EU urges immediate halt to Israel-Hezbollah war

THIS IS THE THIRD COUNTRY ISRAEL

ATTACKS TO GAIN BEACH FRONT PROPERTY

Beirut (Lebanon) (AFP) – Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to Lebanon on Sunday, as the militant group claimed a wave of cross-border attacks.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri met with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borell in Beirut on Sunday © - / LEBANESE PARLIAMENT/AFP

Earlier this week, US special envoy Amos Hochstein said in Lebanon that a truce deal was "within our grasp", and then headed to Israel for talks with officials there.

War between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in late September, nearly a year after the Iran-backed group began launching strikes in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7 attack.

The conflict has killed at least 3,670 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.

In the Lebanese capital, Borrell held talks with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of ally Hezbollah.

Rescuers douse the flames at the scene of an Israeli airstrike that hit a Lebanese army post in southern Lebanon © Kawnat HAJU / AFP

"We see only one possible way ahead: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701," Borrell said after his meeting with Berri.

Under Resolution 1701, which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be allowed to maintain a presence in the south, where Hezbollah holds sway.

It also called for Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon.

"Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse," Borrell said.

He said the European Union was ready to provide 200 million euros ($208 million) to help bolster the Lebanese armed forces.
Air raid sirens

Hezbollah is one of the world's best-armed non-state forces, and was the only group in Lebanon that refused to surrender its arsenal after the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Lebanese army maintains a presence across the country's territory, but it is Hezbollah that holds sway in key areas along the border with Israel.

Residents of central Israel gather underground after being warned of rockets fired from Lebanon © Menahem Kahana / AFP

While the Lebanese army is not engaged in the Israel-Hezbollah war, it has suffered multiple fatalities among its ranks.

On Sunday, the army said an Israeli strike on a military post killed one soldier and wounded 18 others.

Also on Sunday, Hezbollah said it launched attacks using missiles and drones directed at a naval base in southern Israel and a "military target" in Tel Aviv.

It said it had "launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of strike drones on the Ashdod naval base".

In also claimed to have carried out an operation against a "military target" in Tel Aviv using "a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of strike drones".

The Israeli military said air raid sirens were activated in several areas of central and northern Israel, adding that it had intercepted projectiles fired from Lebanon.

Israel's emergency medical service Magen David Adom said it had provided treatment to two people including a 70-year-old woman who was mildly injured.

On Saturday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes around the country killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut.

One strike on the working-class Basta neighbourhood of Beirut killed at least 20 people and wounded 66 others, Lebanon's health ministry said.
Firefighters battle the flames after a building was hit in an Israeli airstrike in south Beirut © - / AFP

"We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more," said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.

In a phone call with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution" in the Lebanon war, a Pentagon spokesperson said.

A spokesman for Katz said he commended US efforts towards de-escalation in Lebanon, but said Israel would "continue to act decisively in response to Hezbollah's attacks on civilian populations in Israel".
Hostage claim

On the Gaza front, Hamas's armed wing said Saturday that an Israeli hostage, captured during the group's October 7 attack which triggered the war, had been killed.

Israel's military said it could neither "confirm nor refute" the claim.

Israeli protesters held another of their regular Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv to demand their government reach a deal to free remaining hostages.

A displaced Palestinian child carrying a bag walks barefoot in a displacement camp in the central Gaza Strip © Bashar TALEB / AFP

On Sunday, Gaza's civil defence agency said a drone strike had seriously injured a hospital chief in an attack on the healthcare facility, while Israeli raids killed 11 people across the Palestinian territory.

Hossam Abu Safiya heads the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of just two partly operating facilities in northern Gaza, as the territory is in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis.

Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,211 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Criticism of Israel has mounted over its conduct of the war, and this week the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

It has also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, though it is unclear whether he is still alive.

© 2024 AFP

Canada's Trudeau condemns violent protests as NATO meets in Montreal

By Nia Williams

November 23, 2024

REUTERS

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on, on the day he makes an announcement at Aylesbury Public School in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, November 22, 2024.

 REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/ File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Nov 23 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday condemned violence and antisemitism at anti-NATO and pro-Palestinian protests in downtown Montreal on Friday night, where NATO delegates have gathered for the alliance's annual assembly.

Around 300 delegates from NATO members and partner states are meeting in Montreal from Nov. 22-25.

Local media reported that protesters burned an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and lit smoke bombs.

Two separate protest groups merged into a march, and some protesters started throwing smoke bombs and metal objects at officers policing the demonstration, Montreal police said.

Police used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd and three people were arrested for assaulting officers and obstructing police work. Protesters set two cars on fire and smashed windows as the march was dispersed around 7 pm ET, police said.

Videos and pictures posted to social media showed masked rioters burning flares and battering storefront windows.

"What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling. Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them," Trudeau said in a post on social media website X.

Pro-Palestinian protests have been taking place across Canada since the Israel-Gaza war started late last year.

Israel's 13-month campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, according to Gaza officials.
The war was launched in response to an attack by Hamas-led fighters who killed 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has said.

Montreal Protests: Justin Trudeau Reacts to Violent Anti-NATO Demonstration

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned violent protests in Montreal Friday night as the city hosted delegates for the annual parliamentary assembly of NATO 

Published Nov 23, 2024 
By Adeola Adeosun
Weekend Night Editor

NEWSWEEK

"What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling," Trudeau wrote Saturday on X, formerly Twitter. "Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them." He added that the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) is in communication with local police, stating "there must be consequences and rioters held accountable."

Newsweek contacted Trudeau's office via email on Saturday for comment.

What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling. Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them.

The RCMP are in communication with local police. There must be consequences, and rioters held accountable.— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) November 23, 2024

The demonstration, organized by Divest for Palestine collective and independent labor union CLAC, coincided with Montreal's hosting of the 70th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Approximately 300 delegates from NATO members and partner states are attending the four-day event, which runs from November 22-25.

According to Montreal police spokesperson Const. Manuel Couture, the protest began at Place Émilie-Gamelin around 4:30 p.m. before merging with another demonstration near Place des Arts. The demonstration escalated around 6:10 p.m. when protesters lit a mannequin on fire and began throwing objects including smoke bombs and metal barriers at police.

Three people were arrested - a 22-year-old woman for obstructing police work and assaulting an officer, and two men aged 22 and 28 for obstructing police work. All three were released pending court appearances according to local authorities.

Police deployed chemical irritants and other crowd control measures after protesters set two vehicles ablaze and vandalized multiple storefronts, including windows at the Palais des congrès. The demonstration was dispersed by 7 p.m.

Speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum, Defense Minister Bill Blair characterized the events not as lawful protest but as "anarchy," saying "This was engagement in violence and hatred on display in the city of Montreal." Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly added that "violence, hate and antisemitism... has no place on our streets."

Montreal police noted they had not received any reports of antisemitic acts or hate crimes related to the demonstration as of Saturday afternoon.

Quebec Premier François Legault condemned the events, writing on X that "The violent and hateful scenes we witnessed last night in the streets of Montreal, with attacks specifically targeting the Jewish community, are unacceptable," adding that "burning cars and smashing windows is not about sending a message, it's about causing chaos."

The protest coincided with the second day of student-held pro-Palestinian strikes across Quebec. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been occurring across Canada since the start of the Israel-Gaza war.

According to Gaza officials, Israel's military campaign has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once. The conflict began following an October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants that killed 1,200 people in Israel and led to the taking of more than 250 hostages.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante condemned the "shocking" actions, stating they have no place in a peaceful city like Montreal, and thanked police for making arrests.

Update 11/23/24, 11:44 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to reflect the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) as not associated with this demonstration.

RIGHT WING RAT UNION ASS KISSERS TO THE BOSSES

Justin Trudeau dances at Taylor Swift concert amid destructive riot in Montreal, sparking outrage

Trudeau later wrote that the protesters must be 'held accountable'

 By Andrea Margolis Fox News
Published November 23, 2024

VIDEO
Montreal demonstrators clash with police, set off smoke bombs in destructive protest

A group of anti-NATO, pro-Palestinian demonstrators wreaked havoc on the streets of Montreal on Friday night, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. (Credit: Reuters)

Video of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dancing at a Taylor Swift concert amid a destructive protest in Montreal drew outrage over the weekend.

Trudeau, who represents a district in Montreal, had attended the Taylor Swift concert in Toronto on Friday night. A viral video posted on X shows the Canadian politician dancing and singing along to the song "You Don't Own Me" before Swift took the stage.

Toronto is roughly 280 miles west of the Canadian capital of Ottowa and 330 miles west of the Montreal district that Trudeau represents.

During the same night, anti-NATO demonstrators set off smoke bombs and marched through the streets of Montreal with Palestinian flags. According to the Montreal Gazette, the rioters set cars on fire and clashed with police.

Protesters also threw small explosive devices and metal items at officers. At one point, the group burned an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The image of Trudeau dancing amid protests in his hometown sparked outrage online. Some social media users even compared Trudeau to Nero, the infamous Roman emperor known for "fiddling while Rome burned."

Don Stewart, a Member of Parliament (MP) representing part of Toronto, called out the prime minister in a post on X.

Video of Justin Trudeau dancing at a Taylor Swift concert amid a destructive protest in his city sparked criticism over the weekend. (Getty Images / Reuters)

"Lawless protesters run roughshod over Montreal in violent protest. The Prime Minister dances," Stewart wrote. "This is the Canada built by the Liberal government."




"Bring back law and order, safe streets and communities in the Canada we once knew and loved," the MP added.

On Saturday, Trudeau denounced the protests and called them "appalling."

Protesters set off smoke bombs at the Montreal anti-NATO demonstration. (Reuters)

"What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling," the Canadian leader said. "Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them."

"The RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] are in communication with local police. There must be consequences, and rioters held accountable."


Demonstrators reportedly hurled metal objects at police and set vehicles on fire. (Reuters)

Palestinian pottery sees revival in war-ravaged Gaza

By AFP
November 23, 2024

The Gaza war has displaced almost all of the territory's 2.4 million people, forced to flee without many everyday items like crockery

 - Copyright AFP/File Eyad BABA

Youssef Hassouna

Traditional clay pottery is seeing a resurgence in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are forced to find solutions for a shortage of plates and other crockery to eat from in the territory ravaged by more than a year of war.

“There is an unprecedented demand for plates as no supplies enter the Gaza Strip,” 26-year-old potter Jafar Atallah said in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah.

The vast majority of the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Fleeing bombs amid Israel’s devastating retaliatory military offensive, which has destroyed large amounts of civilian infrastructure, everyday items like cups and bowls have often been lost, broken or left behind to perish.

With imports made increasingly difficult by Israeli restrictions and the dangers of delivering aid, Gazans have had to find resourceful ways to meet their needs since the war began.



– Bare-bones –



To keep up with demand, Atallah works non-stop, producing around 100 pieces a day, mainly bowls and cups, a stark contrast to the 1,500 units his factory in northern Gaza made before the war.

It is one of the numerous factories in Gaza to have shut down, with many destroyed during air strikes, inaccessible because of the fighting, or unable to operate because of materials and electricity shortages.

Today, Atallah works out of a bare-bones workshop set up under a thin blue plastic sheet.

He carefully shapes the clay into much-needed crockery, then leaves his terracotta creations to dry in the sun — one of the few things Gaza still has plenty of.

Each object is sold for 10 shekels, the equivalent of $2.70 — nearly five times what it was worth before the war led to widespread shortages and sent prices soaring.

Gazans have told AFP they are struggling to find all types of basic household goods.

“After 13 months of war, I went to the market to buy plates and cutlery, and all I could find was this clay pot,” said Lora al-Turk, a 40-year-old mother living in a makeshift shelter in Nuseirat, a few kilometres (miles) from Deir el-Balah.

“I was forced to buy it to feed my children,” she said, noting that the pot’s price was now more than double what it was before the war.

– Old ways –

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 44,176 people, most of them civilians, according to data from Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

Following each Israeli army evacuation order, which generally precedes fighting and bombing, masses of people take to the roads, often on foot, carrying whatever they can manage.

But with each passing month and increasing waves of displacement, the loads they carry grow smaller.

Many Gazans now live in tents or other makeshift shelters, and some even on bare pavement.

The United Nations has warned about the threat of diseases in the often cramped and unsanitary conditions.

But for Gazans, finding inventive ways to cope with hardship is nothing new.

In this, the worst-ever Gaza war, people are using broken concrete from war-damaged buildings to build makeshift homes. With fuel and even firewood scarce, many rely on donkeys for transport. Century-old camping stoves are reconditioned and used for cooking.

Traditional pottery is another sign of a return to the old ways of living.

 

Six Israeli soldiers commit suicide, thousands more get mental health treatment

By

 5Pillars (RMS)

 -

23rd November 2024

AI generated image from Shutterstock

At least six Israeli soldiers have taken their own lives in recent months, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth revealed yesterday, citing severe psychological distress caused by prolonged wars in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon as the primary cause.

The investigation suggests the actual number of suicides may be higher, as the Israeli military has yet to release official figures, despite a promise to disclose them by the end of the year.

The report highlights a broader mental health crisis within the Israeli army. Thousands of soldiers have sought help from military mental health clinics or field psychologists, with approximately a third of those affected showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to the investigation, the number of soldiers suffering psychological trauma may exceed those with physical injuries from the war.

The daily cites experts as saying the full extent of this mental health crisis will become clear once military operations are completed and troops return to normal life.

In March, Lucian Tatsa-Laur, head of the Israeli military’s mental health department, told Haaretz that approximately 1,700 soldiers had received psychological treatment.

Multiple reports have since emerged indicating that thousands of troops are suffering from mental health issues owing to extended deployments in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Regional tension has escalated due to Israel’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 44,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

Over 800 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting since October 7, 2023.

The second year of the genocide in Gaza has drawn growing international condemnation, with figures and institutions labeling the attacks and blocking of aid deliveries as a deliberate attempt to destroy a population.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its deadly war on Gaza.

In a landmark move, the International Criminal Court on Thursday announced it had issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Palestinian territories, including Gaza.

The conflict has spread to Lebanon, with Israel launching deadly strikes across the country in an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of the Gaza war.

The Ukraine missile crisis: Putin’s shadow war against the west finally breaks cover

Simon Tisdall

THE GUARDIAN
Sat 23 November 2024 


President Putin announces an attack on Dnipro, Ukraine, last Thursday, in response to strikes on Russia that used US and British long-range missiles.Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

The unprecedented firing by Ukrainian forces of British-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles at military targets inside Russia last week means the UK, along with the US, is now viewed by Moscow as a legitimate target for punitive, possibly violent retaliation.

In a significant escalation in response to the missile launches, Vladimir Putin confirmed that, for the first time in the war, Russia had fired an intermediate-range ­ballistic missile, targeting the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Putin also said Russia now believed it had the “right” to attack “military facilities” in countries that supply Kyiv with long-range weapons. Though he did not say so specifically, he clearly meant attacks on the UK and US.

Yet in truth, Britain and its allies have been under constant Russian attack since the war began. Using sabotage, arson, deniable cyber-attacks and aggressive and passive forms of covert “hybrid” and “­cognitive” warfare, Putin has tried to impose a high cost for western support of Ukraine.

This largely silent struggle does not yet amount to a conventional military conflict between Nato and its former Soviet adversary. But in an echo of Cuba in 1962, the “Ukraine missile crisis” – fought on land, air and in the dark-web alleyways and byways of a digitised world – points ominously in that direction.

Concern that Russia’s illegal, full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine would trigger a wider war has preoccupied western politicians and military planners from the start. The US, UK and EU armed and bankrolled Kyiv and placed unprecedented, punitive sanctions on Moscow.

But US president Joe Biden remained cautious. His primary aim was to contain the conflict. So the convenient fiction developed that the west was not fighting Russia but, rather, helping a sovereign Ukraine defend itself. That illusion was never shared by Moscow.

Biden can do nothing now to halt the war. He had his chance in 2021-2022 and blew it

From the outset, Putin portrayed the war as an existential battle against a hostile, expansionist Nato. Russia was already big on ­subversion. But as the conflict unfolded, it initiated and now appears to be accelerating a wide array of covert operations targeting western countries.

Biden’s decision on long-range missiles, and Moscow’s furious vow to hit back, has placed this secret campaign under a public spotlight. Russian retaliation may reach new heights. But in truth, Putin’s shadow war was already well under way.

Last week’s severing of Baltic Sea fibre-optic cables linking Finland to Germany and Sweden to Lithuania – all Nato members – is widely regarded as the latest manifestation of Russian hybrid warfare, and a sign of more to come.

Some suggest the damage was accidental. “Nobody believes that,” snarled Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister.

Such scepticism is based on hard experience. Last year, Finland said a damaged underwater natural gas pipeline to Estonia had probably been sabotaged. And an investigation in Nordic countries found evidence that Russia was running spy networks in the Baltic and North Sea, using fishing vessels equipped with underwater surveillance equipment. The aim, it said, was to map pipelines, communications cables and windfarms – vulnerable targets of possible future Russian attacks.

Earlier this month, a Russian ship, the Yantar – supposedly an “oceano­graphic research vessel” – had to be militarily escorted out of the Irish Sea. Its unexplained presence there, and previously off North Sea coasts and in the English Channel, where it was accompanied by the Russian navy, has been linked to the proxi­mity of unprotected seabed inter-connector cables carrying global internet traffic between Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America.

Suspected Russian hybrid warfare actions on land, in Europe and the UK, are multiplying in scope and seriousness. They range from large-scale cyber-attacks, as in Estonia, to the concealing of incendiary devices in parcels aboard aircraft in Germany, Poland and the UK.

Western spy agencies point the finger at the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency (which was responsible for the 2018 Salisbury poisonings). Naturally, all this is denied by the Kremlin.

It gets even more alarming. In the summer, US and German intelligence agencies reportedly foiled a plot to assassinate top European defence industry executives, in an apparent effort to obstruct arms supplies to Kyiv.

Putin’s agents have been blamed for a wide variety of crimes, from assassinations of regime critics on European soil, such as the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Chechen dissident, to arson – for instance, at a warehouse in east London this year – to the intimidation of journalists and civil rights groups, and the frequent harassment and beating of exiled opponents.

Last month, MI5 head Ken McCallum said the GRU has ‘a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets’

National infrastructure, elections, institutions and transport systems are all potential targets of hostile online malefactors, information warfare and fake news, as Britain’s NHS discovered in 2017 and the US in 2016 and 2020 during two presidential elections.

Some operations are random; others are carried out for profit by criminal gangs. But many appear to be Russian state-organised. Such provocations are intended to sow chaos, spread fear and division, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies.

In January, for example, a group called the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn caused significant damage to water utilities in Texas. Biden administration officials warned at the time that disabling cyber-attacks posed a threat to water supplies throughout the US. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water,” state governors were told.

Alerts about Russia’s escalating activities have come thick and fast in recent months. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and newly nominated EU foreign policy chief, spoke earlier this year about what she called Putin’s “shadow war” waged on Europe. “How far do we let them go on our soil?” Kallas asked.

In May, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, accused Moscow of repeated acts of sabotage. In October, Ken McCallum, head of MI5, said the GRU was engaged in “a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets”.

Nato’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, added his voice this month. Moscow, he said, was conducting “an intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks across our allied territories, interfering directly in our democracies, sabotaging industry and committing violence … the frontline in this war is no longer solely in Ukraine.”

It remains unclear, despite these warnings, how prepared Europe is to acknowledge, first, that it is now under sustained attack from Russia and is involved, de facto, in a limit­less, asymmetrical war; and second, what it is prepared to do about it at a moment when US support for Nato and Ukraine has been thrown into doubt by Donald Trump’s re-election.

When the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France – the so-called Weimar Triangle – plus the UK, Italy and Spain met in Warsaw last week, they tried to provide answers. “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activi­ties against Nato and EU countries are unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks,” they declared.

But their proposed solution – increased commitment to Europe’s shared security, higher defence spending, more joint capabilities, intelligence pooling, a stronger Nato, a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and a reinforced transatlantic alliance – was more familiar wishlist than convincing plan of action. Putin is unlikely to be deterred.

Far from it, in fact. Last week’s missiles-related escalation in verbal hostilities has highlighted the Russian leader’s flat refusal to rule out any type of retaliation, however extreme.

His mafioso-like menaces again included a threat to resort to nuclear weapons.

Putin’s very public loosening of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which now hypothetically allows Moscow to nuke a non-nuclear-armed state such as Ukraine, was a tired propa­ganda ploy designed to intimidate the west. Putin is evil but he’s not wholly mad. Mutual assured destruction remains a powerful counter-argument to such recklessness.

Putin has other weapons in his box of dirty tricks, including, for example, the seizing of blameless foreign citizens as hostages. This kind of blackmail worked recently when various Russian spies and thugs were released from jail in the west in return for the freeing of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and others.

Putin also has another nuclear card up his sleeve. Greenpeace warned last week that Ukraine’s power network is at “heightened risk of catastrophic failure”. Russian airstrikes aimed at electricity sub-stations were imperilling the safety of the country’s three operational nuclear power plants, the group said. If the reactors lost power, they could quickly become unstable.

And then there is the possibility, floated by analysts, that Russia, by way of retaliation for Biden’s missile green light, could increase support for anti-western, non-state actors, such as the Houthis in Yemen. In a way, this would merely be an extension of Putin’s current policy of befriending “outlaw” states such as Iran and North Korea, both of which are actively assisting his Ukraine war effort.

All of which, taken together, begs a huge question, so far unanswered by Britain and its allies – possibly because it has never arisen before. What is to be done when a major world power, a nuclear-armed state, a permanent member of the UN security council, a country sworn to uphold the UN charter, international human rights treaties and the laws of war, goes rogue?

Putin’s violently confrontational, lawless and dangerous behaviour – not only towards Ukraine but to the west and the international order in general – is unprecedented in modern times. How very ironic, how very chastening, therefore, is the thought that only another rogue – Trump – may have a chance of bringing him to heel.

Biden can do nothing now to halt the war. He had his chance in 2021-2022 and blew it. His missiles, landmines and extra cash have probably come too late. And in two months’ time, he will be gone.

On the other hand, Trump’s warped idea of peace – surrendering one quarter of Ukraine’s territory and barring it from Nato and the EU – may look increasingly attractive to European leaders with little idea how to curb both overt and covert Russian aggression or how to win an unwinnable war on their own.

Putin calculates that Europe, ­prospectively abandoned by the US, fears a no-longer-hybrid, only too real, all-out war with Russia more than it does the consequences of betraying Ukraine.

Cynical brute that he is, he will keep on clandestinely pushing, probing, provoking and punishing until someone or something breaks – or Trump bails him out.

Bus and tram workers in Greater Manchester to strike after ‘years of falling wages’

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Today

LEFT FOOT FORWARD


'Strike action can still be avoided but that will require TGM sitting down with Unite and tabling an offer our members can accept.'

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Around 200 bus and tram workers employed by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) have voted in favour of industrial action over pay.

Unite, which represents the workers, said the “predominantly low-paid workers are angry at having suffered years of below inflation pay rises” which have resulted in their wages falling in real terms.

An offer of a £1,290 increase for all employees up to and including colleagues on an annual salary of £52,866 was rejected by the unions, which said it fails to reflect the increased cost of living. Workers above this threshold were offered a 2.5% increase.

Union members balloted included those in office-based roles, as well as frontline workers at the interchanges and information and ticket offices. It does not include frontline transport workers such as Metrolink drivers and staff (employed by KeolisAmey) or bus drivers (employed by franchised bus operators).

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said that transport for Greater Manchester workers have seen their wages eroded year after year.

“The current pay offer does nothing to rectify that. They are absolutely right to strike and they have Unite’s full support in doing so.”

The TfGM is a living wage employer and says it is “proud” of its accreditation and that it is committed to carrying on discussions with the union to avoid strikes. It explained how its pay award is made as part of the Passenger Transport Forum (PTF) alongside the West Midlands Combined Authority and West Yorkshire Combined Authority. It claims the PTF’s offer is in line with that made to the unions by the Local Government Association (LGA) for those working in local government.

Steve Warrener, managing director of Transport for Greater Manchester, told LFF: “Whilst union members have voted in favour of industrial action over pay, we’re committed to continuing discussions with the aim of avoiding strikes and minimising any impact on our passengers. We are proud to be a long-standing member of the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter, with real living wage accreditation.”

But Unite says that TfGM is using its Passenger Forum membership as an “excuse” for not offering a higher pay rise. The union’s regional officer Howard Percival said:

“Any disruption caused to the travelling public will be entirely the fault of Transport for Greater Manchester. Its use of the Passenger Forum is just an excuse to try and get out of paying these workers fairly.

“Strike action can still be avoided but that will require TGM sitting down with Unite and tabling an offer our members can accept.”

How to Build a Culture of Organizing: A Conversation with Marshall Ganz

Truth to Power is a regular series of conversations with writers about the promises and pitfalls of movements for social justice. From the roots of racial capitalism to the psychic toll of poverty, from resource wars to popular uprisings, the interviews in this column focus on how to write about the myriad causes of oppression and the organized desire for a better world.

By Marshall Ganz, Steve Dubb 

November 22, 2024

Source: Nonprofit Quarterly


Book cover by Oxford University Press

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Steve Dubb: You indicate in your book that you are writing about the “who, why, and how of democratic practice.” Could you expand on this?

Marshall Ganz: Democracy is not something you have; it is something you do. If you’re not doing it, it’s not real. Sadly, in our country, there is less and less of it being done.

Take the replacement of self-governing organizations with nonprofits or NGOs: there is nothing democratic there. It is almost like unions are one of the few remaining forces where people are actually practicing self-government.

It is kind of hard to have any real understanding of what democracy means in terms of how we interact with each other and how we govern ourselves when it is not part of your daily experience. It hollows out any real understanding of democracy.

SD: You mention a shift from self-governing organizations to NGOs and nonprofits. How has that harmed democratic practice?

MG: There is an interdependence between our political structures and our civil society structures. It was typical, really up until the 1960s, that large organizations in the United States were representative organizations. There would [be] a local, it would pay a per capita up to the [regional] level, and then [the regional would pay] up to the national level. [This meant that power was rooted at the local level.]

That all comes apart in the 1960s and 1970s. [Harvard political scientist] Bob Putnam writes about the social capital crisis. But that’s not a cause. What really happens is there is a very dramatic shift in the dynamics of membership growth and funding.

“When you become dependent on donors for your operations, then your constituency falls into second place.”

It starts with direct mail. We did a study of the Sierra Club. We saw this so clearly. Up to a certain point, chapters drive membership growth. Then, there is an inflection point, and membership growth goes way ahead of the growth of chapters.

The difference is that at the national level, new technologies make it possible…to reach so many more people, raise money that way, [and] conduct elections that way. All of a sudden, the local groups that had been the source of power for the organization become a client of the organization.

You see this pattern of professionalization in advocacy groups in all this stuff. That is part of it.

The other part of it is a boom in philanthropy. It is the other side of the inequality: “All these people out here are suffering, so now we are going to be philanthropists.”

So then comes the donorocracy. Nonprofits are governed by boards. The boards are usually chosen by the wealthy. They are not elected. And then the boards hire people, and they are employees, and they do whatever they do. And there may be beneficiaries, but they are not beneficiaries that have any voice.

In some ways, yes, we want participation. But we decide what happens. When you separate participation from governance, you have—like the institution of the Catholic Church for so many years—high participation but tightly held governance. That is typical of how NGOs are structured.

The problem in the organization world is that then when you become dependent on donors for your operations, then your constituency falls into second place. Your success depends on your donors, not your constituency.

With 501c3s, you often take the most active people that care the most and you put them in a nonpartisan ghetto. It is a ghetto, because parties matter in politics. Politics is the means through which people connect with each other to govern themselves.

People say, “I don’t like politics; I like purity.” Purity is fine but has nothing to do with power. And politics has a lot to do about power. The conservative assault on government is really an assault on democracy, and it has been going on for many years.

SD: In your book, you identify building relationships, telling stories, strategizing, acting, and structuring as “five key practices of organizing.” Could you discuss this?

MG: I think of organizing as a form of leadership. Our approach is posed by the three questions Rabbi Hillel posed when asked, “What do I do with my life?”

“Leadership…is accepting responsibility or enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty.”

In response, Hillel offered three questions: If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? It’s not selfish, it is self-regarding. To see others, you need self-awareness. The second: If I am for myself alone, what am I? It’s about the fact that we are relational creatures. Finally, he says: If not now, when? It’s not about jumping into moving traffic; it is a caution against what Jane Addams called the snare of preparation.

I have become a big fan of [General Dwight David] Eisenhower. Somebody was interviewing him after D-Day and said, “Boy, planning must have really been important.” Eisenhower replied, “Yeah, planning was important, but plans are useless.” Point being that until you get into action, you can’t learn. You need to learn to be effective. So, to me, leadership is the interaction of self with others in action.

Then there are the challenges of hands, head, and heart. A leader who faces a challenge asks themselves, Do I have the tools to deal with this? That’s a hands challenge. Can I use my resources in new ways? That’s a head challenge. And where do I get the courage? Where do I get the hope? How do I inspire hope and courage in others? That’s a heart challenge.

Leadership, I’d argue, is accepting responsibility or enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty. Organizing is a form of leadership in that spirit. Only the first question is not, What is my issue? It is: Who are my people? Second: What are the changes they need because of lived experience? Finally: How do we work with each other to turn the resources we have into the power we need to achieve the change we want?

And it is also about power. There is so much confusion about power. Power is not something you have. It is influence created through interdependence. Where we have an alignment of needs and resources, we can combine to create a credit union or co-op because of our capacity.

But if someone else has resources that we need to meet our needs and our resources are not relevant to theirs, then we can wind up in a situation where theirs will substitute ours because of the dependency that is created. That’s domination. That’s power over. Then, we have to figure out how to turn resources we do have into power that we need to get what we want.

SD: You make a distinction between resources and power. Could you elaborate on this?

MG: I got involved in organizing originally in the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was seminal for the Civil Rights movement. What they discovered was how individual resources could be turned into collective power. It is a very dramatic story, but basically what they discovered is that feet could be a source of power. If you use your feet to walk to work instead of using your feet to get on the bus, your individual dependency on the bus company turns into the bus company’s dependency on a united community.

“Resources matter, but the use of resources also matters. That’s what puts leadership and creativity back into the picture.”

That’s really at the heart of it: How do we transform the resources we do have into the power we need to get the change? When I was working with the farm workers, [the employers] were breaking the strikes. We discovered that grapes could become a source of power. That is, eating them and getting supermarkets to stop selling them. All of a sudden, a grape becomes a resource that leads to power through organization.

The American colonists did the same thing with tea. [Mahatma] Ghandi was doing the same thing with salt.

When I came back to school and started my PhD, I came across an article called “The Insurgency of the Powerless.” It was about the farmworkers in the sixties and seventies. It argued basically our success was due to structural factors, and that we [the United Farm Workers] had nothing to do with it. It pissed me off.

It put me on the path of writing my first journal article and my dissertation, which became my first book, Why David Sometimes Wins. It is about how to leverage your resources in ways that can disempower those who are oppressing you.

And yes, the resources matter, but the use of resources also matters. That’s what puts leadership and creativity back into the picture.

SD: You argue there is a trend toward theories of change that eschew power analysis and instead focus on data, moral suasion, or storytelling. Why does this trend exist?

MG: I’m a big fan of storytelling. But you need understanding of what it is, and what its role is. When I was with the United Farmworkers, we had to have a story, a strategy, and a structure. Why are we doing this? That’s story. How? That’s strategy. How do we organize ourselves to do it? That’s structure.

The dynamic between strategy and story is really important. Because if there is no story, then the value becomes just the strategy. It is not in service of something more significant that we can weigh the strategy against.

There is a new book out called Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. She argues basically that the whole capitalist project is not sustainable and that we are seeing that. So, we better give things a decent burial while we get busy creating what we need to survive as humans. It sounds really radical. It feels like where we are.

In terms of why things are the way they are, there is also a new book by Daron Acemoglu, who just got the Nobel Prize [in Economics]. His new book, Power and Progress, is about power and technology.

What his studies point out is that when a new technology is introduced, it often makes most people poorer, not richer. It makes a few people richer. It takes a while for people whose position has been destabilized to figure out how to use political structures to counter the impact of the concentration of wealth that is associated with new technology.

It is the opposite of “the internet will make use free.” We have an economic system and economic model that dehumanizes. It turns us into users. It turns us into data points. [The late Harvard political scientist] Sid Verba used to say that liberal democracy is a gamble that voice can balance wealth. In other words, political power—citizenship—can balance ownership. We are kind of [on] the losing end of that and have been. But that’s not to say we’re done.

SD: Much of what goes under the name of organizing is more akin to mobilizing. Could you elaborate on the difference and why it matters?

MG: Mobilizing is a tactic. And social media has facilitated that by reducing the cost of information sharing.

So, instead of building commitments to each other and building real organization, we engage in these transactions where we show up and then we go home, and nothing is built. And so, the mechanisms through which you develop strategy are not there because there is no continuity. And the only continuity tends to be provided by the people who can keep the funding going so then they can strategize. But it’s not based on having a real base of people.

And so, with the mobilizing, one thing that happens is—well you know the cartoon figure, Wile E. Coyote, who runs off the cliff, looks down, and there is nothing there. That’s what happened to Sunrise. They were great at mobilizing. They looked down and there was nothing there. They are now trying to recognize themselves in a way that is there is something there.

Consider also, for example, the 2024 election campaign: There were a bunch of people with a lot of money giving money to community organizations to canvass. The donors’ item of value is how many doors you have knocked on.

What does that even mean? There is a decoupling of inputs and outputs. There is a gap in the middle where there is no theory of change. It is just input, input, input. And then how is that supposed to connect? It’s substituting money power for people power. When you have a genuine organized volunteer-based operation, it is a different deal.

I know community organizations that are struggling with this. Because they want to be organizing. But all this money comes in and then they are running these mobilizing operations. It is because the sources of money want something that they can count.

SD: How can movements today effectively negotiate this reality that they often rely on external resources that misdirect them?

MG: It is going to take sacrifice. It is going to take risk-taking. If you look for energy sources, probably the biggest energy source for change globally is the women’s movement.

I see it in my classes. We work with people in the Middle East. We work with people in India. My classes tend to be two-thirds women. We are talking people in their thirties, but from all these different cultures. That’s a powerful energy. It’s happening. It’s there.

Now the question is: What to make of it? How to equip the energy with the structure that it needs to be as powerful as it can be?

The same thing with young people and the young people’s energy around climate justice. There it is a similar challenge. If the energy is there, that’s a huge piece of it. Because you can’t manufacture energy.

“We can’t just rely on virtuous people—we have to create virtuous institutions. And that’s what the whole democratic experiment is about.”

With immigrant communities, the Dreamers are an interesting example: they got highly energized because there was some hope. You don’t generate energy without hope. Grievance does not produce energy. There has to be this other element. I like the Maimonides definition: hope is belief in the plausibility of the possible as opposed to the necessity of the probable. In other words, it is always probable Goliath will win, but sometimes David does.

It is that place of possibility between certainty and fantasy. It is the domain of “could be.” And that takes courage and it takes imagination. And it doesn’t happen in a consulting firm.

SD: You note that winning an organizing campaign is typically one goal of three, and the others are strengthening the organization and building leadership. Could you discuss how campaigns seek to balance these goals?

MG: What is typically missing is organization. In other words, what’s gone along with the [focus on issues] is campaigns, campaigns, campaigns.

Campaigns—they are about change. They are the rhythm of change. They have a specific objective. And they may accomplish the objective or not.

But what is being built? That’s often missing. That is where organization comes in, which is the rhythm of continuity. When I was working with the farmworkers’ union, we had lots of different campaigns, but we were building a union.

So, that’s the missing piece. To the extent that we can bring mobilizing back into the context of organizing, then it becomes a tactic, which is all it is. A lot of mobilizing is tactics in search of a strategy. There is no strategic context to it because there is no organizational venue in which that strategy is being developed.

So, yes, it is a balance. Since [the theorist] Robert Michels discovered the iron law of oligarchy, which states that there is a tendency for continuity to suffocate change, it is the challenge of democracy generally. Unless there are mechanisms of accountability, everything breaks down.

To me, accountability is one of the most moral, psychological, political, and economic realities about how humans work. We can’t just rely on virtuous people—we have to create virtuous institutions. And that’s what the whole democratic experiment is about. Can we do that? Can we actually balance power? The jury is still out.

SD: You wrote that from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, you learned the dangers of a radical diffusion of power, while the United Farm Workers taught you the dangers of too much concentration of power. What does a happy medium look like?

MG: There is a book by Roberto Unger called Democracy Realized. Democracy is a practice; it’s not a thing. The key is flexibility.

Once, I worked with a Jordanian woman organizer who said, “I see that this is not a blueprint. This is a roadmap of where to look within our own cultures, our own histories, and our identities for these sources of solidarity and love and courage and all of that.” And I think she really got it right.

So, this problem—radical decentralization, radical centralization—you have to look at the power dynamics.

Sunrise believed in radical decentralization [using self-governing activist cells] based on a theory of DNA: “We now have our DNA, and all will go forth based on that.” They look back now and say, “Oh, that was nuts.” There was no mechanism to coordinate to exercise scale, or even to learn. Because you have all these isolated groups out there doing their own thing. So, that is one extreme.

But then the other extreme is where it is all consolidated at the top. In the book, I talk about strategy and where it comes from—strata, the Greek word. The general, the strategos, is up on the mountaintop overlooking the field. He develops a theory of change about how to deploy. And the soldiers in the field, they are called taktikos. That’s where you get strategy and tactics.

When a cloud gets in between the two, that’s when you have problems. The local people have intimate knowledge of context—no question. They need each other. If there aren’t mechanisms for decision-making, communication, and legitimacy within the organization, then they fight each other. The world is littered with that.

“When you organize out of hope, you’re saying there is a possibility, and you have possibility, and we build out of that sense of possibility.”

How resources are structured and how work is structured have a lot to do with whether it works or not. Authority, if it is all centralized to make decisions, if resources depend on the fundraiser who has access to the donor, then you’re not going to have widely distributed power because that is where the resources are coming from. If they are generated locally, then it is more democratic.

If the work is organized like these canvassing operations—like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, good old industrial discipline—it will be centralized too. If you look at the dynamics of how the work is done, how authority is structured, and where the resources actually come from, then you can see how the organization works and not get caught in just reading the bylaws.

How you strike that balance? In the UFW, we allowed power to become too centralized, too distant. We were very democratic at the base. Committees were elected by workers. That was all good. Then we had an executive board at the top. And there was nothing in between.

What that meant was there were no local unions and no regional level where somebody could consolidate enough power to hold the board accountable. There was democracy at the base, but it was so scattered and diffuse that it could never challenge the center.

It really is a question of how we structure things. It is also a question of what the narrative is, what the culture is, and the values that we are trying to enact.

With [Harvard sociologist] Theda Skocpol, we did this whole study of representative organizations in the United States from the American Revolution up to the 1960s. There were 65 we identified, all of which had at least 1 percent of the eligible population in them.

Many were fraternal organizations. But there was also the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Farmers’ Alliance. They often started when somebody someplace tried something. And it works. Then they find a way to scale, which rarely involved getting a grant. The scaling was usually people from the first project go elsewhere and start it. It was an evangelical process through people.

[Harvard business professor] Rebecca Henderson did a study of diffusion of innovation in Silicon Valley. The dominant literature said that there was a model, and they replicate it. But what she found actually happens is that new firms hire people from the original firm to bring their understanding with them.

SD: Is there anything else you would like to add?

MG: We over-complexify things by making them abstract. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, it is people. I am not saying it in a romantic way. But people can be pretty creative to develop ways to exercise power—for good or evil.

I think whether you mobilize around fear or hope is fundamental. When you mobilize around fear, what you are doing is you are robbing people of their agency. You’re locating the source of the fear outside of them. It is out there. All you have to [do] is get rid of “them.” It is the opposite of agency.

When you organize out of hope, you’re saying there is a possibility, and you have possibility, and we build out of that sense of possibility, which aligns with having some power. Barack Obama was a hope mobilizer. And Donald Trump is the opposite.

One of the sad things about the 2024 elections is that both candidates were really “Yes, I can” candidates [versus “Yes, we can”]. Trump was, “I am your avenger.” Kamala Harris was the protector: “I will protect you.”

Neither one acknowledged the fact that we, the people, are agents. And that unless that we is part of the solution, it’s not going to happen.

 

Socialist politics and revolutionary compromise

By Raju J Das

Published 23 November, 2024

In “On Compromises”, Vladimir Lenin (1917) said: “The term compromise in politics implies the surrender of certain demands, the renunciation of part of one’s demands, by agreement with another party.” In thinking about any compromise, Lenin (1920) wrote in “Left-wing Communism”: An Infantile Disorder, “the greatest efforts are necessary for a proper assessment of the actual character of this or that ‘compromise’.” 

In this article, I will discuss types of compromises and why they are necessary and possible. As fascist movements get stronger, the oppression of workers and petty producers from religious or racial minorities intensifies, and attacks on people’s living standards continue, the question of revolutionary compromise by socialist organisations and groups assumes greater urgency.

Types of compromise

There are different types of compromises. For example, compromises can be forced or voluntary. Compromises are forced when they are caused by objective political-economic circumstances but the devotion to class struggle is not diminished. Voluntary compromises are those caused by the actions of working-class traitors. 

Lenin eloquently explained the difference:

… between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion) — a compromise which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise — and, on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest …their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists. (Lenin, 1920)

Voluntary compromises cannot be allowed by the Marxist left (henceforward, left) but compromises imposed by objective conditions can be, under certain conditions.

Furthermore, compromises can be made with a) the main class enemy (the bourgeoisie) or b) with one’s “nearest adversaries” (for example, petty-bourgeois-democratic parties). Another group with which compromises are necessary and possible are non-revolutionary left groups.

Compromises can also be made in economic struggle (such as trade union fights) or in political struggle (more on this below). Compromises in economic struggle can be objective or voluntary, as can compromises in political struggle. Discussing compromises in political struggle, Lenin (1920) says:

In politics, where it is sometimes a matter of extremely complex relations … between classes and parties, very many cases will arise that will be much more difficult than the question of a legitimate “compromise” in a strike or a treacherous “compromise” by a strike-breaker, treacherous leader, etc.

Necessity and possibility of revolutionary compromise in political struggle

Here I want to focus on compromise in politics. In the course of the struggle to transcend capitalist society and establish a new genuinely democratic society, circumstances force the proletariat to make compromises in the political sphere. Arguing against the Blanquist communards, Friedrich Engels said it was a mistake to believe that “we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery.” (quoted in Lenin, 1920)

Lenin was scathing in his criticisms of German Communists who thought “All compromise with other parties ... any policy of manoeuvring and compromise must be emphatically rejected.” (ibid.) To launch class struggle, which is protracted and complex, against the bourgeoisie, nationally and globally, and “renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies) — is that not ridiculous in the extreme?” (ibid.)

In so far as all bourgeois parties support capitalists, they are the same class enemy for the left. But these parties support — and represent — the ruling classes in different ways. First, different parties represent different interests of the ruling class (with its multiple fractions). Second, these parties, mainly to remain electorally competitive and to gain votes, represent the interests of different fractions differently, and in ways that are to a certain extent mutually conflictual. Some of these ways may partially overlap with the left’s agenda. Some non-socialist parties may be more secular-minded than others. Some may be slightly more pro-poor, pro-worker or pro-peasant than others. Some may support state-funded social services or state interventions to address the climate crisis more than others. Some may support national economic and political sovereignty or may be against the remnants of pre-capitalist relations more than others. None of these are socialist measures but all can make a socialist movement stronger.

Bot these facts constitute objective reasons why temporary compromises by left are possible:

The more powerful enemy can be vanquished … by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skilful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies…, any conflict of interests among … the various groups or types of bourgeoisie … (Lenin, 1920; italics added)

In fact, the entire history of the socialist movement, “both before and after the October Revolution, is full of instances of changes of tack, conciliatory tactics and compromises with other parties, including bourgeois parties!” (Lenin, 1920)

To vanquish the powerful class enemy, the left may also have to make compromises with small-scale proprietors who exist in large numbers and are exploited by capital, but who vacillate between pro-capitalist parties and the proletarian movement, which fights for the socialisation of means of production. The left has to take “advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional.” (Lenin, 1920; italics added)

Regarding the possibility and necessity of compromises within the socialist movement, we need to consider the nature of the working class. The working class is potentially the most revolutionary agent. There is no Marxist party/movement without this class. No anti-capitalist revolution is possible without this class (or a substitute for this class and its organisation). This is the only class whose interests most consistently lie in a successful struggle for both democracy and socialism. 

Yet, its progressive and revolutionary nature is a potential. The working class as it actually exists falls short, ideologically and politically. This class is deeply politically divided in terms of levels of class consciousness and political preparedness. There are objective reasons for such a situation. 

In capitalism, the proletariat is inevitably surrounded by a large number of groups that are:

... intermediate between the proletarian and the semi-proletarian (who earns his livelihood in part by the sale of his labour-power), between the semi-proletarian and the small peasant (and petty artisan, handicraft worker and small master in general), between the small peasant and the middle peasant, and so on. (Lenin, 1920) 

The proletariat’s consciousness is shaped by ideas and interests of non-proletarian classes. It is shaped by the ways in which capitalism itself operates on the basis of competition, individualism, commodity fetishism, etc.

Some sections of the proletariat may be bribed by the capitalist class in return for their support for capitalism and imperialism. The proletariat is inevitably “divided into more developed and less developed strata” and “divided according to territorial origin, trade, sometimes according to religion, and so on” (Lenin, 1920; italics added). The fact that different groups of the world proletariat have different levels of class consciousness, histories and experiences is a reason why different socialist individuals, groups and organisations have different ideas about how capitalism works and how to fight it. Some are more revolutionary than others.

The fact that the working class exists but lacks unity and class-consciousness constitutes an objective reason why temporary compromises are necessary within the proletarian movement (for example among various socialist groups). Lenin spoke of:

…the absolute necessity, for the Communist Party, the vanguard of the proletariat, its class-conscious section, to resort to changes of tack, to conciliation and compromises with the various groups of proletarians, with the various parties of the workers and small masters. (Lenin, 1920)

Echoing Lenin’s point that the fight against capitalism requires temporary agreements and a degree of principled unity, Leon Trotsky (1933) wrote:

No successes would be possible without temporary agreements, for the sake of fulfilling immediate tasks, among various sections, organisations, and groups of the proletariat. Strikes, trade unions, journals, parliamentary elections, street demonstrations, demand that the split be bridged in practice from time to time as the need arises; that is, they demand an ad hoc united front, even if it does not always take on the form of one. In the first stages of a movement, unity arises episodically and spontaneously from below, but when the masses are accustomed to fighting through their organisations, unity must also be established at the top.

So, temporary compromises in, for example, the political sphere (such as in elections) are objectively necessary because, at a given juncture, the working masses might be divided and not class conscious (enough), and, concomitantly, the left can be relatively weak. Compromises can also be possible because there are conflicts of interests within the economic and political elites.

The point of political compromise is not to arrive at and settle for a capitalist society that is more or less democratic or more or less egalitarian, and just needs to be managed by left forces for an indefinite time period. The compromise in question here is revolutionary compromise (compromise as a part of, and with the purpose of, advancing long-term goals of class struggle). It is a compromise that is temporarily necessitated by the force of circumstances relative to the strength of the left forces, in order to advance the long-term revolutionary goal of transcending capitalism, and not to help sustain a capitalism sans fascistic tendencies.

Given the significance of temporary revolutionary compromises — compromises with bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and reformist socialist organisations, etc — Lenin (1920) warned that those who do not understand the need for temporary compromises “reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general.” (ibid.; italics added) He emphasises:

Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth [the truth about the need for political compromise] in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters.

Lenin added:

The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution. (Lenin, 1917)1

The development of a socialist movement requires engaging in day-to-day struggles against capitalism and its consequences. Doing so might require fighting alongside not-so-revolutionary groups and making temporary compromises with them. This may require a united front approach. The principle of a united front form of struggle “is imposed by the dialectics of the class struggle” (Trotsky, 1933). One aspect of this dialectics is the fact that the proletariat is deeply divided in terms of concrete needs and everyday economic demands, as well as level of consciousness. That means different sections of the proletariat may be represented by more or less revolutionary organisations.

Conclusion

In line with Lenin’s theory, it is possible to argue that compromises in the electoral/political sphere that pose ideological and political risks (of subordinating workers and peasants to bourgeois forces) are justified only when the following criteria are met, making the temporary agreement highly conditional.

First, compromises are unavoidable or forced by conditions (for example, the left is weak relative to, say, fascistic forces, so it needs allies in some cases). Compromises cannot be due to left leaders’ “cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists.” (Lenin, 1920)

Second, compromises must ultimately contribute to the political project of raising the level of mass consciousness and advancing the goal of the communist struggle against capitalism’s adverse consequences for the masses and capitalist class relations. Lenin said tactics of compromises are applied only “to raise — not lower — the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win.” (Lenin, 1920)

Third, left forces must maintain their organisational and ideological independence from non-left parties and movements.

Fourth, the left must always maintain the right to criticise and politically mobilise against its temporary allies when their policies attack the living conditions of ordinary people.

Fifth, the left’s dominant focus must remain on extra-parliamentary mobilisation and not electoral battles, which may involve temporary tactical understanding with non-left forces. The point of temporary agreement is not to confine class struggle to the parliamentary/electoral sphere.

For Marxism — the foundation of which Marx and Engels laid and Lenin and Trotsky, among others, strengthened — revolution requires united action. Marxism recognises that sectarianism is counter-productive.2 It recognises that unity is “a good thing so long as it is possible,” but not, of course, at the expense of the fundamental principles or long-term goal of developing socialist consciousness (Engels, 1882). A non-sectarian revolutionary politics requires working with allies — especially, when fascistic political movements are everywhere and when people’s democratic and social rights are attacked by all sections of the capitalist class.

Socialists ignore this warning at their own peril:

One of the biggest and most dangerous mistakes made by Communists … is the idea that a revolution can be made by revolutionaries alone. On the contrary, to be successful, all serious revolutionary work [must be guided by] … the idea that revolutionaries are capable of playing the part only of the vanguard of the truly virile and advanced class… A vanguard performs its task as vanguard only when it is able to avoid being isolated from the mass of the people it leads and is able really to lead the whole mass forward. Without an alliance with non-Communists in the most diverse spheres of activity there can be no question of any successful communist construction. (Lenin, 1922)

Raju J Das is Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Research, York University, Toronto. https://rajudas.info.yorku.ca

References

Das, R. 2019. “Politics of Marx as Non-sectarian Revolutionary Class Politics: An Interpretation in the Context of the 20th and 21st Centuries.” Class, Race and Corporate Power, 7(1).

Engels, F. 1882. Letter to Bebel. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1882/letters/82_10_28.htm

Lenin, V. 1917. On Compromises. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/03.htm

Lenin, V. 1920. “Left-wing Communism”: An Infantile Disorder https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm

Lenin, V. 2022. On the Significance of Militant Materialism. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/12.htm

Trotsky, L. 1933. The German Catastrophe. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330528.htm

• 1

  “To agree, for instance, to participate in the Third and Fourth Dumas was a compromise, a temporary renunciation of revolutionary demands. But this was a compromise absolutely forced upon us, for the balance of forces made it impossible for us for the time being to conduct a mass revolutionary struggle, and in order to prepare this struggle over a long period we had to be able to work even from inside such a ‘pigsty’.”  (Lenin, 1917).

• 2

  Note that it is not sectarian if a Marxist organisation refuses to join a bourgeois/reformist group/party organisationally, or if a democratically-functioning Marxist leadership drives away reformist people from its organisation (Das, 2019).