A manual for how the left can fail to agree
First published at Ecosocialist Notebook.
When I stepped back from frontline politics three years ago, I was invited to write a book about what I saw as one of the most intense political decades in Spain’s history: from the 15-M protests to the Spanish government. Many of my comrades who had left before me, and even many who are still active, had ventured into this kind of political literature with similar books. In most cases, however, these were not only personal accounts of what had happened, with their legitimate biases and particular points of view, but also brutal settling of scores. I dislike that approach because I don’t believe more detailed knowledge of what is usually called “dirty laundry” would do any good for the country, the left, or the working class. For that reason I turned the project down.
I mention this because I think I understand why the Spanish left is finding it so hard to reach agreement at such a crucial moment. In theory it shouldn’t be so complicated. Most of the parties that make up the left share 90% of their political programme, so if, as Julio Anguita used to say, we stick to that criterion, agreement ought to be relatively easy. If, in practice, it isn’t, it is because other factors come into play, factors that make what looks easy far more complex.
The main distorting factor, as obvious as it may sound, is that people make politics. And we are all prisoners of both our virtues and our vices, including needs such as recognition, identity, respect, material livelihood, and social relationships… In short, human beings are complicated creatures. Even when we come together as people who, like us, want to change the world, and even when we share almost the entire worldview and plans for the future, seemingly insurmountable differences end up emerging one way or another.
The political world I have experienced is full of episodes that are, strictly speaking, completely absurd. People so ideologically close that they become couples and start families, only to separate over time and end up disagreeing politically about everything down to the colour of the doors. People who, with enviable assertiveness, say one thing today that becomes its opposite tomorrow, and the day after that, if need be, changes again. People who take a position only after the debate is over, always guided by the question “which of us won?”. People who started out as friends and comrades but, as things evolve, become the ones who deny ever having said hello to you. In short, situations of political divergence that might fall under the labels of cynicism and hypocrisy, but that at their core express something deeper: the social inertia of complex human beings.
Actually existing politics is a meat grinder for people, so it is hardly surprising that those who know how things work refuse to take on new responsibilities. Others are braver, or more reckless, and take on impossible challenges even knowing the costs are high. It was never easy, and in other times doing politics meant far graver things such as torture or murder, but we cannot deny that the last fifteen years have been a centrifuge for human beings. Just as quickly as politics became an attraction and a source of hope for tens of thousands of people, drawing many of the best minds in this country to the front line, it also soon became a human-grinding machine that wore down and expelled all that raw material and its original freshness.
When I entered institutional politics in 2011, as someone raised in the republican and socialist tradition, I deeply distrusted leadership: “neither in gods, kings nor tribunes lies the supreme saviour,” says one of the most influential texts in political history. But when push comes to shove, I’m afraid someone is needed to bring some sanity, serenity and calm to the chaotic world of flesh-and-blood humans. Someone who, perhaps through charisma or intelligence, knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff and keep the focus on what really matters. Someone with enough emotional and political intelligence to rise above human pettiness while bringing out human virtues. That, for me, is the main function of a leader, and the left is fortunate to have many people who fit that profile. The problem is that almost nobody wants to waste part of their life on such a toxic and thankless task.
People often say leaders and parties are to blame for all of this. But let us admit the problem doesn't lie only with the leaders. It also lies with us, because we all participate, one way or another, in the incentives that make the atmosphere unbearable. With our pettiness, we don’t let the grass grow. From the comments on social media, completely vampirised by hatred and brutality, the toxic atmosphere starts from below. Like any other leader, I became a candidate already hated by a considerable part of the electorate and even by my own people, before I had even opened my mouth. And that was before social media existed in its current form, that is, as a megaphone for the darkest passions. If that happens just for arriving, there’s no need to dwell on what happens when, like all human beings, we make mistakes. Be that as it may, on the left, and perhaps just as elsewhere, we tear each other apart first and only afterwards, if at all, reflect on why.
These days, with so many rumours circulating about how to put together a Frente Amplio (Broad Front) ticket, it is not easy to find someone with a brilliant idea, but it is very easy to find thousands of people with destructive criticism of every possibility: he or she would be the worst candidate in the world and I won’t vote if that goes ahead; that one said such-and-such a hundred years ago and for me that’s a red line; that other one is even worse because he’s spineless or, worse still, a traitor for not insulting the bad guys enough; but this one here is almost worse, because he’s not from my party; and so on. And it isn’t only those who are active and putting themselves on the line who take the hits. My latest social media “flame” (read: public lynching) came from members and leaders of Adelante Andalucía, who didn’t like me pointing out that the electoral law penalises fragmentation. Even though I was their comrade until a few years ago, even though we campaigned together many times and I have never had a bad word for them, it didn’t matter: the backlash was as passionate as it was disproportionate. The kind anyone would unleash against an enemy to be defeated. Perhaps even more so.
It would be foolish to think that all this is just basic psychology. The left wants to transform social structures, but it often refuses to acknowledge that its own organisations are shot through with the same power relations, material incentives and identities it seeks to transform. For example, people have to make ends meet, and, believe it or not, so do people on the left; ideological affinities are intertwined with our livelihoods. If my party says it’s raining, even if I can see a perfectly clear sky through the window, it may be inconvenient to acknowledge that contradiction, and it may be in my interest to overact and insist that the storm is about to break. We used to call them “traffic lights”: people who switch to amber when it’s still unclear who will win (which means choosing who will allow them to keep earning a living), and whose political sense of smell is so finely tuned that when they turn green, backing someone or something, you know there’s no better poll. This keeps the same profiles in place and reproduces practices that distort any honest debate. And another day, if the occasion arises, we can talk about the incentives facing insiders who have, moreover, spent their lives in a socially penalised activity (because your CV says you’re the company’s next subversive) when it comes to leaving politics and, imagine the whim, continuing to earn a living.
Material ties are not the only ones that bind parties to their leaders and members. An emotional or symbolic bond also exists, which, like every identity, arouses as much passion as a romantic relationship, or more. One can understand that a lifelong activist who has devoted decades to a cause embodied in a logo or an acronym feels an attachment to their party and its symbols that goes beyond the rational. But we also see the same thing among people who have only just joined a party, or in parties still in their cradle. Party patriotism takes root quickly, but it introduces dynamics that have nothing to do with the tidy rationality of the programme Julio Anguita spoke of. They have more to do, obviously, with the irrational drive that every nationalism awakens, even when it is disguised in party rhetoric. And, needless to say, all of this is a first-order obstacle to getting different people to agree, people who bring very different identities, experiences, and relationships from home.
Be that as it may, even if we addressed and resolved all of the above, and we are still a long way from that, the substantive debate would remain: what to do when your cards are so few and the barbarians are at the gates. After all this time, I have reached a practical conclusion: whatever Frente Amplio decides, I will support it. I will keep my insider comments to myself, and I will humbly help support the people who are there, the ones who have been brave enough to put themselves on the line for all of us at such a difficult time. That matters far more for the country than reading or listening to the left-wing activist who knows everything and who, above all, has a magic idea and a problem for every solution.