The Politics of the Three Lefts

Principles, goals, and strategies divide the US left into at least three camps: a progressive left, a democratic left, and a hard left.

Three locomotives parked in Richmond, VA. (Marty Bernard / Flickr)

I’ll return in a few weeks to continue my series on the Democratic Party and socialist electoral strategy (see: part one and part two). Today though I share a few thoughts on left-wing political pluralism.

The left, much like the center and right, is not dominated by a single coherent political program or organization. This is true across the world. In many countries there is more than one party of the center and of the right, so too are there multiple parties of the left. An appreciation and acceptance of a pluralist approach to the left is clarifying for a number of reasons, from figuring out the natural organizational dividing lines between rival theories of change to demarcating sharp breaks between different sets of principles.

Each country for its own historical reasons has different divisions inside its right, center, and left camps. In Germany, for example, there are at least three clear left-wing camps: a democratic socialist one rooted in Die Linke, a progressive and cosmopolitan one that finds its home in the Green Party, and a labor and traditional center left anchored in the Social Democratic Party.

The United States, for its own historical reasons, has at least three lefts: a progressive left, a democratic socialist left (which for simplicity’s sake I’ll call the democratic left below), and a hard left. Without a multiparty system these camps are not clearly separated into different parties. Nevertheless the differences are real. The key distinctions: Unlike its counterparts, the progressive left has no vision of a better world beyond a more humane capitalism. Both the democratic and hard lefts are pursuing an end to capitalism. The hard left, on the other hand, has no solid and principled commitment to democratic norms (what it would likely criticize disparagingly as “bourgeois” or “liberal” rights) — either in its internal organizational forms or its vision for society. Both the democratic and progressive lefts insist on a more fundamental commitment to small-d democracy.

What follows are short sketches of each camp.

The Progressive Left

The progressive left is led by politicians like Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and Ro Khanna. It includes the Working Families Party, much of the progressive nonprofit world, and many in the AFL-CIO and other major unions who follow the politics of what labor lawyer Joe Burns calls “labor liberalism.” 

The progressive left draws its financial support primarily from affluent donors and some progressive foundations, which provide it with sufficient resources to dominate the wider left in national debates. Its social base is among professionals and older left-leaning Democrats, and it reads publications like the Nation and the American Prospect. Progressives take their cues from the likes of Robert Reich and the more left-leaning columnists of the New York Times.

The progressive left is an ardent believer in a version of the junior partner strategy and is very supportive of the idea of a “popular front” uniting all centrist and left-leaning forces behind Democrats. It is deeply uncomfortable with too direct a challenge to the existing Democratic Party. Progressives prioritize a legislative strategy and grassroots lobbying to win reforms that will soften the edges of what some on the progressive left call “crony capitalism,” the goal being to “save capitalism” from itself. It leans toward support for the Western bloc of the United States and Europe (NATO) in global politics, though it can be critical of this bloc. The progressive left tends to be ambivalent about choosing sides between Israel and Palestine, defending the Israeli state while criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and atrocities in Gaza.

The progressive left’s activist core number in the thousands and is dominated by full-timers for various foundations, community orgs, elected politicians, and unions. Its supporter base must be in the high hundreds of thousands or a few million, though these are mostly passive supporters whose activity is limited to donating, voting, and following progressive media.

The Democratic Left

The democratic left is anchored in democratic, open-membership organizations. The Democratic Socialists of America is the dominant force of the democratic left, and it exists alongside various reform caucuses within the labor movement. It aspires to encompass the left wing of the labor movement, including many in the reformed United Auto Workers and other reformed local unions across the country. 

It draws its financial support from small-donor members but has limited resources. It contains many tendencies that are prone to disagreement and debate among themselves. The democratic left reads publications like Jacobin, In These Times, Labor Notes, and Dissent Magazine. It counts among its ranks politicians like Rashida Tlaib and many of DSA’s locally endorsed candidates. (Four years ago, I would not have hesitated to add Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the democratic left. Today I’d say they’re at least somewhere between the democratic and progressive left.) It draws its core activists from a similar class fraction of professionals plus workers in the service sector, but it skews younger than the progressive left.

The horizon of the democratic left is democratic socialism, a transition out of capitalism by way of a “democratic road.” It supports both electoral and workplace organizing to get there, as well as popular street mobilizations. It is comfortable with more aggressive challenges to the Democratic Party, though some on the democratic left are starting to embrace a popular front orientation. Democratic socialists are trying to build a more disciplined and independent electoral bloc within the Democratic Party. Some on the democratic left want to start contesting elections outside the Democratic Party in the near future, but are not opposed to efforts within the Democratic Party as well. The labor strategy of the democratic left is, as Joe Burns puts it, “class-struggle unionism.” The democratic left rejects both the Western bloc of the United States and Europe and the Eastern bloc of China and Russia. In the Palestine solidarity movement, the democratic left has been focused on supporting pro-Palestine members of Congress and efforts like the uncommitted campaign, though it also participates actively in mass mobilizations.

The democratic left’s activist core numbers in the thousands or low tens of thousands and is overwhelmingly made up of volunteers. Its supporter base is in the low hundreds of thousands (roughly the number of people who have at some point been in or around DSA).

The Hard Left

The hard left is led by top-down, undemocratic cadre organizations like the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). It is much smaller than either the progressive left or the democratic left, but has a more intense base of cadre and activists and substantial financial support from a handful of very wealthy donors, like Roy Singham. This financial base allows the hard left to support extremely successful media projects like BreakThrough News (which has almost a million subscribers on Youtube) and well-resourced headquarters like the People’s Forum in NYC. Intellectuals like Vijay Prashad are an important reference for the hard left.

Its goal is also an end to capitalism, but it readily defends the need to use authoritarian methods in the transition out of capitalism. It therefore tends to be strongly supportive of governments in Venezuela, North Korea, and Nicaragua, among others. It supports and defends these governments even when they repress dissent from the left and seek to control working-class organizations and social movements in order to hold on to power. To its credit, because of its long-term investment in the Palestine solidarity movement, the hard left has played an important role in street demonstrations and actions in the last year. 

The hard left is totally opposed to any activity inside the Democratic Party and prefers to run independent protest candidates. But its main focus is on mass mobilizations. Through front groups like the ANSWER coalition that have years of experience organizing rapid response demonstrations, the hard left is usually the first to respond to crises and to organize protests. Its biggest bases are in the big urban centers, especially New York City and Los Angeles. In its defense of the right to armed resistance to imperialist powers and occupations, it at times glorifies violence against civilians. The hard left is also supportive of the Eastern bloc of China and Russia in global politics, and some in its ranks look favorably on the return of a multipolar world order and geopolitical competition.

The hard left’s activist core numbers around a thousand or so (secrecy around membership numbers makes that hard to assess), and its supporter base must be some multiple of that. Its heavy investment in popular media could help it reach many more in the future.

Takeaways

I think understanding the pluralism of the left is important for at least two reasons.

First, for those of us in DSA, it ought to remind us how important it is to defend, strengthen, and reform DSA. As the preeminent organization of the democratic left, it provides a home and unites members of the democratic left. If it disappeared, many members of the democratic left might drift out of politics, and others would be pulled toward the progressive left or the more marginal hard left. The space for a real democratic socialist alternative in the wider left-wing family might close.

Second, understanding some of the key internal distinctions on the left ought to guide any ideas about the left’s future organizational forms. A sharp distinction between progressives’ commitment to “saving capitalism” on the one hand and democratic socialists’ and hard leftists’ ambition to go beyond it on the other is one key line of division. The progressive and democratic lefts’ firm commitment to democracy and political rights and the hard left’s ambivalent relationship to both is another.

These lines of division do not mean it’s impossible for all three of these lefts to work together towards specific goals. But — though conditions could change in the future — I would wager that any attempt to try to build a party or organization that spanned either line of division would be hard to sustain. While socialists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century dreamed of holding together a single party of the left, the development of capitalist reformism and authoritarian socialism as alternative currents on the left to democratic socialism makes such an ambition much harder to realize. This is not necessarily a problem, however. Acknowledging this reality can even be the precondition for having a healthier working relationship between the three lefts, for realizing what socialists of an earlier generation once called a “united front” of the left.