Left-wing politics

“ There is no other group in the unions other than the left wing that has the understanding and initiative to do this basic task. The right wing, which represents the interests of the skilled workers, is opposed to the organizing of the unorganized unskilled masses, and the so-called "progressives," although they do lip service to the necessity of organization, are too spineless and wavering to really do anything about it except under the general leadership and stimulus of the militant left wing. ”

“ The ease with which the Coalition Government was upset cannot be explained by the strength of the left wing of the democracy, but only by the incapacity of the Government to give the people peace and bread. And the left wing cannot maintain itself in power unless it can solve these questions....
"Can it give bread to the people? Grain is scarce. The majority of the peasants will not be with you, for you cannot give them the machinery they need. ”

“ On the other hand, to postpone the realization of the proletarian dictatorship until such a time as there is not left a single professionally narrow-minded workman, until all are quite free from craft and Trade Union prejudices, would be a still greater mistake. For a Communist, with a correct understanding of his own ends, the art of politics lies in correctly calculating the conditions and the moment when the proletarian vanguard can take over power successfully. ”

“ Up to the time of the last Convention, our party called itself the party of the social democracy. The party of the working class bore the same name all over the world. But the war has been responsible for an unprecedented schism in the social-democratic parties here. Three main tendencies have come to the fore—the extreme right, the centre, and the extreme left wing. ”

“ Russia, which has imbibed so much revolutionary initiative from the West, is now perhaps itself ready to serve as a source of revolutionary energy. The Russian revolutionary movement, which is now bursting into flame, will, perhaps, become the strongest means for the extermination of the senile philistinism and sedate politics which is beginning to spread in our ranks, and will again rekindle the militant spirit and the passionate devotion to our great ideals. Russia has long ceased to be for Western Europe a simple prop for reaction and obsolutism. ”

“ In politics it is not always so easy to make distinctions as in this childishly simple little example. But whoever took it into his head that he could contrive for the workers a formula which would give beforehand ready solutions of all cases, or who would assert that in the political experience of the revolutionary proletariat there will be no difficulties, no intricate problems to solve, would be merely a charlatan. ”

“ The Left Wing not only preaches revolutionary Socialism, it believes that the economic and social forces that have made half Europe Socialist, and threaten momentarily to engulf the other half are at work in America also. It believes that a revolutionary outbreak in America is not a matter of the far and distant future. And it desires to make that revolution as easy and as successful as it can possibly be. For that reason the Left Wing has evolved its manifesto and program, and now calls upon the Socialist Party to discuss it, perfect it, and adopt it. ”

“ Like a tidal wave, the demand for a Socialism which stands true to the working class at all times has swept the party. The thousands of Comrades who are sincerely working to win the party to a more revolutionary position are known to the Left Wing. ”

“ The radical left dreads the threats of the Social Democrats more than the fatuous blunders of the Kaiser. The very logic of events condemns revisionism and dedicates the workingman to majestic isolation. But this isolation engenders a revolutionary spirit. Allied with the liberals the Social Democracy would eschew all action outside the law. ”

“ But I am less interested in the verbiage of the Left Wing than in the idea of keeping ultimates everlastingly in the center of attention to the exclusion of mere puttering reforms. One of the things that will hasten the revolution is to spread the notion that it can come soon. If the Left Wing adopts impossibilist methods of campaign, I shall stand aloof, but if they push for Confiscation, Equality of Economic Status, and the speedy elimination of class privilege, and keep their heads, I shall go with them rather than the yellows. ”

“ The leaders in control of the executive machinery of the Socialist Party, wishing to retain their lucrative positions, and looking forward to the advantage of political office during the years which might elapse before the time would be ripe for rebellion, were nearly all Right Wingers, and have waged a bitter and unscrupulous fight against the Left Wing organization within the party. ”

“ Of course, in politics, involving sometimes very intricate national or international relationships between classes and parties, many cases will arise much more difficult than the question of a lawful compromise during a strike, or the treasonable compromise of a strike-breaker, a traitorous leader, etc. To invent such a formula or general rule as "No Compromises," which would serve in all cases, is an absurdity. One must keep one's head in order not to lose oneself in each separate case. ”

“ They are so self-absorbed, so narcissistic, so sickeningly partial that they make for fine amusement in dreary times. There are the coalition papers and the opposition papers, the left wing and the right wing and the centre ones. ”

“ This is not a left and right issue. This is the important thing to recognize: This is not about conservatives versus liberals.
In our case, in Eldred, we have this brief filed by 17 economists, including Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Ronald Kost, Ken Arrow, you know, lunatics, right? Left-wing liberals, right? Friedman said he'd only join if the word "no-brainer" existed in the brief somewhere, like this was a complete no-brainer for him. This is not about left and right. This is about right and wrong. That's what this battle is. ”

“ That many things must be treated as beyond question was the fruit of his maxims; it is a position which I have never been able to adopt; with me the acid of doubt bit into every axiom. I took pleasure in the society and arguments of the liberal politicians and journalists who began to frequent the court as soon as a rumour of my inclinations spread. I became the centre and object of a contention between the Right and the Left, between Conservative and Liberal forces—or, if I apply to each party the nickname accorded to it by the enemy, between the Reaction and the Revolution. ”

“ And so, the Liberal bourgeoisie renounce the bi-party system of the exploiters—historically sanctified by centuries of experience, and highly profitable to the exploiters—finding it necessary to join their forces for the fight against the Labor Party. Part of the Liberals, like rats deserting a sinking ship, run over to the Labor Party. The Left Communists find it inevitable that the power will fall into the hands of the Labor Party by a majority of working men. ”

“ The two main groups, right and left, into which German political life falls are split up into various factions. The Socialist Party is divided into a constitutional right wing, the Social Democrats, and a revolutionary left wing, the “Unabhängige” or Independent Socialists. Since the revolution, various parties have been busily engaged changing their names, a fact which does not simplify the situation, as the old ones still survive in current conversation. ”

“ The left wing strategists must find ways and means to force the hands of the right wing leaders in such critical situations by mobilizing the membership against them. This is a real test of our strike strategy, especially where the left wing has but little organization. ”

“ In the eyes of anyone who understands the workings of such a mechanism, the attempts to discredit the Opposition by referring to the fact that some Right wing grafter or Left wing stripling of the social democracy quotes approvingly a sentence from our criticism, must appear in a pitiable ideological light. ”

“ Why, then, should a rapidly-growing revolutionary mass party, under conditions of post-war disappointment and exasperation of the masses, be unable to hammer-out for itself a Communist faction in the worst of parliaments? ”

“ The political wrangling between the Left and Right in the US media has further entrenched the estrangement and division between the two parties and between the elite and the mass public. It has aggravated political polarization in the US, pushing the political Left further left and the Right further right. ”

“ Every Left Winger will work night and day for the reinstatement of the nearly 40,000 members whom the reactionaries are trying to sever from the party in violation of the party's constitution. Every radical will work with might and main to get new members and build, build the Left Wing and the party. Every revolutionist will stick until victory is ours and the Socialist Party is completely won for revolutionary Socialism. ”

“ Our own history shows how fierce the resistance can be to changes which later generations regard as part of the normal framework of life. And the course of rational social change is even more hazardous for those progressive governments who often face entrenched privilege of the right and subversive conspiracies on the left. ”

“ This is coming about primarily through the growth of the Extreme Left, and especially of the Socialists. Although the effects are as yet scarcely perceptible, so that the politics of the country exhibit still all of the changeableness, ineffectiveness, and chaos characteristic of the group system, the development of the partiti populari which compose collectively the Extreme Left, i.e., the Republicans, the Radicals, and the Socialists, is an interesting political phenomenon. ”

“ The fact that Liberals are fighting among themselves undoubtedly drives a very considerable number of Liberals in despair to the Labor Party, where you get a considerable body of Liberals, very able men, whose business it is to discredit the Government. ”

“ Some of the Socialist-Revolutionists of the left wing carried on a plainly demagogic agitation against the decree on dictatorship, appealing to the evil instincts and to the petty bourgeois desire for personal gain. ”

“ Why, in Germany, did a wholly similar movement of the workers from Right to Left first strengthen, not the Communists, but the intermediate party of the "Independents"?—although this party never had any independent political idea of its own, no independent policy of its own, but only wavered between the Scheidemanns and the Communists. ”

“ The absence of these specific conditions—not to mention various minor ones—accounts for the greater difficulty which Western Europe must experience in beginning the social revolution. To attempt to "circumvent" this difficulty, by "jumping over" the hard task of utilizing reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes, is absolute childishness. You wish to create a new society? And yet you fear the difficulties entailed in forming, in a reactionary Parliament, a sound group composed of convinced, devoted, heroic Communists! ”

“ If one wishes to indulge in parliamentary language, it is sufficient to say "So long as the majority of the town workers follow the Independents, we Communists cannot possibly interfere with the workers in their desire to live out their last illusions of middle class democracy (consequently, also bourgeois-capitalist illusions) in practical experience with their own governments." ”

“ For the Communists in Germany parliamentarism is, of course, "politically out-worn"; but—and this is the whole point—we must not deem that that which is outworn for us is necessarily outworn for the class, the masses. Here, again, we see that the "Left" do not know how to argue, do not know how to behave as a class, as a party of the masses. True, it is our duty not to sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. ”

“ If the Left Wing is the party, then and only then can we answer the criticism of the syndicalist that a political party is nothing else but a vote-catching machinery for middle-class politicians. If the principles enunciated in the manifesto will be the principles of the party, then it will enjoy the confidence of those who, through their bitter experience realized the fallacies of the Second International, led and dominated by the social-patriots, reformists of the German Social Democratic Party. ”

“ In the Catholic cantons it occupies the field almost alone, and everywhere it is the most compact and zealous of the parties, although even it is not without a certain amount of division of opinion and of policy. The Left, or Radical party, has always represented a combination of widely varied shades of radicalism and democracy. ”

“ This alone radically destroys the proposition that "parliamentarism is politically worn-out." It is incumbent upon the "Left" to prove that their mistake at that time has now ceased to be a mistake. They do not, and cannot, give even the shadow of a proof of their proposition. The attitude of a political party towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest criteria of the seriousness of the party, and of how it fulfils in practice its obligations towards its class and towards the laboring masses. ”

“ In arriving at these conclusions the left wing was moved principally by (1) the disastrous effects of the policy of craft treachery of the reactionary labor leaders, (2) the fact that the left wing based its policies chiefly on the big trustified industries where partial settlements are manifestly impossible.
But the general conclusion that there shall be no partial settlements under any circumstances is wrong. It is ultra-leftist. In certain situations the workers find it advantageous to make such partial settlements. ”

“ Communists, adherents to the Third International, exist in all countries precisely for the purpose of adapting, along the whole line, in every domain of life, the old Socialist, Trade Unionist, Syndicalist and parliamentarian activities to the new Communist idea. We, too, had plenty of opportunism, pure bourgeois traffickings, rascally capitalist dealings in our elections. The Communists of Western Europe and America must learn to create a new parliamentarism, entirely distinct from the usual opportunist, office-seeking form. ”