http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/962/letters Real pro In light of Jack Conrad’s article on Left Unity, I would like to revisit something from Mike Macnair’s article on Riddell’s Comintern translation and from past articles: the false dichotomy of unity with diplomatic or no criticism, and of criticism without unity. On April 2, there was an Open Democracy article, ‘Young and good-looking: the saviours of Europe’s left’. Part of this article that really interested me as a professional worker was mixed, that part about being “well-spoken”, having “media-friendly manners”, “middle class [language] based on references to justice and fairness rather than class”, “terms that combine social indignation with the language of justice and democracy” and “packaged in a more middle-class-friendly language”. In the course of professional self-development, I have come to realise that, surely, there has to be a spectrum of criticism that includes forms that facilitate longer-term unity and forms that don’t. I agree that diplomatic criticism isn’t enough, but surely we should be capable of offering professional criticism - and neither criticism for the sake of criticism nor more amateurish forms (like polemical slurs that only drive people away)! How can there be unity with critical critics or those whose polemical bread and butter are ad hominems? It may have worked in Lenin’s day, but it doesn’t work in ours. Professional criticism can be worded in ways like informed concerns, or alarms over another group’s lack of due diligence. Surely this is the case in the time-tested and failed reform coalitionism strategy! We should be the ones internalising the political equivalent of due diligence as part of offering professional criticism.
