New left party: dead-end or dead right

TK Adisa and Lotta P argue that any new mass socialist formation must be based on class politics that takes liberation seriously and recognises the materiality of oppression.

Note: the authors are elected members of rs21’s Steering Group, but are writing in an individual capacity. This article is reprinted from Prometheus.

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me
But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will see

-Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues 

What is the worst case scenario for the next general election? Huge electoral advances for Reform, winning loads more MPs, while the left puts up a scattered and divided resistance, with independent left MPs running a barely-coordinated campaign through some loose umbrella or network organisation. Some would even say a Reform victory with Nigel Farage as prime minister shouldn’t be considered impossible.

But we don’t need a worst case scenario to be worried – Labour is doing plenty here and now to advance a reactionary, authoritarian agenda, from a return to austerity and violent cuts targeting disabled people, children and pensioners, to its cruel approach to immigration, continued support for Zionist genocide in Gaza, and its repression of our movements.  We are in a moment where the far right is making leaps forward, using electoral politics in an exemplary way to build its base and its voice. Meanwhile, the left has won a historic number of MPs to Labour’s left, partly due to the mass Palestine solidarity movement, but when it comes to a real power-building project to take things to the next level it feels like we are stuck. The existential challenges posed by the social and ecological crises we face grow ever more clear, and in this context, many are turning towards systemic change for answers, yet others are demobilised by the scale of the challenge. 

In particular, we want to make the case for a new formation to root itself in a class politics which understands its relation to oppression and becomes a political beacon for social movements against imperialism, militarism and austerity. 

This article has three sections:

1. What politics is needed for the moment we are in.
2. Why the relationship with social movements will be key to deciding how useful and successful any new party could be.
3. Organisational and strategic questions about a possible new party or electoral network and how the far left might relate to it.

What politics is needed for the moment we are in

‘A meaningful common interest does not somehow exist by default. We cannot reduce any group of people and the multitudes they contain to a single common interest, as though we were reducing a fraction. A common interest is constituted by the composition of these multitudes into a group. And this is a process of political practice.’

-Asad Haider, ‘Where are the People of Colour?

On oppression and freedom

A class politics that takes liberation seriously understands that race, gender, sexuality and other social forms are part of capitalist social relations and serve to configure, in historically specific ways, the regimes of exploitation and domination that facilitate capital accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist class society as a whole. Fighting against racism, misogyny, transphobia and xenophobia and other forms of oppression are not a mere distraction from class politics, but a key part of it. 

We need a socialist anti-oppression politics that recognises the materiality of oppression and goes beyond liberal demands for rights from the state, and beyond the reification of the identities of marginalised groups, towards a vision of liberation from the systems that mark us as different and expose us to domination, oppression and exploitation in the first place. 

We need a class politics which leaves no section of the class behind and sees how a disinterest in fighting oppression against women, migrants, trans people and people of colour leaves the entire class weaker. It needs to articulate that attacks on trans people are attacks on gendered and sexual freedom for everyone, that they are an attack on children and women rather than defence of them, and a form of divide and rule that we should not be afraid to confront and expose as such. It needs to make clear that most migrants are also members of the working class, and that their exploitation in labour markets and their exclusion from the social state is both wrong and strategically ruinous. 

In the words of Richard Seymour, ‘we need bread and butter… but we don’t love it.’  What the right are doing is not only appealing to people’s passions, but trying to shape them too. We need to do the same. If a new left party emerged, it should be bold in putting forward a vision for a different world – taking up the many fights for justice and liberation and being a channel through which people can actually see the possibility of taking steps towards that liberation. That will go further than the most sanitised economic programme ever could. As Jonas Marvin said, ‘we must suss out practically how our interventions can chime with and facilitate the flourishing of forms of culture and identity conducive to new coalitions, new common-senses and a mass socialist politics of ‘freedom dreams‘’. 

We cannot pretend to have definite answers over what interventions, cultures, and coalitions could build a mass socialist politics in the coming years, but we can emphasise that the work of “sussing it out” must come before we retreat to a lowest common denominator left-populism that abandons a commitment to liberation politics. This kind of “economically radical” and  “socially moderate” (conservative) “left-populism” is not even particularly populist because its does not seek to appeal to the whole class. Rather its subject is sectional, and the pitfalls of this approach, even merely on electoral terrain (the basis on which many argue for it), are evident in the poor performance of BSW in the German elections, especially in comparison to Die Linke. 

We cannot assume that the subjectivities that will build a mass socialist politics are fully visible yet, but a commitment by any new party to engage with the existing struggles around issues that shape the lives of working class people, across different locales and contexts, would be key to identifying these subjectivities and building a coalition across the class.

Anti-militarism and anti-austerity politics

A key part of the politics of a new party must be anti-imperialism and anti-militarism. Most obviously, because over the last 18 months the Zionist genocide in Gaza has been conducted with the full support of the British state. But also because we are in a moment where US-led Western imperialism is undergoing historic fracturing, and as such, there are huge cries for remilitarisation emanating from the ruling classes of Britain and Europe, either to hold NATO together or to develop European military capacity fit for an independent European imperialist bloc.

Here in Britain, calls for increases in defence spending are explicitly being counterposed with government spending on welfare, healthcare, and infrastructure. Why is this important? Because not only do socialists reject imperialist warmongering and militarisation, but a strong majority of working class people do too. The ruling class argument that frames these cuts as difficult but based on a necessary reworking of the social contract for our “national security” rings hollow for most people at a time when living standards are falling significantly. The scale of remilitarisation – and cuts – that would be needed to pursue a more independent British and European foreign policy is massive. ‘Warfare not welfare’ will be a key demand from the ruling classes not just in this election cycle, but well beyond too.  As the climate crisis intensifies, the trade off between the imperialist wars of the ruling class and the lives of the masses and the planet they depend upon will only become more apparent. 

Some of the strongest socialist arguments can be put forward here. Anti-war politics connected to popular anti-austerity arguments could be very powerful in this moment and may cut across differences in the class. Against the warmongering of Labour and the Tories (and Reform’s similar demand for 3% defence spending) we have an opportunity to build an anti-imperialist politics that is tightly linked to the everyday concerns of the working class. As socialists, we should be going beyond demands to re-fund the welfare state or for a Universal Basic Income that attempts to revive it, but towards demands around de-commodifying and democratising the means by which our lives are reproduced e.g housing, education, energy and healthcare. 

A nostalgic call for the reconstruction of the post-war welfare state is inadequate: not only because of the role of imperialism in making it possible and the lack of an economic basis for its revival now, but also because we need to begin to articulate an ecosocialist vision of freedom and of ‘the good life’. Imperialist capitalism has caused endless social and ecological destruction. In response, we need to put forward the case – today –  that another world is possible. A world in which our lives and our sense of fulfilment and freedom are no longer tied to our ability to consume products that don’t make us happy or free. These are crumbs from the table of the ruling class built on the oppression and exploitation of the masses, especially in the global south, on ecologically unequal exchange and the destruction of the planet. The necessity and urgency of a class-based ecological politics which connects our day to day needs and our planetary future cannot be understated. We don’t put much hope in the Green Party to provide this, mainly because of its lack of a clear and inspiring politics and relatedly, its lack of a strong working-class base. However, we respect the efforts of comrades trying to change that, and believe that any new party must at least coordinate with the Greens electorally.

Social movements and workers movements

‘Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories … ‘

-Amilcar Cabral, ‘Tell no lies, Claim no easy victories…’

One of the core reasons we are having this discussion is because of the Palestinian struggle, and the global solidarity movement that rose up in response to the genocide. This mass social movement created the energy and the anger, as well as some of the organising structures, that got five independent MPs elected and secured strong results for many other candidates. Who knows what conversations we’d be having if none of that had happened, but there would not be the energy or the urgency around the idea of a new left party that there is now. This isn’t the first time a social movement has led to a political shift in the landscape of elections. Sometimes it can have a seismic impact; the emergence of Corbynism is inconceivable without the anti-war and anti-austerity movements.

Social movements aren’t just an add-on for the real work of class struggle. Social movements are often how classes struggle. And they can be left or right, just as class struggle isn’t something only exploited classes in society do. Reform is partly operating a social movement, in a complex relationship with Tommy Robinson protesters and organised fascists. Part of the groundswell of energy behind this is a racist reaction against seeing hundreds of thousands of people in the streets marching for Palestine every weekend. 

Why is this point so important? Workplace organising will always be a key site of politicisation, but other social struggles, from BLM, Palestine solidarity, housing struggles, climate protests, feminist organising, are also key ways that people are politicising in the current moment. On our side, people are developing deeper understandings of racism and imperialism, economics and geopolitics, through struggle. The upturn in Palestine solidarity has been one of the most intense and for that reason one of the most radicalising in recent history – one of the reasons as well that people use the phrase ‘Palestine is freeing us’. Social movements are riven with contradictions, really hard to organise and sustain, and there are many ways the state can manage and deflect them. However, what’s clear is that any new party must be conscious that much of the mass energy in the class right now is coming from social movements. 

We have to commit to building the workers movement however we can, because it’s one of the crucial tools for building class power, and any party should be rooted in workplace organising and ideally supported by unions too. That means reckoning with the state of the workers movement today. There are no great strike waves or workers’ struggles at the moment on the scale they were when some of our left institutions were forged. We had a significant strike wave in 2023, but the workers movement is a shadow of what it was fifty years ago. This is not only a problem for the workers movement. The limitations of social movements not adequately connected to struggles in workplaces are evident in the inability of the Palestine solidarity movement to stop the genocide over the last 18 months. Our strongest tool – our labour and our ability to withdraw it – has been marginal to these struggles. Union leaderships, particularly that of Sharon Graham in Unite, have also been organising against the connection between organisers and Palestine campaigners, deepening this issue. So we know that rebuilding class power in the unions is key to struggles around our own lives but also to those of our siblings in Palestine and elsewhere. 

This process is not going to be quick, and it’s also not going to be enough. If a new party is formed, there will need to be a struggle from rank and file activists within the unions to get their institutions on board, to give resources and platforms to the party but without the bureaucracy trying to dominate it as happened with the fiasco of Enough is Enough. Centrally, we must look to social movements as a key base of any new left formation that emerges. That formation should not only be a response to social movements, but also an expression of those movements, by being rooted in them. 

Being rooted in these movements not only means a rootedness in these aspects of class struggle, but also means building coalitions and consciousness through fighting different battles, as well as winning space, time and energy for more working class organising. That will do a thousand times more than just mobilising for electoral work.

Organisational and strategic questions

We are committed to building a mass revolutionary party. But the political context we are in is not one in which that is possible in the short or medium term. Revolutionaries can and should engage with broader left projects when the time is right. In a non-revolutionary moment, the work is building class power and class consciousness. A new party could empower militant forces to make progress. That progress is crucial to any social mass revolution ever becoming possible. 

But what is actually likely to happen next? Will a new left party be founded that can unite independent MPs and candidates who came 2nd in 2024, with a membership structure allowing it to grow and build power, and be linked to struggles beyond the doorstep? Or will we instead have to make do with some kind of loose network between candidates and their teams, where the main opportunity to get involved will be a flurry of pre-election campaigning with the political message decided from the top down? Whatever happens, there will be at least one guaranteed fracture on the left of Labour – between any new force and the Green party. They will need to come to terms and cooperate electorally to mount any challenge to the big parties and Reform.

Ideally we’d need MPs on board to give the new party momentum, a platform to reach people, and to make it electorally viable. But if they do join, there need to be ways for the membership to hold them to account. Without this, we would likely see issues where elected representatives betray the politics of the organisation that won them their seats. This is happening in the Democratic Socialists of America, with AOC and others shifting to the right. This is a question of both the politics of these MPs and the democratic setup of any new formation. 

We can’t do much to shift the former; But the latter brings us to a crucial set of points: it is vital that:

• any new party is shaped by its membership through democratic processes
• that it is rooted in class struggle and attempts to give political articulation to it, including through non-electoral organising and campaigning
• that its leadership or any elected leaders who are members are accountable to and recallable by that membership,
• and that it holds space for revolutionaries and factional organising. 

Without these, a party has a really limited horizon.

A new party would likely be brought into formal existence by individuals and small groups with institutional power and connectedness. The agenda may be set from the top, and it is probably idealistic to suggest that a new party could be formed in a different manner given the current state of the left and its disorganisation. But it must be made clear that the party will be significantly limited if it does not shift from this mode of politics towards one that is participatory and democratic and engages with the thousands of activists who could make up its core. 

The best case scenario in the short term is a left party that does these things and brings together some of the MPs. It should be radical, democratic, and geared to organise much more than just election campaigns, forging new political constituencies and coalitions in the process. Nobody living has seen a party like this in Britain – one that can connect the energy of the streets and grassroots struggles with workers organising, amplifying these struggles in parliament. It would truly be a party of a new type.

Who’s afraid of elections?

For some this vision of a new party may sound utopian, but for us and many other revolutionaries, socialists, communists, this is a compromise. We want to see a revolutionary transformation of society, and we’ll be working with people – quite possibly a majority of the party – who disagree about the end goal or how we get there (for now!)

We believe electoral work is necessary, but that doesn’t mean we think there’s a clear route to winning significant wins through elections any time soon. Even if there is a new party, we are highly sceptical that it should aim at winning state power through elections. Only with the emergence of revolutionary conditions and a revolutionising of the party into one that makes clear demands for total socialist transformation with a communist horizon could it take state power. 

Why? Gaining state power through elections, within a British state still welded to its repressive apparatus, at a time of economic stagnation and renewed inter-imperialist rivalry, should not be the goal. The party would be stuck managing a declining British capitalism, under relentless siege from all angles, as elected radical left parties have often found themselves. A real social revolution would mean working to disintegrate and smash the British state, rather than working within its confines. 

We are far away from a revolutionary moment. But a new left party could bring us closer to that horizon. If it engages seriously with workers and social movements, it could build consciousness, self-activity and power in ways that put us several steps closer to that horizon. 

Leaps, leaps, leaps!

‘Gradualism explains nothing without Leaps. Leaps! Leaps! Leaps!’ 

– Lenin, Conspectus of Hegel’s book The Science of Logic (1914)

Given the uncertainty over what this new formation will look like, both because of the uncertain orientation of left MPs and because the forces that are likely to cohere a new formation are operating behind closed doors, we have to think about what we do if we get a party (or ‘network’) that politically, strategically and/or organisationally fits into the worst case scenarios that we’ve outlined. To put it another way, what do we do if the new party is shit? 

The last five years have been radicalising for a lot of people – the defeat of Corbynism pushed some into inactivity, but others into the far left. The social movements discussed above, especially the Palestine movement, has politicised and radicalised hundreds of thousands more. Our organisation has grown, and other Marxist organisations have too. The new comrades who have joined us are bringing new energy and new ideas, contributing to reshaping rs21. That is likely also happening in other left organisations. Things can sometimes feel so stagnant on the left that change feels impossible, but sometimes the change isn’t always visible to start with.

We are organising in the streets, in workplaces, in our communities. Without an electoral project there is still huge amounts of work to be done in the struggle, and to be clear, lots of it could never be done by electing politicians. And some of the work of fighting against Reform and building class power can be done without a party – in our labour and tenant unions and our social movements and our communities – it is just going to be much, much harder without a mass vehicle, active around the country, that uses the opportunities of bourgeois democracy to agitate for a radical alternative to the status quo or new forms of reactionary rightism. 

Whatever project might emerge, the only way to stop the energy behind it dying in bureaucratic backroom deals will be socialists rooted in struggle organising together. There are probably thousands more radical (even revolutionary) socialists not currently in an organisation, than there are in the memberships of the far left groups. We are making a pitch for you to join us at the best of times. But if the worst happens and we end up with nothing but a life-raft network of independent MPs and no party to be seen, then we’re going to need each other even more. If there are no leaders, together we’ll have to make some. If there is no party, together we’ll have to build one.