http://automnia.tumblr.com/post/54203935812/left-for-dead
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The left is fucked.
“The Left” is a construct of the 18th century. As the King of France struggled to protect divine autocracy, the Constituent Assembly of 1789-91 split; the radicals moved to sit together on the president’s left whilst the reactionaries coalesced on his right.Over time spatial and ideological positions became interwoven, ideas of an elected legislature, a broad franchise and progressive taxation became the politics of “the left”.[8]<http://automnia.tumblr.com/post/54203935812/left-for-dead#_ftn8> It is worth noting that even in its nascent form the left was overtly reformist. Time since has seen the ceaseless agglomeration of ideas to the original core. If the identity was ever cohesive and intelligible, it certainly is not now. When anyone from Bakunin to Blair can look into the same amalgam and draw out their inspiration, the absurdity of describing a human *weltanschauung* through this concoction is clear. Blair wished to embrace the State and Capital, Bakunin wished to smash both, yet the two of them can fairly be termed to of “the left”, for the only thing the term has rejected from its ever-widening embrace is any real meaning.
The desire to protect or perpetuate such a clear absurdity is perplexing. It destroys attempts at understanding, and instead means that intelligent and pleasant human beings are neatly categorised alongside Stalin, Mao and Harriet Harman. This is clearly insufferable. The USSR was left wing, as are both China and Cuba. If that sentence incensed you, good. Direct your fury at the terminology, not its critic. Under the hopelessly nebulous definitions of the left, all three nations fit into the category; they all pursued a vision of society where the means of production were altered in order to advance a (however deluded) idea of democracy. These are state-capitalist, authoritarian basket cases, but they are also of the left.
These are the bones of the left’s skeleton, an osteological form steadfast in its refusal to be returned to the cupboard. Of course the past is not merely an embarrassment for the left, its obscurity offers refuge too. A leftist can look behind themselves and see Diggers, Luddites, Chartists, Communards, Suffragettes, Black Panthers, Stonewallers, Zapatistas, Pussy Rioters, Occupiers, or the countless millions who were too busy fighting to think of a name. It is an insult, however, to take these human lives, rich in suffering and costly victories, and lump them with some of the very people they were struggling against.
The left today is splintered, yet resistant to disunity. The idea that those who apologise rape for the SWP, torture for the WRP or statism for the SP are part of the same movement which unceasingly criticises them is deluded. The party form upon which the SWP, WRP, SP and all of the other muddles of sovietised letters depends is based on an oxymoron. “Democratic centralism” is a contradiction dressed up an ideology, an impossibility arrogant enough to wear its dissonance as a name. The idea that a narrow party can blossom into a mass movement, then bear fruit as a government for the masses is pure fantasy. The structures of the bureaucratised tyrant lie sleeping within the smallest cadre.
Even in the party stage the organisation of top-down governance is the midwife to authoritarianism. The SWP’s reaction to the rape of one if its members by a high ranking party official exemplifies this truth. The central committee carried out its own investigations, and delivered the inevitable verdict; “innocent”. When faced with criticism from within the party, the committee laid down its zero-tolerance attitude to dissent, which presented an opportunity to compare it to their exceedingly liberal attitude to sexual assault. Comrades were purged for offences as serious as discussing the leadership on Facebook, or forming factions fully endorsed by party rules. The subsequent deterioration of the party is depressing in that those who left in disgust represent a minority. That a section of the left is willing to forget rape in pursuit of party discipline is testament to the necessity of never letting these people come close to power.
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To progress in the pursuit of the total emancipation of humanity, the left must liberate itself from itself. It is time to free ourselves from the tyranny of obscurity and go forth either unlabelled or more truthfully described. Before the 1780s, “the left” did not exist, yet the world was not one of unquestioning obedience to authority and unchallenged oppression. The old forms which typify the established left will not help us, the war for the future will must be fought against hierarchies, not from within them. We must atomise to unionise, divide to multiply, break apart to discover form with true potential. Friends, let us smash the left, from its rubble we can build barricades.