The Case Against 'Left' Unity
An open letter to well-meaning 'leftists', spineless opportunists and my past self
Before you leave a comment complaining about ‘sectarianism’ and incessant (and always senseless!) left-wing infighting, I invite you to seriously consider two questions:
What is ‘the left’? What makes a ‘leftist’?
These aren’t meant to be purely rhetorical questions, so bear with me for a minute or two.
When people speak of ‘the left’ these days, it is almost impossible to discern what they actually mean without looking out for a hundred different context clues and other signifiers of their concrete political affiliation. The results have very little to do with each other. I’m not gonna bore you with lectures about the seating order in the revolutionary French National Assembly, but the fact that the very terms we use originate in this world-historical bourgeois revolution isn’t a coincidence—class conflicts are always at the core of serious political differentiation, then as they are now.
To those on ‘the right’—a term that colloquially describes a vague cultural affiliation with neo-fascist politics these days, since capitalism is hegemonic either way—leftism is essentially a conspiracy theory, propagated by shadowy figures behind the scenes and executed by million-strong armies of college students, woke professors, liberal journalists, trans people, ethnic minorities, women (yes, all of them) and whoever else needs to play the role of the enemy for the Zeitgeist not to collapse in on itself. None of this would be particularly interesting if it weren’t for the fact that this abstraction of ‘leftism’ from politics has led to widespread confusion about what their presumed enemies even want in the first place. This confusion about what ‘the left’ actually is has long crossed the cultural divide.
When Lenin lamented the miserable state of supposed ‘Marxists’ after the collapse of the Second International in the face of the First World War, he put it like this:
“Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now ‘Marxists’ (don’t laugh!).”
— Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917
Today, all the social-chauvinists are ‘leftists’ (you may laugh, while it’s still funny!).
Confused liberals who think ‘progressive’ doesn’t sound spectacular enough while screaming for war; social democrats who believe in begging ninety-year-old genocidaires for healthcare and debt relief; democratic socialists who want to appease the calcified narratives of the red scare by attacking imaginary ‘authoritarians’; a hundred types of communists and anarchists who are terrified of their own history: All of them become ‘leftists’ when questioned on their politics, and they all seek to impose the proper limits on what ‘leftism’ should be. This is—to put it politely—completely ridiculous. As a final consequence, ‘leftism’ means nothing and turns into an empty cultural affiliation divorced from politics.
The immediate antidote for this is clarity: If you are a Marxist, don’t shy away from the label. If you are a communist, don’t run from the hammer and sickle. If you don’t know what you are, learn from those who do. Clarity is a weapon when others try to obscure their position because they know it is inadequate.
Of course, it isn’t a crime to hold uninterrogated, unrealised or incomplete ideas—these ideas mainly end up being a reflection of the class character of those who hold them, for good or ill—but the problem is when they are turned into parties, organisations and political lines. Then those ideas quickly turn into tragedy, by actively hampering the development of a class-conscious proletarian movement. Worse yet, some exploit this lack of clarity for their own goals that have absolutely nothing to do with socialism.
This is where the supposed necessity for unity turns into self-inflicted sabotage.
To take the extreme contrast, and with that the clearest example:
It should be obvious to anyone that the feckless social democratic parties turned neoliberal, infesting Europe’s parliaments while spitting on the memory of the workers’ movement, have nothing to do with Marxism, not even to mention the ongoing people’s wars of communist guerrillas in the Philippines, Myanmar, India or Palestine. Just because they wave a red flag and, on very rare occasions, incidentally invoke the same slogans to describe entirely different things, they are not on the same side—to be fair, most social democrats are afraid even to wave the flags and invoke the slogans nowadays. An attempt to bring these political projects under one imaginary umbrella isn’t just absurd, it is also completely useless when it becomes necessary to understand their role in the larger struggle. And oh… We’ll get to that role, alright.
For now, let’s talk about the difference between unity and surrender.
On Unity
Let me be provocative:
Left unity, as it is commonly understood, is a sham; a damaging one at that.
In the last weeks, a lot of time has been spent discussing in what way communists should interact with various social democratic projects, no matter how reactionary in actual substance. One only needs to take a look at the reception of Bernie Sanders and AOC touring the United States, and advocating for… well, what exactly remains somewhat unclear, but the positions expressed suggest a future social democratic presidential campaign by AOC, with healthcare, student debt cancellation, affordable housing and all the best hits that managed to turn young Americans into ‘leftists' ten years ago. In some sense, this entire campaign seems stuck in the past, since many of those turned into ‘leftists’ didn’t stop there and now advocate for ideas that seem to dangerously outmanoeuvre social democracy.
This discrepancy in concrete interests, most clear when it comes to anti-zionist positions coming out of a burgeoning sense of international solidarity and revulsion with the moral cost of imperialism, inevitably leads to friction, and with friction come those who wish to alleviate it no matter the cost—yes, even if it means going out of their way to indirectly run cover for genocide.
Should we not work together in the face of Trump’s fascism?
Can’t we put our differences aside for now?
Don’t we have more in common than drives us apart?
Do we always have to fight over the little things?
Isn’t it time for unity?
Ultimately, such empty calls for unity are always wielded as a cudgel against Marxists. That is their entire purpose, whether those who wield them know it or not.
When these supposed ‘leftists’ cry out for unity, it is never they who are willing to subordinate themself and their organisations to the Marxist line and tactics for the sake of unity; it is always the Marxists who must be ‘reasonable’ and ‘realistic’ and take a step toward reformism, liberalism and the as a final consequence the imperialist bourgeoisie we are supposedly all fighting against. ‘Being reasonable’, much like ‘common sense’, functions as a synonym for total surrender to the formal state institutions and the logic of imperialism.
Who then wields this cudgel? At best, misguided cowards who surrender to imagined roadblocks before ever meeting any real resistance, and at worst, blatant opportunists who use the blooming of working-class radicalism as a tool for their personal career advancement, whether they are aware of it or not. The former may be won over as the movement as such consolidates and finds a clearer purpose; the latter must be attacked in the sharpest possible terms, while focusing on the organic demands the working-class brings forward, especially where the opportunists try to moderate those demands into forms more amenable to their liberalism and future careers in the public sector.
While this is certainly nothing new—Marx was still alive when he felt the need to harshly intervene against concessions to the enemies of the revolutionary workers with his Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Engels’ polemic against the ‘respectable’ Herr Professor Dühring is a classic for a reason—let’s stick with the current example of Palestine, where the questions of our time are most acute, because the initial radicalism was fostered far away from the usual thumbscrews of Western social democracy and reformism:
When the opportunists demand moderation in the face of colonial genocide, they must be answered with uncompromising anti-imperialism that does not weigh ‘domestic politics’ against the lives of tens of thousands
When the opportunists demand condemnation of radicals, extremists or so-called terrorists, they must be reminded that the real terrorists sit in Washington, Berlin and Tel-Aviv
When the opportunists demand compromise over the heads of Palestinians, they must be laughed out of the room with the universal and unshakeable right of self-determination for all peoples against their colonial masters
When the opportunists cry out for unity, the answer of Marxists must always be: Unity on what terms? Unity for what purpose? Unity with whom?
Or as Lenin put it quite clearly:
“Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism. And we must ask everyone who talks about unity: unity with whom? With the liquidators? If so, we have nothing to do with each other.
But if it is a question of genuine Marxist unity, we shall say: Ever since the Pravdist newspapers appeared we have been calling for the unity of all the forces of Marxism, for unity from below, for unity in practical activities. No flirting with the liquidators, no diplomatic negotiations with groups of wreckers of the corporate body; concentrate all efforts on rallying the Marxist workers around the Marxist slogans, around the entire Marxist body.” — Lenin, Unity, 1914
Two parts stand out here and should be addressed in more detail to clarify their relevance for today’s questions of unity:
When Lenin speaks of ‘rallying the Marxist workers’, this does not mean a sort of ridiculous liberal purity test, where workers need to fulfil specific criteria to prove their adherence to Marxism or pass a test on their correct understanding of the M-C-M’ formula. Developing our understanding of Marxism and the understanding of others is part of the revolutionary process, but all proletarians are by definition the revolutionary subject of Marxism, without exception. That is our class struggle, the question is just whether we are conscious of it. For this, workers need to be rallied ‘around the Marxist slogans, around the entire Marxist body’, to separate them from reactionary political lines that contradict their interests.
Similarly, Lenin advocates for ‘unity from below, for unity in practical activities’ and this is key to understanding how to put Marxist unity into practice. Plenty of workers are tied to various reformist, opportunist or outright reactionary organisations and /or political lines, but that doesn’t change a single thing about their actual interests. When social democrats like Bernie Sanders manage to attract thousands of working-class people to their rallies, we must see this as an opportunity. The social democratic political line and its leaders are certainly our enemies, but not those who have come to support it and see it as the correct position; instead, they must be separated from this line by participating in their concrete struggles, and through that, open up an alternative. Marxists must find ways to intervene in these struggles, even if they take place under the umbrella of reactionary organisations, without subordinating themself to those organisations. That is the principle of unity from below.
So, if unity for the sake of unity is not the answer, then what is? How can the inevitable political conflicts that emerge as a result be won?
The answer, in one form or another, is struggle.
On Struggle
About four years ago, in May 2021, Israel was bombing Gaza. The scale of the murder almost seems quaint in comparison to the devastation wrought by the current genocide, but I was scandalised all the same. I went to the protests, I talked to people, and went through the motions in Munich’s political scene, hostile to anyone who stands up for Palestinian rights, then even more than now. I also happened to be a member of the ‘big tent socialist’ party ‘Die Linke’. Sure, I had my disagreements with people in the party and was already on the left-most edge, but I also believed in unity, that terrible, grand meta-narrative that held the party together. Better to be in one party than fight over minor differences, right?
Well, the differences were no longer minor, as their reaction to the brutalisation of Gaza showed, though I would need almost two more years to fully internalise it. While there were others like me who demanded a clear position on Israel’s terror bombing, the vast majority of the local party leadership called for unity—the national elections were close, and fighting about ‘controversial’ and ‘divisive’ topics wasn’t a good look. For some time, that conflict simmered, but in the end, we conceded the fight for the sake of internal harmony; the bombs kept falling, and all the party managed was a pathetic condemnation of violence on all sides.
Today, I know that those in solidarity with Palestine in the party, and I with them, chose unity over struggle and with that gave in to the cheapest kind of opportunism imaginable. We sold the Palestinian struggle, and any pretence at international solidarity, for the hope of a digit more in an election, each of us in our own small way.
It is a crime. But what is there to learn from it?
As I’m finishing up this article, Israel just announced its intention to occupy the entirety of Gaza and ethnically cleanse the north. This isn’t a surprise by any means, but rather the obvious conclusion of their genocidal policy. What is my former party doing? Well, they just affirmed their commitment to ‘Israel’s right to exist’ a week ago, never acknowledging the genocide with a single word. If that is what unity looks like, we have no use for it—in fact, we should fight it tooth and nail.
Most issues plaguing this discussion aren’t that people have fantastical, outdated or downright racist views of Hamas, that they nitpick at this or that struggle line of the PFLP, or that they have a verbal essay prepared to criticise the role of the DFLP. The issue is a fundamental misconception about the nature of politics.
The central takeaway is that we need to stop conceiving of ‘left-wing’ positions as a vague amalgum of opinions, hot takes and views, but of concrete differences in lines of struggle; lines of struggle that only matter in the real world if they are put into action, but matter all the more if they are; lines of struggle that may appear invisible to some, but are too often followed in the exact paths presented by hegemonic ideology; lines of struggle that either lead the developments, or rightfully become irrelevant if they trail behind them as mere appendages. I hate to break it to you, but the resistance and suffering of Palestinians isn’t an excuse to win an argument with someone on the internet or your local reformist party organisation of choice—Palestinians are real people struggling against a real genocide, against real bombs, against real murderers, not against their ghosts invoked in eclectic college book clubs. We should treat this discussion as such. It isn’t a game.
What you or I think about all that, deep in our hearts, is completely irrelevant and worse than useless if it isn’t connected to concrete political action or the preparation of that action through critique or investigation. Yet people treat abstracted opinions as if they somehow stand on equal footing. Why? Because opinions are comfortable and pose no risk, they can be changed and warped at any point. If push comes to shove in the form of repression or social pressure, they can be discarded completely as if nothing ever happened at all, precisely because nothing did happen in actuality. Opinions are dirt cheap and they die fast.
To interact with politics in this way is an expression of liberal ideology. It is pure, unblemished idealism, often resulting from the weakness of Marxist organisations in the actual struggle, while at the same time preserving this weakness. It also happens to be a death trap for the real movement, because it turns the dead-serious into the mundane.
As Mao put it in his perhaps most famous pamphlet:
“[…] Liberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations.
[…] Liberalism is a manifestation of opportunism and conflicts fundamentally with Marxism. It is negative and objectively has the effect of helping the enemy; that is why the enemy welcomes its preservation in our midst. Such being its nature, there should be no place for it in the ranks of the revolution.” — Mao, Combat Liberalism, 1937
To stick with Mao’s argument, we must always differentiate between the two lines that characterise all things political as long as the primary contradiction between capital and the proletariat remains: The bourgeois reactionary line and the proletarian revolutionary line. These lines are an objective reality that is immanent to the real conditions of the class struggle, and our task as communists is to investigate reality through Marxism, thus identifying their respective features, and combating the bourgeois line by putting the proletarian line into action. This is the core of political struggle.
Four years ago, I chose the bourgeois reactionary line on Palestine. Not because I didn’t know any better, but because it was the easier way out, and because the trappings of false unity made it more appealing. I opted for ‘unprincipled peace’ because everything about the type of organisation I was in, one founded on the unity of liberals, social democrats, reformists and unprincipled communists, pointed in that direction. This isn’t surprising, and there is nothing new under the sun. There are many types of liberalism:
“To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.” — Mao, Combat Liberalism, 1937
This exercise in self-criticism isn’t meant to be self-flagellation, but rather an example of how false unity can actively harm the practical politics, which are the only type of politics that matter, of otherwise well-meaning people. There was no substantial difference between my theoretical stance on Zionism compared to today, and I still subordinated it to an aversion to internal party conflict. There were many others like me, and you can find them in every single opportunist organisation in the world, since that is exactly what incorrect political lines lead to, especially if unity is seen as a goal in itself.
So next time you hear someone calling for unity on uncertain terms, based on poorly defined politics, your reply should look something like this:
No unity, without a combined struggle. No unity, without a combined purpose.
If that can’t be guaranteed, it is necessary to take a stance against false unity, for the sake of those who are sold downriver by it without a seat at the proverbial table, be they in Palestine or elsewhere.
Everything is at stake, so which line will it be?
Thank you for reading!
Some of you may have noticed that it has been a whole month since my last article, and while I’ve been busy, that isn’t the main reason. I’m just absolutely terrible at sticking to one topic. My drafts are fuller than ever, bursting with half-finished articles about everything, from the concept of the urban guerrilla to the pre-revolutionary Cuban plantation system.
Similarly, this piece went through several iterations that resulted in two other (unfinished!) drafts with related topics. So look forward to a piece on the history and practice of united front tactics, the Third International’s social fascism thesis, and more!
If you made it all the way down here, consider leaving some of your thoughts in the comments. I’m always glad to read your opinions and discussions.
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Beautifully said, ‘left unity’ in the USA is a euphemism for getting along with liberals and reformist. Marxist are seen as ‘extreme’ and ‘dogmatic’ because we see through the methods of social democrats and we see through the liberal bourgeois establishment. Like you stated, it should be always ‘unity for whom?’ based on what? Who are we unifying with and why are we unifying with them? Beyond that the left in the west (particularly the United States) is adverse to theory and history so we keep making nearly the same mistakes Lenin wrote about over 100 years ago. Why would we as Marxist ‘unify’ with reformist when reformist have historically sold us out and paved the way for fascist.
Great article! The call for left unity ultimately undermines the Marxist movement and means a compromise with reactionary forces… Funnily enough, Max Parry and I just had a podcast about the traitorous nature of social democrats: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaenahbatterson/p/suck-dems?r=2r6o04&utm_medium=ios