Discussing Leftism, What it is (and isn't) and Who Gets to Belong

A big tent strategy is not only unnecessary, but can be harmful to the movement.

There exists in a lot of spaces both online and off, a particular sort of Discourse™ regarding just how big the tent should be for building an online movement. There is a lot of discussion on inclusivity, olive branches, and organizing tips around creating some Lovecraftian sized beast of leftist strength. Unfortunately, inside that discourse, there is, in my opinion, a complete lack of understanding regarding a few key points to building a movement that gets overlooked in the rush to recruit. So lets chat about those shall we?

What is a leftist in the first place?

Before we start asking that our carts drag our horses along the trail, we should take a brief moment to really hone in on what exactly it means to be a leftist. At the end of the day, if you don’t know who you are or what you stand for, what even is the point of a movement? I find it’s pretty easily agreed upon that to be a leftist you need to be:

• Anti-Capitalist

• Anti-Imperialist

• Anti-Racist (It’s not enough to be not racist, you gotta fight it where you can)

• Anti-Bigotry

• Anti-fascist

And it’s not enough to just be against stuff, you need to stand for things as well, so you need to also be:

• Pro-Freedom

• Pro-Equality

• Pro-Solidarity

• Pro-Worker

• Pro-Democracy (not the American sense but the actual “everyone gets a say” one)

• Pro-Inclusion

• Pro-Diversity

While I am sure there are at least a few other things we could argue that we ought to be for or against, this short list I believe does wonders to separate the wheat from the chaff¹. I say this because the last thing a budding leftist movement needs, is to be infiltrated by a number of people who don’t hold those values but use the democratic process to shift the movement rightward.

So as you watch and listen to someone who claims to speak for The Left™, compare their arguments against the list. Are they in favor of some war overseas? Are they suggesting that capitalism can be reformed, or isn’t that bad? Are they using wild hyperbole in which they play the role of the comic character in the well meme?

The key here, is that if at any point, the person is acting like the guy on the right “Yet you have an iphone!” or “Yet you are not doing X, Y, or Z, thing to solve the global crisis yourself!” that person isn’t on your team. They aren’t a leftist.

“But EQ, they SAID they are a communist, and that’s a leftist ideology. So that means they can still … “

No. No they cannot. The nice thing about this society we live in, is that words mean things. You can call yourself whatever you like, but your actions are what make you something. If your actions aren’t leftist, then you aren’t leftist. Full stop.

What about bringing people into the fold? Shouldn’t we convert Liberals, Nazis, etc?

The short answer is no. The Long answer is Noooooooooooooooooooo. I kid. But not really, and here’s why:

We happen to live in a time and space in which almost all of the information learned by our species since the dawn of the written word is available to most people in a magic palm sized device. While in some cases people are raised in horrible conditions with racist and or bigoted parents/grand-parents, etc. They still have the capacity to learn better. Whether they are willing to do so, is on them. Far right ideologies are built on being Pro-Imperialist, Pro-Authoritarian, Pro-Capitalist, and whatnot. Their entire ideology is antithetical to ours.

Suggesting that giving a member of the KKK free healthcare is going to convert him away from his worldview is both naive and dangerous. What you are doing by inviting your racist cop uncle to a DSA meeting isn’t moving your uncle left, it’s letting him collect data on those in your movement to give to his racist cop buddies.

There is a good reason why massive capitalist organizations, non-profits, charities, what-have-yous, argue for “Big Tent” movements. It’s because they need money for something and they don’t care where it comes from. They are inherently NOT anti-capitalist. The Democrat and Republican parties for example don’t care if you support their agenda, or like what they say or do. They only care about your money and your vote (even then, the vote part they can go either way on). The red cross doesn’t care if you’re a democratic socialist or a nazi. They just want your money. They’re no different than Wal-Mart or your local 7-11. “Big Tent” groups by their very nature are not concerned with things like justice, community, or solidarity. They are only concerned with “being big”.

As such, as a leftist, we need to focus on “small tent” systems. The only people who should be allowed in are the ones who ideologically agree with us. We can of course quibble about smaller details (E.g., Dem Socs vs Soc Dems and their respective platforms) within the tent, but you have to agree to the baseline stuff, or else you’re not allowed in the tent.

“But EQ, isn’t this being exclusionary, which is not leftist?”

No. Not all exclusion is equal. For this we can look to Karl Popper’s The Paradox of Tolerance:

Not tolerating antithetical ideologies allows you to have functional discussions inside your small tent about strategies, platforms, and more without someone trying to Sea-Lion² the entire discussion.

While these things are relatively easy to spot in places like online forums, twitter, and Facebook, picking out these problems in real world situations, such as a local meetup can prove more difficult. So let’s discuss the next problem, Bad Faith Actors.

What is a Bad Faith Actor, and how do we identify them?

First and foremost it’s important to discuss the clear difference between “person who disagrees with you” and “someone acting in bad faith”. Ideologically there are a lot of substantive differences between leftist groups; take Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists for example. They have opposing ideas on the need for a centralized State. That doesn’t mean that any ML is a bad faith actor automatically when debating with an Anarchist. Definitionally, a Bad Faith Actor (BFA) is someone who adopts a position but in other cases does not hold the same type of logic. They tend to be deceitful whether consciously or not in order to advance their agenda (politically, socially, economically etc).

Of course, you can sus out someone who is, pretty quickly by applying these three points:

1. The ‘Big Tent’ arguer. As previously discussed, Big Tent strategies can be harmful to your movement by allowing in those who don’t want to see your organization succeed. In a practical sense, having someone in the group hand-wave away problematic things such as racist, sexist, or ableist language; or doing apologia for abusers, all in the name of pushing for some kind of progressive policy or reform is a major red flag. People who value the policy over the well being of the people fighting for the policy shows a complete disconnect from the movement and why the movement exists in the first place.

2. Pushing electoral-ism as the only available solution. Anytime an issue or concern is levied, be it against a policy, politician, organization, or political party, if the BFA is deriding those complaints as harmful to the movement because they may cause people to not vote in line with something, that is a red flag. Voting is, in all reality, not a solution to anything in places like the United States. So sheep-dogging people away from direct actions (Protests, riots, mutual aid, etc) and trying to funnel everything back into the system you are resisting is a clear sign that they are not a member of the left, because they are not actively attempting to dismantle the systems of oppression that exist. You cannot vote away fascism, capitalism, imperialism, or racism. Those problems require action OUTSIDE of the their respective systems to fix. Equally noteworthy is the person is hesitant to use ANY form of direct action not related to phone-banking/door knocking, etc because they are concerned with potential blow back should raise suspicions. It’s one thing to want to not put a target on your head, it’s an entirely different thing to be a coward and use that as an excuse to do nothing.

3. Constant demands to put off all arguments until ‘later’. Telling leftists who disagree ideologically (like our ML vs Anarchist example above) that all those conversations must wait until some undetermined time in the future after “we won the fight” is a sign that the person doing so is up to something. You can determine whether or not they are sincere based on if their reasoning points to a specific alternative that can be worked on in that moment. A good example is if your local org meeting is discussing a mutual aid event and two people break into debate over socialism vs communism based on something tangentially related. That isn’t productive discourse and can be put on the back burner. On the other hand, debating whether or not your commune should have an emperor, requires immediate attention and someone trying to table that is up to something. Along the lines of the end point of #2, people who are completely pacifistic and use minority groups as a shield to prevent any questions about their beliefs are a red flag. Black and Brown people suffer immensely under our system every day. Calling for a ceasefire on violence (No rioting for example) because minority groups could be hurt shows either a blatant lack of understanding about the world around them, or an intentional attempt to ham-fist civility politics into a place they don’t belong. Oftentimes, liberals and others who don’t belong in the group are actually concerned about in a revolutionary case, white people having to join their black and brown family in the suffering. To often their current comfort level is more important that temporary suffering in order to remove systems of oppression.

OK, So ‘Big Tents’ can be bad, but what value do we get from staying small or fringe?

Just because your movement doesn’t include everyone on earth, doesn’t mean your movement has to be small. The ‘size” when discussing big vs small tent strategies has nothing to do with the number of people, but rather the number of ideologies. But keeping the movement more ideologically pure (purity politics) you can be razor focused on achieving your goals. An excellent example here is the Rainbow Coalition of the 70s in Chicago. Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party had a “10 point program” which were a set of guidelines that states their ideals and ways of operation. They were able to create a larger movement and include diverse groups like the Young Lords (Puerto Rican). the Young Patriots (Southern Whites), Brown Berets (Chicano), The Red Guard (Chinese), and others all because each of those groups ALSO had a 10 point plan that was overwhelmingly similar. A side by side comparison of all the plans shows roughly a fully agreed on 8 point plan and a larger 15 point plan that covers some of the more racially specific needs of each member group.

This is a one of those cases where I mentioned earlier about not quibbling over the small stuff. Hampton wasn’t going to kick out Chinese socialists because they only agreed on 8 of the 10. The other two could be worked on solo by the Red Guard and the primary 8 could be handled by the now large coalition. The tent here, is still small however. Each of the member organizations held the same ideological beliefs. So even though there were a number of organizations involved, and lots of people in each, this was picture perfect “small tent” organizing.

The Next Steps:

Once we recognize that our mission is one which need only be filled with people who are on board with our stated end goals: abolishing systems of oppression including capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and more; we can now begin the work of creating our own individual 10 point plans and then meshing them together to see where we can build a larger coalition. As previously mentioned, a functional leftist movement can be laser focused on specific tasks and can accomplish meaningful wins for the working class. That being said, now is the time for the left to create some actual goals and the timetable by which they can be accomplished. In the sales world, they talk a lot about establishing smart goals. in this case, smart is an acronym:

S - Specific. Your goal can’t be painfully vague. Things like “we need a revolution” is vague and useless. What kind of revolution? what does it look like? how do we do it? You need to hone in more on what exactly you want that revolution to look like. “We need an economic revolution, built off a general strike.” is a much better goal.

M - Measurable. You need to be able to track progress and see how its going. Are we talking to enough people about general strikes? Are we seeing growth in our orgs who support this cause?

A - Actionable. You need to actualy be able to do the damn thing. “We need to end all exploitation!” isn’t actionable. You can’t do that. What you can do is crush it where it is, and over time work to reduce it to near zero. But rather setting the goal of “We need to exit the capitalist system to crash the hegemony.” is much more actionable.

R - Realistic. Your goals need to be grounded in reality. “Let’s overthrow the gubment!” isn’t realistic. You aren’t storming the castle gates and and wiping out the power structures with your plucky band of insurgents. We saw that on January 6th 2021. Granted the reason they got in the door is because the cops let them, but even still, their storming of a random government building didn’t reinstate their desired ruler, most of them just ended up in prison.

T - Timeable. You need to be able to have an actual time-frame in which your goal can be accomplished. Here on this platform I will be laying out how a non-violent revolution can be had in a matter of 12-18 months. Goals like “have a general strike” aren’t valuable if there isn’t a timetable attached to it. When? If you can’t answer that, then you need to revise your goals.

As we move forward, it’s going to become ever more vital that we take heed of things I’ve laid out. Leftist movements are almost always quashed early on because their desire to have a larger bottom-up movement allowed in too many secret cops, bootlickers, abusers, and various other ne’er-do-wells. Keep it small, keep it simple, keep it anarchistic.

-EQ

1. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/separate+the+wheat+from+the+chaff

2. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning