Abandoning the Masses: How Left Voice's Opposition to 'Useful Parties' Repeats Classical Ultra-Left Errors

A Revolutionary Socialist Response to "Broad Left Parties Are a Dead End"

Introduction: Confronting the Ultra-Left Error

The contemporary rejection of broad left parties by certain revolutionary currents represents a dangerous repetition of classical ultra-left errors that have plagued the socialist movement since its inception. This position, which masquerades as revolutionary purity, in fact abandons the masses and retreats into sectarian isolation precisely when the working class movement faces its most profound crisis of organization, consciousness, and leadership.

Left Voice's polemic "Broad Left Parties Are a Dead End" exemplifies this error in its most sophisticated form. While avoiding the crude sectarianism of smaller groups, their analysis reveals the same mechanical thinking that treats organizational forms as sacred principles rather than tactical instruments serving revolutionary content. Their rigid adherence to what they imagine as "Leninist orthodoxy" would be unrecognizable to Lenin himself, whose genius lay precisely in his dialectical approach to revolutionary strategy.

As Ernest Mandel's masterful analysis of the German Revolution demonstrates, the revolutionary movement has repeatedly faced this fundamental strategic choice: engage with the masses where they are, or maintain ideological purity in splendid isolation. The tragedy of March 1921, when the German Communist Party launched an ultra-left adventure that decimated its membership and influence, stands as a permanent warning against the seductive simplicity of pure revolutionary posturing.

We anticipate that critics will charge us with "liquidationism" and "opportunism"—the standard sectarian response when confronted with strategic complexity. But this misrepresents our position fundamentally. We argue not for organizational merger but for tactical engagement combined with absolute preservation of revolutionary independence. The useful party strategy explicitly requires maintaining the capacity for strategic withdrawal—the very opposite of liquidationist practice.

The Historical Context: Beyond the Crisis of Leadership

The decline of traditional social democracy created the very conditions that make broad left formations both necessary and problematic. As documented throughout our movement's analysis, the post-war economic boom allowed social democratic parties to act as mediators between capital and labor, implementing significant reforms while becoming deeply integrated into the capitalist state apparatus. However, with the rise of neoliberalism from the 1970s onwards, these parties increasingly abandoned their traditional working-class base and socialist aspirations, embracing austerity measures and market-friendly policies.

This rightward shift created what Michael Löwy would recognize as a classic example of the uneven and combined development of political consciousness. A profound political vacuum opened up, creating space for genuinely anti-capitalist formations, but also exposing the contradictions inherent in attempting to build revolutionary politics within capitalist democratic frameworks.

However, the current situation represents more than Trotsky's 1938 formulation of a "crisis of leadership." We face what can only be characterized as a triple crisis: of leadership, consciousness, and mass organization. Revolutionary critics who act as if the sole obstacle to socialist revolution is an absence of revolutionary leadership substitute the narrow interests of revolutionary groups for the interests of the working class as a whole. This mechanical approach ignores the qualitative changes in working-class composition, consciousness, and organization that characterize the neoliberal epoch.

The Fourth International's response—advocating for the formation of new, broad left parties—represented a principled attempt to fill this vacuum while recognizing these changed conditions. Early experiments like the Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil and the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC) in Italy initially demonstrated significant promise, mobilizing new layers of activists and achieving considerable electoral success. However, these experiences also revealed the critical pitfalls: both parties eventually moved toward participation in austerity governments, leading to widespread disillusionment and the compromise of their initial radicalism.

The Strategic Logic of "Useful Parties": A Dialectical Approach

The evolution toward "useful parties" in the 21st century represents a sophisticated refinement of the broad party strategy, informed by these earlier experiences. As our analysis demonstrates, this concept is designed to "bridge the gap between active intervention in social struggles and electoral work," while incorporating built-in mechanisms for strategic disengagement when parties cease to serve their revolutionary purpose.

This approach embodies what Mandel understood as the dialectical nature of revolutionary strategy. The concept of "useful parties" establishes clear, pragmatic criteria for engagement: does this formation genuinely advance the class struggle and anti-capitalist goals? When it ceases to do so, continued participation compromises revolutionary integrity and blurs essential political lines.

Critics will undoubtedly claim this represents "unprincipled combination" or "strategic liquidation." But this fundamentally misrepresents our position. The useful party strategy explicitly requires:

1. Maintaining absolute programmatic independence while engaging tactically with broader formations

2. Preserving organizational capacity for strategic withdrawal when formations move rightward

3. Building revolutionary hegemony within mass movements rather than standing apart from them

4. Developing clear exit strategies that preserve revolutionary credibility for future interventions

This is not liquidationism but its opposite—a method for engaging with mass consciousness while preserving revolutionary independence. The experiences of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain illustrate both the potential and the limitations of this strategy. While these parties initially moved leftward and mobilized significant popular support, their subsequent rightward drift necessitated strategic withdrawal by revolutionary forces. This is not failure—it is the strategy working as intended, preserving revolutionary credibility for future interventions.

Answering the Sectarian Challenge: Lenin's Actual Method

Left Voice and similar currents will inevitably invoke Lenin as the apostle of organizational purity, but this represents a fundamental distortion of his actual method. Lenin's approach was far more pragmatic and oriented towards mass engagement than the rigid caricature suggests. His writings on the united front and his pragmatic approach to party building, particularly in "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder," demonstrate a willingness to work with non-revolutionary forces when strategically necessary.

Consider Lenin's actual practice rather than sectarian mythology:

• 1905: Worked within broader revolutionary organizations while maintaining Bolshevik independence

• 1912-1917: Built independent organization while engaging in extensive united front activities

• 1917: His tactics were specific to a revolutionary crisis with dual power—conditions that do not exist today

• 1921: Advocated the United Front policy despite fierce opposition from ultra-left elements

Lenin's method was dialectical—the ability to combine tactical flexibility with strategic firmness. The mechanical repetition of 1917 tactics in fundamentally different conditions represents not Leninist orthodoxy but its opposite: the transformation of historically specific tactics into timeless strategic principles.

Critics who invoke Lenin's opposition to coalition governments in 1917 reveal their mechanical approach to revolutionary strategy. Lenin's tactics were specific to revolutionary crisis in which dual power existed and the question of state power was immediately posed. Contemporary conditions are fundamentally different: we face not revolutionary crisis but the atomization and disorganization of the working class after decades of neoliberal assault.

The Ultra-Left Error: Abandoning the Masses

The "purely Leninist party" approach (which would be unrecognisable to Lenin) advocated by broad party critics suffers from several fatal flaws:

The Problem of Sectarian Isolation

In an era characterized by working-class fragmentation and generally low levels of political consciousness, a rigid, ideologically pure approach "often leads to sectarian isolation." Such organizations struggle to connect with broader layers of the working class and frequently fail to intervene effectively in significant political movements. This creates what our analysis identifies as a "self-fulfilling prophecy where the chosen organizational form actively hinders the stated revolutionary goal of mass leadership."

Revolutionary critics will claim that maintaining "purity" preserves revolutionary credibility for future interventions. But credibility cannot be preserved in isolation—it must be built through engagement with actual struggles. Workers and youth do not automatically recognize revolutionary leadership through propaganda alone; they must see it demonstrated in practice through participation in their concrete struggles.

Misunderstanding the Contemporary Crisis

The current situation is characterized by what we might call a "triple crisis"—of leadership, consciousness, and mass organization. This represents a qualitative shift from Trotsky's 1938 formulation of a "crisis of leadership." Revolutionaries who act as if the sole obstacle to socialist revolution is an absence of revolutionary leadership systematically ignore:

• The collapse of traditional mass organizations that once provided points of contact with working-class militants

• The fragmentation of left-wing consciousness across multiple issue-based movements

• The persistence of illusions in reformist solutions despite repeated historical betrayals

• The complexity of contemporary capitalism that requires new forms of organization and struggle.

In these conditions, the mechanical application of classical party-building methods faces severe structural limitations. The useful party strategy provides a method for revolutionaries to engage with actually existing mass consciousness while building toward revolutionary alternatives.

The Fetishism of Organizational Form

The ultra-left position reveals what Mandel would recognize as a mechanical rather than dialectical approach to organization. It treats the party form as sacred, regardless of its effectiveness in connecting with mass struggles. This represents what could be called the fetishism of the revolutionary party—treating the organizational form as an end in itself rather than as a means to revolutionary transformation.

Flexibility in organizational form can indeed serve revolutionary content, provided that revolutionary independence is vigilantly preserved through the mechanism of strategic disengagement. Critics who denounce this as "opportunism" mistake tactical adaptation for strategic capitulation.

Learning from Concrete Experience: The Argentina Model

Critics will undoubtedly point to the Workers Left Front (FIT-U) in Argentina as proof that revolutionary unity is possible without broad party engagement. We welcome this example—but it actually vindicates rather than contradicts our analysis.

The FIT-U emerged precisely from the successful application of useful party principles. Consider the trajectory of the Socialist Workers Movement (MST), originally the largest Trotskyist organization in Argentina. The MST's experience with Proyecto Sur—a broad left formation that eventually collapsed into bourgeois liberalism—demonstrates both the risks and the necessity of strategic engagement.

The MST's temporary participation in Proyecto Sur, followed by strategic withdrawal when it moved rightward, preserved their forces for eventual principled unity with other revolutionary currents in the FIT-U. Had they adopted the sectarian approach of refusing all engagement, they would have remained isolated while other forces built the foundation for revolutionary unity.

The FIT-U's current success in leading factory occupations and workers' struggles demonstrates that revolutionary influence in the class struggle cannot be built through propaganda alone—it requires organic connection with mass movements developed through decades of patient engagement, not sectarian isolation.

Critics who celebrate the FIT-U while denouncing broad party engagement ignore this crucial context. The FIT-U represents not an alternative to our strategy but its successful application under specific Argentine conditions.

By the Fight and In the Fight: The United Front Method

The essence of revolutionary strategy in the current period must be guided, as our comrades in RISE explain, by the principle of being both "by the fight and in the fight." This means revolutionaries must be "on the frontline of the re-organisation of the working class and the redevelopment of its consciousness—politically, in workplaces and in communities."

Engaging Where the Masses Are

The United Front method, as developed by Lenin and applied by revolutionaries like Clara Zetkin, remains essential for winning over the masses as a precondition to winning power. This tactic recognizes that revolutionary consciousness develops through struggle, not through propaganda alone. As our Irish comrades demonstrate, this means engaging with formations like Sinn Féin not out of illusions about their leadership, but as a method to break working class people from Sinn Féin and to the socialist left.

The method is clear to RISE: "Starting with the point of agreement we had with the potential electoral base... we used that to illustrate in practice that [reformist parties were] not going to deliver on those expectations." This is the United Front in action—tactical engagement that exposes reformist limitations through practical experience.

Critics who invoke the United Front as purely tactical miss that tactic’s deeper strategic logic: exposing reformist limitations through practical experience rather than abstract denunciation.

Revolutionary organizations must seek to build what could be called revolutionary hegemony within broader movements. This means participating enthusiastically in climate activism, housing struggles, anti-racist movements, and trade union battles—not as external recruiters, but as organic components helping to build these movements while advancing anti-capitalist perspectives.

The Question of "Principled Compromise"

Sectarian critics will charge that any engagement with non-revolutionary forces constitutes "unprincipled compromise." But this mechanical approach ignores the dialectical relationship between tactics and strategy. Tactical engagement with reformist forces, designed to expose their limitations through practical experience, differs qualitatively from strategic alliance based on programmatic agreement.

The useful party strategy maintains this crucial distinction by preserving the capacity for strategic withdrawal. When broad formations move rightward—as they inevitably do under capitalist pressure—revolutionary forces exit while retaining the credibility built through their participation in struggles. This is not opportunism but strategic positioning for future re-entry into new struggles.

The DSA Question: Concrete Analysis of Concrete Conditions

In the United States, the growth of the Democratic Socialists of America to over 90,000 members creates opportunities that revolutionaries cannot ignore through sectarian abstention. Critics [including Left Voice] will claim the DSA has become a left cover for the Democratic Party's rightward drift, but this mechanical characterization (widely and understandably held by many Trotskyists) often ignores the complex internal dynamics within the organization and the consciousness of its membership [for example, the review by Peter Drucker of Kim Moody’s excellent history of the strategic impasse of the Democratic party notes that “Moody may however somewhat underestimate the relative autonomy of politics, which can make even electoralist left forces useful for brief periods to a limited degree”].

The DSA contains tens of thousands of members who joined precisely because they reject Democratic Party politics. While the organization's leadership may be moving rightward, significant sections of the membership remain open to revolutionary politics. The sectarian strategy of standing apart ensures that these members will be abandoned to reformist leadership rather than won to revolutionary perspectives.

Our approach does not involve "liquidating" into the DSA but engaging with its membership while building independent revolutionary alternatives. This means:

• Participating in DSA campaigns that advance working-class interests while maintaining programmatic independence

• Building revolutionary networks within and around DSA structures

• Offering clear alternatives when DSA leadership betrays its stated principles

• Preparing for strategic withdrawal when continued engagement no longer serves revolutionary purposes

This tactical engagement differs fundamentally from the strategic support that characterized earlier broad party experiences. The goal is not to transform the DSA into a revolutionary organization but to win its most advanced members to revolutionary politics while building independent alternatives.

The Necessity of Independent Revolutionary Organization

None of this negates the absolute necessity of maintaining independent revolutionary organization. The broad party strategy is not liquidationism—it requires what Dave Packer called the maintenance of organised revolutionary tendencies in broad parties. This independent core serves multiple crucial functions that critics often ignore:

1. Preserving Revolutionary Memory

The revolutionary organization acts as the repository of revolutionary memory, ensuring the lessons of past struggles are retained. In an era of rapid political change and frequent disappointments, this historical consciousness becomes essential for understanding when tactical shifts are necessary. Without this organizational continuity, each generation must rediscover revolutionary principles through bitter experience.

2. Strategic Flexibility and Exit Capacity

The ability to exit broad formations when they move rightward is not abandonment—it is strategic positioning for future re-entry into new struggles. As Anticapitalistas demonstrated, after leaving Podemos, revolutionary organizations that maintain their independence and principled stance can offer credible alternatives when ‘useful party’ formations alienate their base through rightward movement.

3. Cadre Development

The revolutionary organization serves as the essential training ground for future cadres. This involves not just theoretical education, but practical experience in applying revolutionary strategy across different political conjunctures. The useful party strategy provides unparalleled opportunities for this development through engagement with mass movements while maintaining revolutionary perspectives.

Learning from Mandel: The German Revolution's Lessons

Ernest Mandel's analysis of the German Revolution provides crucial insights for contemporary debates that anticipate and answer sectarian criticisms. The tragedy of the German Communist Party was not that it became too large or too broad, but that it oscillated between ultra-left adventurism and mechanical opportunism, never achieving the dialectical balance necessary for revolutionary leadership.

The March Action of 1921 stands as a permanent warning against ultra-left impatience. As Mandel documented, this adventure almost immediately dealt a very hard blow to this party, throwing it very far back and making it lose an enormous number of members. The party had become a mass organization of "half a million members" through unification with left-wing Independent Social Democrats, but this potential was squandered through sectarian tactics.

Even more tragically, when the party later adopted the correct United Front policy under Brandler's leadership, achieving remarkable success in connecting with mass struggles, the missed opportunity of 1923 led to a retreat back toward ultra-leftism. This demonstrates how organizational forms must serve revolutionary content, not the reverse.

Contemporary sectarians who invoke the German experience typically focus on the KPD's ultimate failure while ignoring Mandel's crucial insight: the party's tragedy lay in its inability to maintain dialectical balance between mass orientation and revolutionary initiative. The useful party strategy represents an attempt to achieve this balance under contemporary conditions.

Against "Pure Trotskyism": Dialectical Strategy for Complex Times

The rejection of broad party engagement often cloaks itself in appeals to Trotskyist orthodoxy, but this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Trotsky's method. Trotsky's genius lay not in rigid adherence to organizational formulas, but in his dialectical approach to revolutionary strategy—his ability to analyze concrete conditions and adapt tactics accordingly while maintaining strategic principles.

Michael Löwy's work on combined and uneven development provides the theoretical framework for understanding why mechanical approaches fail. Revolutionary consciousness develops unevenly, creating complex political formations that require sophisticated strategic responses. The broad party strategy represents an attempt to work with this uneven development rather than against it.

The Sectarian Temptation

The appeal of sectarian purity is understandable—it offers clear lines, simple answers, and the comfort of righteousness. But this approach inevitably isolates revolutionary organizations from the broader working class and social movements, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where the chosen organizational form actively hinders the stated revolutionary goal of mass leadership.

Critics will argue that maintaining "purity" preserves revolutionary credibility for future interventions. But credibility cannot be preserved in isolation from struggle. Revolutionary leadership must be demonstrated through practice, not proclaimed through propaganda. The sectarian approach substitutes organizational form for revolutionary content, treating the party as an end in itself rather than as an instrument of class struggle.

Revolutionary Realism vs. Sectarian Idealism

The useful party strategy embodies what Michael Löwy calls Marx's revolutionary realism—the ability to work with the world as it is while fighting to transform it into what it should be. This means engaging with actually existing mass movements and political formations, not the idealized movements that exist only in sectarian imagination.

This revolutionary realism requires accepting that:

• Mass consciousness develops unevenly and cannot be transformed through propaganda alone

• Revolutionary opportunities emerge through engagement with contradictory political formations

• Organizational flexibility serves revolutionary content when combined with principled independence

• Strategic withdrawal preserves revolutionary credibility for future interventions

The Path Forward: Complexity and Adaptation

The defense of broad party engagement does not mean uncritical support for every left formation. Rather, it means developing a necessarily complex approach that inherently rejects the allure of simplistic, dogmatic solutions. Revolutionary politics in the 21st century cannot be reduced to a fixed formula; it demands constant theoretical refinement and practical adaptation based on concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

This complexity reflects the multifaceted nature of contemporary class struggle. The traditional model of the industrial working class organized in mass parties no longer captures the full reality of modern capitalism. New fields of struggle have emerged around housing, ecology, and social reproduction that require new forms of organization and engagement.

Building Revolutionary Hegemony

The concept of revolutionary hegemony, developed by Antonio Gramsci, provides crucial insights for understanding how revolutionary forces can build influence within civil society rather than waiting for revolutionary crisis to resolve all contradictions. This requires what Gramsci called the "war of position"—patient work within existing institutions and movements to build revolutionary consciousness and organization.

The useful party strategy represents one method for conducting this war of position under contemporary conditions. By engaging with broad formations while maintaining independent organization, revolutionary forces can build influence within mass movements while preserving the capacity for strategic leadership when crisis conditions emerge.

The Steam and the Piston Box

Trotsky's metaphor of steam and the piston box remains relevant but requires reinterpretation for contemporary conditions "Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box but the steam."

The task is not to build the perfect organizational form but to channel mass energy toward revolutionary goals through whatever organizational means prove effective. This may require working within and alongside reformist formations while building independent revolutionary organization—the very approach that sectarian critics denounce as opportunism.

As RISE comrades explain, this means that "mass revolutionary parties capable of measuring up to the historic challenges before them will not be built linearly from the small revolutionary groups today." They must be "consciously built as part of the reconstruction and re-emergence of a 'vanguard', or advanced section of working class people generally."

Conclusion: Avoiding the Dual Pitfalls

The Fourth International's evolving strategy toward broad and useful parties represents a dynamic and necessary approach for revolutionary socialists in the 21st century. This strategy offers the most viable path for revolutionary socialists to connect with, influence, and ultimately lead mass movements, effectively avoiding the dual pitfalls of reformist co-option and sectarian isolation.

We anticipate that critics will charge us with abandoning revolutionary principles in pursuit of mass influence. But the opposite is true: we seek to apply revolutionary principles to the concrete conditions of contemporary capitalism rather than mechanically repeating formulas developed under different historical circumstances.

The emphasis on strategic complexity and the built-in mechanism for exit distinguishes this approach from both reformist liquidationism and ultra-left sectarianism. It recognizes that revolutionary organizations must be fluid and adaptable, capable of entering and leaving different political formations based on their strategic utility, while maintaining their independent revolutionary core.

The path forward requires what Michael Löwy calls Marx’s revolutionary realism—the ability to work with the world as it is while fighting to transform it into what it should be. This means engaging with actually existing mass movements and political formations, not the idealized movements that exist only in sectarian imagination.

The alternative—the pure revolutionary party standing apart from mass struggles—represents not revolutionary commitment but revolutionary abdication. It abandons the masses to reformist leadership precisely when revolutionary intervention is most needed. This represents a profound error that not only hinders revolutionary goals but abandons the masses in their hour of greatest need.

Critics may denounce this as "opportunism" or "liquidationism," but these charges cannot obscure the fundamental choice before us: engage in the complex, contradictory work of building revolutionary politics within and alongside mass movements, or retreat into the comfortable irrelevance of sectarian purity.

For those committed to the revolutionary transformation of society, there can be only one answer. The masses are in motion—our task is to be by the fight and in the fight, building revolutionary influence through engagement while maintaining the independent organization necessary for strategic leadership. History will not wait for our organizational preferences to be validated—it demands that we engage with it as it unfolds, not as we wish it would unfold.