Can’t we all just get along? Thoughts on class unity and anti-capitalist unity

A number of new radical groups have emerged over the last year. Among them is the Anti-Capitalist Initiative, which seems to have been set up by a number of activists who come from a Trotskyist background, but are willing to reassess some aspects of that tradition. It’s always healthy to take a critical look at what you’ve been doing to work out where you might be going wrong, but I’m not that convinced by the ACI’s answer: judging by the fact that they’ve just published an article on their own site calling for left unity, and another on the Commune’s website making essentially the same case, it seems that calls for greater left unity are going to be a major defining feature of the new group. The anarchist critique of “left unity” is one that’s been made a number of times before, most sharply in the article “Why left unity is a noose around the neck of the working class in struggle” but also in my own pieces “No to cuts, yes to what?” and “On ‘infighting’ and the left”. Having said all that, it’s also quite likely that we’ll continue to see calls for unity for as long as tiny leftist groups continue to exist, which may well turn out to be for as long as capitalism does, so it’s worth returning to the subject from time to time, especially since my own views might have developed a bit since I last wrote about it.
Essentially, one of my main problems with left unity drives is that they focus on the tiny minority of people who already have revolutionary ideas, and not the huge majority of the population who don’t. This focus is, in many ways, entirely understandable: when talking to other activists, we can guarantee that we’ll share certain cultural reference points that’ll make communication smoother. It doesn’t really matter whether those reference points are shared memories of early-2000s summit protests, collections of Crass Records 7”s, or an interest in organisational debates in the First International: what matters is that they’re there, and knowing we have these shared interests gives us a comfort zone that we don’t always have when talking to other people. If everyone else at your work spent the evening before watching the X-Factor, and you spent it discussing Kronstadt or reading up on value theory, that can seem like a pretty major obstacle to creating the kind of bonds that are so vital to successful workplace organising.  Of course, this article in itself is another expression of the tendency for revolutionaries to write for other revolutionaries rather than for the unconverted. The desire to stick to places where we feel comfortable is something that shouldn’t be sneered at: considering how homophobic, racist and sexist mainstream society often is, it can be really important for us to have some safe spaces where we can feel reasonably confident that we won’t be made to feel uncomfortable for who we are.
But however understandable this tendency can be, it’s also pretty useless as a general orientation: the revolution won’t be made by the few hundreds or thousands of people who’re already anarchists or Marxists, but by the millions who aren’t. The active, deliberate participation of the great mass of the population is absolutely vital to any revolution worth the name: their conscious involvement isn’t just the difference between a revolution that succeeds and one that fails, it’s the starting point that’s necessary before we can even really be said to have tried.
To focus on building unity with other activists first and foremost is essentially to stick with the “if we build it, they will come” approach to organisation, where we first need to get our own house in order, and then everyone else will flock to us. Whether the problem is diagnosed as disorganisation, theoretical confusion, or squabbling and disunity, the important thing is that it’s something internal to the movement, that we can put right and all will be well. But sadly, I don’t think things are as easy as that. I think the problem is that our ideas don’t make sense.
That’s a bold claim to make, so I’ll explain it a bit: I do believe that our essential ideas are correct, but I don’t think they fit with the reality that most people live in. In a culture where it’s normal for people to take collective action to improve or defend their standard of living, then communist/anarchist ideas are naturally going to make sense to people, as the most consistent and coherent expressions of those struggles. But in the UK, those kinds of collective struggles are mostly absent from our cultural memory. The definitive narrative of a mass working-class struggle in the UK in recent history is still the Miner’s Strike. Considering how that one ended, is it any surprise that people aren’t exactly flocking to our banners when we call for more class struggle?
This means that the point isn’t to fine-tune and perfect our arguments, or to find more attractive ways of presenting them; it’s to make the shift from a culture where our ideas don’t make sense to one where they do. As a materialist, I don’t believe that struggles come from consciousness, but vice versa. Whether we’re in work, claiming benefits, or studying, we all face problems that directly affect our own lives, and the lives of the people around us; it’s by focusing on these issues that we can start to build the unity we really need, one based on our class position rather than our ideological identity. The student movement that just defeated fee rises in Quebec and the successes achieved by the Sparks network of electricians are the two best recent, large-scale examples of this kind of material unity; more recently still, thinking about the demonstration on October 20th, some of the best action on the day came not from any of the competing political vanguards seeking to sell their version of leadership, but from the Black Triangle/Disabled People Against Cuts contingent who blockaded Park Lane.
The fact that a group of people defined by their shared material position as benefit claimants were able to provide better practical leadership than any of the revolutionary political groups defined by their ideological positions is something that should cause serious reflection among anyone who still hopes to offer political leadership to the working class. If members of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative focus on building practical, day-to-day unity with their fellow workers, claimants or students, following the example set by groups like DPAC or the Quebecois student association CLASSE, then they may be able to play some part in creating a culture where anti-capitalist ideas sound like common sense; if they choose to make left unity their main priority, then they may find out that they’re chasing a pipe dream.