The Dialectics of Unity and the "Left"

Is all unity good?

In societies fractured by class antagonisms, the ruling elite who control the means of production, and hence, the politics, judicature, education, etc. of society, requires that those whom they extract value from, indebt, and oppress, split themselves into as many groups as possible. For the ruling classes, the principle of divide et impera, divide and rule/conquer, has always been necessary. In factionalizing the propertyless masses they win. This is why Marx calls racism “the secret through which the ruling class maintains its power.”[1] A similar sentiment is admitted to in James Madison’s Federalist 10. When writing to the owners of capital in his time, he promises that a faction across the lines of the property question could be avoided only insofar as more factionalism is promoted amongst those without property.[2]

It is clear that to challenge this division of the people imposed by the elites, unity of the people is necessary. Kwame Nkrumah emphasizes that since balkanization is a pivotal tool in the imperialist’s struggle to keep Africa divided, weak, and subjugated, African unity is the only way to combat it.[3] Likewise, the anti-colonial Cuban philosopher and poet, José Martí, urges that for Latin America to defend itself from U.S. imperialism, it must be united. Divided they will fall. Using the European folklore of the giant of the Seven-league boots to represent U.S. imperialism, Martí writes that “The trees must form ranks to keep the giant with seven-league boots from passing! It is the time of mobilization, of marching together, and we must go forward in close ranks, like silver in the veins of the Andes.”[4]  

But not all unity is of the same character. Not all unity serves to undermine the division imposed upon the people by the ruling class. The unity of working people artificially divided by the ruling class is one thing; unity of various “leftists” is a whole different affair. The former undermines the division the ruling class imposes on the masses, the latter often intensifies it under the auspices of uniting. We must recall what Lenin long ago taught us: “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.”[5] Lenin urged us to always ask: “unity with whom?”[6] One undermines the cause of uniting the people when unity includes those who, in their very political practice, promote division. Unity with a purity fetish left, which consistently treads in petty-bourgeois moralizing, identity politics, and cancel culture, can only serve the cause of division and factionalism.[7] A left for whom large swaths of workers are far too ‘impure’ to organize will only ever undermine the class struggle and serve the interests of the ruling elite.

It is sufficient to look at the million ‘new’ organizations and parties that pop up left and right, seemingly out of nowhere, to conclude that something about this so-called “left” is rotten. Irrespective of whatever “radical” veneer they might put on their politics, they are not only fully compatible with the dominant order, but an indispensable component of it. A left that requires a checklist of positions workers must hold with regards to issues of gender, sexuality, national history, or whatever else, will only ever end up preaching to the choir… a choir that will get smaller and smaller as the people in those spaces who are more serious about the class struggle leave.

Unity, therefore, cannot be accepted as an abstraction. It must always be examined concretely. Unity of whom? Towards what ends? With what results? In what context? These are the questions we must ask. Class collaborationist unity with the imperialist bourgeoisie, clearly, is not the unity that will advance the class struggle. Unity with “leftists” who base their politics on a monastery-like purity of ideas, and who shun all those who don’t measure up to such purity, can likewise only hinder the class struggle. As the young Karl Liebknecht wrote,

"Not all unity means strength. Unity between fire and water puts the fire out and causes the water to disappear as steam; unity between a wolf and a lamb results in the lamb finding itself inside the wolf; unity between the proletariat and the ruling class is to sacrifice the proletariat; unity with traitors means defeat."[8]

Unity between the fire of the intensifying class struggles of the 2020s, driven by the necessity of such struggles in our period of decaying capitalist-imperialism, with the water of the old leftist dogmatists and purity fetishists, can only serve the cause of exterminating the fire, or at best preventing its spreading.

If in the past, because of our inexperience and youth, we urged such unity, we were wrong.[9] Concrete experience has taught us that no unity can be achieved with those who, while calling themselves “leftists,” “socialists,” or “communists,” produce only division in their actual political practice. Unity with a fake, compatible, purity fetish “left” only serves the cause of division and social insularity. Clear lines must be drawn between those who are serious about the class struggle, and those who are only committed to sustaining the purity of their abstract ideas. Unity with this middle-class left, fabricated historically by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and major capitalist foundations, is akin to unity with the imperialist bourgeoisie – a hindrance at best, and betrayal at worst, of the class struggle. The unity we must secure, and which the American Communist Party has accomplished in its very act of launching, is unity between serious, actual Marxists, who propose for themselves not the task of developing the loftiest pure ideas, but of concretely advancing the class struggle.

In the dialectic of unity and division, we have found, therefore, that certain forms of unity serve the cause of division, and certain forms of division serve the cause of unity. Abstractly, “unity” and “division” are devoid of content; empty causes in whose ambiguity can serve both sides of the class struggle. Dividing serious Marxists from the ruling class and their “leftist” agents is indispensable for the task of united working people and fighting for socialism.

This does not mean, however, that there is something ontologically wrong with the individuals that find themselves in these divisive “leftist” spaces. For many, these are the only areas they have found “dissident” politics to be present. This is not unintentional; the ruling order needs this to be the areas where dissenting young people go to. What we condemn, therefore, are not individuals. Many of them, if they’re serious about the class struggle, will in time end up on the right side. It is the fundamentally divisive politics of the middle class “left,” a politics indispensable for the ruling system keeping working people away from socialism with a ten-foot pole, that we condemn. As my colleague, Eddie Liger Smith, recently said: “for those people who do nothing but deride, attack, and smear us, guess what? The door will always be open. We’ll be here building when you get over your purity fetish and decide to come help us change this social system into one that actually serves the people.”[10]

Citations

[1] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 407-408.

[2] James Madison, “The Federalist Number 10, [22 November] 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0178. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 10, 27 May 1787–3 March 1788, ed. Robert A. Rutland, Charles F. Hobson, William M. E. Rachal, and Frederika J. Teute. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977, pp. 263–270.]

[3] Kwame Nkrumah, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Panal Books, 2004), xiii.

[4] José Martí J, “Tres Héroes,” In Páginas Escogidas, ed. Óscar Montoya (Bogotá: Editorial Norma, 1994), 41.

[5] V. I. Lenin, Collected Works Vol. 20 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), 232.

[6] Ibid.

[7] See Carlos L. Garrido, The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (Dubuque: Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2023).

[8] Karl Liebknecht, “The New ‘Civil Peace,’” In The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1986), 84.

[9] I am here being self-critical of my younger writings, when I was still too naïve about the effectiveness of “leftist” unity in the U.S., although I nonetheless still emphasized, rightly, the centrality of class unity and economic organization. See, for instance, this passage from 2020: “The American left focuses the majority of its efforts in pursuit of electoral victories without the prior existence of organization among class lines. Until the irrational divisions of socialist parties and organizations in the US unite and focus their energies on workplace organization as the necessary predecessor to the electoral struggle, we will continue to face futility in the political sphere.” Carlos L. Garrido, “Revolutionizing in America the Hope Bolivia Has Given Us,” Midwestern Marx Institute (October 20, 2020):
https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/revolutionizing-in-america-the-hope-bolivia-has-given-us-by-carlos-l-garrido  

[10] Edward Liger Smith, “Speech at the Institute for a Free America,” Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube (May 28, 2024):

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Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy professor. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the Secretary of Education of the American Communist Party. He has authored many books, including The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Why We Need American Marxism (2024), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming On Losurdo's Western Marxism (2024) and Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2025). He has written for dozens of scholarly and popular publications around the world and runs various live-broadcast shows for the Midwestern Marx Institute YouTube. You can subscribe to his Philosophy in Crisis Substack HERE.