Progressive International: Globalize the Left

The left in virtually all countries has been on the defensive for at least forty years. The political right and big business neoliberals have been on the offensive, have become ideologically hegemonic and have won most of the big battles. The result of their victories and our defeats is an accumulation of problems of all sorts. Those problems are becoming increasingly visible to everyone. The financial crisis of 2007-8 was a turning point. Climate change is close to providing a second turning point, or wakeup call.

Can the left revive, reorganize and reinvent itself, and start going on the offensive again? The answer is yes. The intensifying and increasingly visible and overlapping crises create the opportunity to do so. These crises also, more soberingly, create the absolute necessity of doing so. A new organization – the Progressive International (PI) -- has been created at the global level that recognizes both the opportunity and the necessity. One of its slogans, ‘Internationalism or Extinction’, incarnates this idea. Even more so, its very name expresses the core insight behind its founding. What the world needs now is for all Progressives to unite, and for an International that can enable them to do so on a global level. The ruling classes of the world have globalized more than ever, so we can and must do so too, in order to start winning major victories again.

In December 2018, activists coming out of the progressive political left in Europe and the USA issued a call to form what now exists as the Progressive International (PI), a Common Front that would facilitate increasingly effective international solidarity actions, i.e. mutual support for local progressive struggles at a global level. The PI also aimed to be an organizational vehicle for waging struggles on globally shared issues at the global level. More specifically, the two key organizations making the call were the [Bernie] Sanders Institute and the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). The latter was founded by former Syriza party Greek government finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, and has chapters across Europe. The PI held its Inaugural Summit in Iceland in September 2020.

The Most Original and Interesting Idea is that Progressives Need to Globalize Too

The PI home page states what they try to do: “We unite, organize and mobilize progressive forces around the world”. Think of it as the next stage in the efforts of locally-based progressives in both the North and South (because the PI has quickly evolved to have the majority of its individual leaders and organization members come from the global South) to organize on the global level, a successor to the World Social Forums and Global Justice protests of the past 20 plus years. It is an attempt to achieve a significantly higher level of both (a) ‘unity of action’; and (b) ‘basis of unity’, i.e. shared theories/analyses, strategic societal change goals, and tactics (specific policy proposals and organizational means for achieving them).

My goal in this article is to persuade you and your organization to join the Progressive International, and then get others to join too. (I signed up as an individual member, but I have yet to participate in any of its activities; I write here as an outsider.). We progressives are already connected, and manage to hold widely based conferences, and mobilize coalitions on single issues and for single events, at the international level. But the world left has not yet gone beyond the networking and temporary coalition and single issue level of unity and organization. The PI proposes that we take the next step, and get serious about creating the ensemble of specialized and general institutions of our own Left Globalization Front, to provide a seriously organized, systematic multi-issue counter to world capitalism and globalized neoliberalism.

In this article, I will mostly explain what the PI proposes as the basis of unity -- the specification of broad goals and means, of principles and policies, of problems and solutions -- that can provide an orienting framework within which to wage our various specific struggles, campaigns and movements. I will return in future posts to what actions and activities it is organizing.

The PI Basis of Unity is as Important for What it Leaves Out as for What it Includes

I will argue that the PI basis of unity is as important for what it leaves out as for what it includes. The PI has done a good job of both. It highlights stances on the issues where explicit unity is essential if there is to be high-level joint action. It also recognizes where there is no unity within progressive forces anywhere, and mostly does not try to paper over the cracks. This is almost as important an achievement as specifying where we can agree, because it helps spell out an agenda for what left scholars and activists need to choose to study, debate and decide. Put simply, the left has developed major new insights into how and why different social groups are systematically disadvantaged over the past many decades, but its many specific movements have yet to cohere into a common Project for an alternative society. There is a lot of work to do. The PI can be an essential medium for doing it.

To see what I am referring to in the critique that follows below, go to the PI site (Progressive International ), click on the Who We Are tab, then About Us, to see the list of twelve adjectives that define ‘Our Vision’. Then click on the link near the bottom of that page to see the quite concise 25-point Political Declaration of the Progressive International from the September 2020 Summit.

The ‘basis of unity’ is quite close to my own proposal for a Ten Point Programme that states clear ideological principles and strategic goals for change, but expects progressive organizations and individuals (and countries/locations) to interpret and apply them differently. I have been excited about the PI since I discovered it, because its approach to uniting the broad left is very similar to the one that I have been developing in my essay posts on this site. See for example, Unite Around the Basics: Billy Graham’s Lesson for the Left and How to Use Left Populism to Win a Post-Work Economy .

The PI is more like a Global Popular Front than a Single-Party International

I will try to explain and evaluate what the PI is doing in its practical organizing activities, as an organized International, in a later post. This piece explains what the PI means by Progressive. But before I do that, let me clarify a few things about what the PI’s idea of an International is and is not.

The PI is not an attempt at a new International like the 2nd (Socialist) or 3rd (Bolshevik-led) Internationals, not yet anyway. It includes political parties in its membership, but it is equally made up of every other type of activist or social movement or mass organization. In historical terms, it comes closest to trying to be a 1930s anti-fascist Popular Front coalition of mass organizations and multiple left-leaning political parties.

The PI is not, however, like the 1930s Popular Fronts either inasmuch as it is not based on an analysis that some kind of Fascism is on the rise. The 1930s Popular Fronts called on leftists to set aside their efforts to replace capitalism with socialism, in order to ally with liberals and even conservatives, to beat back the threat of fascism first. The PI is not doing this. It recognizes the present balance of political forces that still heavily favour the Right. But the PI is built to enable the left to remount an offence, not (just) to organize a more effective defence.

The PI is a Global Coalition with Space for Creative Contention Within It

The September 2020 Political Declaration defines what it means by International in sixteen of the twenty-five one paragraph points (1-6, 9-11, 18-25). Here are the key phrases:

-- “Our mandate is to build the infrastructure for internationalism. The forces of progress remain fragmented, while wealth and power consolidate around the world. We build the scaffolding of a planetary front with the strength to fight and win.” (point IV)

-- “Our mission is to build a planetary front of progressive forces. We define progressive as the aspiration to a world that is: democratic, decolonised, just, egalitarian, liberated, feminist, ecological, peaceful, post-capitalist, prosperous, plural, and bound by radical love.” (point II)

-- “Our coalition reflects the diversity of struggle in the world. We welcome unions, parties, movements, publications, research centres, neighbourhood associations, and individual activists in their lonely struggle. Together, this coalition is greater than the sum of its parts, and powerful enough to remake the world.” (point XXIII)

-- “We seek unity through shared struggle. The present crisis demands the strategic alliance of all progressive forces. But coordination does not require submission. We aim to build a broad coalition, while making space for creative contention inside of it.” (point V)

-- “Our internationalism is intersectional: we believe that the layers of oppression sedimented by racial capitalism in the course of its imperial expansion demand that we center the frontline struggles for liberation at the base of global economy: for food, for land, for dignity, and for emancipation.” (point X)

There is a lot to unpack here, and I hope to do so in the near future. Meanwhile, I encourage you to go to the PI site and find out for yourself all the things that they are doing. Click on the What We Do tab and follow the links to see what its three main activities are at present – what it labels as ‘Movement’, ‘Blueprint’ and ‘Wire’.

Basis of Unity -- What is Progressive?

Point II of the Political Declaration lists a dozen adjectives that define the kind of world that all progressives aspire to. This is more or less the same set of strategic objectives specified in its Our Vision statement (“feminist” and “bound by radical love” are added in the Declaration, and “solidaristic” and “sustainable” are dropped):

“We aspire to a world that is:

• Democratic, where all people have the power to shape their institutions and their societies.

• Decolonised, where all nations determine their collective destiny free from oppression.

• Just, that redresses inequality in our societies and the legacy of our shared history.

• Egalitarian, that serves the interests of the many, and never the few.

• Liberated, where all identities enjoy equal rights, recognition, and power.

• Solidaristic, where the struggle of each is the struggle of all.

• Sustainable, that respects planetary boundaries and protects frontline communities.

• Ecological, that brings human society into harmony with its habitat.

• Peaceful, where the violence of war is replaced by the diplomacy of peoples.

• Post-capitalist, that rewards all forms of labour while abolishing the cult of work.

• Prosperous, that eradicates poverty and invests in a future of shared abundance.

• Plural, where difference is celebrated as strength.”

For a World that is Democratic, Decolonized, Equal, Ecological, Peaceful and Post-Capitalist

Assuming that the order of the points is intentional, the twelve points can be reduced to six by combining closely related ones as follows: Progressives share a basis of unity of seeking a world that is (1) Democratic and Plural; (2) Decolonized; (3) Just, Egalitarian and Liberated; (4) Sustainable and Ecological; (5) Solidaristic and Peaceful; (6) Post-Capitalist and Prosperous.

What kind of Basis of Unity (or set of Core Strategic Objectives to guide all of our more specific campaigns and struggles) is this? Who can it realistically unite and for what kinds of purposes? How will it make today’s progressive movements stronger and more effective? I cannot answer these questions fully, but I will start to do so by pointing out three things: what is included; what is excluded; and consequently, what individuals and organizations the PI are likely to be open to joining the Progressive International.

(1) WHAT THE PI BASIS OF UNITY INCLUDES

The 2020 Political Declaration expands on the Vision points. It does not make the basis of unity more coherent, only more specific and in some cases more rhetorically radical. The largest number of additions relate to Decolonization, understood in an updated Fanonian sense (where imperialism/colonization is the subjugation of racialized peoples within nation states as well as between nation states).

There are five main phrases related to this. The most important one, referring to “layers of oppression sedimented by racial capitalism in the course of its imperial expansion” was already quoted above. The others are:

-- “Our internationalism stands against imperialism in all its forms: from war and sanctions to privatization and ‘structural adjustment’” (from point VIII)

-- “Language Is Power… We speak in many languages” [and this right must be protected] (from point IX)

-- “We fight racism, casteism… white supremacy is an organizing principle of the world system. Our opposition to oppressive hierarchies is the foundation of our internationalism.” (from point XI)

-- “We do not settle for symbolic acts of decolonisation. Our demand is full reparations for past crimes and the immediate restoration of land, resources, and sovereignty to all the dispossessed peoples of the world.” (from point XII)

Decolonization means Overturning All the Layers of Oppression Created by Racial Capitalism

Decolonization = the overturning of the layers of oppression created during imperial expansion by racial capitalism, working outward from the most oppressed layers [in the global South].

Three other phrases are important for being both more specific and more radical than the Vision principles they expand upon, relating to capitalism, gender/sexuality and economic growth:

-- “We aspire to eradicate capitalism everywhere. We believe that exploitation, dispossession, and environmental destruction are written into the genetic code of capitalism. We do not support efforts to save this system, nor enable its expansion to all corners of the earth.” (point VII)

-- “Our aim is to break with the patriarchy while disrupting the binary structure of gender on which it relies.” (from point XIII)

-- “We do not measure progress with growth. The imperative of expansion is the engine of ecocide. We seek good ways of living, free from hunger and want, and we define our success by the quality of our collective coexistence.” (point XIV)

Capitalism Cannot Be Reformed. It Must Be Replaced.

Reduced to essentials, the PI basis of unity is: (1) Pluralist Democratization of all institutions (and implicitly all progressive organizations); (2) Decolonization to reverse the history of dispossession by racial capitalism; (3) Fight for Equality/Liberation “where all identities enjoy equal rights, recognition and power”; (4) Protect nature by restraining the economic growth imperative; (5) Peace (but not without Justice – see below); (6) Post-capitalism, meaning “eradicate capitalism everywhere”.

(2) WHAT THE PI BASIS OF UNITY LEAVES OUT

These six stances are definite enough as principled positions to give a definition of what can and should unite progressives all around the world. Or rather, as I will assert below, it can serve to unite almost all parts of the politically diverse left flank of progressive movements. This is what the PI needs to do if it is going to provide some leadership and direction to progressive movements (while rejecting being a non-pluralist, single party vanguard).

Here are some of the things that the PI either avoids, or apparently intentionally fudges. These omissions and fudges make it possible for people on the left flank of progressive movements with different politics to unite in common actions, while being guided by a clear-enough set of strategic social change goals:

-- While the PI wants to replace capitalism with a different social system, there is no mention of socialism. There is no mention of any of the competing versions of socialism either – not social democracy, not revolutionary Marxism, and not any kind of anarchism. This has the benefit of allowing activists preferring different versions to work together at the major issue coalition (including the PI) level.

The PI Leaves Out Any Visualization of What Would Replace Capitalism (as it must)

-- There is no attempt at a class analysis of contemporary, fourth industrial revolution, post-industrial capitalism in either rich or non-rich countries. Hence there is also no position on what social classes exist in different countries and what their interests are vis a vis any of the six key goals: ending capitalism or decolonization or democratization or restricted growth environmentalism or peace or equality of all ‘identities’. (There is an oblique reference in the Vision list where Post-capitalist is followed with the words “that rewards all forms of human labour while abolishing the cult of work”. I take this to refer to changes in the class structure at a global level towards the exclusion of an increasingly large proportion of workers from full-time (the precariat) or any time (the grey economy) in the official wage labour economy. But the reference is too obscure and imprecise to guide any kind of organizing or claims-raising. Again, see How to Use Left Populism to Win a Post-Work Economy.)

-- The PI is anti-imperialist in the Fanonian sense of wanting to ‘decolonize’, to overturn the world hierarchy of nations and racialized peoples, including seeking “full reparations for past crimes and the immediate restoration of land, resources, and sovereignty to all the dispossessed”. But this provides no analysis of the economic or political-military structure of contemporary imperialism(s), and the conflict as well as collusion of relatively dominant states and other states at various relative levels of power and leverage. Are we still in the era of armed national liberation struggles by Third World states (which Fanon’s theory was designed to justify)? If not, then what? What kinds of struggles need to be waged in either ‘colonizer’ countries or ‘colonized’ ones to actually equalize the distribution of wealth and power and status in the world? The PI theory addresses the centrally racist dimension of Western imperialist expansion over the past 500 years, but is silent on everything else.

The Left Does Not Share Analyses of the Sources and Mechanisms of Most Inequalities

-- The PI Vision and Declaration ultimately falls back on an ‘identity politics’ analysis of all types of social exploitation and oppression. It is a kind of ‘one size fits all’ analysis which says that all sorts of groupings of people (genders, sexualities, ‘races’, nations, workers, farmers etc) are placed in the position of an inferior in a status hierarchy. To my mind, this too is a place holder, an admission that we do not share more fully articulated analyses of the various types of exploitation and oppression that various groups of people face in contemporary society. Or, therefore, a clear idea of what a ‘liberated’ alternative social structure and culture would look like for each of these subordinated groupings.

What we do agree upon, and what the positive side of identity politics offers, is a stance that we will support all struggles for “equal rights, recognition and power” by subordinated groups, by any group of people who are denied full equality of status. But this sidesteps the issues of status privilege for dominant groups within all of these status hierarchies, including how these ‘contradictions among the people’ will be resolved. (These issues are of course very much central in debates within left coalitions and mass participatory consensus-building assemblies of all kinds.)

So much for the absences about the goals of our common struggles. We agree on moving past capitalism to a different social system, but there is little or no agreement on even the most general axial principles for the alternative economic, social and political institutions. And there is very little shared social analysis about the precise structural and cultural dynamics of contemporary capitalism and imperialism either. We are at a stage of ‘one size fits all’ (everything is a status hierarchy) identity politics that nevertheless provides some clear signposts (six of them by my count in the PI stance) that go beyond the level of our mostly reactive and defensive struggles against the routine injustices inflicted on people. Those goals provide some sense of what we are fighting for as alternatives, what gives us hope for a better future.

The PI Fudges on Revolution, Reform, (Non)Violence – That is a Good Thing

The PI Declaration is also equivocal on the most basic ideas about what means progressives will need to use – revolution or reform, parliamentary or extraparliamentary, violence or non-violence. Of course, all decisions about means are ultimately situational. Any of these means can be appropriate depending on the concrete context. In my view it is a plus that the PI stance on the ‘correct means’, whether intentionally or not, ends up being that there is no correct means that applies to all circumstances.

But this is far from the dominant view in the left these days. One of the biggest problems with contemporary left movements is a moralistic dogmatism about the ‘absolutely correct means in all circumstances’, and the related idea that the means must already be a utopian realization of the ends. There are many good reasons for the Occupy Wall Street or Podemos or Five Star approach to making the Process of change actually more important than the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. Partly this is a reaction to the negative side of the history of Marxist-Leninist parties and states and social democratic parties and states. It also has to do with the valid intuition that has been central in extraparliamentary new left movements since at least the 1960s: that any kind of future post-capitalist society has to be a pluralistic, deliberative and participatory (as well as representative) democracy.

But the ends are not the means. It is not that the ends justify any means, only that neither our means or our ends can be static utopias where there is a ‘correct line’ that applies in all times and places. One of Marx’s most important insights is that the only thing constant about our human (or natural) world is conflict-based variation and change.

There Can Be No Peace Without Justice. So How Can We Maximize Non-Violence?

Here are the relevant phrases in the Declaration that equivocate (usefully) on the means of change:

-- “Revolution, Not Regime Change: We support popular movements to transform society and reclaim the state. But we stand against attempts to overthrow regimes in order to protect the interests of capital and assist the advance of empire.” (point XVI)

-- “Our mission is to build popular power on a planetary scale. Elections are opportunities to transform politics and turn popular demands into government policy. But we know that winning elections is not enough to fulfill our mission. “ (point XVII)

-- “No Justice, No Peace: Our aim is lasting peace. But peace can only last in the security of social justice. We work to dismantle the war machine, and replace it with a diplomacy of peoples based on cooperation and coexistence.” (point XV)

(3) WHO COULD BE WON TO JOIN THE PI

The Progressive International has a slightly misleading name. A more accurate one would be Left Progressive Global Liberation Front, a terrible name for many reasons, but more accurate.

Why Left Progressive instead of Progressive? Because, even the limited six-point basis of unity is not one that the majority of progressives in the world would support. Certainly, neither Bernie Sanders nor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could openly say that they wanted to ‘eradicate capitalism’ or that they were ‘against imperialism in all its forms’ (certainly not if this meant opposing US imperialism) or even that they were for Restricted Growth Environmentalism. Many in the left of the Labour Party or in the left of other social-democratic parties outside the US could openly support this position, but this proves my point. A majority of both British Labour Party members and voters (not so sure about elected MPs) are genuinely progressive, but they are not yet for eliminating capitalism or opposing the imperialism of their own country and ‘nation’. (Ditto by the way for progressives in weaker and poorer states whose nation states are imperialistic on a lower and more regional level, appropriate to their relative position in the hierarchy of competing and colluding nation states. Not to mention allegiances to one ‘nation’ or another within nation states.). The same is true even for extra-parliamentary protest movements, and certainly for SMOs that do not engage primarily in conflictual mobilizations. Only the left wing of progressive parties and unions and SMOs can agree on the need for system-level change in the six areas.

The PI Can Unite Those Progressives who are Ready to Lead (and Be Accountable)

The contemporary left these days likes to see itself as really ‘democratic’ and ‘pluralist’ and as supporters of a libertarian ‘freedom of choice’ in all things, as practicing a leaderless horizontal politics. It is kidding itself. In fact, all of those activist gatherings are just that -- gatherings of activists, of the most militant and conscious and left wing, of the people who are ‘leaders’ in relation to the people they are seeking to get support from, and in some cases to actually mobilize or organize. All of those people, all of us, need to unite in organizations at every level from local to global where we can exercize that leadership more effectively. The PI proposes a key global level organization for such leaders and activists and for organizations of whatever kind that actually lead, mobilize and organize masses of exploited and opressed peoples, or try to do so. If you are a left progressive (organization), why not join it?

(I will leave it there for now. More in future on the difference between a left that unites and acts in a Global Liberation Front, in a set of ‘global’ or ‘transnational’ institutions, as opposed to an old-style International, after forty years of neoliberal globalization.)