Well that’s fine then – we agree. My writings too have to be taken in their context. I’m not talking directly to people but talking in broad terms, which means my language will be different to what you’d like…

If we’re to overturn that victory – and we must – then these concepts, however refashioned, are the only ones which describe our state of affairs accurately.

So let’s re-fashion them. I don’t buy into modern frames necessarily either, but I do believe in re-fashioning terms to reflect new realities.

Nevertheless, your point is the right one. We do agree on that. We want people to go in different directions than is currently the case, but once again, you seem to view my engagement with voters, workers, people in their homes as only ever focused through the prism of the language I use on this blog. This blog has always been a conversation between activists about activism. The problems, the inabilities of the far Left, don’t stem from my language or, in the case of the key groups such as the LRC, the SP, the SWP etc, theirs.*

So I don’t think the chicken and egg analogy works.

There’s no question that in order to convince people, you have to talk to them where they’re at – so we agree on that too. But since neither I nor most socialists who have any degree of proportion or ability insist upon everyone knowing the writings of Marx and Lenin by rote before they work with them. We go into organisations like trades councils and talk about terms and conditions, about wages, about mobilising labour to support local community groups and protect public services. Ain’t any of that controversial, and it has the benefit of being precisely what people want to see.

We’re not always successful, because organised labour is a quagmire of bureaucracy, petty obstructionism and laziness. This doesn’t mean we can simply abandon this particular fight, because ultimately the economic power wielded by workers (and all the corollaries of this) is the only tool that will be able to take on the legal, forceful and ideological powers of the state and capitalists.

There are other aspects to our fight to change minds as well of course. And again, we address people where they’re at. When on anti-war marches, conscientious socialists will advance ideas about how the economic system causes the problems we’re protesting against. In terms of global social justice, we’ve actually already framed the debate – the problem is now one of accountability, of leaders promising and never delivering. And socialists were a key part of framing that debate, as part of the global justice / anti-capitalist movement.

Whether or not terms like working class, or socialism, capitalism or other words are used is not itself important, but the concepts involved are the key to correcting problems like unaccountable leaders. The fact that these concepts are still under-discussed is connected to the continuing inability of our movement to better organise itself to secure accountability from its leaders. I’d also point out (in case you didn’t read Nick Davies’ Flat Earth) that the lack of discussion around these concepts is linked to the ‘victory’ of neo-liberal capitalism. If we’re to overturn that victory – and we must – then these concepts, however refashioned, are the only ones which describe our state of affairs accurately.

(*No question though, I’m sure some sects are a bit nutty in how they approach workers – we are living in a world, after all, where some people are prepared to assert that UFO visits are really an example of a Galactic Soviet system. No, really. Check it out – they’re called Posadists).

Sorry Dave – I’m not buying it. I take your point about getting fellow workers to ‘reach out’ and educate others but its not really happening. It’s not going to happen given that trade union membership itself is falling. The metrics are moving against you.

Now – I’m not trying to make Marxism outdated, it has become outdated by virtue of the fact that people cannot relate to it any more in the way that they relate to the iPod as a product of capitalism (and hence something they want to keep).

My point is: I’m working with the situation as it is now because my immediate aim is to persuade people to move into a different direction. That is more a direction you’d also like to go in – so let’s at least agree on that.

But you’re in a chicken an egg situation. You’d like people to be enlightened and accept your frame of the debate. But they’re not educated and you’re sticking to your frame – which makes it harder for you to communicate and thus educate…

I don’t work like that. If a battle can still be won then I’m happy to stick to my frame. But if it’s way past that: then I think its time to recognise changed realities and figure out the best way to bring people back through their new way of understanding.

I hope that made some sense…

Sunny, disingenuity with words “aspiration” or “persuasion” hardly makes a difference. You’re not willing to view this in historical context. Either this aspiration has been ‘created’, in which case it can be uncreated*. Or it is a byproduct of capitalism, has always been part of it, and is being manipulated, in which case we can put it to better use. It’s not some mystical force which we must simply accept.

Secondly, I think you’re misusing the word “outdated” simply because you want Marxism itself to be outdated. Using language which people don’t always use about themselves is not necessarily a feature of outdated language, and does not make language outdated. It simply makes the language specialist. And plenty of disciplines, not just political economy, indulge in this. The ones from a hundred years ago, the ones from yesterday, the ones from tomorrow.

Using this as a starting point isn’t flawed. Using “working class” like an identity to which we expect people would automatically lean towards is flawed. Unlike being “English”, “British” or any of a range of other identities which bear no ill-will towards capitalism, being working class is still a taboo subject, so naturally we have to fight to construct the ‘identity’ around the reality.

How we do that, the mass persuasion strategy, is simple enough – it’s just not being done. Socialists intervene in their workplaces, in other workplaces and communities which are struggling with bosses or the government, and link the theory to the practice of class struggle. It’s a tried and tested tactic, and it works. As it did at Visteon, for example. This understanding of class and class struggle rarely comes independently of being pushed towards struggle by “market forces” or whatever you wish to call it when bosses cut wages and the government cuts public services.

Accepting that there’s a fight to “re-construct” the working class ahead of us – and there is – doesn’t mean we have to abandon the term. Similar arguments have been made over abandoning terms like “socialist” in our party names, or “Marxist” in our programmes. This is dishonest and opportunistic, and is basically another version of what New Labour have done with management speak; hidden a regressive agenda inside all the progressive language they can muster.

Hiding words like these usually doesn’t come on its own, however, it comes with programmatic differences between people attached to the word socialism or the phrase “working class” and those prepared to jettison them. And that’s where we should focus.

*For example, bearing in mind the amount of personal debt our supposed middle class bears, this uncreation is hardly too difficult to imagine. The house ownership thing, for example, could be dramatically reversed – all of those council houses being bought back into state ownership as the State nationalises the debt used to purchase them. Rather than gratis payments to fulfill one’s mortgage, which is the current strategy. If coupled to half a dozen other measures, it may not be as unpopular as at first glance.

It’s not persuasion – it’s aspiration. Technically they may be working class, but they want to feel middle class and upwardly mobile. Which is why they rarely class themselves as working class. The polls back me up. I’m not making it up.

How do you plan this mass persuasion strategy?

2. Just calling terminology outdated doesn’t mean it is;

It is, if it refers to a situation most people don’t see themselves in. What I’m saying is you can call everyone WC if you wish, but if they don’t see themselves as such then your starting point is flawed.

Once you’ve convinced people to feel WC again, you can then call them that.

and wholly capitulating on where we want to be simply because we can’t see how to get there from where we are now.

What am I capitulating over? Terminology? I rarely care about that. I care about outcomes. If that outcome is better served by understanding how people see and classify themselves, then I prefer that strategy.

As to whether it is psychologically possible – who knows?

1. If people have been persuaded they are middle class, then it follows that they can be unpersuaded.

2. Just calling terminology outdated doesn’t mean it is; I’ve yet to see anyone in this debate advance language less problematic than the idea of a working class.

3. We are taking the situation as it is, but there’s a difference between understanding where we are and trying to get to where we want to be, and wholly capitulating on where we want to be simply because we can’t see how to get there from where we are now.

3a. It’s not myself and Paul who can’t see how to get there from where we are now; it’s the people advocating the supremacy of a discursively constructed “middle class” and those calling the idea of a working class outdated.