United or Divided Left

[alpharowe3]

I am a newcomer here and consider myself a "general lefty" supporting socialism, anarchism, communism, and everything in between... However i know many lefties that label themselves within a certain leftist movement and spend a lot of time criticizing other leftest movements. Personally I see very little differences between one leftest ideology and the next... is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.

[Q]

I am a newcomer here and consider myself a "general lefty" supporting socialism, anarchism, communism, and everything in between... However i know many lefties that label themselves within a certain leftist movement and spend a lot of time criticizing other leftest movements. Personally I see very little differences between one leftest ideology and the next... is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.

Be warned, you may get what you wish for :lol:
But seriously. There are, withing the communist movement, three currents I'd say: the left-communists, the Trotskyists and the Stalinists. Between these three are a variety of currents somewhere in between.

I'm a Trot as the sig says and as such believe in organising the working class, (re)build the workers movement, encourage militancy and of course offer the alternative of Socialism for which a revolution is needed.

What we as Committee for a Workers International stand for (in a nutshell) can be viewed here (http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/cwi/wwsf.html). What Trotskyism is in general could be read here (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/r.htm#trotskyism) or here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/index.htm).

I hope that helps, welcome to the boards :)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Between the various trends there is justification for division. For example, the organization, methods and even principles of an "anti-revisionist" Party" differ greatly from that of a "Trotskyist" party. They have totally different ideas about what revolution is, and what kind of society we need to construct after capitalism to get to communism.

Splits between members of some trends, however, are often petty and personalistic.

Many (most?) organizations calling themselves communist claim to operate on "Democratic Centralism," yet dissidence is not accepted, leadership is entrenched, etc.

The combination of sectarian and dogmatic mindsets (which is influenced by isolation), "personal politics", and fake "Democratic Centralism" results in the things we see today: like 6 or 7 "Trotskyist" groups, 4 "anti-revisionist" groups, and 3 "Maoist" groups existing in the same country.

PoWR, on the other hand, "is not yet another sect declaring allegiance to this or that doctrine, but rather a force which basis itself on the living -- and constantly developing -- scientific communist theory first developed by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. The Party’s theoretical roots lie in our synthesis of the world communist movement, from its origins to today, formulated through a thorough analysis of its failures and successes.

"PoWR’s outlook is summed up by a statement made by Thomas Sankara, a leader of the 1983 revolution in Burkino Faso, who, along with Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara stands among the Party’s political forebears:

“We are open to all the winds of the will of the peoples and their revolutions, and we study some of the terrible failures that have given rise to tragic violations of human rights. We take from each revolution only its kernel of purity, which forbids us to become slaves to the reality of others.”

[redarmyfaction38]

I am a newcomer here and consider myself a "general lefty" supporting socialism, anarchism, communism, and everything in between... However i know many lefties that label themselves within a certain leftist movement and spend a lot of time criticizing other leftest movements. Personally I see very little differences between one leftest ideology and the next... is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.
join the campaign for a new workers party, that way, you'll be part of a movement that encompasses different "leftist" parties and if you are active will mean you will meet real human beings and have a chance to make your own mind up.
in my experience, you find yourself learning and questioning much more than you could have done if you just "accepted "(not the right word) the "doctrine" of the political grouping you belong to.

[Djehuti]

is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.

No, not really. But that depends on where you live.


Personally I can't understand how people can say that they are trotskyists, luxemburgists, council-communists, syndicalists, marxist-leninists, operaists, maoists or whatever. These ideologies are all products of their specific time and situation and I'd say that it's a sign of weakness that we still tend to cling to them.

Don't get me wrong, some things of what these ideologies have thought is still relevant, but not the ideologies in themselves.

[ernie]

I am a newcomer here and consider myself a "general lefty" supporting socialism, anarchism, communism, and everything in between... However i know many lefties that label themselves within a certain leftist movement and spend a lot of time criticizing other leftest movements. Personally I see very little differences between one leftest ideology and the next... is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.
Well, I think it depends on what two "ideologies" we're talking about. For instance, I find the quibbles between some anarchists and left-communists about the "nature of the state" quite unimportant. That is to say, it's an valid theoretical question -- what exactly is the state and what exactly it represents -- but I don't think it justifies division. This is especiall true because most the anarcho-whatever groups agree on the important issues, both tactical and theoretical.

On the other hand, some differences between Leninists and more radical Marxists like anarcho-communists are indeed irreconcilable. For example, differences in opinion about what a post-capitalist society should be like. Although both agree that capitalism sucks, they have totally different views on what the alternative should be like. And I don't mean to say that any of these groups are "evil" or any such nonsense; just that some differences can be quite deep and divisive.

[ashaman1324]

divisions in leftism?
the only important division i see in the left is between the socialists and fascists.
fascists call themselves leftists so were pretty much stuck with them.:mad:
maoism, trotskyism, etc... aren't very important to most of us(as shown above) and really only exist because they are real parties in their respective countries (china, russia) that some people group themselves with.
like... saying your from california, but above all being from america.

[Tatarin]

I guess the divisions arise, also, as what is to be done after a revolution. The "plan" must be done now, from organizing to creating a revolutionary group, to making the revolution, and finally to establish a new society after it. I think different methods apply to different places. A poor country could maybe do well with anarchism, as it is poor, while wealthier countries could do better with socialism due to it's wealth. I guess history will tell.

[FreeFocus]

I'm very unsure on this issue. I acknowledge that unity is important in order to advance "leftist" causes. On the other hand, I certainly do not have much in common with Stalinists, Maoists, or state communists in general, but particularly the ones who advocate strict control (suppression) of civil liberties and human rights. So, it would be hard for me to align myself with a Stalinist, whose ideology I really abhor and whose policies have led to atrocity after atrocity.

I suppose it also has something to do with my own analysis. I really can't stand the insanely dogmatic Marxists who will quote the Manifesto or Kapital in order to prove Marxist theory. It's like the Christian who, when debating the merits of the Bible, does not refer to outside sources but keeps referring to the same verses over and over. I reject an absolute materialist perspective, which is simply completely wrong scientifically, from what we understand today of perception, social influence, conditioning, etc.

So those are some of my quick critiques of the left right now. Of course I have some for anarchists, too, such as downright hostility to things like decent treatment of animals, lack of emphasis on environmental concerns (or even encouragement of environmental degradation), etc. The left has a lot of work to do.

[Tower of Bebel]

Well, I see a lot of sectional (party/organization) interests at play among the left. Instead of working together within a broader movement to unite and struggle for the working class we see a lot of fighting between factions that want to take the most advantages out of each action only to strengthen their own section. There is something wrong with the idea of democratic centralism that goes around.
Those struggles are translated/transformed to huge struggles between ideologies. Their ideological differences become forms of justification for their behavior.

[Pogue]

The divisions are petty and pathetic, unnecesary short-sighted and completely counter-productive, they serve no use and lack any validity, and are the reason why capitalism is running rife and our movement is currently in a ghetto.

[cyu]

Personally I don't see a diversity of leftist thought as a bad thing. It's better to have a memepool with many memes available. If you're stuck with a memepool with only one set of memes, then if the environment changes, the result may be disaster.

Of course, if the ideological disagreements keeps leftists too busy fighting each other instead of fighting capitalism, then it will be a problem.

On the other hand, if there are many leftist choices and only one capitalist choice, my bet would be that there would be more leftists than if there were only one leftist choice and many capitalist choices.

[Chapaev]

Communists, convinced that no progress can be made toward socialism until the split in the working class movement has been overcome. At the same time, they criticize the right opportunist ideology and policy of reformism, support a constructive dialogue, free of prejudices, between communists and socialists and support broad cooperation with the Social Democrats.

Under contemporary conditions, communists, attaching importance to working-class unity, favor cooperation with socialists and Social Democrats in order to establish a progressive democratic system in the present and to build a socialist society in the future.

But the major obstacle to unity of action between the revolutionary and reformist currents in the working-class movement is the anticommunism of right-wing Social Democratic leaders. The anticommunism of Social Democratic policies has resulted in a virtual dissapearance of differences between Social Democratic and liberal bourgeois policies.

[Sprinkles]

I am a newcomer here and consider myself a "general lefty" supporting socialism, anarchism, communism, and everything in between... However i know many lefties that label themselves within a certain leftist movement and spend a lot of time criticizing other leftest movements. Personally I see very little differences between one leftest ideology and the next... is there major differences that justify such division? Anyway I'd like to here all opinions.

There are, but it doesn't really matter since it's the working class that creates change and not the political parties that claim to represent it. Since it's a low period of class struggle most theory can't be verified by practice and a lot of the political parties that are in existence today are little more than historical societies promoting a certain historical narrative.

Some of these fossilized ideologies like Stalinism are still preaching the exact same programs from the 1930's and denouncing long gone opponents. They haven't noticed yet that they were already irrelevant even when it still existed as an political movement, since it could not even comprehend the events that took place during it's existence.

Events that signified the resurgence of a combative working class like the Hungarian Revolt or the uprisings and strikes in East-Germany and even today can only denounce them. Let alone provide relevant commentary for more "recent" or future events. They have no comprehensive critique about the student movement in 1968, no understanding of where the Situationists came from, no knowledge of the French Mouvement Communiste and no coherent rebuttal of Socialisme Ou Barbarie.

The only reason they're still around is the stagnation of the revolutionary communist movement in a period of profound reaction. Once the working class starts to act in it's own interest again they'll be only pushed further into historical obscurity. The quote "We are not weak because we are divided. We are divided because we are weak" applies to the current state of the communist movement.