The new left party is coming. Details remain vague, but every week seems to bring new signs of hope since Zara Sultana partially dragged the backroom negotiations into daylight, along with those of its participants who appear more committed to internecine manoeuvering than to building mass socialist politics. Now, revolutionaries must decide how we approach this emerging project with the limited information we have.
For a lucky few, the answer will be simple: it will begin life as a reformist formation, initially dominated by its founding forces, and therefore we must condemn it from the outset to avoid tainting our pure and perfect politics. For the rest of us, who recognise that our own particular tendencies, traditions and organisations alone cannot be the golden goose that will one day lay an immaculate communist egg, things are more complicated.
To begin to wade through this complexity, this article responds to the perspectives on the party outlined by Anti-Capitalist Resistance (A*CR), alongside the accompanying commentary of leading A*CR member, Simon Hannah1.
A*CR rightly rejects abstentionism and presents substantive political and tactical points that the new party should adopt. However, at the same time, the weaknesses in their perspective are a helpful starting point for thinking about how not to approach the party as revolutionaries, specifically given their lack of clarity, ambition and clear strategy for building revolutionary politics in and through the party.
What is to be won?
To start, it is worth addressing the question of why revolutionaries should engage with the new party at all.
The new left party will, frankly, not be enough. It is largely inevitable that it will initially take the form of yet another broad left party, aimed at winning electoral contests to implement reforms that – if they are not crushed by capital’s opposition – will slightly alter the parameters of British capitalism in the working class’s favour. Faced with a global climate crisis, capital’s accelerating drive to war and capitalists’ increasing hoarding of wealth, this is insufficient – and it is certainly not the limit of what is possible and what we should strive towards. To concede on the potential for broader societal transformation without even articulating it as a possibility is defeatist, and will only see us forever fighting on the terms of our opponents, unable to set an alternative agenda.
In this initial context, the party will be riven with tensions over myriad issues, strategic approaches and more fundamental questions surrounding its nature. The right wing of the party will likely be constituted by dyed-in-the-wool social democrats and by those on the lookout for paid work, who cut their teeth under Corbyn’s Labour, in the trade union bureaucracies and left NGOs, and whose political commitments are simultaneously commitments to their next paycheck. The pull from this section will be towards a politics aimed at the survival of the party above all else, avoiding controversy, conceiving of the party’s audience as a monolith electorate incapable of seriously considering radical ideas, and subsequently pushing a “not in front of the children” approach to disagreement, which itself can have a chilling, red-baiting effect on the party’s internal culture.
Something fundamentally different is needed: a functioning communist party, explicitly aimed at overthrowing capitalism in its entirety.
Unfortunately, however, such a party will not drop from the sky. As others have articulated in greater detail, the communist party is not born of Marxist theory alone, as if we could simply convince the working class majority of the correctness of our ideas by imparting knowledge from above. Rather, it is the merger of Marxist theory with the everyday, organic struggles of the class – struggles aimed at such immediate gains as pay rises, challenging misogynist, racist and ableist structures, and at making life more liveable in other discrete ways. Marxist theory is the means by which such activities can be combined, coordinated amongst participants, and directed at societal change so fundamental that it will make such struggles superfluous: at revolution. With sufficient ability to build roots in the class, act flexibly and inclusively, and practice internal democracy, the communist party is both the site in which this merger takes place, through its programme, and it is the result of this merger: a real political alternative.
How, then, do we get from here to there? The 57 varieties of British Marxist groupuscules are incapable of acting as sites of large-scale merger, including those which declare themselves to be communist parties. Many of them have ossified to the point where they exist primarily to reproduce themselves, rather than to promote revolutionary politics. The texts of their founders, senior leaders and theoretical forefathers are treated with such sacredness as to shut down intellectual curiosity and ingrain backwards conceptions of the world. Others maintain a sense of humility and recognise that they are not themselves the sole vehicle that will deliver socialism, but remain confined to small memberships and support bases, concentrated in particular places. In clinging to the sect-model of the dead generations and replicating our efforts in competition with each other, we deny the space needed for merger and earn every lazy Life of Brian “splitters” jibe we receive.
Just as with the new left party, however, condemning this quagmire as irrelevant is not enough. In almost every Marxist organisation in Britain, you can find militants who are excellent organisers with deep roots in the class. If all such organised Marxists suddenly disappeared, many trade union structures from branch-level upwards would collapse overnight, and projects such as tenants’ unions, migrant solidarity groups and much of the mass-movement for Palestine would struggle to sustain themselves at the very least. To dismiss the existing far-left is to dismiss this hard-built infrastructure and all of its potential. The task for organised Marxists then is not to defeat one another, but to find a means of combining our best features in the direction of a functioning communist party. However difficult this may be, the only way out is through.
Here, we can see the potential of the Sultana-Corbyn party beyond building another reformist venture. Revolutionaries, both within existing organisations and outside, will join, regardless of any attempts to stop us. In cooperating over efforts to expand the political horizon of this party, we will have the opportunity to work together – to identify points of agreement and address differences. Doing so in good faith, without concealing our motivations, will be essential if anything is to come of such cooperation. This is, sadly, easier said than done given the rotten cultures of many existing sects, but it is no less necessary for that. It demands structures that facilitate disagreement under unifying principles: a formalised revolutionary caucus, able to operate as a coordinated left flank within the new party. By promoting our politics in unity and with open commitment, we will be better placed to push for the transformation of the party or to cohere the basis for something better to ultimately emerge from it.
Alongside this qualitative dimension, there is the potential here to bring revolutionary politics to a much wider audience. Polls already indicate that the new left party could appeal to a broad base – if it is led by Jeremy Corbyn. Corbynism created a lot of Corbynites, but it did not create as many socialists. Much of the mass base of Corbyn’s leadership between 2015 and 2019 seemed to disappear over the following years, with subsequent left movements largely sustained by those who had already been active socialists before his time as Labour leader, or who would have been so regardless. Nonetheless, Corbyn maintains a base of support that is far from insignificant, although it is politically underdeveloped and largely inactive. The new party is an opportunity for revolutionaries to reach and develop them – if we are sufficiently organised to take it.
How not to party
A*CR is a small revolutionary Marxist organisation, but many of its members are committed comrades and effective organisers, and the group has avoided the internal authoritarianism, hero-worship and chauvinism – most obviously in the form of transphobia – which has plagued much of the British revolutionary left. Through the Fourth International, A*CR has the kind of valuable international links which all revolutionary organisations should build if we are to realise our internationalist principles. Whilst there are political disagreements to be had with the organisation – perhaps most significantly over its shallow conception of imperialism exemplified in the call to arm the Ukrainian state – the point of this article is not to condemn A*CR but, in the spirit outlined above, to appeal for clarity and for ambition, setting the tone for collaboration in the new party and beyond.
Outlining a communist perspective on the new left party points to perhaps the most obvious issue with A*CR’s declared approach: a lack of clarity on what they believe the new left party is for. The thirteen points agreed by A*CR regarding the new party and Hannah’s preamble give us only limited information on this, with Hannah calling for “a political alternative, one that can tackle neoliberalism, tax the rich and big business and rebuild the welfare state as well as contributing to making Israel a pariah state for its genocidal actions.” There is nothing wrong with any of these points, but they cannot amount to the limit of our political horizon. Revolutionary Marxism is not left-Keynesianism.
Beyond these limited aspirations, readers are left with a sense that A*CR’s decision to involve themselves in the party is a reluctant one, made in desperation. To some degree, that’s fine. The crises we face demand urgent action and, as Hannah points out, the failures of previous broad left initiatives are an understandable basis for reluctance. But if, as Hannah writes, the new party “will undoubtedly have similar policies to those outlined in the 2017 Labour manifesto [which] falls far short of what is needed as late capitalism hurtles towards climate collapse”, then how do we build something better? A*CR’s list of points offers no clear, coherent strategy for doing this, presented as they are without any obvious order or overarching objective.
If we are to build something better, an open declaration of our intentions, principles and revolutionary ambitions will be essential. We cannot deceive our way to communism. The risk is that, in investing our capacities in the new party without explicit and clear goals, we conceal the revolutionary nature of our politics and do nothing to further it. Yet this is effectively the approach implied by the seventh point agreed by A*CR, which is worth quoting in full:
“Any new party should allow tendencies to exist and have the right to express their opinions openly, including in any press. Once the basic principles were agreed, debate going beyond that – the sort of discussions a revolutionary Marxist party might have needs to be set aside. Otherwise you have a continual debate like we had in Left Unity around programme and workers militias. This is one of the most difficult things to manage. If you have an open democratic party it is difficult to stop revolutionary currents joining but how do you stop their ‘raids’ and endless propagandising? You have to make sure there is enough of a genuine mass base and healthy local groups that have a majority who are not already members of organized groups.”
Yes, open factions and the right to dissent are essential and can facilitate disagreement without collapsing into splits. But then, presumably once a conference has voted on the party’s initial setup, are we to set aside our differences and throw ourselves into the project as constituted?
This is a concession of ground before the struggle has even begun. Without attempting to improve this body as it both emerges and develops continually, we can only build exactly the type of insufficient reformist party that Hannah critiques in both his preamble and in his book A Party with Socialists in It: A History of the Labour Left. How do we create anything other than a left duplication of Labourism while willingly stifling our own objections and making no effort at shaping the project on an ongoing basis? This self-policing is also a recipe for turning revolutionaries into reformists, when there will already be no shortage of pressure aimed at doing so. As A*CR’s eighth point notes: “The danger of being integrated into the establishment and then politically neutered is very real” – especially true when the call is coming from inside the house.
The same pre-emptive defeatism is visible in their sixth point, where A*CR fumbles their positions on anti-Zionism by “remain[ing] open about a two state or one state approach” and on militarism by “leaving the arms issue for further debate” when it comes to Ukraine, in favour of a “flexible approach” to maintain a broad base for the party. To say nothing of the political content of these issues, we should make arguments with the intention of winning them. Yes, we will have to pick our battles, but the implications of pre-emptively conceding on points of principle can only be to conceal our genuine intentions, fostering a slippery culture of concessions and making our real ambitions more difficult to realise in the long term.
That the comrades in A*CR can write of “revolutionary currents” and “members of organized groups” as if they are not amongst these speaks to two damaging trends on the revolutionary left: an “everyone-is-a-sect-except-me” attitude, where one’s organisation is so superior that members conceive of it as entirely beyond the rest of the far-left; and a related “quiet sectarianism” where there is no need to interact with or even acknowledge other organised Marxists, because the task instead is to reach an unsullied majority of friendly local people. Decades of these practices are yet to prove effective, and they will not do so while communists are fragmented and isolated. Now we are left with the challenge of adapting our strategy.
That challenge calls for nothing less than a radical break with deeply ingrained ways of thinking. Standard British Marxist practice is to assume that the correct way to organise is to have the best theory and propagate that as widely as possible, rather than to find a wide enough basis for agreement in our political work – a Marxist programme. Changing this will require a recognition that we ultimately have to supersede the organisations that we have built to date; to lean into the communist ethos of self-abolition in all of our activity. This is not something that can be rushed. Hannah is right to note the need for simultaneously “engaging in and consistently working to establish the new party on the best possible basis, and continuing to build a revolutionary ecosocialist force that can contribute to overthrowing capitalism”. But the assumption must not be that said force will be our organisations as they currently exist – that, if this project ends, A*CR, rs21, the RCP etc., must each come out of it exactly as we entered, but perhaps with a few more members. We should ultimately aim to develop the project to a point where our organisations are no longer needed.
And how to party
Beyond these faults, the remainder of A*CR’s points range from unobjectionable to laudable.
They are entirely right to point out that: “A false counter-position of identity versus class politics needs to be avoided. A party which is not inclusive will fail.” Opposing reactionary tendencies will be amongst the greatest challenges within the new party, which will likely see arguments for avoiding “culture war” issues, ceding ground to transphobia, anti-migrant sentiment or whichever scapegoating effort is GB News’ flavour of the month. Again, here we need to make arguments with the assumption that we can win them – that we can convince waiverers and construct majorities – rather than responding to worrying trends by abandoning solidarity, issue-by-issue.
On this, and on the questions of ecological politics, building the party within unions and workplaces, keeping elected politicians accountable and, crucially, opposing narrow electoralism through a counterbalancing orientation to extra-parliamentary struggles, A*CR’s points affirm that they will be steadfast allies. But towards what end?
That same question applies to all revolutionaries who are thinking of getting involved in the new party, particularly to those in existing organisations. Can we look beyond the twin conceptions of this project as an opportunity to either elect slightly better managers of the capitalist state, or to sell a few more papers and break away, having marginally increased the membership of our existing organisations? Can we aim at being more than revolutionaries in a reformist party – many of us for the second, third or fourth time around? Can we not be more ambitious than this?
- Similar points were also raised by Dave Kellaway, “New Left party – a historic opportunity?”, Anti*Capitalist Resistance, July 29, 2025, https://anticapitalistresistance.org/new-left-party-an-historic-opportunity/ ↩︎
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