Something that is not immediately obvious to people outside the mess that is left-wing organising, and politics is that the groups don’t really get along very well. In Newcastle there is open hostility between different far left groupings to the point of attempting to ban some groups from public protest and open hostility on picket lines.
Now this isn’t really wrong. Sometimes some groups have really off the mark ideas on specific issues, and their inclusion in a demonstration might undermine the point you are trying to make, but this isn’t the case here. The disagreements stem from different groups position on tactics.
Theory, Strategy and Tactics
Now differences on the left stem from three different elements, what a group thinks about the world and what is the cause/solution to those issues (Theory), the general broad strokes and long-term plan on how to change society (Strategy) and the actions you should take to make that strategy a reality (Tactics).
Now to be clear, differences in theory, lead to differences in strategy which in term leads to differences in tactics, all these elements are linked together. If your starting point is that aliens are in charge of the government, your strategy might include exposing the world to the ‘facts’ that support that goal so the humans can take charge again and your tactics might include rants on Facebook all the way up to assassination to prove the president of Malaysia has green blood. So, if you come to a discussion on how best to support Palestine, your input may not be seen as appreciated if you keep talking about how the Zionist state is supported by the Gromlich race and we need to save Palestinians from their brutal rule.
Like your theory may discredit everyone else who is based on earth, and that might undermine what everyone else is trying to achieve.
The reality is these differences end up being much smaller. The far left in general accepts the premise that capitalism is evil. They all have some grasp on why that is, some will follow a Marxist analysis (although this does mean a variety of things to different people depending on how far up the academic change you are and how much you operate on pure vibes that daddy Karl was based), some might have read some Graeber and have a bit of an anarchistic we need to burn the whole system to the ground perspective, some may be radical liberals who have a moralistic approach and believe the system to be evil but that its not the system itself but the way it is used that is the issue.
These positions all start from roughly the same place and often means that there are large strategic disagreements. A Trot, a ML, an Anarchist and a Rad Lib are never going to agree what the long-term goal should be, they all simply think completely different things about that. Your not going to convince a Rad Lib or a Trot that we need to burn down parliament, in the same way you won’t convince an Anarchist you need an organisation to recruit and become the vanguard. Each perspective understanding of the world, their theory, creates what they believe they need to do strategically to make life better for everyone.
A Convergence
This isn’t always the case. There are issues that come up that are so potent and the resolution so clear to those on the far left that they cut through all this strategic disagreement. Climate change is such an obvious threat to humankind that yeah, we need to do something about it and we need to do it quickly. Palestine has been another. Everyone agrees we need to stop the genocide, and we cannot stand by while it happens.
So all these groups meet up and now we have the start of more disagreement. The general tendency for Anarchists, Rad Libs and a chunk of the ML’s is that direct action will be the only way we can resolve this. That we should ‘firebomb ASDA’ so to speak. The newly engaged who feel passionate about these issues will avoid the extreme side of this but will still value direct engagement. Things like writing to politicians, going on marches maybe doing a table or two to try and reach more people.
I think the reason these things appeal to a lot of people is two-fold. One they that this action immediately engaged them, and they get visceral immediate feedback that they did something. In the year of our lord 2025 our entire existence is about immediacy. Information, friends, anything you could imagine buying and images of cats being cute are available with the tap of a screen. People are wired a little differently when in basically every aspect of your life delayed gratification no longer exists (make edging popular).
You want your political engagement to align with the rest of your life and ‘firebombing ASDA’ lets you do that.
The second reason is a weak grasp on theory. A lot of people’s theory comes from threads on X (formerly known as twitter) where someone says just a bunch of stuff that feels like it passes the vibe check or that one book they may have read and agreed with. I have heard people say that they don’t need to read theory they simply can figure it out themselves. My boy Karl didn’t spend hours in the British Library into chain smoking and writing for you to fucking just pull a better economic theory out of your arse.
Theory to me is cheating. Let someone else spend the days upon days doing the research for me to be able to read that time condescended into a few hundred pages. It’s good to read books, watch videos and listen to podcasts and then start to think about the world and form your own links. You at least start from a solid basis.
Without this theory you just don’t really have a strong long-term strategy. People just flit about following trends while trying to figure out what they actually believe and tend to burn out long before then.
Bloody Trotskyists
Now clearly, I am showing my hand here a little. I am a filthy Trot so of course I believe reading books is good, but I do also think that (to borrow their own over used metaphor) Trots bend the stick to far in the other direction. Trots have now gained a reputation to showing up to movements, putting across their political points and ideas for tactics, having their politics in general agreed with but their tactics dismissed and then taking their toys and storming off.
Part of this is obviously ego (on both sides), but an element of this is also Trots perspective on strategy. The idea that the long-term goal is to build the party, makes your short-term tactical choices vastly different. If you participate in something and everyone disagrees with your tactics (normally which involve long boring work trying to get support from workers involved in whatever you are trying to do) then your unlikely to build the party and this becomes a waste of your efforts. I will also add that if you try and slowly build up a relationship with the workers, while the other side of the movement throws firebombs at them, then your job becomes basically impossible.
Here’s the issue though; you breakdown all possible friendly relationships with the broad left because you seem to be opportunists. Sometimes you gotta eat a lil shit for people to trust you. If you keep showing up to stuff and then leaving because they don’t do what you want, you look like cunts. Doesn’t matter how good your theory and strategy is, if your only tactics are paper sales and isolating yourself from the left.
And yeah, sometimes the left is deeply unserious. I have spoken to enough students whose current perspective of the world is informed by the last book they read, anarchists who think chanting ‘Allah Ackbar’ at the far right is based and trade unionists who have basically given up. You can look at them and just be super discouraged and accept that we are all fucked, but unfortunately that would betray our precious book reading wouldn’t it.
Unfortunately, we gotta take the world as it is, not how we want it to be. The left is a mess, but on some issues, we are so close together on these things we must be able to put aside petty stuff and focus on those points of attack. We all hate the far right. We all think the situation in Palestine is horrific. We all are aware that climate change will kill us.
So at least from my perspective please people who believe in direct action be nicer to the Trots and Trade Unionists and Trots it’s not substantialism to contribute to a movement. Be more involved and stop shouting from the sideline how smart you are.
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