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Twenty-First Century Socialism

      Jeremy Gilbert

      polity

      Copyright © Jeremy Gilbert 2020

      The right of Jeremy Gilbert to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      First published in 2020 by Polity Press

      Polity Press

      65 Bridge Street

      Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

      Polity Press

      101 Station Landing

      Suite 300

      Medford, MA 02155, USA

      All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3657-3

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Gilbert, Jeremy, 1971- author.

      Title: Twenty-first century Socialism / Jeremy Gilbert.

      Description: Medford : Polity, 2020. | Series: Radical futures | Summary: “In this urgent manifesto for a 21st century left, Jeremy Gilbert shows that we need a revitalised socialist politics that learns from the past to adapt to contemporary challenges”-- Provided by publisher.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019032308 (print) | LCCN 2019032309 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509536559 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509536566 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509536573 (epub)

      Subjects: LCSH: Socialism--History--21st century. | Capitalism--History--21st century. | Populism--History--21st century.

      Classification: LCC HX45 .G45 2020 (print) | LCC HX45 (ebook) | DDC 335--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032308 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032309

      The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

      Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

      For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Acknowledgements

      This book wasn’t one that I ever expected to write, although I’m glad I have, and it’s only thanks to the persistence and patience of my colleagues at Polity – George Owers and Julia Davies – that it’s come about at all. Keir Milburn and Alex Williams both read and commented on a first draft and were insightful and supportive as ever.

The phrase ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ obviously isn’t one that I coined: it was being used in various publications from the late 1990s onwards, and probably much earlier. I used this phrase polemically once or twice before, but the first time I used it as the title for anything, it was at the behest of Craig Gent, who asked me to write a short piece on the topic for Novara Media that in some ways ended up becoming the intellectual kernel of this book. In broader terms, the present volume draws on arguments that I’ve made in earlier, more academic work, such as my books Anticapitalism and Culture and, most importantly, Common Ground. Perhaps more immediately, it draws on commentary that I’ve written for publications such as Soundings, the Guardian, Red Pepper and New Statesman over many years – but above all for Open Democracy. Perhaps most directly it draws on the pamphlet ‘Reclaim Modernity’, which I wrote with Mark Fisher and which was published by the think tank and lobby group Compass in 2014. I’m grateful to all these outlets and to my editors, readers and collaborators there.

More than any of those sources, however, some of the book’s key sections on the nature of capitalism and socialism and on the defining features of recent and contemporary history draw on my many years of teaching undergraduates at the University of East London. Teaching students on degree programmes in cultural studies, sociology, music, media studies, politics, history and English – trying to equip with them with a comprehensive and comprehensible account of how the world works and how it got that way – has often been a challenge, but always a rewarding one. It’s a matter of great regret that most of those degree programmes no longer exist, but the many students who passed through them are all owed a debt of gratitude for helping me to shape and hone much of the account and analysis offered here. So are my colleagues at the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at UEL, which thankfully persists in its commitment to public discussion, freed education and political analysis as well as to exploring the boundaries of cultural studies and cultural theory.

      Above all, of course, like most writers, I owe a permanent debt of gratitude to my immediate friends and family for their ongoing support and inspiration. Jo Littler and our children – Robin and Isla – make every day special and make the future matter more than ever. It would really be impossible to list all the friends and colleagues who contribute to and stimulate my political thinking every day, but over the past few years friends connected to and taking part in the Culture, Power, Politics seminar series, as well as organisations and projects such as Compass, Momentum, The World Transformed, the New Economy Organisers Network and #ACFM have all been crucial sources of insight and interlocution. Many thanks to all of them.