The left used to build community. It’s time it started again

Last week, Left Field reported how one in five young people have no in-person friends. A loneliness epidemic in Britain and the west is increasingly impacting all ages, with marriage rates declining and people starting families later in life. Add to this the loneliness of older people, an historic issue that is made worse by the absence of functioning social care networks.

This is a political issue, shaped by job markets, mass culture and for-profit technologies. However, the left does not currently speak to this issue in ways that cut through to the majority in society.

When absence bred adaptation

In the past, when communication technology was much poorer, people produced their own culture and entertainment instead. A century ago, when pre-recorded sounds and images could not be activated at home on demand, people made their own music, entertainment and cultural shows, so as not to live in a world without art and beauty.

People could not travel long distances to socialise, so they created social spaces in their communities. Speak to your parents and grandparents about the memory of village halls and assembly rooms that were booked for several events each week.

Capitalism has eroded all this by privatising public spaces and raising the rent. However, the proliferation of smart devices with a global internet connection creates the illusion of continuous social contact and bottled culture on demand, meaning that people have lost the reflex to create genuine connections offline.

Community and the birth of radical politics

Left-wing and working-class politics were birthed by people who knew each other personally from union branches, village halls and non-conformist chapels, who could tell that the messages of Conservative and Liberal politics were not for them. They knew they were not alone because they were part of a community and a class. The existence of Labour clubs and working men’s institutes indicates how the terms used for politics also shaped people’s personal lives and leisure, to which political organising was just one ancillary.

In the 21st century, with community destroyed by capitalist labour markets, urban ownership and design and online spaces curated by corporations, it is harder for politics to spring from organic community connections. Instead, political organisations now offer only ‘the official business of politics’, namely, business meetings and electioneering. This is essential and necessary work for an organised political movement, but it is alienating and it struggles to attract newcomers when it is divorced from the joy and beauty for which progressive politics stands.

A space occupied by the right

Not too long ago – when I was myself young – the left dominated online political spaces and under-25s heavily embraced progressive political and cultural values. Although the left still leads among the young, the political right has begun to make inroads spearheaded by its most radical and populist elements.

This has not been entirely organic, and right-wing online content has gone through an evolution of trial and error over two decades to now churn out corporate-funded content carefully curated to look shoestring and authentic. By picking its issues in the culture wars, the populist right is able to gain new recruits by leading with issues that are perceived as pre-political to those who it attracts: discussions about lifestyles and life choices come first, the political ideas come later.

Polling makes it clear that the populist right is making inroads among young men, proposing misogynistic interpretations of their experiences on the dating market, suggesting that a move from liberal to traditional values is the solution to this part of the loneliness epidemic. It is not surprising that an early (pseudo)intellectual of the populist right is Jordan Peterson, who made his name with a popular self-help book rather than a political tract, namely, 12 Rules for Life.

The insurgent right is addressing people who are both curious and anxious about how to live the good life, while succeeding in painting the left as a lecturing intellectual class whose concerns are distant from those of day-to-day life.

Re-entering communities, creating communities

The erosion of community has hurt the left, and the right’s pale online imitation of community is nevertheless making inroads. To counter this, the left should not only find and rebuild communities; it should also create them.

In continental Europe, politics once shaped personal life and leisure even more so than in Britain. Protestant, Catholic, liberal, social and communist sections of society, not only had their own political parties, but also their own sports clubs, cultural festivals, social venues and youth associations. In France, the Union des vaillants was the communist answer to the boy scouts after 1945.

If there is a loneliness epidemic in Britain and the west, then the left should meet this need by creating community picnics, walking clubs and cultural shows organised under its political banner. The left should state openly and proudly its belief that capitalism has destroyed communities, but that a different politics could bring it back. Rather than more demands on the time of activists, this will build the pre-existing communities from which collective organisation and action spring as a reflex, and no longer a drudging duty.