Ken Livingstone - Political Views

Political Views

"Ken never had a very clear political philosophy. Ken never read philosophical books from a political point of view. He had a gut feeling; he was always opposed to exploitation and inequalities in a big way. He had a social conscience and wanted to do something about it. But he saw it within the existing parliamentary and political system. He didn't consider taking up arms against anybody as a way forward or dramatically changing the electoral system. He thought you could persuade and change the Labour Party."

Within the Labour Party, Livingstone was aligned with the hard left. Historian Alwyn W. Turner noted that Livingstone's entire approach to politics revolved not simply around providing public services, but in trying to change society itself; in his words, he wanted to get away from the concept of "old white men coming along to general management committees and talking about rubbish collection." Biographer John Carvel, a journalist from The Guardian, remarked that Livingstone's political motivation was a "fundamental desire... for a more participative, cooperative society", leading him to oppose "concentrations of power and... exploitation in all its forms – economic, racial and sexual."

Livingstone describes himself as a socialist. In 2007, he stated that "I still believe one day that the idea that the main means of production are owned by private individuals... will be considered as anti-democratic as the idea serfs could be tied to the land. But I will not be alive when that day comes." Livingstone had always worked towards a unified socialist front on the British left, and disliked the tendency towards splintering and forming rival factions, usually over issues of political theory, among the socialist community. Although rejecting Marxism, throughout his political career he has worked alongside Marxist far left groups and has become involved with the "politics of the street". He has however not worked with those Marxist groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party, who advocate the destruction of the Labour Party as the way forward for socialism, seeing their beliefs as incompatible with his own.

Livingstone has consistently rejected being defined under any particular ideological current of socialism. Recognising this, in 2000, the former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock asserted that Livingstone could only be defined as a "Kennist". Livingstone's understanding of politics arises from his studies of animal behaviour and anthropology; rejecting the idea that the human species is naturally progressing (a view advocated by socialists like the Fabian Society), Livingstone instead took the view that human society is still coming to terms with the massive socio-economic changes that it experienced upon the development of agriculture during the Neolithic. Highlighting that a hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence is more natural to the human species, he believes that modern society has to adopt many hunter-gatherer values – namely mutual co-operation and emphasis on human relationships rather than consumerism – in order to survive.