Caroline Lucas is stepping down as Green Party leader. The news is awash with it, and the skeptics are out: Can anyone replace such a prominent and popular leader? Who will take the party forward? Is Caroline acting in haste?

A good leader in British politics, in my experience, is not a nice leader. They have to have experience in governance, be ruthless in achieving their agenda, and stay the hell away from internal party politics. But more important that any of that, they need to be charismatic.

The next leader will to need to analyse the previous couple of elections. They will need to stitch together a party that is beginning to fall apart at its seams. Their focus will have to be on internal reform, to develop of a co-ordinated media campaign, and to create a clear political strategy on where the party is heading.

A bit of background: the recent local elections

The switch between Labour/Tory isn’t just a swing of discontent. Most people remember Labour failing them under Blair and Brown, and they’re not blind to Miliband’s incompetencies. So Labour gains of 30% are not reactionary – they’re procedural. Labour gains send a huge message to the Coalition; they state very clearly that if circumstances don’t change, the next general election will bring back the opposition – Labour. And with the Liberal Democrats nosediving towards a rather sticky end, we (the Greens) should have been able to have stolen some old Yellow ground.

This is construct the Greens need to break if they want to gain local strengths. Beyond just being a good local councillor, people need to believe that they can represent a real threat to the other three major parties. There is a way to do this, but it will take the Green Party a lot of challenges and shake-ups if they want to achieve it.

These are the 3 simple ways I think the leader will need to take if they want the Green Party to grow.

1. Sell the Green Soul

What does being Green stand for? What is it in opposition to?

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves if we want to win elections. It’s very clear to us that we’re no longer a party of (only) hugging trees and tie-dye shirts. But it’s not clear to the public. Why? Simply because we’re not sure what we stand for either.

All successful parties are entrenched in a political vision – a myth of what/who they represent. For Labour, it is a workers utopia – the party of unions and the downtrodden of society – and despite their shift to liberalism, are still seen as the only party for the lower middle and working classes. For the Conservatives, that was wealth owners and those in their service – keeping “Englishness” and the ‘civilised’ class-based society that Britain long sought to sell to the world. For the Liberal Democrats, it is small businesses, students and humanism – the modern party fighting for modern issues.

This is where the Greens have failed to connect the public. We need to dispel the myth that the Greens are a niche party for hippies, environmentalists and peaceniks alike, and show that our environmental goals are deeply entrenched in economic and social reform. Instead of bobbling bar graphs and discussions about wind-farms, our marketing has to show our true policy colours – through stopping cuts, standing up for refugee and immigrants’ rights, improving well-being for everyone, challenging inequality, etc.

These policies are the soul of the Greens. We need to show that we care about everyone, and we’re not just a single issue party.

Take this video from an Australian TV program during the 2010 elections. Although not commissioned by the Greens themselves, it was possibly one of the best campaign videos I have seen. Why? Because it brings the viewer to emotionally connect with the Green Party. It visually expresses the true Green Party vision – a better world for everyone.

2. Actions speak louder than words

People don’t just vote for a party based on who they think will most likely be most sensible in government. The recent results of the Mayoral Elections is a clear indication of that. Boris Johnson has won his election through being a figure of hilarity – a stumbling confused buffoon. Whether he actually fits that character is, of course, open to debate – but the use of the British love of black humour was an excellent campaign tactic.

It would lie within the ethics of the Green Party to use such manipulative tactics to win an election, thankfully. But that doesn’t mean that there are not other legitimate ways of becoming a crowd-pleasing party.

Firstly, the Greens need a real political strategy. When Mélenchon formed the Parti de Gauche his main tactic was to gain the support of the people that the Socialistes had left behind. Observing the lack of proper union negotiations and the interest in revolutionary activism by the French people, his party’s policies have already reflected those he claims to represent. It was the working classes, the youth and people of colour that Mélenchon has holding his banner. And he has done so through public discussion, activism and outreach – all of which the Greens have continually failed on.

To champion the left, we need to recognise that the Greens are not an off the spectrum party. We are not the Liberal Democrats, where the swing from left to right is so simple. We are a left-wing party and we do represent the people politics has forgotten.

Instead of focussing all our efforts on the middle classes, we need to start getting into negotiations with small unions, with university students, with people of colour, with the long-term unemployed, with the poorest in society. We need to shout out our claims for more equal pay and a higher minimum wage – organise demonstrations, speak in public forums, and, most importantly, take action.

Everyone believes that all politicians lie, so they need to know that the Greens will not let them down. And the only way we can show them that is by taking action. We need to campaign on increasing the minimum wage, on tenants’ rights over landlords, and on the right to a fair trial – through legal aid and financial support, especially for refugees.

3. Be Oppositional!

I submit, therefore, that you do not have full political democracy, let alone the economic as well as political democracy for which my party stands, unless you include along with the ingredients that are taken for granted, such as universal suffrage, the secret ballot and majority rule, a full and unquestioned recognition of the rights and functions of the opposition to the government of the day. Only in this way can you protect the rights of minorities; only in this way can you make sure that the force of public opinion will be brought to bear on the legislative process, and we are indeed fortunate in Canada to have inherited from the United Kingdom a parliamentary system of government, the genius of which is the responsibility of the government to a parliament in which the rights of those who support the government and likewise the rights of those who oppose it are clearly recognized.

- Stanley Knowles, “The Role of the Opposition in Parliament,” Address to the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, 21 March 1957.

The fact is, currently, there is no way that the Green Party is going to get magically voted into power. Our strategy has to be to increase votes & memberships, not (entirely) win elections. The guide to gaining power is a path, not a leap of faith. And to do so, we need a new set of tactics.

As a minority party in a two-party system, we’re bound to remain in Opposition. So, why not use that to our advantage? We know that the two major parties are gutless, due to their connections with corporate power and other media and interest groups. So, let the two* major parties to argue out their childish battle:

“Well it’s Labour’s fault that the treasury is empty…”

“But it’s the Tories fault that Murdoch has so much power!”

And in the meanwhile, we make a fuss about the real issues: jobs, investments, fair pay, open spaces, lower rents, tenants rights, etc. All the stuff the community actually cares about. And we don’t need the mainstream media to make it happen, we need to become organised and shout out about it! Social media, blogging, comments for newspapers – everyone wants someone to write for them – so we sell it to them by offering our views for free.

Ultimately: more noise = more members = more funding = more organisation and tactics = more noise = … all the way to = wins elections.

Our current system is not representational, but it does have an oppositional role. So why aren’t we exploiting it?

*

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If there is ever anyone to credit for my engagement in politics, it is Bob Brown. A good leader never just dives straight into politics, they come from a long history of wanting to create a positive change. Party politics should always be a road amongst many, for democracy is not just about elections but a much longer campaign for a better society.

Bob Brown’s roots in direct action and green-anarchism are fundamental to understanding how the Green Party of Australia was born, and why it has grown so significantly in a country that still functions on a two-party system of government. The Greens’ success lies deep in its actions to not only promote an image of environmentalism, but a culture of caring. And, as we have seen in the UK and across Europe, it takes a brilliant leader to ensure that remains the case.

When I first wanted to join the Greens (at 15), it was not because of their brilliant environmentalism. Instead, it was their key engagement in asylum rights, international justice (for Tibet and West Papua, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, etc) and Aboriginal rights. For the first time, I read of political policies that were based on achieving unity and social justice rather than the lackluster rhetoric I had heard from the Liberals and Labor Party.

And it wasn’t rhetoric that the Greens were providing either. Whenever an issue was incredibly important, they actively encouraged direct action. I distinctly remember when Bob Brown led a march around Parliament because the Greens were ‘kicked out’ for heckling Bush and Howard over the War on Iraq. Green political action was also an initiation process for many of Tasmanian Greens – camping up in the trees to prevent logging of Old Growth forests.

Bob Brown has made the Greens what they are today. Under his leadership, the Greens have been shown to be intelligent, pragmatic and sound candidates for election. The policies they advocate and fight for come across as sensible and possible, despite the numerous hate campaigns that have been run by major newspapers like The Australian and the Herald Sun.

Brown’s greatness has also been his overwhelming personal engagement in broader political concerns. When journalist Nigel Brennan was kidnapped in Somalia, Brown made a personal contribution of A$100,000 despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s disinterest. And, if a liberal magazine like the Economist can give such a glowing report to a fundamentally left-wing party leader, he has been incredibly successful in challenging the Greens’ natural enemies.

Bob Brown’s decision to resign is, for myself and others, the end of an era – a Golden Era. There are very very few politicians that I have ever really thought were amazing – and Brown is in that elite group.

However Brown’s decision is extremely wise; not only will it allow the Greens to grow away from a Single-Man leadership, but will be essential for Brown’s own well-being. I wish him the best of luck for the future, and only hope I can catch him on one of his national tours in the coming months.

Christine Milne, who replaces Brown as leader, has some big boots to fill. But as her visits to farmlands, her outcry against public service cuts, and her press conference against the power of large mining companies have all shown – Milne is on her way with a leap and a bound. I wish her the best of luck.

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To get what should be the whole post out of the way in one line – practising virtual violence, and enjoying simulations of torture and dominance, make us more violent and more tolerant of violence. That is true of individuals and of society. This isn’t a statement based on gut instinct, although it seems pretty common-sense to me, it’s a well documented, well researched, indisputable fact. If you don’t get how people can deny evolution, but you think violent games and tv are benign, then you’ve got some cognitive dissonance that needs addressing. Look up “Imitation, Media Violence, and Freedom of Speech” by Susan Hurley, and sort your coherence of belief out.

That should be enough. But the two-pronged assault of a huge capitalist industry and the ‘libertarian’ inability to see that anyone other than white men should have rights, mean that it’s not. What particularly pisses me off is the dissociation of violence that meets certain criteria from the spectrum of violence that has produced whatever spectacular incident has caught our attention. Say the gunning down of civilians for fun by an American soldier. Yes, it’s such a repulsive story that it makes you want to vomit, or go and scream in the street, or get drunk and forget it. But separating off this one incident, while it’s clearly what the government and media want us to do, means it will happen again and again.

It’s comfortable to hate the crime to the extent that we don’t identify with it. Thus pro-military right wing Americans have him down as a lone nutter, a victim himself, who snapped under enormous pressure, inexplicable. Then there’s some folks with qualms about the brutalisation of the military, but still on the whole comfortably racist and patriotic, who are blaming the particular training facility that he attended. Next level up, the anti-war moderates, who see this as the product of an unjust invasion, of this war, or of all war. They’re getting warmer, but still see the soldiers as a  distinct group from the rest of society, a total disconnect caused by the brutality of their experiences. Then there are those who can see that this is political in a bigger sense, the expression of the implicit assumptions of colonialism, we own you, you aren’t human, we can exercise complete control over you. But that’s still comfortable if you’re all progressive and anti-colonialist. And I’m afraid it goes deeper than that. It’s our whole masculine, violent culture.*

Soldiers train on video games that are produced for the general, playing public. They make it easier for them to kill in real life. The language soldiers use is the language of misogyny and rape, they can kill and hate because they practice hate speech, it isn’t obviously recognisable as hate speech because it sounds just like what you hear in the pub on a Friday night. It’s the sort of things your friends say, and you were probably embarrassed and annoyed if a passing feminist called them on it. And then of course there’s an imagery that mirrors that language, porn, the same porn that most of the teenage and adult men we live and work with watch for casual entertainment. The imagery that no one can avoid, that teenage girls are aware of before they’ve even started their periods, or got their first boyfriend (who will have see the same images), that shows women as masturbatory tools, to be used and discarded.

I’m sick of people telling me about how they found a film that graphically, realistically depicts human bodies being treated in as demeaning a way as possible “kind of funny”. Or of being told that a picture of a woman as an object is “just there as a joke”. Of going to the pub and hearing casual “banter” about raping disabled transexual women.  Making things a joke does make them less real, to the perpetrator though, not the victim. All of us have internalized some of the culture that produces the soldiers of Abu Ghraib and Kandahar. All of us can choose the degree to which we play the “isolated incident” tape and close and compartmentalise and blame. Part of the reason that it’s hard news to read is because it feels as if there’s nothing we can do in the face of such brutality and injustice. But there is, it’s just hard. And for all the socialised masculinity stuff about being brave and heroic, I don’t see many men finding the courage to do this shit. It’s not being ashamed of challenging violence and the glorification of violence, in yourself, in your friends, workplace, wherever you safely can. It’s stopping using porn, and recognising the fellow humanity of women. It’s not consuming and sharing the violent propaganda of torture films, that are all about destroying and demeaning other people’s bodies, usually women’s. It’s considering what you’re saying when you use violent rape as a metaphor for winning an argument, or a football match, or a war. It’s interrupting yourself with a “Oh wait, that’s sexist isn’t it?” if you find yourself telling a joke about women’s bodies. Ultimately, it’s learning to live with feeling a bit uneasy about everything that’s in your head, because without doing that we can never confront violence honestly, and never change.

* Basic definition for them-as-needs-it: Masculine is the socialised traits of dominance and aggression, not the biological fact of being male. As a former token one-of-the-guys I know full well that women can also internalise much of this stuff, although of course only along with a whole loada self-hate and ambivalence. So no-one cry because I’m being gender-essentialist, because I’m not.

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This is the first part of a series on the end of the left & right. Feel free to submit your own by emailing me.

Unlike many of my political colleagues, I can’t read the writings of Marx without quivering with irritable disagreement. Not always specifically because Marx is necessarily wrong about the narrative of capital and its direct relationship with the political elite, but because his arguments live in a world that is somewhat utterly disconnected to our own. Why this makes me fume, however, is more that people still seem to think that times have not changed. And many of my fellow political colleagues will spout rhetoric without realising how outdated its content is.

Let me explain. Marx’s world was much more restricted to rudimentary capitalism. For him, the concept of statehood lacked the multinational corporations that co-mingle with our “elected” leaders. His world lacked financial adjustments that were necessary for the West to retain its economic superiority over the rest of the world. And most importantly, his world lacked the very concept of globalisation – economic and social.

Thus, many of his ideas on how Capital and Power were interrelated, and specifically material dialectics did not engage communities which had hugely different social structures to those in which he resided. For him, the world was black and white – the Western form of organisation (Capitalism and Industrialisation) was easily superior and more advanced to the primitive Other.

Communism was the ideal – the perfect end of social reformation – because capitalism had to be an integral step. Furthermore, any other society which could be perceived as more just was not, simply because it had not achieved industrialisation. If equality was achieved through materiality, then our relationship with the material would have to become rational, and not based on superstition, faith or myth. And in order to do that, we would need to commodify the material – make the material the nature of our valuation system rather than the sacred.

And this is where Marxist dialetics really begin to fall apart. Valuation theory, even when seemingly entirely monetary, shows that our relationship with material culture is distinctly much more complex. What we value is embedded with meaning – meaning which we impose upon the object, and one in which value is constantly changing. Within this complex relationship, we begin to see the problems with perceiving technological advancements as the agent of change.

Technology plays a close role in the cultural imagination. For many African traditions, the production of iron was very much a process of reproduction. The furnace in which the iron was smelted was often shaped in the form of a female, while the bellows would often be worked by fertile men ‘blowing’ into the female furnace. The iron would be the transformed product of that relationship. Its value was not defined by only its exchange value, but its spiritual value at the time of production. The mode of production, therefore, was a religious ceremony in itself. Value was literally blown into the object.

Marx’s flaw, therefore, was he was unable to see the social and cultural patterns of meaning that were embedded in his view of materiality – that innovation and change in technology could occur without a link back to metaphoric link to natural human processes. His belief in rationalism, for example, was dependent on a worldview that had some concept of an objective reality, and even if so, it was an objective reality that humans could actually reach out and access.

Of course, neomarxists have covered this ground well, but it still shocks me that political activists have not. To accept Marx at face value is very much accepting racism at face value, because it accepts a model of Western superiority (or indeed white supremacy). We have passed a point when being a Marxist is relevant. Society has faced huge changes, and models of power are not universal or even similar anymore. Marx, I believe, would have a hard time trying to explain the same discourse in our world, which is far more digitalised and individualised than even he could have imagined.

Our changes have made the utopian Communist ideal weak. Collectivism cannot be accomplished without accepting liberation movements, many of whom identity politics play an essential role. Even if we take in Frantz Fanon‘s views on how black culture could only win through adopting Marxist ideals, we need to remember that Fanon was guilty of disregarding gender and disability into his discourse.

The fact is that our world is more than just a battle between the Haves and the Have-nots, everything lies on multiple spectrums of power relationships. If we want to truly build a more stable world, we do not want equality as that would create uniformity. Instead, we want equity, justice and liberty – all of which will always be reliant on a world that excepts that difference isn’t the bad thing, control is.

On a deconstructive note: of course this criticism of Marx’s use of rationalism is flavoured with its own structured use of rationality in itself. But it would be somewhat amusing to have watched Marx be challenged by a Buddhist; I doubt he could have dealt with Maya that well.

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Topsoil is the fertile layer where the rich rot of abstract analysis meets living organic activity. It nourishes the thriving grassroots, and nurtures the seeds of diverse movements, whether they're dropped from nearby, or blown in from afar. The burrowing creatures of Topsoil do not believe that life can be owned by corporations, and think that resistance to the blight of capitalism comes from diversity and balance.

From the shared roots of a movement for justice and equality, Topsoil is written for people whose primary goal is to embrace left-wing values for a better future.

Editors: Beth (@beth_tich) | Kevin (@oxkev) | Nishma (@nishmadoshi)