Revisiting Jimmy Reid’s 1972 rectorial address, one cannot help but feel a fond sense of nostalgia for the politics of an entirely different era. In the words of Archie Hind, these were men with “the fire which came from a moral belief in a political idea as expansive, generous and as hot as the head of a steam boiler”.
Yet the faith of Reid and those who fought alongside him, a faith in the possibility of a fairer and more just world, has been gradually sidelined by a malignant breed of nihilism. Almost forty years on, that fire has all but died out and the strength of conviction which so markedly defined Reid and others like him is notably absent from the political landscape of our time. Indeed, with very few exceptions, the very idea of belief—be it in a God, a nation, a politics, or even in an institution as fundamental as the family—would seem an anathema to the type of society we have found ourselves living in, a risible and indulgent anachronism in a world in which the blind pursuit of self-interest, rejected in such impassioned terms by Reid, has become the prevailing norm in a spiritually impoverished society.
In growth we trust. Growth, economic growth that is, has become the unchallengeable transcendental that governs the workings of a consumer society. Both on an individual level and beyond this has led to the erosion of our belief in the power of the collective, leaving us deprived of a vital source of nourishment and undermining a powerful sense of humanity that is fundamental to Scottish culture and which indubitably constitutes one of its greatest assets.
Yet perhaps all this was inevitable. Perhaps the triumph of capitalism as the grand narrative of the twentieth century, together with its eternally-recurring desire, was inevitable; perhaps too the fact that belief was no longer to be possible on its shifting sands. Indeed, the Market’s hedonistic celebration of the most insubstantial and vainglorious of human desires has perhaps rendered it unnecessary: why bother with something as arduous and trying as faith when the misery of instant gratification is always close to hand?
For all this and more, we now find ourselves in a curious situation, living in a world in many ways alien to Reid’s. In an age of perpetual crisis, burgeoning population growth and in which competition for increasingly scarce resources grows ever more fierce, dreams of a fairer and more just world would appear to be just that: the stuff of make-believe, consigned to a poor second place by the short-sighted pragmatism of the self-interest required to stay ahead in our times.
The battlefield may have changed then, however even if the specific goals for which Reid fought are in some senses no longer valid and the utopias of yesteryear no longer tenable, the substance of which they were made, the core values that lie at their heart and the fire, returning to Archie Hind’s metaphor, that is fuelled by them, are more vital than ever before.
The great strength of neoliberalism, as we are often told, is that it appeals to human nature, that very grasping, self-centredness pinpointed by Reid in his speech. Yet such a belief remains perilously ignorant of the fact that we are but products of the communities we form, that humankind’s greatest achievements have come not as a consequence of this self-interest, but in spite of it; they are a product of the strength derived from working together, not by attempting to shirk the responsibilities this entails.
The immediate challenge them, is how to counter this zeitgeist, how to rescue and rebuild what has been stealthily eroded by the increasingly dubious “progress” of recent decades. “What has made global capitalism more difficult to challenge”, writes Eagleton in Trouble with Strangers (2009), “is the fact that it has grown more predatory, not less so”. He continues: “this means that the very changes in the system which have helped to dispirit and deplete the left are also why the need to combat the system remains more urgent than ever”. Yet the question remains of how to grasp such an incipient and omnipotent problem, something that has become so systematically embedded in the structure of our societies.
What better place to begin than reflecting on Reid’s words, reviving his faith, his conviction, in the words of the great orator himself, that “real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women”.
In honour of Jimmy Reid
Yet the faith of Reid and those who fought alongside him, a faith in the possibility of a fairer and more just world, has been gradually sidelined by a malignant breed of nihilism. Almost forty years on, that fire has all but died out and the strength of conviction which so markedly defined Reid and others like him is notably absent from the political landscape of our time. Indeed, with very few exceptions, the very idea of belief—be it in a God, a nation, a politics, or even in an institution as fundamental as the family—would seem an anathema to the type of society we have found ourselves living in, a risible and indulgent anachronism in a world in which the blind pursuit of self-interest, rejected in such impassioned terms by Reid, has become the prevailing norm in a spiritually impoverished society.
In growth we trust. Growth, economic growth that is, has become the unchallengeable transcendental that governs the workings of a consumer society. Both on an individual level and beyond this has led to the erosion of our belief in the power of the collective, leaving us deprived of a vital source of nourishment and undermining a powerful sense of humanity that is fundamental to Scottish culture and which indubitably constitutes one of its greatest assets.
Yet perhaps all this was inevitable. Perhaps the triumph of capitalism as the grand narrative of the twentieth century, together with its eternally-recurring desire, was inevitable; perhaps too the fact that belief was no longer to be possible on its shifting sands. Indeed, the Market’s hedonistic celebration of the most insubstantial and vainglorious of human desires has perhaps rendered it unnecessary: why bother with something as arduous and trying as faith when the misery of instant gratification is always close to hand?
For all this and more, we now find ourselves in a curious situation, living in a world in many ways alien to Reid’s. In an age of perpetual crisis, burgeoning population growth and in which competition for increasingly scarce resources grows ever more fierce, dreams of a fairer and more just world would appear to be just that: the stuff of make-believe, consigned to a poor second place by the short-sighted pragmatism of the self-interest required to stay ahead in our times.
The battlefield may have changed then, however even if the specific goals for which Reid fought are in some senses no longer valid and the utopias of yesteryear no longer tenable, the substance of which they were made, the core values that lie at their heart and the fire, returning to Archie Hind’s metaphor, that is fuelled by them, are more vital than ever before.
The great strength of neoliberalism, as we are often told, is that it appeals to human nature, that very grasping, self-centredness pinpointed by Reid in his speech. Yet such a belief remains perilously ignorant of the fact that we are but products of the communities we form, that humankind’s greatest achievements have come not as a consequence of this self-interest, but in spite of it; they are a product of the strength derived from working together, not by attempting to shirk the responsibilities this entails.
The immediate challenge them, is how to counter this zeitgeist, how to rescue and rebuild what has been stealthily eroded by the increasingly dubious “progress” of recent decades. “What has made global capitalism more difficult to challenge”, writes Eagleton in Trouble with Strangers (2009), “is the fact that it has grown more predatory, not less so”. He continues: “this means that the very changes in the system which have helped to dispirit and deplete the left are also why the need to combat the system remains more urgent than ever”. Yet the question remains of how to grasp such an incipient and omnipotent problem, something that has become so systematically embedded in the structure of our societies.
What better place to begin than reflecting on Reid’s words, reviving his faith, his conviction, in the words of the great orator himself, that “real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women”.
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