Put your mouth where your money is

I keep getting hassled by chuggers. I don’t really mind, I have to admit, though I can never afford to sign up for a direct debit to a charity, but it has got me thinking about the left. Every single chugger I’ve spoken to in the last few weeks has tried to sell me their charity on lefty grounds, and while it may be possible that this is because I have a beard and wear badges, I actually do think that some of the causes are in themselves quite left wing. I’ve had long debates with these people about the third world, poverty, aid, medicine, and the environment, but the fact that it is economically viable for charities to send people out on the streets to sign up donors suggests that those who donate to these causes are not simply the left as we know it.

I am quite interested in the differences between how the left interacts with the public, and how charities do. Very rarely do you hear anyone say “well, I won’t give to charity because I think the poor of the world have enough money, because the oppressed have quite enough support, and because I think what you stand for is just plain wrong.” On the contrary, my experience of discussing issues on the left is one of constantly being told I am wrong. So what is it that charities do right that we fail to do that makes us so much less popular than them? Why is it that the left fails to get those who give to charity to speak out?

An old interpretation would be to model those who give to charities as Victorian-style philanthropists. They are to be treated as assuaging their guilt by giving to the poor, but I actually think that this interpretation is wrong. If the effectiveness of chuggers is to tell us anything, it’s that people are giving because they agree with the ideas, they agree that there are problems with the world, and they want to see change. And surely the left offers as many possibilities of change as any charity out there. Surely we offer the promise of a better world, on a deeper level than those who simply seek to provide aid.

Most of us know that some of our actions are responsible for the fucked up state of the world. With the philanthropist model of givers we can say that charities rid people of guilt at the cost of a few coins. The left, on the other hand, demands that we are made to feel even more guilty. That we take absolute responsibility for the way things are. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but an important one. But it seems to me that if people are now giving on moral grounds, they are beginning to give because they know that the world must change, and this is fertile ground for the left.

A lot of charities broadly spend their time making moral arguments. They tell you about why things need to change. They tell you that you can make a difference. And this, I think, is something the left really is missing. We need to be making moral arguments for socialism. It doesn’t take much to show that a proper redistribution of wealth is the only way to end poverty. It’s not hard to argue for freedom from oppression, or for lives without hardship.

It may be true that people are more concerned about the problems that occur in the world than an analysis of the capitalist machine, but we should be taking this prevalent concern with the world seriously. A critical analysis of capitalism is necessary, but not as some staid old cliché to hit people over the head with, but as real new thought, of demanding change. Instead of telling people that they should take responsibility, we should be telling them that they can take responsibility, and that responsibility is possible above and beyond monthly donations.

The left should be offering these people who give a mouthpiece with which to express their concerns. We should be deconstructing some of the more conservative arguments that many charities make, and showing that we can offer a programme of change. If charities can take advantage of the views already held by the men and women on the street then we can too. The left has for far too long been telling people that if they want to organize effectively they should become part of a vanguard party, that they should read Lenin and Trotsky. The point of this, in the past, was to mobilize and organize people and their bodies. But now, with the far left as one of the weakest sections of British politics, it would maybe serve us better to follow the chuggers and work on mobilizing and organizing a popular consciousness, which within it already bears the seeds of radicalism.