says ‘progressive’ things. That wouldn’t set it far apart from a blog, much less a think tank. It’s that Compass, for a fleeting moment at least, started to look like it could actually exert some influence. “We always bill ourselves as more pressure group than think tank,” explains Gavin. “Simply because there’s a lot of ideas out there.” He pays tribute to the forward-thinking of other think tanks, like Demos. “But what was lacking, and where Compass plays its role, is as a pressure group – an organisation to actually push forward some of these policy ideas and campaign for them.”

For many, the idea that there is any point in lobbying the Labour Party, and trying to influence its members, seems strange. For one thing, the party now looks remarkably out of touch, even with its own members. There is a clear and shrinking group of people with influence on policy. Many members of this tiny elite have never been elected, and are brought on as ‘advisors’ in an American-style staffing system. Even the elected stand to benefit monetarily from the policies they enact, through a revolving door system that guarantees them corporate jobs with six-figure salaries once they are removed from public office. For another thing, the democratic deficit of the political system has become so obvious that it can seem absurd to expect Labour – even if it were somehow to democratise from within – to win another election. We have now witnessed the spectacle of the Conservative party branding itself as the party of social conscience. “It’s fair to say that the right have taken the language of the left,” Gavin tells me. “They’ve taken the progressive language. But I don’t think they have the policies that can deliver a fairer society. They’re still chained to market mechanisms and market policies to deliver what they want.”

So they haven’t got the policies that can deliver their rhetoric. But what does it matter? Their policies are the same as Labour’s anyway. There exists practically zero choice for the electorate in issues that count – like stopping the spread of privatisation, to take a key example. “It depends whether or not Gordon Brown is willing to stand up and say that these Blairite pro-market reforms are not the right direction for the Labour government to be pursuing,” says Gavin. And this, it seems, is where Compass differs from the rest of the critics. They genuinely believe in a Labour that most people have forgotten about. Gavin insists that there’s an internal debate in the party about its future direction, aside from the bickering over leadership. With privatisation, Gavin tells me, Compass has put forward alternatives like co-production, which are based on a vision of modernisation without the need to resort to damaging market forces. Labour could well adopt such ideas. In what looks like its dying years, it seems there are those who believe Labour could radically redeem itself.

It can sound surprising, in the context of the country’s resigned acceptance of Cameron as the inevitable PM-in waiting, to hear Gavin talk about influencing Gordon Brown. He remembers the muted hopefulness at Blair’s resignation – “When Gordon Brown first took over as Prime Minister, there was talk about more democracy at a local level. There was talk of ensuring the House of Lords is properly democratised, and there were positive policies that were put forward.” So what happened? “It is possible to win support within government for mainstream left-of-centre polices,” insists Gavin. “But it does require a boldness on the part of the Prime Minister to push these policies forward. So the job of Compass is to try to create the space for the debate to take place, and to try and push forward some of these arguments and change the terms of the debate, and try and get some of these policies enacted.”

The idea of enacting real change by asking Gordon Brown to be bold could be labelled hopeless, but some might even see it as counterproductive. Many on the left have an issue with the ‘third sector’ – think tanks, and pressure groups, because they see them as stifling real working-class organisation. They fill the space, it is said, which should be taken up by unions and grassroots organisations. An article on ‘Socialist Unity’ asks where Compass is going, and glumly concludes: “The gyrations of the leading Compass MPs suggests that grubby compromise and caving-in to the authoritarian guardians of the corporate interest of New Labour will be the result.” One person even comments: “Compass is merely the left cheek on the arse of New Labour.”

Does Gavin think Compass is a counterrevolutionary force? “I think what you’re talking about is probably, sort of ‘hard left’ elements,” he says. “The fantastic thing about Compass, and all the work we do – whether it was our big national conference that we held in June on equality, or whether it was the campaign that we’ve just been running on the windfall tax, or on Trident, when we opposed the government on Trident – we put together progressive coalitions of a whole range of organisations. So that includes trade unions, it includes MPs, it includes NGOs like Friends of the Earth, or Liberty, broad coalitions of different organisations, different interest groups, poverty groups, and so on. Actually for us, having all those groups and bringing them all under the one umbrella is a huge strength.” I’m intrigued. Does that mean, ideologically, he’s opposed to revolution? “I’ve always believed in the democratic process,” he tells me diplomatically. Does that include democratic control over economic resources? Gavin thinks for a minute. “I think there’s certainly a case in some instances for certain sections of society to be publicly owned and within the public realm. There’s certainly a strong case for a strong public realm to counteract the market.” He cites the example of the railways, which “clearly should be nationalised”. And “there are perhaps other sectors as well, where we could look to ensure they’re in the public realm, and not in the private sector.”

Gavin, like many of today’s younger idealists, was politicised during the Thatcher years. “My parents were quite political,” he tells me. They hated the Thatcher government – “not least because Margaret Thatcher imposed the poll tax, and at the time my parents, from working class backgrounds, couldn’t really afford the poll tax.” The memory clearly lingers. “I do remember the bailiffs knocking on our door because my parents hadn’t paid the poll tax. I guess that’s what made me political – it was through all those awful things that happened in the 1980s, the riots and everything else.” He joined the Labour Party at 16, studied politics at college, and went to university. “When I left university I got a job working for a left-of-centre think tank,” he says. “And I’ve worked in politics ever since.”

You could say that Compass’s attempts to create a genuine debate in an organisation like the Labour Party are utterly futile. You might argue that it is only when Labour has accepted electoral defeat that it allows itself even to think about principled, democratic socialism. In government, you could argue, the party is just as heavingly corrupt as the Chancery Court in Dickens’s Bleak House; full of the self-obsessed fawning after power; full of career politicians making a mockery out of the idea ‘representative’. You might even wonder why Compass operates. But if you do, Gavin has a simple answer, and it has an elegance to it that suggests he is quite serious. “Because ideas on their own aren’t enough,” he says. “You need to organise for them.”

This piece was published on the Compass website in October 2008

Michael Albert is a renowned activist, speaker and writer who was elected President of the MIT student body during the 1960s, and expelled for his vocal and direct anti-war activism. He is the co-founder of ZNet, an independent media centre which incorporates the successful, ad-free magazine ZMag. Albert is perhaps best-known for his vision (along with radical economist Robin Hahnel) of a participatory economy – or ‘parecon’ – as an alternative to market capitalism, market socialism or centrally-planned socialism. Parecon has rapidly taken primacy in the economic vision of libertarian socialism. “What parecon achieves,” says Albert, “is to facilitate each producer and consumer having a say in economic outcomes proportionate to the degree those outcomes affect him or her (self management), via social structures which promote mutual solidarity and shared interests, which advance diverse patterns of behaviour and outcome, and which attain distributional equity both of circumstances and of income.”

I am a student, it’s 8am on a Monday, and I have £10 ($20) in my pocket. What can I do, today, to get us closer to parecon?

Well, there is no one thing, rather many things, that people can do to reach most complex and large scale goals – and that is true for parecon, too. As a new type economy, involving new institutions replacing those familiar now, parecon is not something arrives in full, overnight. The hardest steps, in many respects, are the early ones. Some key facets of winning parecon, or by analogy any major social changes, are: developing a large group of informed advocates, developing instances of pareconish institutions, moving the left toward a pareconish commitment – not only rhetorical, but in our own organizations and projects – and developing changes in existing institutions that not only better people’s lives now, but also to move toward parecon and establish conditions for winning further gains on the same path.

That said, all kinds of activity are possible, though none are incredibly quick, so to speak. One can inform oneself about the main facets of the new vision, becoming ever more able to develop its contours, and, especially, to communicate about it to others, providing people an inspiring and compelling picture that leads, in turn, to their doing likewise to others. One can, having become well informed and able to communicate – whether in print, or verbally, or video, or however – spreading related insights. One can embark on creating pareconish projects and institutions, workplaces in particular. One can make a case for and seek to inspire existing left projects and institutions to adopt a pareconish make over in their structures, themselves becoming pareconish. One can create movements to win changes in any/all social arenas that elevate awareness of pareconish aims, and develop momentum for them, while bettering people’s lives, now.

Do you think the age of grand, unifying theories is over? Have we been left with thousands of little theories dealing with various aspects of the modern world?

What does that mean, grand unifying theories? I am not sure.

Take a different realm. Are our theories of biology, physics, etc. etc. grand unifying theories? If they aren’t, then there are none, anywhere and your question answers itself. If they are, and one could have them more or less by analogy for social realms, then all it means is can we have shared sets of ways of understanding and knowing and making predictions about, and, in the social realm, also having aims regarding various parts of social life? Well, put that way, sure, we can have that. It doesn’t mean no diversity, and it doesn’t mean homogenized minds, in a social context any more than it implies those bad results in the harder sciences.

I think the question arises from schools of thought that say something like this – grand unifying theories lead to myopic, sectarian, coercive projects that violate our aspirations, dull our creativity, regiment our inclinations and in time our behaviors, and thereby make winning a truly liberated world impossible.

And I think that bad outcomes like that are certainly possible, yes – so the shared ideas we seek need to be sought in ways that counter all those bad possibilities, and the shared ideas we seek need to themselves be contrary to those outcomes, too. People with a shared theory, grand or otherwise, or shared vision, or shared strategy, can be myopic, can be inflexible, can try to impose their even coercively, even on allies, even on themselves, and so on, to the worst imaginings possible. That is true, but notice, that does not say that such outcomes are inevitable. It says they are possible. It seems to me, and it seems the sciences show this, that it is also possible to pursue shared concepts, vision, and strategy, with an open and critical attitude, with a manner opposite to sectarianism, with a commitment in the shared ideas themselves and in the associated practice to pursue participation, to pursue an anti-authoritarian process and aims, etc.

I believe that efforts to transform modern societies into a much better future, transformative efforts, therefore, will be fueled by, informed by, oriented by, frameworks of comprehension of the present, shared goals for the future, and, in time, also shared strategies of change. To me that seems utterly obvious.

But then, in a country with, say, 100 million adult citizens, if we take that observation just one step further – and it is of course only a guess, we don’t know – it seems to me it suggests that a movement to create a truly participatory future, not one dominated by new elites, would require about 30 million of those 100 million people to be self consciously committed to and, more, highly informed and aware about, the aims of a mass movement. For informed participation and self management, there must be – well – informed participation and self management – and that means members seeking change who understand the goal, who are themselves the leaders people often seem to be waiting for. Then, yes, there would be many millions more, supporting, but not so deeply enmeshed in the project. Now if that is true, or even very roughly true, as in you think it would take twice as many people, or maybe only half as many, deeply and self consciously involved, then in any case, and any remotely plausible picture, we are talking about, before fully winning a new society in which there is real self management, having incredibly large and insightful collections of committed people on the move, seeking broadly the same future.

So I don’t know what a grand unifying theory is – but I think movements to overcome modern industrialized mass societies and attain what we might call a new type of participatory society, in my view including participatory economies, will certainly have unifying shared concepts, unifying shared vision, and unifying shared strategy. The trick is to have all this with participation, without new elite domination, and without sectarianism.

Noam Chomsky has influenced a generation, but especially, it seems, many of those who have known him personally for a long time. Can you tell us what the difference or divergence of views is between you and Chomsky?

Noam and I have been close friends for 40 years. There aren’t a lot of big differences, mostly only that we occupy ourselves in different ways and he is, well, Noam, which makes him different than pretty much everyone in various respects. He focuses mostly on international relations and, also, the domestic institutions at their roots, and then he branches out to domestic institutions in general, as well – in both cases overwhelmingly trying to reveal causes of injustice and explain plausible immediate possibilities, and to motivate rejection of injustice. I do that too, to a degree, but I tend to focus more on trying to myself formulate and also to inspire and help others to formulate vision – meaning institutional goals – and associated strategy as well. I do it more in the economics domain, but elsewhere as well.

As to significant differences with Noam, in Noam’s earlier years, say back in the sixties and early seventies, which is also when I was his student, he was quite strong about the need for shared vision to galvanize and orient effective opposition, even urging work in that direction. In fact, I think I was probably influenced by his calls for that sort of creativity. Later, he became somewhat skeptical, I think it is fair to say, of that effort feeling despite its potential benefits, too often such attempts tend to extend into silly blueprints, sectarian inflexibility, conjecture without basis if not sophomoric conjecture, etc. Most recently, however, I think it is also fair to say that he is moving back toward his prior views – knowing all the ill results that are possible, but now as the more predominant sentiment realizing also that shared viewpoints, including vision, is critically important and needs development and widespread involvement. This probably explains why his support for parecon has grown steadily over the years.

Will it make any difference if Barack Obama is elected President of the U.S., and if so, does that make it worth voting (for him)?

It is not Obama or nobody, it is Obama or McCain. So, what if you asked your question this way. Would it make a difference if the American people voted in larger numbers for McCain or for Obama. Yes, put that way I hope you agree that it obviously makes a big difference because it reveals the population is in a better place, maybe a lot better, maybe only a little better, then if McCain were more supported.

More, McCain and his base of support are, well, horrific even beyond the norm, and would be horrendous for humanity, even beyond the norm, until restrained, and the depression induced by his election would curtail early energy for restraint, I suspect. Obama, by contrast, we don’t know a lot about, personally, and I doubt there is much there to get excited about, unless you are excited about charisma without visible substance, with one caveat I will return to below.

On the other hand, Obama’s support is being elicited and then propelled based on the rubric of change and this has two very large upsides. It says change is possible, change is worth fighting for, and it aligns millions at least for the moment, for change, raising the question – how much change, and change to what? Also, you and I know that Obama isn’t going to deliver much without mass pressure on him to do so. He isn’t going to run for president, get the nomination, and then be president, if that happens, because he isn’t like others who have done so, but because he is like others who have done so. The idea he is some kind of stealth leftist is ludicrous. So, at the outset of his administration if he wins, he won’t deliver much change – just, I think, in some broad social programs and especially health care. He will let people down, as usual, in many respects, and particular regarding the war. Now what will be the popular reply. If Obama gets elected, this will be the critical deciding factor in whether it is just broadly more of the same, a little nicer (which means a lot to many people worldwide and therefore should not be dismissed as irrelevant) or the beginning of something new.

It could be something new, not due to Obama being some kind of tribune of change – he isn’t – but due to his constituencies deciding, on seeing that he isn’t, that they don’t care firstly about him per se, they care firstly about change per se, and they are going to keep seeking it, even against Obama’s administration. That is what we have to hope for and seek.

Now the caveat. There is one sense in which election of Obama, even without anything else occurring, would itself be historic and positive, again as a reflection of positive developments in the American population, but also as a spur to more. That is, of course, a black person becoming president, being voted for as president and day after day demonstrating the absurdity of racism on a very, very large stage. Anyone who says that wouldn’t be a wonderful step forward, though certainly not a final step in any respect, has a very strange understanding, in my view. And actually, the same holds but now around gender not just if Clinton had become president, but even just for her getting so close to that end. These are major indicators of a huge and even stupendous, but not yet complete, shift in consciousness and to a degree also social relations in the U.S. and they are also, themselves, events that add to that process. I know they are not irrevocable, I know they do not in themselves end racism or sexism, but they are real and substantial gains for what they say about progress to date, for the mindsets they will impact positively in the future, nonetheless, and are good, very good, in that respect. And this is so even if, as I believe to be the case, both Clinton and Obama are just more candidates of the same intellectual and moral sort as we always see.

How do you manage to fit everything in?

The truth is, my life is – at least when I am not traveling – at least structurally infinitely less stressful and more fulfilling and flexible than is the situation of people with wage slave jobs. There is no sacrifice involved, or little, day to day. This is another reason to try to incorporate the seeds of future relations in current practice. It makes existence more fulfilling. When I am traveling, things are different, ironically. The long trips in particular I find to be less pleasant and manageable. I’m not sure if others feel similarly or not, I haven’t really talked about this with others in similar situations.

Is there a certain amount of futility involved in describing in detail a utopic ideal unless one explains in similar detail how to achieve it?

First off, there is futility, and ignorance, in seeking detail in vision in any case. We can’t know, nor should we much care about, I think, or waste time even on hypothesizing about even possible detail, much less supposedly accurate detail. What matters is broad clarity about defining structures. What matters is being able to envision the defining relations of some domain – the economy in my case, most often, or the culture, or kinship, or the polity, etc. What one wants is to know those aspects that need to be communicated to inspire hope and advocacy and to inform activism so it leads where we desire. You don’t need fine details for that, but, to give an example, you do need to know, say, that we have to replace the current typical division of labor that prevails throughout society. If you don’t know you want a new division of labor, you replicate the current division of labor in your own movements and you forego any chance of winning the changes you hope for.

That said, I agree that even presenting what is worth presenting, a broad strokes picture of defining relations of sought institutions, is made far more valuable if one can also present a broad strokes picture of at least broadly how to attain the vision, thereby fueling and informing not only rational informed belief that a better world is abstractly possible, but also rational, informed belief that the abstractly possible better world is practically attainable, and efforts in that direction.

But I think it is a two step process, and while it isn’t entirely one step after the other, there are elements of that involved. You can’t have a compelling broad strategy (and strategy is even less susceptible to useful detail than is vision) until you broadly know where you are going. Example, if you don’t know where you are going, or you would be happy arriving somewhere that still has class division and class rule, you are likely to settle for a strategy that is ignorant about or even propels the interests of what I call the coordinator class above workers. But if you favor parecon, and you understand that possibility, and you instead favor classlessness, you will advocate a very different broad strategy, because you will understand that being anticapitalist doesn’t by itself imply being for classlessness.

So, in my mind at least, the project we face is to arrive at shared vision, and also to begin to expand its base of supporters, for lots of domains of social life, and then to also move on, with collectives of advocates and then organizations, to matters of program and strategy. Hopefully we are nearing the time for pursuing the latter project even while continuing to work on vision, as well.

What does the current economic crisis tell us about the advantages of parecon?

Honestly, I think not much more than we already knew.

Suppose you lived in a dictatorship that was, of course, rotten to the core, all the time. Suddenly something unexpected occurs and life under the dictatorship gets even worse, and the crisis afflicts wider constituencies, as well. Well its devolution does tell us that a relatively stable rotten dictatorship can hit a bump and become even worse, sure, which is another strike against it. But the dictatorship had already, even before the crisis, obviously and unquestionably a decrepit means of decision making and government, that was rejected not for its worst moments, but for its best moments.

The same holds for capitalism. At its best capitalism is horrific. At its worst, capitalism’s horror increases somewhat and spreads also, touching more folks, and even some who have advantage. This is not really much more of a debit compared to the constant debit of exploitation and alienation and subordination that is capitalism’s optimal norm.

That said, when the system starts to literally unravel it does create a different and dangerous context. If there are massive movements with high consciousness about the system’s faults and explicit desires for a better system, then dissolution may elevate those inclinations, pushing society toward new possibilities. But if that forward looking consciousness and organization is absent, then system failure can instead evoke in people a desire to return to stability by any means offered, including right wing regimentation. The latter possibility, not just the former hope, is a serious threat, now.
There is a sense, therefore, in which the U.S. election, even though it is between two candidates both of whom represent the interests of empire and capital, is likely to become at least a partial indicator of the population’s inclinations – do people want to make popular and even participatory changes away from business as usual (even if the candidates, themselves, in fact, are not really about serious change), or do people want to hand over all power to a narrow elite to impose order from above? These two possible desires, even if not the candidates, are very serious, I think, and while the election won’t be definitive, it has gone up in importance in light of the crisis.

Is a two-state solution still viable?
The two-state settlement is viable if Israel wants it to be viable. Settlements can be evacuated, and land swaps are possible where settlements remain in place. If the two-state settlement is not viable, then it is for Israel to declare, in which case Palestinians will have no alternative except to seek a unitary state. Politically it is not prudent for Palestinians to appear to be the “spoilers”of a two-state settlement, which is supported by the whole of the international community.

Do you think threats to academic freedom are reaching dangerous new heights?
I do not see serious new threats to academic freedom in the United States. Few professors are denied tenure for political reasons. Most tenure-track professors know exactly what they need to say and what they need not to say in order to get tenure. This is true as a general rule, not just when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict, although the range of permissible academic discussion on the Israel-Palestine conflict is perhaps narrower. It’s in the nature of academic life that by the time a professor gets tenure, he or she has been morally and intellectually neutered. The process begins already in graduate school, when you learn what are the “respectable” journals and publishers, etc.

How do you think Israel will respond to the ‘Iran problem’?
I do not believe Israel has a military option, and it cannot do anything without support from the United States. So, the question is how will the US respond to the “Iran Problem”? Again, it does not seem that the US has a military option, although it is possible that if Obama gets elected, Bush-Cheney will use their last months in office for one last roll of the dice: if they knock out Iran, well and good; if not, they will leave the whole mess for Obama to clean up.

The US presidential campaign has been quiet on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Any thoughts about the candidates and their positions?
I am a person of the Left. The Left has no say on the outcome of the election, because it is currently not a political force in American life. The best advice is of course to free ourselves from all illusions; and some illusions – fewer now than a few months ago – are still rife about Obama. Some of his appointments, especially at the sub-Cabinet level, will probably be somewhat more humane than the Republican party super-crazies, but otherwise it will pretty much resemble the Clinton era.

You are due to speak here in Nottingham in November. Have you noticed a difference between British and American academia in relations to anti-Israel criticism? In particular, their response to the recent books by Walt/Mearsheimer and Jimmy Carter?
The public reception to criticism of Israeli policy has become much less hostile in the United States. There’s lot of opportunity to get things done, if the supporters of Palestinian rights would get their act together: less pointless chatter about one-state vs. two-states and more serious organizing.

Milan Rai, author and activist, was sentenced to time in prison at the end of 2005 after he refused pay a fine which he incurred for reading out the names of the Iraqi civilians killed by the invasion at the Cenotaph, the London War Memorial. Milan made the most of his time at HMP Lewes by writing extensive prison diaries detailing his insights into political activism and his experiences of prison life. Below is Milan’s response to a letter received whilst in prison from Dan Robertson, a student and President of the Nottingham Student Peace Movement at the time.

Yesterday (22 November) I received a letter from Nottingham Student Peace Movement, musing on the scope and limits of university activism. (Incidentally, the letter is dated 21 November, so you have some idea of how fast things are turning around at this just-in-time (or is that stuck-in-time) prison.) Dan Robertson expresses frustration at the unwillingness of many students to ‘leave their comfort zone to take more radical positions’.

Now I think by now you know what is going to happen. I’m going to take some of Chomsky’s comments on the topic, reproduce them in somewhat less elegant language, and embroider them. As an academic, Chomsky has had a lot of time to think about the topic, but he’s rarely written about it. One point he has made about the academic scene is that there is a dramatic change of attitude between students and even young faculty, who are only a year or so away from being students themselves. He also points out the recurring pattern of students going off for summer jobs at commercial law firms, for example, thinking they are only going to earn some money, to help them with their debts, and then coming back with an entirely different outlook, often wearing different clothes. Every radical student knows about the hidden agenda of the classroom; and the tacit lessons taught unobtrusively in the course of the school day, lessons in obedience and conformity. The same is true, even more powerfully, of the re-shaping that goes on under the surface at work – even at university.

Another foundational remark from Chomsky concerns the objectives of university reform. Now barely detectable as a live issue, university reform (in a liberatory sense) was a major concern thirty years ago. Chomsky pointed out that what mattered was not alterations to boards of trustees or such like, but the content of the curriculum and the relationship between staff and students. In passing, one might note the same about industrial relations, and the workplace. As we have seen in Germany recently, putting a few token trade unionists on a board is more likely to lead to corruption of the labour movement leadership than real changes towards industrial democracy on the shop floor. Universities are locations of enormous privilege and provide students and faculty with intellectual skills, wide resources and considerable leisure, which can and should be used to contribute intellectually as well as bodily to movements for social change. Chomsky says that intellectuals should make their ideas dominant by their excellence. Quite a challenge, but it’s hard to see what the alternative there is.

Okay, back to “comfort zones”, and student activism. Why should someone become active, and take some part in a movement – “join” the movement? Why should they take a more sceptical attitude towards the mainstream media and official propaganda – let alone the accepted framework of the social sciences, for example? The only reasons that might move someone would be (a) a compelling and irrefutable picture of something that they find outrageous and (b) compelling and irrefutable arguments that undermine official lies and received wisdom. What often provides the key for change is something that makes the picture or the argument human. Chomsky is very self-deprecating about his own tactical judgements. One example he has given is the sanctuary offered by MIT students to a US soldier who had gone Absent Without Official Leave (AWOL) in protest against the Vietnam War. Chomsky argued against it – I think because he thought it would receive too little support, and would fall flat. In the event, the sanctuary was a massive success, with students flocking up to the hall where Mike (I forget his surname) was staying. Teachers moved their classes there, students slept there; the sanctuary apparently changed opinion on campus. Instead of arguing in the abstract, students were confronted with a young person much like themselves, facing an appalling decision, and they changed their minds as the arguments were put in this new human framework, with a new sense of immediacy (Face-toface, hands-on, immediate involvement. Familiar?). The sanctuary ended when Mike was arrested and taken off to face military courts. The effect on MIT seems to have been substantial and lasting.

So why would someone move out of their comfort zone – whether on campus or anywhere else? There are lots of reasons not to. In marketing, in the commercial world, there is an emphasis on understanding and resonating with the attitudes of those you are trying to influence, repeating your message regularly and in a variety of ways. Advertising is based on manipulation, campaigning is about honesty and persuasion, but there are useful lessons that we can learn, nevertheless. Dan writes, quite rightly, ‘even the realisation that those calling for radical change are not easily pigeonholed and derided [as] “hippies” or “nihilists”, but are compassionate and intelligent human is actually an important step in some cases.’ This applies outside university as well. Finally, there is another attitude shift which is of equal importance, which is for intellectuals, whether “radical”, “liberal” or “conservative”, to rid themselves of the delusion that their form of literacy and education means that they are both more intelligent and (therefore) more suited to dominate and rule the less-highly-schooled. Intellectuals must free themselves of the contempt for “the masses” which has undermined movements for social change in the past. If they can form a true partnership with other working people, intellectuals can help rather than hinder social progress.