How to Tell if You Have an Incorrect Political Line

As Marxists, we know that there is no single, eternally-correct political line. Marxism itself isn’t a strategy that will liberate us. It is a framework (a worldview and a method) that we can apply to the concrete conditions of our own times and places to develop a correct strategy that can liberate us. Our political lines will only be correct when we correctly apply them to those material conditions. However, the processes of both (a) understanding those conditions and (b) applying Marxism to develop a strategy based on those conditions are human, error-prone processes.

But this isn’t a new discovery. Marxist theorists have spilled a lot of ink over centuries of struggle to identify common errors, their causes, and their solutions. If we want to have a hope of developing a correct political line or correctly updating our existing lines, we absolutely need to be aware of the errors that seep into our movement in order to correct them… because we know they will be there if we look hard enough.

It is a fundamental law of reality that all things have internal contradictions and that their development is driven by how those internal contradictions develop over time. Communist organizations are no exception to this rule. Every communist organization will have internal contradictions between a correct political line and one or more errors. There are some limited cases where this general rule may not appear to be true but these are limited, rare, and temporary.

The presence of these internal contradictions may temporarily seem absent if the movement or organization we’re talking about is (1) way too small, (2) way too new, or (3) recently went through a significant purge or split. Even in these specific cases, things will return to the status quo pretty quickly and you will be able to find those errors somewhere.

We know they will almost certainly be there almost all of the time. We know that there will generally be multiple errors at any given point. We can even know what some of these errors will be with a fair degree of certainty. We also know that there are a limited number of ways that such an internal contradiction within a communist organization can develop:

• The error is identified early, monitored continuously, and managed proactively. The impact of the error on the organization’s political line and activity is negligible at worst. The contradiction between the correct line and the political error in question will remain non-antagonistic. The contradiction never becomes a serious problem because it is actively handled as a part of “regular maintenance.”
• The error isn’t identified until it has begun to do damage to the organization. The contradiction between it and the correct line has become antagonistic. Before the incorrect line gains the upper hand over the correct one, people upholding the incorrect line are expelled from the organization to resolve the problem. A mass purge at this stage, even if it is the best option, means that the organization has already been damaged greatly.
• The error isn’t identified until it has begun to do damage to the organization. The contradiction between it and the correct line has become antagonistic. The incorrect line overtakes the correct line to win leadership of and control over the organization. Those holding the correct line are repressed by the incorrect leadership, generally being pushed out or formally expelled, until the correct political line poses no “threat” to the organization.

Out of these three outcomes, did it take you more than a second of thinking to realize the first option is preferable to the alternatives? If we wait until an internal contradiction has reached this point, the damage will already have been done. This absolutely cannot be a matter of recognizing those errors only when they’ve steered our movement and organizations off course for years. It would be downright laughable to think that the solution is “just have the correct line and fight for it.”

We need to recognize their near-constant presence within our movements, organizations, and parties, before they become a problem. We need a proactive approach to dealing with errors within our organizations before they become antagonistic. This starts with identifying them.

To that end, I would like to describe a general rule that can help identify an organization’s errors. When you’re looking for them, finding errors in other people’s thinking is relatively easy. Two much more difficult tasks are (1) remembering to be proactive about the search for errors and (2) recognizing when you are one of the people holding an incorrect line (which all of us will certainly do at some point). So, without further ado:

If you cannot identify both a right error and a “left” error within your organization, it is likely because your personal line is representative of the error you weren’t able to identify.

Here’s a concrete example. Let’s say that you are in a party that has been around for more than a year, has at least a few dozen members, and hasn’t had a purge or split in the past few decades. You sit down to think about your party’s internal contradictions and you’re able to identify a mistaken political line that’s defined by the error of left sectarianism. You have some comrades who refuse to engage in mass movements and will not work with any organization that is not explicitly Marxist.

However, when you think about whether there is a corresponding right error within your party (e.g. right opportunism), you’re pretty sure there is no right error. If you are in this situation, it is most likely the case that your tendency within the organization is its right error. (Note: this same principle also holds true if we swap the right and “left” errors within this scenario)

Rather than take my word for it, let’s explore why this must be the case. We will discuss right and “left” errors, how/why they develop within an organization, and then finally think about these general laws in terms of probability to demonstrate why we can be confident in our new general rule.

Right and “Left” Errors

A number of errors have so consistently cropped up throughout the history of the communist movement that we have been able to identify, name, and study them. One of the most common ways of categorizing the errors we have found is dividing them into right and “left” errors.

Both kinds of errors can lead us away from revolution and can be said to be “objectively right wing” in their content and impact. This is why you’ll often see people put quotations around “left” when talking about “left” errors. However, for a number of reasons, we have found it more useful to categorize and think about errors in terms of whether their form is “right wing” or “left wing”.

Developing a precise understanding of how to make this distinction is useful but beyond the scope of this essay. Talking about the most common errors of each type will be enough for our purposes. So, we’ll just stick to giving a general guideline and providing common examples.

Right wing errors, to oversimplify, are errors that lead us to have less hostile and more hopeful attitudes toward capitalism. The most obvious examples will explicitly advance the idea that capitalism can be fixed. However, it is just as common to see right wing errors that talk a big game with revolutionary rhetoric but promote policies that ultimately subordinate our movement to progressive liberal movements that operate under capitalist class leadership. (For anyone interested, the former is often associated with the historical figure of Eduard Bernstein while the latter is often associated with Karl Kautsky).

“Left” wing errors tend to be very revolutionary in their rhetoric and often attack the correct line of an organization as not being “revolutionary enough.” These errors are often characterized by brash action that would isolate an organization from its allies. At the root of these errors frequently lies a lack of faith or condescending view of the masses while holding up the people who are revolutionaries at that moment as the awoken heroes who will spur the masses into action. Because many of these errors often occur together within a single political tendency, we often refer to that tendency as “ultra-leftist.”

To summarize: right wing errors tend to defang a party ideologically, “left” wing errors tend to defang a party organizationally, and both defang a party politically. Below, we will list the most common errors that you might find in either category. It is also worth noting that there are many errors that have their own “left” and right wing variations as well. There will be one common error, called “revisionism”, that we will not include here. It is a serious concern but its frequently uneducated use without clear meaning warrants a more in-depth explanation than I can provide here.

Right Errors

• Right Opportunism: Opportunism, as defined by Lenin, is “sacrificing the basic interests of the working class for some temporary advantage.” Right opportunism promotes class collaboration and/or toning down militancy in order to secure some temporary advantage. In short, it sacrifices the ultimate objective of class struggle for immediate gains (whether personal or collective).
• Reformism: Reformism is the idea that we can achieve a revolutionary transformation in society, moving from capitalism to socialism, through legislative reforms rather than a revolution. Reformism is always considered a right wing error and is a frequent companion of right opportunism.
• Tailism: Tailism can be summed up as “meeting the masses where they are at but remaining where you found them.” The two most common examples include (1) appealing to the most backwards or broadest sections of the masses without advancing their political consciousness & (2) engaging in mass struggles without meaningful attempts to develop their revolutionary character.
• Chauvinism: Chauvinism is the failure to confront special oppression and/or challenge reactionary social ideas (e.g. racism, sexism, transphobia, etc.) in favor of a narrow view of class struggle. A common example is the failure to address Black or Indigenous liberation as questions that are separate from, but related to, questions of class. It can also be seen in a neglect of these considerations within an organization, such as allowing a gendered division of labor or not raising questions when the demographics of leadership does not match the demographics of the rank-and-file.

“Left” Errors

• Left Sectarianism: Sectarianism is when an organization chooses to isolate itself from its allies. Historical examples include establishing competing “dual unions” rather than organizing within existing unions and outright refusals to work with social democrats on specific issues (even when no theoretical compromises are being made).
• Adventurism: Adventurism is when revolutionaries, often a small group of revolutionaries, escalate a confrontation or go “on the offensive’’ when the masses are not yet ready to do so. A commonly cited, extreme example is conducting armed attacks when the masses are not prepared for the backlash that will follow. However, adventurism is not always about armed conflict. Encouraging the tenants within a tenants union to conduct a rent strike, even if they support it, when their level of preparation makes eviction a certain outcome is also an example of adventurism.
• Dogmatism: Dogmatism can be defined as being unwilling to accept criticism and stubbornly clinging to “eternal truths” about Marxism. There are certain principles that Marxists hold to be universal to class societies in general or capitalist societies in particular, such as the idea that capitalist and working class interests can never be truly reconciled. However, a lot of Marxist theory does not apply to all times and places. A dogmatist is someone who mechanically copies what Marxists have done in other situations without questioning whether it is appropriate for their own situation.
• Left Opportunism: Opportunism most often appears in the form of right opportunism but opportunism also has a left variety. It is generally characterized by abandoning difficult mass struggles that may require compromise and hardship while criticizing others from the sidelines. You can think of left opportunism as the error of “armchair revolutionaries” who may cultivate a degree of prestige or even build careers on criticizing the way others wage class struggle without ever needing to wage it themselves where they may be exposed to criticism from others.

How Right and “Left” Errors Develop

Right and “left” errors are not unrelated phenomena that appear independently. There is an intimate relationship between these errors and, especially in the United States, their development occurs in roughly the same cyclical pattern throughout the history of our movement like an annoying piece of clockwork.

Right errors are essentially the product of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influence on the Communist movement. There are two primary sources that introduce this harmful distortion. The first is an unavoidable consequence of the fact that all communist organizations seeking to transform a capitalist society must necessarily grow out of a capitalist society.

We are indoctrinated with bourgeois ideology from birth and throughout our lives, through “traditional” methods of child-rearing, schooling, the media, and many other places. Identifying these influences can be difficult and unlearning them requires constant hard work. The workers within a communist organization within a capitalist society will have been and will continue to be bombarded with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology at a frequency and volume that is impossible to avoid. This ideology is then carried with us into the organization where it has the potential to affect our political thinking and activity if we aren’t careful.

The second primary route by which bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology is introduced is by the organization’s class composition. Members of a communist organization with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class backgrounds will be predisposed to viewing the world and thinking about politics using the habits and perspectives their class grows up with.

This isn’t to say that communist organizations should never include people from these class backgrounds. After all, some of our greatest theorists came from bourgeois or petty-bourgeois families but these individuals must recognize that a correct line can only come from a proletarian perspective and must proactively be re-educated toward that perspective. It is rarely a serious issue when discussing the class background of an individual. However, a communist organization whose rank-and-file and leadership are not overwhelmingly proletarian should be considered as cruising towards failure.

“Left” errors are most commonly a product of two factors. William Z Foster, former chair of CPUSA, explains that “left” errors like sectarianism are “basically an immature political reaction to… opportunism”. So, we get “left” errors when (1) we have right errors that people are rejecting and (2) when the people rejecting those right errors lack the political education required to distinguish that right error from a correct political line.

Throughout the history of American Marxism, the most intense “ultra-left” reactions have been provoked when socialist or communist organizations were dominated by right-wing opportunist leadership. Our movement in the US has typically lagged behind in our theoretical maturity compared to other sections of the international communist movement, so right-wing opportunism has invariably produced ultra-left errors.

Opportunists have over time become more savvy at using rhetorical sleights of hand to make their incorrect line sound like the correct one. In doing so, they have been able to require increasingly greater levels of theoretical maturity on our part to cut through their illusions to distinguish their opportunist stances from the correct, Marxist position. The more we fail at outing and ousting right wing opportunism, the more we are punished for those failures with corresponding “left” errors.

Unfortunately, this is not where the cycle ends. Right-wing opportunists will then criticize the errors of ultra-left elements and portray the ultra-left as dangerous. They are sometimes correct and sometimes paranoid but whether they’re correct in a particular case is largely irrelevant. They will again use rhetorical sleights of hand to blur the lines between a correct, Marxist position and an incorrect, ultra-left position.

A diagram outlining how right and “left” errors develop dialectically. Initially, (1) right errors like opportunism are introduced from the ideology the dominates bourgeois society and (2) right errors help generate “left” errors as a reaction. In turn, (3) “left” errors are exploited by right opportunists, leading people further from a correct line and strengthening right errors within the party. Finally, (4) right opportunism further provokes an ultra-left reaction among people without sufficient theoretical maturity, perpetuating a dialectical cycle of development.

These criticisms, often containing a grain of truth and usually involving heaps of paranoia, will be explicitly directed at ultra-leftists. However, they almost always implicitly include any Marxist with a correct line that they can construe as ultra-left. Ultimately, this builds and consolidates the strength of opportunist forces within an organization, provoking even more ultra-left reactions among Marxists who lack a sufficient level of education to see through their tricks, and beginning the cycle anew.

Why You Should Always Be Able to Find Both

At this point, you should be more or less convinced that we will always find both kinds of errors within any communist organization of a sufficient size. Their presence may be small and their influence may be non-existent, but they’ll be there. After all:

1. Right errors like opportunism are constantly being introduced into communist organizations
2. Our movement has never historically achieved a high degree of theoretical maturity compared to other sections of the international communist movement.
3. The constant presence of right errors and a low degree of theoretical maturity leads to a constant presence of “left” errors.

Are there cases where one of the two errors isn’t present to an extent that we can detect? Sure. Those occasions are rare but let’s say for a moment that you can’t identify one of the two errors and are pretty sure that your organization’s situation must be an exception. Now, let’s think about this in terms of probabilities and lay out some basic premises we can start from:

1. Almost everyone who has an incorrect line is absolutely, unshakably certain they actually have the correct line.
2. You are almost certainly going to believe you have a correct line, even if you don’t.
3. In this scenario, you can’t identify both kinds of errors, so one of two things is the case. You either have an incorrect line but don’t realize it or you do have a correct line and there’s a genuine exception to the general rule at play.

We will be working with ballpark estimates here rather than anything approaching concrete numbers, but bear with me because ballpark estimates should be enough.

The occasions where a communist organization does not have both right and “left” errors are few and far between. So, we can assume the number of people who could not identify one of the two kinds of errors but still had a correct line are correspondingly few and far between. The vast majority of the time, however, communist organizations do have both errors and the people who can only identify one kind of error can’t do so because they actually have an incorrect line representative of that error.

Finally, let’s consider all of the people in communist organizations who tried to but couldn’t identify both kinds of errors within their organization. How many of those people had a correct line and how many did not? It’s next to impossible to assign specific numbers but it should be pretty clear that, whatever numbers we would pick, the number of people in this group who had an incorrect line would vastly outnumber those who had a correct one.

If you randomly selected one person who can’t identify both kinds of errors, it is a statistical near-certainty they have an incorrect line that corresponds to the error they couldn’t find. Thus, if we know that we are someone who can’t identify both kinds of errors within our organization, the odds are that we are making the error we can’t identify.

If you belong to a Communist organization that’s been around for more than a year, has more than a couple people, and hasn’t undergone some kind of split/purge within the past year, we should assume that our general law is true:

If you cannot identify both a right error and a “left” error within your organization, it is likely because your personal line is representative of the error you weren’t able to identify.

Conclusion

Finding errors in someone else’s thinking isn’t too hard. Keeping ourselves on guard to notice errors is hard. Noticing those errors within ourselves is even harder. The reason it’s so difficult is because of all of the unnecessary shame wrapped up with it. Even for a person who rightfully prides themself on being willing to admit they were in the wrong, this is a whole different animal.

Realizing that you’re on the wrong side of an internal, ideological struggle isn’t just recognizing that you were wrong. It’s recognizing that, at least for a moment, you were on the wrong side of history. That’s honestly a shitty feeling. I mean, isn’t being on the right side of history one of the reasons we’re proud to be Communists?

But, if you really think about it, it’s actually kind of silly to think we will never be on the wrong side of history. It’s pretty much guaranteed that we will end up on the wrong side of one question or another. It’s even sillier to stake your identity and ego on whatever political line you hold right now unless you’re convinced that your political development has permanently stopped.

Like, how does it make any sense to expect that you will come to understand things in the future that you don’t understand right now… but also resist the idea that there’s anything you might not understand right now that could lead you in the wrong direction? Remember: one of the other reasons we are proud to be Communists is that our political tradition actively admits its mistake and calls for us to proactively do the same.