The Dividedness of the Left

[Sea]

It has come to my attention long ago, and likely also to the attention of anyone who pays any attention, that the political left has been skinned, chopped up, packaged and labeled in a way that would put even the most skilled delicatessen worker to shame. Obvious as it may be that there is a problem in this, it's one that few have sought to solve.




Those who have (aside from nearly all members of the involved political movements in the back of their minds in the sense that they're against it) package and label themselves on this forum as pan-leftist. As much as I support the simple principle of camaraderie that ultimately lies behind this, it's an idea that's bound to be unstable under tension, such as that an active and real and ongoing revolution or the years thereafter would bring. In fact, to not have differences settled before attempting to confront the powers that be may seriously interfere with and bring up differences between the objectives of revolution as they exist in the collective minds of various factions, leading to a dividedness when being united is of the utmost importance. The United States and the Soviet Union could be described as being pan-anti-Nazi in the context of, and indeed they stuck together well enough during, the pressure of the second world war, but this sticky stuck-togetherness didn't stick for very long.




What this flaw that puttin' it off 'till it's time therefor boils down to is that it presupposes that immense pressure will never come. Or, at least, it presupposes that immense pressure will never come while it counts, that is to say before the differences in the left have been worked out. I'm sure many people that take pan-leftism at face value and nothing more haven't stopped to deliberate on this, but the point still stands.




To settle the split between various leftists requires an open mind to be certain. It requires people to wrestle with ideas foreign to their worldview. It requires an end to the poking and teasing that I've oft seen between tendencies. As ironic as it may be, though comic relief is important to the goal of keeping serious and logical, it is required that we treat others as thinking minds as opposed to punching bags for the insecurity of, boredom with or tiredness that we may feel for the tendencies of ourselves or others.




Dividing ourselves is vicious, as it gives a label to the things we disagree with. It gives a strong grouping that paves the way to having as many differences between members of one single group as between members of others with eachother.







It gives an arbitrary separateness that could very well not exist as much as it seems.




It serves to section us up more than need be.




It's a damned shame.

What do YOU suppose we do about it?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Conservatives and "liberals" are just as divided amongst themselves, but these divisions do not necessitate political exclusivity. A pro-war businessman and a religious conservative might have massive ideological conflicts. These conflicts cause tension within the right and even strong divisions. However, these conflicts are not mutually exclusive. They can all be a part of the same program or project. Thus, Catholic and Protestant conservatives can agree on a particular political platform without resolving their fundamental differences, because they can play that conflict without sacrificing their broader political unity.

With leftism on the other hand, the programs are more mutually exclusive. Trotskyists, "MLs" and Maoists for instance all propose competing programs to arrive at communism, and the programs themselves are mutually exclusive. Thus the focoism of Che Guevara, for instance, is a very different strategy for seizing power than, say, organizing a general strike the way the far left did. Each program sees the efforts of the other programs as inefficient, a waster of energy or outright counter productive. On the example of Che and the far left, the focoist model pushes for a putsch which an organization might have a harder time organizing if it is simultaneously trying to organize the workers. This seems to be what happens between communists and anarchists too ... each sees the other as wasting their energy or even slowing the revolution down, which means they will be leery about a vague "pan leftism"

[Blanquist]

The differences are very real. There can be no unity, it's called opportunism.

I recommend reading Lenin and Trotsky on this subject.

[Positivist]

Perhaps my Left Unity thread could help. A lot of these issues came up and were discussed. There is also a new politicakbparty called the independent workers league which focuses on a United workers movement. Lolshevik on here is a founding member of the party so you could contact him for a copy of their platform.

[Lolshevik]

Just saw this post. There will be more information about the IWL on RevLeft today that hopefully answers, or begins to answer, some of these problems.