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In the interests of making myself wildly unpopular: why the current inter-left beef over the future of Momentum is damaging and unnecessary, because everyone basically already agrees.
There have been two programmatic statements on what the future of Momentum should be from the two camps of the class struggle left: Forward Momentum's proposal document https://www.fwdmomentum.org/proposal and Tribune's editorial https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/04/rebuilding-the-labour-left
Given the fact that both camps are currently slagging each other off, it would make sense if these two documents reflected some kind of real, practical political difference. But... they don't.
The two sides agree that Momentum became NGO-ised and London-centric, and that it should now:
Advance clear socialist politics
Rebuild class power outside the party
Empower members
And in order to achieve the above the left should:
contest the next NCG election
Advance clear socialist politics Rebuild class power outside the partyEmpower members And in order to achieve the above the left should:
contest the next NCG election
So why this argument? Because we're terrible at building coalitions. We have a tendency to focus on divisions (sometimes real, sometimes imagined). But we're a small current that has just suffered a huge defeat - if we don't unite over a common programme, we're fucked.
Or in the words of that Tribune article: 'The difficulty in such efforts, especially at moments of defeat, is their tendency to result in recrimination and fragmentation. The only hope that the Labour Left has [...]rests in finding a unity'
