The Left is incredibly fragmented.
Obviously, as long as it is in pieces it will remain weak. And yet that is not the real problem at this juncture. The real problem is that the Left is divided into essentially two pieces, if we consider only their political complexion and not other factors such as national or ethnic composition.
The largest piece by far, the majority of people on the Left, are middle-class opportunists. Their search is always to find the lowest common denominator. An interesting example I find is the Palestine Solidarity Organization, to which I belonged some years ago. The Palestinians who control the organization decided at a certain point that the people of the US were hopelessly backward and that there was no point in putting forward militant positions, such as an exposure of Zionism, of US imperialist policy in the Middle East. They decided instead to concentrate on the “human rights” aspect, to gather support from the US public around the question of the atrocities of Israel in the occupied lands. They een curbed their demand for no money to be sent to Israel which they had previously put forward and revised to no money to Israel going to the West Bank Occupation, as if one could separate what money was going where.
Now the interesting thing is that we used to fight in the peace and non-intervention movements for recognition of the Palestinian struggle. Of course, many of the activists in other movements didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. They were trying to get the broadest possible support for their cause(s) and were reluctant to antagonize liberal Jewish opinion or the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The Palestine movement was bitterly critical of this opportunist policy–Yet they themselves succumb to the same opportunism, to the same kind of thinking, and yet continue to be critical of the other movements. But if they are right in curtailing their support work in the name of getting the broadest kind of support for the Palestinian struggle, then they have no right to demand a less opportunist policy on the part of the other movements. Otherwise, it is simply a question of cynically putting the Palestinian struggle ahead of all others and being prepared to hurt other struggles for the sake of the Palestinian struggle.
Actually, opportunist thinking is quite shortsighted. The only way there will be a fundamental change in US foreign policy–and all the national liberation movements require such a fundamental change–is a radical change in the political consciousness of working people, the oppressed, and other sectors, a radicalization of that consciousness, a true democratization of that consciousness.
Getting back to the Left. The Left almost universally guides itself by the theory of reaching the lowest common denominator. What would ending the fragmentation of the Left mean? Only the consolidation of opportunism. How does the consolidation of opportunism help the movement?
On the other side are a small minority of “revolutionaries” who do not know how to approach and work with the masses. While their political analyses are more on target, they remain impotent. Ending their fragmentation only consolidates their impotence.
So what is needed now is not the in-gathering of the Left (which is the line of certain opportunist Left groups). What is needed is an ideological campaign aimed in part at the Left as presently constituted, but even more importantly aimed at new, virgin forces whose minds have not been corrupted by years of bad practice and rationalizations for that practice.
And this campaign should be aimed primarily at the oppressed peoples, aimed at seeking out the most intelligent, most serious-minded, most principled forces within these communities who can be trained to play a leadership role in the Left movement to come.
