Why are most US leftist parties so divided?

[TrotskistMarx]

I would like to know if it is possible to see a United Socialist Workers Front as an electoral option in USA. And why are most leftist parties of USA so sectarian, and is it possible to see a United Party composed of all the small socialist parties of USA into one pole, into one big united front? thanks

[4th supporter]

It comes down to the fact that we cant get over our small differences, id like to see this too as our communist party is terrible, but its not going to happen as long as we cant get over our "isms":(

[The Douche]

It comes down to the fact that we cant get over our small differences, id like to see this too as our communist party is terrible, but its not going to happen as long as we cant get over our "isms":(

What about the big differences? Should we "get over" them as well?

These differences exist for a reason. I really don't feel as though I have anything in common with the M-Ls on this board, I often feel I don't have anything in common with the trots, and often find myself at odds with some anarchists.

I don't think I should "get over" this, nor should they "get over" their problems with my ideas. What you really mean when you say "get over" is that some groups (the smaller ones, or the ones with less dynamic representation, or a million other factors) should abandon their ideas and submit to the ideas of other groups.

Its not that I don't want to work with the stalinists (or trots, or platformists, or hoxhaists, or maoists, or titoists, or whatever the fuckists) its that I can't because we have different methods, different goals, and different ideas.

[NewLeft]

Well, some parties seem to be regional, so it's not like they're really fighting against each other.

[Lee Van Cleef]

These differences exist for a reason. I really don't feel as though I have anything in common with the M-Ls on this board, I often feel I don't have anything in common with the trots, and often find myself at odds with some anarchists.

Its not that I don't want to work with the stalinists (or trots, or platformists, or hoxhaists, or maoists, or titoists, or whatever the fuckists) its that I can't because we have different methods, different goals, and different ideas.
I think this is more your own problem than a problem with any communist, or especially other anarchists.

Our goals, for the time being, are the same. To educate and agitate for the destruction of capitalism at the hands of the working class. It's really not that hard at all for us to come together and find something we can do to achieve this together.

If I were in your area, I'd be more than willing to help out with whatever activity you have planned. It's a shame that some people don't feel the same way.

Rest assured that if a mass revolutionary movement ever does take hold, the Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens and all the rest will put aside their differences in their efforts to kill the revolution.

[gorillafuck]

I, like cmoney, find myself at odds with stalinists, as well as deluded anarchists that think that large anarchist movements have at any point in history reflected what modern liberal anarchists believe (respecting political rights of their political enemies, etc).

there are some leftists I could easily work with if they were at least okay with my presence (trotskyists, left communists, and level headed anarchists). just because I don't think that "state capitalism" accurately describes the now irrelevant soviet union doesn't mean that I don't think I could find myself organizing alongside some people that do if push came to shove.

[Prometeo liberado]

I have to partially agree with cmoney on this one. It's just so fuckin' difficult to work with some groups that work under the the narrowest of tactics or outright petty immaturity. I was at a march just last month and there were several socialist/communist groups there. Most cordial, some not, and still one that refused to march(?)! Only there to sell papers! It comes down to ability to work together and not embarrass ourselves in the process.

[4th supporter]

Sorry for the simplicity of my answer there cmoney but it comes down to the fact that were working towards the same goals, it does not make sense that even with our "big differences" that we still cant come to a logical agreement,but i do admit that the division of the left goes back all the way to the beginnings of anarchism and communism so there is a lot more then meets the eye especially if we still haven't found a solution after all this time, and i no way intended to crush the smaller tendency's i actually admire them for pointing out the disagreements with the larger tendency's that seem to control the movement. I never wanted you to just surrender to my or any other large tendency i just wanted to point out that some of our bickering is pointless(mine included) and we can start to resolve our large differences as soon as we remove the pointless small ones and there is no hope for solidarity as long as we continue to fight over nothing when we can work to resolve and come to agreements on the ideas that matter

[workersadvocate]

Think about how the petty bourgeois typically see and do things. Now think about how middle class managers and independent professionals typically see and do things.

Now think about the left ses, which are typically middle class in composition, centered around some fulltime professional leader(s) and/or fulltime professional bureaucrats (in unions, for example) who do not really make their living the same way as the workers they "represent" (maybe in the past they did, but lets not be distracted fron their social being today).

What do today's left sects and small business enterprises have in common?
What do today's left sects and fulltime union bureacracies have in common?
What do today's left sects and those who play manager/admininstrator/coordinator roles as junior partners of the capitalists have in common?

Why use one method to understand society and seek to change it, but stop using that when looking at the Left itself?

The 800 pound elephant in the room, which many leftists prefer to ignore and pretend doesn't exist, is that the now-existing Left hasn't been a truly proletarian movement, in its outlooks, compositions or relationships with the working people, in a very long time.
They took the old left books and found themselves places and audiences in the middle class, and became like the middle class elements they kept company with, then it was time to reinterpret those old left books, to reinvent the left in a new basis reflecting their new social being and new roles within the top 33%. Perhaps they couldn't make a being successful career at being typical cappies, typical academic apologists, typical union bureaucrats, typical bourgeois politicians, etc...so they carved out a left face rebranding and niche market(s) for themselves to exploit, just like middle class types tend to do.
More likely, this was a way to escape a working class they didn't actually believe in and which had been betrayed/defeated so many times, in favor of the "good life" they saw middle class people had for so long.
Maybe they didn't even see it so honestly and coldly, but instead, told themselves that they'd be helping the cause of greater equality advance by getting themselves positioned in the middle class and influencing their middle class peers. Don't under-estimate the capacity of human beings to self-deceive regarding the true nature of their own interests.

The debates in the Left over ideas, programs, strategies, and so on cannot be understood, until the above has be seriously considered.

[TrotskistMarx]

Hi, sorry that it took me so long to reply. Indeed, it seems to me that humans are still too egocentric, and living in the ego stage, because that nature of leftist parties divided into many different kinds of leftist parties and movements is all over the world. In most countries the left is very divided. Just like christian churches and other religions. But like you said, as long as leftists don't put away their petty differences, we will be divided and conquered by the right-wing parties.

Thanks

It comes down to the fact that we cant get over our small differences, id like to see this too as our communist party is terrible, but its not going to happen as long as we cant get over our "isms":(

[Yehuda Stern]

I think the problem is, like cmoney said, not the small differences, but the big ones. The labels and abstract ideas of different Marxist and Anarchist groups are the same, but the politics are quite different. In Israel, for example, I do not see how my organization, which advocates a single Palestinian workers state, can fuse with organizations calling for a two-state solution, nor do I see how I can work with organizations that are in favor of subordinating the working class struggle to the nationalist parties, a strategy which is responsible for the many terrible defeats that the Palestinian struggle has suffered over the years.

[Crux]

I would like to know if it is possible to see a United Socialist Workers Front as an electoral option in USA. And why are most leftist parties of USA so sectarian, and is it possible to see a United Party composed of all the small socialist parties of USA into one pole, into one big united front? thanks
Well, to be fair, I do think some kind of common electoral front, if that's what you're asking, consisting fo at least large parts of the left at some point is not out of the question. It has happened in other countries, it just doesn't happen overnight.

[The Douche]

Some people keep saying we all have the same goals, I don't think thats true, my goal is certainly not to increase membership in my organization (I have none), which is a major goal of most/all organizations.

I also don't think revolution hinges on the existence/action of me/my (non-existant) organization, which many organizations do believe. They believe revolution cannot happen without the revolutionary party, and they are the revolutionary party.


Those are big things that are going to stop me from ever working with certain groups, Yehuda listed things that would prevent him from working with others. Me and Yehuda have very different politics, and cannot set aside principled issues (because they are pincipled, they're not just differences for the hell of it) just to increase numbers.

In my mind this whole discussion is silly, because I don't think revolution is a numbers game anyways, and it doesn't matter much to me if everybody gets together in one big organization...

[kevster03]

So what, if anything, can we do to make this theory a reality? Get these groups together to come up with a theme and get the message out. As always there is no time like the present...

[The Douche]

So what, if anything, can we do to make this theory a reality? Get these groups together to come up with a theme and get the message out. As always there is no time like the present...

What theory? What message?

[KurtFF8]

Some people keep saying we all have the same goals, I don't think thats true, my goal is certainly not to increase membership in my organization (I have none), which is a major goal of most/all organizations.

I think that organizations do have a goal of increasing membership, but that's not the goal, nor the raison d'etre of said groups.

The reason for wanting an increase in membership is that more members means more people directly agitating in the struggle to advance it forward.

Now I know the easy rebuttal to that will of course be: but people don't need to be a member of an organization to do that. This is of course completley true, but the disagreement comes down to the question over the need of a certain kind of party or lack thereof. But for those who think that a kind of party can play an important role: membership is a key part of that. And even then, I don't think that's exactly the main focus of all parties.

[The Douche]

I think that organizations do have a goal of increasing membership, but that's not the goal, nor the raison d'etre of said groups.

The reason for wanting an increase in membership is that more members means more people directly agitating in the struggle to advance it forward.

Now I know the easy rebuttal to that will of course be: but people don't need to be a member of an organization to do that. This is of course completley true, but the disagreement comes down to the question over the need of a certain kind of party or lack thereof. But for those who think that a kind of party can play an important role: membership is a key part of that. And even then, I don't think that's exactly the main focus of all parties.

For many parties it is, many parties believe in the creation of a "mass party" prior to revolution. And thats not even getting into the various communist/anarchist positions which oppose the party.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think there are some legitimate 'big issues' that separate left groups, but I feel the majority of issues that get thrown around are petty and completely useless. Arguing about what Stalin wrote in an obscure memo about his breakfast in 1934 or what one insignificant Trot faction did to some other insignificant Trot faction twenty years ago at rally in an American backwater seems to be more about people engaging in a hobby than revolutionaries engaging in political action. I think it's a symptom of defeatism and I don't think it's anything new. Until we are faced with a real Revolutionary moment in this country, I think the left will continue to be nothing more than a handful of Academics and their ideologues squabbling over nothing of significance while the workers and the planet pay the price.

[Ostrinski]

The various communist parties seem more like social clubs at this point in time.

[aty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE)

[KurtFF8]

For many parties it is, many parties believe in the creation of a "mass party" prior to revolution. And thats not even getting into the various communist/anarchist positions which oppose the party.

Indeed. And Anarchists believe in building a sort of "critical mass" of opposition to capitalism (which in my opinion is a different version of vanguardism). And if not that, then if they believe that revolution can happen prior to this critical mass: that is yet another form of vanguardism imo.

This is perhaps a controversial claim of mine/been done before, however, and I hope to not derail the thread with it.

[daft punk]

gb_qHP7VaZE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE)

This is not an accurate representation of real life though. The truth is that the left is 100 times more divided that even this sketch could convey. The list of so-called Trotskyist Internationals is incredible. I think there are literally dozens of them, some with lots of sections, some with just a few. And the sectarianism again, truth is crazier than what even Monty Python can conjure up.

It's a terrible shame, ok, there are different ideas, they should be thrashed out in public, but the sectarianism, there's just no need.

[daft punk]

http://www.broadleft.org/trotskyi.htm

just look at this, incredible...

[TrotskistMarx]

Hello all again. I know that many Socialist Labor Parties in this world when the rise to government power, they apply neoliberal IMF economic model, just like The Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE) of former Spain President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Lula Dasilva (Former Brazil's President), and The Socialist Party of Chile of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, and even Tony Blair was supposed to be a socialist.

But then you have an excess of orthodox leftists like the orthodox-trotskists of wsws.org, anarchists, and the folks of International Communist Currents and other perfectionist "Socialism from Below" leftists who hate Chavez, Mao, Castro, Stalin and even Lenin for their "Socialism from above" of including small bourgeoise sectors in their popular fronts, parties and movements.

So that's the main problem of the left, what I mean is that we either have too many fake-leftists parties in this world, using the logos of Marx and Socialism but are really neoliberals and capitalists. And then you have the ultra-left who hates electoral politics, and would rather see USA to be ruled by Mitt Romney and Obama. Than to join The Green Party or to support Ron Paul as a necessary evil to at least stop the zionist military industrial complex of The Pentagon.

So I think that USA needs a new left, that is not neoliberal and capitalist like Michelle Bachelet's party but at the same time it would not be too ultra-leftist and too peffectionist. United into a United Front composed of most of the marxist leftist movements, organizations into one big front


.



Indeed. And Anarchists believe in building a sort of "critical mass" of opposition to capitalism (which in my opinion is a different version of vanguardism). And if not that, then if they believe that revolution can happen prior to this critical mass: that is yet another form of vanguardism imo.

This is perhaps a controversial claim of mine/been done before, however, and I hope to not derail the thread with it.