Marxism and pigeons
I always enjoy grabbing the Socialist Standard from the local radical bookshop, and read with interest the October Life and Times piece, ‘Chasing pigeons in the park’. Here stalwart HKM finds himself in a fractious encounter with a working class mother, and unsurprisingly, comes off worse for it. I would never advise anyone, Marxist or otherwise, to intervene in the parenting of a stranger’s child. It smacks of condescension, and I’m hardly shocked that she went straight for the jugular.
That aside, while I appreciate the article’s humane spirit and its attempt to connect everyday behaviour to the wider social order, I think it falls into certain traps that weaken the socialist case.
As an anecdote and moral exhortation, one small incident, a child chasing a pigeon, is made to carry the burden of a sweeping claim about capitalist society. What’s needed instead is structural analysis, grounded in class relations and historical development. Otherwise the critique risks idealism, as if cruelty will simply vanish once capitalism is abolished, and empathy will bloom automatically.
The piece also overlooks the way ideology and institutions actively reproduce capitalist values. Capitalism doesn’t just ‘promote thoughtlessness,’ it systematically manufactures individualism, competition, and alienation through schools, media, and the daily grind of wage labour. Those habits of thought won’t dissolve on day one of socialism, they will need to be challenged through conscious struggle, education, and organisation.
Under capitalism, ‘competition,’ ‘self-interest,’ ‘private property,’ and even what counts as ‘good parenting’ or ‘normal behaviour’ are all suffused with hegemonic ideas.
Finally, the article sidesteps the harder question of how socialism itself will handle conflict, scarcity, or antisocial behaviour. To imply that a socialist world will be one of effortless harmony is to underplay the ongoing, practical work of building and sustaining solidarity in the face of real contradictions.
In short, the piece has a sound moral impulse, but its reliance on anecdote and lack of class analysis blunt its usefulness as a Marxist critique.
Marx himself could well have been a pigeon fancier, though most likely encapsulated in pastry and well baked in a pie. While I can’t cite a specific reference for that, it is at least recorded that he did enjoy a pork and matzah sandwich when he could.
A.T.
No comments:
Post a Comment