Consider everybody in society. Some eat meat, others don’t. Some live in Spain, others in Japan. Some are rural, others urban. Countless differences separate people into “we and they groups” for one purpose or another. So, what about for political purposes? What differences divide people into left and not left? What disagreements about social change are that important? 

Suppose you think being left sometimes entails engaging in violence. Someone else thinks being left requires always rejecting violence. Is one left and one non-left due to that disagreement?

Suppose you think that to urge others to vote for Biden in a contested state is to shill for the Democrats. Someone else thinks to not stop Trump aids catastrophe. Is it legitimate for either to call the other not left? Both dismissals exist. Is either warranted? Is either constructive?

Suppose you believe that for winning social change a particular aspect of life is more fundamental to address than all other aspects. You say if someone disagrees with elevating my favored aspect, they are not left. If they agree with you, however, okay, they are left. For example, you feel that what’s socially possible and desirable depends mainly on class. Others should understand racism, sexism, ecological decline, fascism, and war first and foremost in terms of relations to class. Someone else says that race is central or that gender, authority, ecology, or international relations is central. Should such differences divide left and not left?

Or suppose if you agree with me on something that I think now but that I didn’t think last year, I say you are left. If not, I say you are not left. For example, I newly become vegan, advocate for trans rights, condemn some country’s recent policies, or oppose a current war, and depending on which side of that line you’re on, I deem you left or not left. Useful?

Perhaps I support writing letters to elected officials, giving talks to the rich and powerful, organizing strikes, or taking over buildings. Whichever it is, you don’t agree. I decide you are not left. Or perhaps you think some tactic I favor is counterproductive. You deem me not left. Is one of us left, the other not left?

The above are not phony caricatures. These and other divisions often arise. I support a higher wage for custodians on my campus, affirmative action in hiring where I work, higher taxes on the rich everywhere, debt forgiveness, or abortion on demand. You say to support any reform ratifies and strengthens the system. To seek any reform vests all concern in one limited aim. Reform-seekers go home at the end of each campaign. Struggle ends. I say no, reforms improve people’s lives. One should support them both out of solidarity and because the battle to win them can yield further radicalization and enlarge commitment. A campaign may end but struggle continues. They each say to the other, “my way or the highway.”

Still another example would be if you are in my organization I consider you left, but if you’re not in my organization, I consider you not left. Or, perhaps I feel you’re not left if you don’t function in light of a collective project and program. Warranted?

The point of all this is that people often highlight differences to demarcate borders where those on one side are left and those on the other side are not left. But which demarcations are sufficiently important? Put differently, how large an umbrella should the whole left assemble under? How quick should we be to push people out from under our umbrella? And why does any of this matter? 

It matters because demarcation lines can destructively split the left. A particular campaign divides in two. Each side deems the other not left. A particular organization divides in two or even just falls apart because a difference runs through it which people start to feel demarcates left from not left. Before long those on each side don’t want to share anything with those on the other side. Each side increasingly views the other side as people to defeat.  

Hostilities across demarcation lines tend to become a bit like what occurs in a dysfunctional family. Activists behave like relatives who too often don’t even clearly acknowledge much less focus on trying to narrow their differences. They feel antagonism but avoid communication. Absent communication, the antagonism festers and hostility grows. Soon past hostility becomes the reason for future hostility. Each side feels the other ought to change. Neither side changes until finally no one expends any effort to hear across the growing divide. When a significant difference appears, can mutual aid instead cross the demarcation line?

Suppose to win a new world concerns us, or to win a better society, or to win a particular campaign, or to create a particular project. Our personal comfort should matter, but what ought to matter most is to amass sufficient people and shared insights to win whatever we seek. To build a left able to persist but also to change plans and even aims as circumstances change, can a structure facilitate people hearing and addressing one another across differences sufficiently to discover what can succeed?

How do you welcome differences but avoid splits? I’ve heard two ways. One is you create a coalition that includes, for example, an anti-war movement, a women’s movement, an anti-racist movement and other diverse campaigns and organizations that each have different views so that the coalition fully agrees on only a particular narrow focus or what some call a least common denominator. You might create an anti-war coalition, a Green New Deal coalition, an abortion rights coalition, or a Ceasefire coalition where any such coalition includes many components that do not agree on everything or even on most things and that sometimes even significantly disagree on various things, but which jointly pursues the anti-war, Green, abortion rights, or Ceasefire agenda even while and perhaps because their coalition largely ignores and has no shared program about everything else and doesn’t even try to address differences about everything else. The coalition approach achieves effective collective unity about a narrowly-focussed agenda.

Another approach to build the overall left and not just one specific aspect of the whole is to not only welcome but also acknowledge views on both sides of many possible demarcation lines. Organizations, projects, and movements that take this approach still disagree about many things which each member finds important. But the many members openly acknowledge their differences and commit to hear, respect, and continue to explore disputed issues in hopes they will attain new agreements and insights. Perhaps one member proves to be more correct in what they were thinking about some disputed matter, or perhaps entirely new views emerge. In the interim, the whole forthrightly includes both sides of many disagreements. More, as a whole entity, it pursues the agendas of the main proponents of different focuses as the collective approach to that focus, be it race, gender, sexuality, class, ecology, or international relations. The whole has a widened not a narrowed focus. It has a greatest sum not a least common denominator approach. The participants conduct mutual aid, celebrate solidarity, and seek to sincerely explore and respectfully work through their differences toward greater unity. Regarding most of the potentially divisive issues mentioned earlier, this second approach seeks to include their sum rather than to eliminate or simply ignore contending views to avoid disagreement. Consider violence or not. Dave Dellinger, who a central figure in sixties and seventies radical work was a pacifist. He did not believe in the use of violence. On the other hand, he worked with groups like the Black Panthers who did believe in violent tactics. So they had a very strong disagreement but they were mutually respectful and heard each other and tried to learn from each other and even to operate in proximity to each other. Unlike many others at the time, they saw each other as part of one left. Can that type mutual respect extend over the various demarcation lines I mentioned earlier? Can we see ways for disagreeing partisans to think and talk about their differences to try to narrow them instead of disagreeing partisans rushing to polarize and define each other as an opponent to defeat? Could those involved seek to stay under one umbrella to sincerely explore their differences and find what proves ultimately most useful? 

Consider an example that now operates in and may even cause dissolution of one of the largest U.S. left organizations, DSA. Some members seek and celebrate reforms. Other members dismiss reforms and seek only revolution. Some of the former view the latter as mucking up their win-changes-now “brand” by callously ignoring the needs of current citizens. In reverse, some of the latter view the former as mucking up their win-everything-now “brand,” by losing track of or getting coopted out of recognizing the full extent of current oppressions and the need to seek fundamental rather than only ameliorative change. 

Could a serious conversation rather than growing separation take place? Would it reveal that beyond the intensifying conflict, there exists an interesting unity? Leftists in DSA who focus intently on reforms nonetheless think it would be great to have fundamental change. Leftists in DSA who focus intently on revolution nonetheless think it would be excellent to have a ceasefire, a higher minimum wage, and abortion rights. To have those who emphasize reform and also those who emphasize revolution in the same organization without each seeing the other as non-left or even as an enemy, what if DSA members were to establish overall shared aims? Couldn’t they then hear each other and work together because each would recognize that the other wants to win the shared worthy aims and disagrees only about how much emphasis to put here or there and what particular words to employ at particular moments, and so on? 

There’s a domain in which the above common sum approach to “membership” happens routinely. It’s called science. Within science, there’s physics, chemistry, biology and much else, and in the whole of it people have a great many disagreements. Even within each separate component, which are a bit like an orientation or specific movement or organization inside the whole left, there are big differences. So physicists have very strong differences with each other, but they nonetheless respect each other. They don’t say you’re not under the same umbrella as me. They accept that serious differences exist, debate them, and yet continue to respect one another’s efforts. They each and all want to move the whole forward as they explore, discuss, and debate their differences. Can leftists do that more often and never form “circular firing squads?”

I’m suggesting that instead of frequently seeking to find a line of demarcation that allows the finder to enjoy a more comfortable but smaller community, we should try to figure out ways to respect, listen to, learn from, and affect people on both sides of differences. It is better to not define our differences as demarcation lines between left and not left. It is better to not try to escape from or to destroy those with whom we differ. It is better to try to converse, debate, and explore with those with whom we differ. Rather than seek “better fewer but better,” we should seek “better more but better.” Fewer is not a goal. More is. And better members means members who seek to hear as well as to speak. Members who participate. That is what can win what is sought by all, and not just win nothing or win what is sought by few. This approach won’t always work or even be an advisory that always applies. But often it will make sense and fit. And so often we should try the mutual aid, conversing, listening, and exploring rather than exiling approach. Trying to hunker down in a comfortable perfectly homogenized left is most often counterproductive. That doesn’t mean that that there is never a line and on one side there’s left and on the other side there’s not left. Sometimes that is the case and it’s important to realize when. But to rush to see every difference that discomforts us as grist to not converse, become hostile, and then split is a sure recipe for losing.