Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Democrats in Britain, especially those on the left, still have a lot to learn from the ideas of Andre Gorz, who died last month. He was well known as a member of the group around Sartre and Les Temps Moderns. But unlike Satre he was not a womaniser and he ended his life-long relationship with his wife Dorine in a suicide pact, currently celebrated in France thanks to a now best-selling account of their life together he wrote in the final period of her terminal illness. This has attracted some publicity at the expense of his originality and radicalism as a thinker, which is how I knew him.
He was a lovely man, friendly, open and unassuming. I was lucky enough to interview him after the publication of two important books, Farewell to the Working-Class in 1980 and Paths to Paradise in 1985 at their home in a quiet village south of Paris. Our conversation went on so long that I was late, very late, for an important dinner that evening in Paris. Gorz has been described as an ecological communalist and if the phrase has any meaning, then he was a living example of the idea. I remember his garden vividly, a profuse mix of weeds and vegetable in which he took great pride. He explained that the weeds actually contributed to the quality of the vegetables which he traded with neighbours for rabbits and other food. He was contemptuous of the tastelessness of vegetables sold in supermarkets and most shops and the carrots he served at lunch were luscious, both in colour and taste.
It is easy enough to see how his ideas have gradually over time gained influence, but he was largely ignored at the time in Britain, and still is. The conventional left, with its workerist and labourist ideology, and the immature posers of the Trotskyist or "hard" left, both emphasised the centrality of the working class to socialist advance and were uninterested in red-green ideas and hostile when confronted with them. The point of his Farewell was that the working class was not central to a politics of emancipation and that the Marxist emphasis on the world of production was as damaging to people's emancipation as that of corporate business. For him, freedom pre-supposed emancipation from work. He rejected production and technology in his books as fiercely as he condemned tasteless carrots and seedless grapes in conversation.
Gorz saw the organised labour movement as a privileged minority that could not play a progressive role. He argued that it was only those sections of society not involved in productive work who could begin to transform society - the people he called "the non-class of non-workers." Many of his ideas are now common within the green movement. They have also been at least partly accepted by trade unions in France and Germany. He argued that modern labour-saving technology should be seized as an opportunity to "abolish" work in favour of "autonomous activity" or "work-for-oneself". Today, continental trade unions regard the 35-hour week not just as a way of dealing with unemployment, but also as a means to a better quality of life for their members. Not surprisingly, the neo-cons and monetarists disagree. But democrats should consider the more holistic interpretation of democracy and social justice that his ideas suggest. Come to think of it, perhaps this will be a good way of approaching Britain's Conservatives now that they too are engaging with the principles of democracy and the quality of life.
