I’m an Anarchist and I’m in Left Unity, there I said it!
by Stephen Miller of Northampton Left Unity
I am involved with Left Unity because it is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. The left as a force within this country is spent, it is on its knees and the only way it stands a fighting chance against the onslaught of capitalism is if we work together. Thus I became part of the Left Unity project, sceptical of what it really was, and afraid it was more of the same but lucky enough for me, it did not turn out to be any of the things I expected! There is no one ideology of Left Unity, you can be a Leninist, Marxist, Maoist, Makhovist and everything in between, I am not being told I have to kneel down and pray to Karl Marx five times a day, I can have an opinion.
Our local branch is pretty free to do as it pleases which is a massive plus, there is not some central top down leadership attempting to control my every action and thought, I feel like I am free to express myself and that I have a voice. Right from the get go the party has been an inclusive place for all those along the left, a place where we can come together to fight our common enemy and work for the common good. It also seeks to be more than just a political party, it seeks to be a social movement and if the left can’t pull its act together, what then? For me to not just pay lip service to the term Left Unity, I had no choice but to get involved.
Before the founding conference and beyond members within Left Unity hold the power, we created the constitution, we can submit motions and far from Left Unity pretending to have all the answers, it asked all the right questions. There seems to be a real commitment within Left Unity for members to have wildly different views and be allowed to express them as they wish. Not only that but we have some really interesting policies which are their to either curb someone attaining to much power to keep them in check in the case they do, e.g Only being allowed to hold a position for three years and yearly elections both of which are massively important in holding the leadership to account and providing power to the grass roots.
Left Unity has that commitment to grass roots, bottom up leadership which to me makes it an ok place to work. I do not want to be part of an organisation where everyone thinks and acts the same, because that is not healthy and the fact Left Unity has a massive local agenda, I feel it does not jeopardise my anarchist views. We all want to see the end of capitalism, and there is no point in arguing about what comes next until the end of capitalism is a possibility, we have a long way to fight and it makes no sense being spread out and divided, unity is our strength.
I hope I’m not the only Anarchist within Left Unity, and if there is enough of us we should get a tendency together.
24 comments
24 responses to “I’m an Anarchist and I’m in Left Unity, there I said it!”
Left Unity is active in movements and campaigns across the left, working to create an alternative to the main political parties.
About Left Unity
Read our manifesto
Left Unity is a member of the European Left Party. 
Read the European Left Manifesto
ACTIVIST CALENDAR
Events and protests from around the movement, and local Left Unity meetings.
ongoing
Just Stop Oil – Slow Marches
Slow marches are still legal (so LOW RISK of arrest), and are extremely effective. The plan is to keep up the pressure on this ecocidal government to stop all new fossil fuel licences.
Saturday 27th April: national march for Palestine
National demonstration.
Ceasefire NOW! Stop the Genocide in Gaza: Assemble 12 noon Central London
Full details to follow
More events »
GET UPDATES
Sign up to the Left Unity email newsletter.
CAMPAIGNING MATERIALS
Get the latest Left Unity resources.
Great article Stephen… your definitely not the only Anarchist in Left Unity! Of course there are as many varieties of “Anarchists” in the UK as their are varieties of “Trotskyists”. The great potential of Left Unity lies in the possibility of healing the first great schism in the international working class movement that blew apart the first International in the Days of Bakunin and Marx. About time too!
Hear hear to article and to Mark’s comment above. I am of libertarian socialist (anarchist) views myself as are at least two others in my branch and am in LU for the same reasons as Stephen. Glad to hear we’re not alone!
I also come from this end of the spectrum.
But I think we should do away with all tendencies, labels and associations with 150 year old thinkers. Let’s make our own instead. Live in the future not the past.
We need to get rid of our labels just as the supporters of the existing economic system should do away with make believe incarnations of men like Adam Smith. Who – like Marx, Trotsky and Schmotsky – is no doubt currently swiveling in his grave at the people who claim his intellectual inheritance.
Now I understand Comrade John Smith Cohen’s intellectual and political reasoning. Quite ironic that Comrade John has such hostility to the ideas that are associated “with 150 year old thinkers” when the ideas of anarchism are a lot older. But I agree let us live in the present and future and not in the past; but let us learn from the past, both victories and defeats, to make the working class the owners of the future.
I know you are being friendly. But please don’t call me `comrade`. That time has gone. I really object to that language.
I’m not hostile to ideas, new or old. If you had read what I said I am hostile to labels, more often than not self-defined. People calling themselves – or ideas they like – `radical` `communist` or `socialist`. It means nothing.
Once you define yourself by a label – outside a few beers with mates – you immediately limit yourself.
I’m afraid , John, that it simply isn’t possible, or useful, to avoid “labelling” – either as a self definition, or as a label assigned by others observing ones politics. Sometimes this self labelling or the assignment by others of a “label” may be inadequate or simply wrong – eg, the false belief by Stalinists that they are a legitimate part of the socialist tradition.
However the refusal to accept or self assign a political “label” to oneself is usually a sign of the political “butterfly” in my long political experience – a person who thinks they are free of all that tiresome old political theory of 150 years ago, ie Marxism and socialist theory generally, but actually they have merely replaced it with a mish mash of ideological positions firmly rooted in bourgeois capitalist ideology.
Left Unity has overwhelmingly self defined itself as “socialist”, in background philosophy inspiration, and overall objectives, though debate and considered Conference decisions . The “socialist tradition” that most members hold to is not the anarchist one of course , but the radical Left reformist and Marxist revolutionary ones. This doesn’t mean the party is closed to those from other radical perspectives of course. We all need to fight together against the bosses’ Austerity Offensive.
At the end of the day though the Party is on a firm line of march towards socialism – not a liberal mixed capitalist economy. It is quite clear from your considerable body of online posts, as “coolfonz” that you are ideologically a radical liberal reformist, John, not a socialist. Dislike the “label ” if you like – but that is what your politics are. Nevertheless , you are very welcome in our broad radical left party. Just don’t delude yourself that you have somehow personally transcended all that tiresome “old politics of the Left” stuff. You haven’t – you’ve simply accepted instead a whole raft of capitalist bourgeois ideological assumptions – but with a radical reformist spin.
You have a label which is ‘John Smith Cohen’, in fact you have two labels, not only do you have ‘John Smith Cohen’ you also have ‘aka Coolfonz’. You are a member of Left Unity which is a label that indicates a particular direction of political travel that you want to go down. A label identity’s one to someone else; if one did not have labels then one is amorphous and shapeless, both in the personal sense and the political sense. So when one identifies themselves as a socialist or a communist or an anarchist or a Marxist then they are telling the general public, not just their mates, what they stand for, what their particular thought process is, and what direction they would like society to develop.
Labels are there, however imprecise they may appear, to give direction. Political ideas are labels, political strategy are labels, political tactics are labels and political slogans are labels; and none of them “limit yourself” to speaking to people about achieving a more egalitarian society. I am sorry if I sound patronising but it is the height of both personal and political naivety to suggest that a person cannot go about this capitalist society (a label) which is owned and controlled by the one per cent (a label) and not use political and social labels to identify particular social phenomenon. It sounds like you are denying that we live in a society that is owned and controlled by the banks (a label) and multi-national capitalist elite (a label), in other words the 1% (another label) as a means to extract profit (a label) from the 99% (a label).
Every week on the political stalls (a label), and working class meetings (a label) that I am involved in and I carry out for the Socialist Party Scotland (a label) I campaign on the ending of the zero hour contracts (a label) and fight for a living wage of £10 an hour (a label); as well as campaigning for an independent socialist Scotland (a label) in which the government would take the major companies and banks in Scotland into public ownership (a label) and run them under democratic working class (a label) control and management (a label) with compensation only paid on the basis of proven need (another label). I have no problem in my encounters with the working class of Scotland, having these labels does not limit me, in fact the very opposite they allow me to conduct a challenging discourse with the working class of Scotland on what type of society they would like to see now and for the future for themselves and their children
As for that word “comrade” you do not like. Fine I will not call you comrade but you have no right do not deny me the right to write or call someone a comrade, brother or sister; I go to many labour movement events and those words are still used and they are not seen as old fashioned or living in the past and it means something, which is fraternity, to them and me. To indicate “That time has gone” signifies to me no intellectual reasoning (another label) to any political thought from yourself apart from vagueness. Maybe it is the non-political circle you gravitate to that indicates your hostility to that label.
Finally let me leave you with a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German writer and social scientist from the 18/19 century, that I love: “All theory is grey, but, ah my friend, the glad golden tree of life is green”; in other words do not worry about the labels get out into the working class and build your party and the labels will sort themselves out.
Stephen, I like what you’ve said. LU is very broad and needs to stay that way but we need to listen and learn from each other about the strengths and weaknesses we’ve each experienced within our political lives. There are highs and lows already for me in LU but if we can build our mutual trust and internal solidarity, then great.
Me – the only group I have been in before was Big Flame – a libertarian socialist group which died in the mid-80s after our last bif initiative – the Beyond the Fragments COnference in Leeds – but not because our politics had failed, but because we were all knackered from too much activism and then defeats from Thatcher and because groups based on early 20th century thinking refused to listen to the need to update thinking in line with capitalism’s metamorphoses. Since then just single issue stuff until LU came along.
Good article, but I’m not sure if a member who was critical of open borders L/U’s emphasis(obsession?) on UKIP, just look at the F/B page to see its priorities, they would not be shouted down at meetings. What is happening with the rise of UKIP, Britain First, etc is alarming, but every month claimants are actually dying through suicide or neglect, we now have the harshest benefit regime in Europe, these are real casualties, this should be L/U’ priorities. I’m aware that if UKIP came to power/went into coalition then things could be even worse, but please don’t get like the SWP at its worst: promoting hysteria and focussing on the most popular causes(on the left/liberal left that is.)
Mark,
“The great potential of Left Unity lies in the possibility of healing the first great schism in the international working class movement that blew apart the first International in the Days of Bakunin and Marx.”
Bakunin’s elitist and conspiratorial antics in the First International, and elsewhere, precisely showed that he was *not* a part of the international class movement. In that sense, that “great schism” was necessary and correct: and we need to build upon it. That is, step up the fight for democratic and proletarian socialism from below.
Mr Penney. Thanks for the reply. I haven’t transcended anything, apart from maybe sometimes at the weekend clubbing to house and techno.
But when you say things like ” the “socialist tradition” that most members hold to is not the anarchist one of course , but the radical Left reformist and Marxist revolutionary ones.”
And the rather personal: “you are ideologically a radical liberal reformist, John, not a socialist. Dislike the “label ” if you like – but that is what your politics are. Nevertheless , you are very welcome in our broad radical left party. Just don’t delude yourself…” then I am just left shaking my head.
Please just debate me on the ideas going forward, if that is okay.
Mr Haddow – the word `bank` isn’t a label. Nor is `zero hours contract` or `Scotland`. These are not labels. Are you deliberately confusing the point? It sounds like the work you do for Unity and other causes is great. As I said in my first post to you, I know you were being friendly.
Just as a basic idea – some people on the (rabid) right call President Obama a `socialist` or a `Marxist`. They define the label. All these words are defined by the person who says them.
Again the word `liberal` is also a term widely used both as an identifier and as an insult. It is defined only be the person who says it.
When someone in Unity defines themselves – or other people – with words which cannot clearly be understood, which are only defined by the person who says them, it is my view, a big mistake.
As the article states, the left in this country is nowhere. I want Left Unity to do more than be a stitch up of all those people who already have a line, although I welcome people who might describe themselves as anarchists as much as anyone else who wants to get organised and take practical steps forward.
We need to be reaching out because so many people, including many within Left Unity, are really struggling thanks to Tories and a spineless opposition which no longer even pretends to oppose it, and hasn’t for many years even in government. Arguing about long dead men in the comments section of the national website, who most people aren’t interested in will convince nobody that LU is any more than another “Judean Peoples’ Front.”
We all need meaningful and rewarding work or sufficient financial support for those in need, decent homes to live in, quality education, proper healthcare and properly funded public services.
That is what matters right now. The right talk about these things, even though they are at best kidding themselves, and at worst lying. But that is why they are more successful. To many people this helps to give the impression that we are the nutters, because many of the abstract, long term goals of the left look like utopian posturing. There are more immediate problems that need to be faced too. That is the only way to get rid of the (inaccurate) perception of the left as a bunch of do-gooders and extremists.
Steven Miller – good article
Welcome. I am not an anarchist, I am afraid, but I do believe in radical, revolutionary change to an economically democratic, fair and just society. I am certain that the left need to remember that liberty is vital as a demand to mobilise behind – yes, individual liberty, freedom from powerful state, and not just in some never never land after a period of totalitarian rule, after which the state magically “withers away”, as the Leninists (in all their different sub-sections) would have us believe but as a commitment to individual and collective freedom and liberty and the fullest democracy at every stage of the process. For this reason I am not a Trotskyist but strangely find myself regularly to the “left” of many in the party who are, though I am sure that would not save me from the Gulag. :) I often even agree with John Penney, although never with the savagery or condescension of his responses. Bad boy John!
Like you, I like the style and democratic structures of our little acorn of a party (though I do have some quibbles with some bits of our constitution). Who would have thought that a left party would actually have votes at a party conference where the result was actually in doubt and nothing had been stitched up before?
On language, there is a balance to be struck. All, yes all, of the old leftie labels are only useful as a kind of shorthand jargon between people who know, or think they know, what they mean, and as such they do save time. However, words that we think we understand are often not understood in the same way by the uninitiated, so we have to be careful when ranting on that the audience is still with us.
The real problem is that in my opinion we are virtually back in the 1890s or 1900s stage, trying to start to develop a proper radical challenge to the existing system free of all the appalling ideological baggage of 20th century “socialism” – between Labourite, social democratic sell out and open treachery, and the nightmarish hell of the Soviet system, whether of the Russian, Chinese, or Korean varieties.
This worries me, can someone tell me what an Anarchist National Health Service would look like? How can this be explained to the general public?
Left unity needs a broad group of ideologies. Not just jumped old Trotskites and Lennists. We need people like Anarchists who actually respect grassroot democracy.
How refreshing Stephen Miller (and how typical the bickering starts almost immediately). I’m an anarchist too, though not in Left Unity, but I’m no purist/sectarian so I can’t say I’m not tempted.
I suppose it’s possible, for someone to say the same thing, and be in the SWP. It’d still be nutty, even if it’s someone who thinks of him/ her self as an Anarchst. That’s because for people to become part of something, which requires them to diminish their responsibility, they have to abandon autonomy, to some extent. Doing that, they cease to be Anarchic. On another side of the same multi – surfaced object, with a syndicalist. He was slagging me off, for not being submissive to the authority of people who’d read more Anarchist literature, than I had, And I’d not read a book, since I escaped from the Prem Rawat guru midfuck, 30 years ago. I told him, that I was not a Proudhonist, or a Kropotkinist, I’m an Anarchist. The same goes for me not being a Tolstoyan, or a Woodcockian or a Goldmanite, or any other -ite, -ist, -ian or something which requies me to cease being a creature which retains the ability to think.
When people do anything as a group, other than a group of individuals, then to that extent, they cease to be creatures who can be reasoned with. That’s because people can think. And groups can’t. Groups can only react.
we need to stop saying what we are and start saying what we’ll do..
everyday the idiots are repeating the same nonsense ‘immigrants steal your homes your jobs and rob us blind you life is shit because of the immagrants’
and everyday someone intellegent stands up and elogently says how smart they are and passionately reasons their perfect ideology position. — No one cares about you or your label
we’ve got problems that need solving and we’ve got practical soultions that we know work
why aren’t we standing up saying everyday
HI we’re left unity we’re going to build homes that are eco friendly and cheap and rent them out to people at a reasonable rates and create jobs
we’re going to set up factories to build the energy saving technoligies to install in the new houses we’ll build
we’re going to collect the taxes that are owed
we’re going to renationalise the services that were sold
we re going to put things back togeather again and make it better
so vote for us
Mark A – exactly. 100pc.
Party politics and the broad anarchist tradition (in terms of the political action it advocates) are logically incompatible unless you water both sets of ideas down until they are essentially meaningless.
Just my two cents though guys, have a great Monday!
Wonderful!
Good article Stephen. You aren’t the only anarchist in LU – there’s quite a few of us in Bristol too. I don’t think there is any incompatibility between Anarchism and party politics. Anarchism is the principle that we should maximize freedom and minimize authority – to do this we have to organize ourselves democratically. We will still need some regional, national and international institutions but these should be formed by free federation.
I’m not particularly keen on the Anarchist label though due to the media stereotype and the actions of our more insurrectionary comrades. How about forming a Libertarian and Co-operative Platform?
I agree with you Phil, I use it among a bunch of other terms Libertarian Socialist being one.
I don’t really care about the name, that is just a formality, would just be good for us to get to know each other and share ideas with one another.
Hope you are well.