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In Marxism,ultra-leftism encompasses a broad spectrum of revolutionaryMarxist currents that areanti-Leninist in perspective. Ultra-leftism distinguishes itself from other left-wing currents through its rejection ofelectoralism,trade unionism, and national liberation. The term is sometimes used as a synonym ofleft communism. "Ultra-left" is also commonly used as apejorative byMarxist–Leninists andTrotskyists to refer to extreme or uncompromising Marxist sects.[1]
The termultra-left is rarely used in English. Instead, people tend to speak broadly ofleft communism as a variant of traditionalMarxism. The French equivalent,ultra-gauche [fr], has a stronger meaning in that language and is used to define a movement that still exists today: a branch of left communism developed by theorists such asAmadeo Bordiga,Otto Rühle,Anton Pannekoek,Herman Gorter, andPaul Mattick, and continuing with more recent writers, such asJacques Camatte andGilles Dauvé. This standpoint includes two main traditions, a Dutch-German tradition including Rühle, Pannekoek, Gorter, and Mattick, and an Italian tradition following Bordiga. These traditions came together in the 1960s French ultra-gauche.[2] The political theorist Nicholas Thoburn refers to these traditions as the "actuality of ... the historical ultra-left".[3]
The term originated in the 1920s in the German and Dutch workers movements, originally referring to a Marxist group opposed to bothBolshevism andsocial democracy, and with some affinities withanarchism.[4]
The ultra-left is defined particularly by its breed ofanti-authoritarian Marxism, which generally involves an opposition to thestate and tostate socialism, as well as toparliamentary democracy andwage labour. In opposition to Bolshevism, the ultra-left generally places heavy emphasis upon the autonomy andself-organization of theproletariat. It rejected the necessity of arevolutionary party and was described as permanently counterposing "the masses" to their leaders.[5] Dauvé also explained:
The ultra-left was born and grew in opposition to Social Democracy andLeninism—which had becomeStalinism. Against them, it affirmed the revolutionary spontaneity of the proletariat. The German communist left (in fact German-Dutch), and its derivatives, maintained that the only human solution lay in proletarians' own activity, without it being necessary to educate or to organize them ... Inheriting the mantle of the ultra-left after the war, the magazineSocialisme ou Barbarie appeared in France between 1949 and 1965.[6]
One variant of ultra-leftist ideas was widely revived in theNew Left of the 1960s, and particularly in theMay 1968 moment inlibertarian socialist movements such asBig Flame, theSituationist International, andautonomism.[7] During the May 1968 events in France, ultra-leftism was initially associated with the opposition and critique to theFrench Communist Party (PCF).[8] Ultra-leftism was thus used by the established currents of the communist movement to prevent, sometimes correctly, against "self-indulgent ultra-leftism [that] could only make it more difficult for the revolutionary left to win rank and file PCF members away from their leaders″.[9]
Used pejoratively,ultra-left is used to label positions that are adopted without taking notice of the current situation or of the consequences which would result from following a proposed course. The term is used to criticize leftist positions that, for example, are seen as overstating the tempo of events, propose initiatives that overestimate the current level ofmilitancy, or which employ appeals to violence in their activism.[10]
The mainstream Marxist critique of such a position began withVladimir Lenin's"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, which critiqued those (such asAnton Pannekoek orSylvia Pankhurst) in the nascentCommunist International, who argued against cooperation withparliamentary orreformistsocialists. Lenin characterized the ultra-left as a politics of purity—the doctrinal "repetition of the 'truths' of pure communism".[11][12] Leninists typically used the term against their rivals on the left: "theCommunist Party's Betty Reid wrote in a 1969 pamphletUltra-Leftism in Britain that theCPGB made 'no exclusive claim to be the only force on the left', but dismissed the groups to the left of the CPGB as the 'ultra-left', with Reid outlining the ultra-left as groups that were Trotskyist, anarchist orsyndicalist or those that 'support the line of theCommunist Party of China during theSino-Soviet Split' (pp. 7–8)".[13]
Trotskyists and others stated the Communist International was pursuing a strategy of unrealistic ultra-leftism during itsThird Period, which the Communist International later admitted when it turned to apopular front strategy in 1934–35.[14] The term has been popularized in the United States by theSocialist Workers Party at the time of theVietnam War, using the term to describe opponents in theanti-war movement, includingGerry Healy.[15][page needed] Ultra-leftism is often associated with leftistsectarianism, in which a socialist organization might attempt to put its own short-term interests before the long-term interests of the working class and its allies.[16]
As for the term 'ultra-left', which is often equated with 'sectarianism', it can only define those currents which historically split from the KPD between 1925 and 1927. Left communism never appeared as a pure will to be 'as left as possible'.
