career development the Bronstein way

Dave Osler’s been running an amusing series on ex Trots and their current prosperity. The general tone is that these folks sold out. I’m not so sure. The college trots used to refer to anarchists – humane and gentle folk, one and all – as the ganja social club. The trots were right; but this speaks of a certain seriousness on their part, and not just about helping the weary toilers either.

Membership of any far left group at University is good career training. While others are off trying to master revenger’s tragedies or geothermal properties or whatever it is that gives them a special area of knowledge, the trots and tankies are learning what really matters if you want to get on in the world – how to manipulate committees, control agendas, identify and neutralise enemies. The generally venomous internecine conflict between far left groupings also provides a good grounding for life in more conventional achievement oriented environments. Anyone with the remotest talent for bullshitting gets first rate training, especially since the professional merchandising of opinion is now a considerable business in itself. And there’s surely no better basis from which to launch a career as a modern manager than knowing nothing specific while claming to have the answer to everything.

All this is true of mainstream student political groupings. But they offer a path direct into politics itself, Young revolutionaries can take this path too, following the dictum that “freedom is the recognition of necessity.” But that recognition could equally take them outside political management and into the wider economy. It helps, too, here that the permanent revolution meme in Trotskyism has also become part of general business and political language. It’s additionally useful if you can write off your own young idealistic self as suffering from an “infantile disorder”. It’s OK, though. I’m all better now. Even the existential futility of holding far left positions in the actually existing political order teaches the kind of persistence that a true go-getter needs. I am right eventually becomes I am right, and Lev Davidovich Bronstein, becomes, by slow degrees, Tom Davidovich Peters.

I’m not sure that selling out is the main issue. It seems to miss the point in the same way that Melanie Phillips-type ranting about Trots in high places misses it. The fact is that having acquired such a useful skill set, it becomes very difficult not to use it. One group that realised this is the old RCP, which basically morphed into a career development consultancy for its own membership.

UPDATE: Dave takes issue somewhat with my post. I didn't mean to cast any particular doubt on the motives of people who join left groups at University - or anywhere come to that - though I'd trust your average Labour Student about as far as I could comfortably spit a rat. The point is that many people pass through them and that their experience while in them gives them a pretty good grounding of the realities of the commercial life.

Dave asks:

Funnily enough, including stints as Trot full-timer or ghostwriter for Arthur Scargill on my CV does not seem to have helped me secure a job with a telephone number salary. What am I doing wrong, Jamie?

Tch, Dave. Ever heard of the airbrush? Alternatively, make a full self-criticism along the lines that you've lost your convictions and found your reason while developing excellent motivational and organising skills. Moreover, all that dragging your arse out of bed to sell papers makes you an great self-starter.

Anyway, why don't we do a career guidance book? I mean The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Former Revolutionaries makes at least much sense as Make Jesus your CEO. Fifty fifty. What do you say?

Comments

[Tom Griffin]

Marx owed a lot to various 'bourgeois' thinkers. Intellectually, it's not that difficult for ex-Marxists to drop the socialist revolution and re-invent themselves as 'progressives', i.e. utilitarian modernizers.

[Dave]

Worth it for the title alone, Jamie ...

[Alex]

I suspect he was probably thinking of the RCP/LM/Spiked/Genocidal Bastard Fanclub/Institute of Ideas crowd.

[Chris Williams]

'Genocidal Bastard Fanclub', although perfectly apposite for the RCP, doesn't narrow it down too far among far left groups. Alas.

[Alex]

They invited me to their Duelling Egos...sorry..Battle of Ideas thing. Maybe I should have replied "Dear Genocidal Bastard Fanclub..."

[jamie]

On the other hand, if the RCP staged a duelling banjos competition, I'd certainly attend.

[Chris Williams]

"Your attachment to is just a sympton of your subservience to the culture of fear. See, the Acme Company has now proposed a nuclear-powered , and that is way cool."

- From the as yet unwritten 'Spiked-o-matic RCP bullshit generator'. Another job for Manic.

[Nick Brooks]

If the LM lot organised a duelling banjos contest, they'd stuff it full of harmonicas disguised as banjos, then declare the harmonicas the real banjos, and dismiss the banjos as frauds.

Like the blog by the way - hope you don't mind me butting in.

[ejh]

The fact is that having acquired such a useful skill set, it becomes very difficult not to use it.

You do, as well, pick up a formidable education. You read a lot, you learn polemics, you practice public speaking. I'd imagine it must be much the same in the Jesuits except they provide the career structure with the training, as it were.

Incidentally I'm penniless at 42 despite having both the Trotskyite background and an Oxbridge education (not that the combination is unheard of).

[BristleKRS]

"If the LM lot organised a duelling banjos contest, they'd stuff it full of harmonicas disguised as banjos, then declare the harmonicas the real banjos, and dismiss the banjos as frauds."

:D

I like the OP too :)