I'm not sure the left/right thing is even the best way of looking at politics right now. To me the important distinction is more like socially progressive/green/inclusive vs reactionary/conservative/harking back to the days of empire.
I recognise what you’re trying to say, but you are arguing for essentially a ‘popular front.’ Currently, the most widely known proponent of this strategy is the former Newsnight presenter and erstwhile left-wing commentator Paul Mason. He has called for the left to deal with fascism through the courts and legal system, and for the police to deal with fascists more robustly. This is a disastrous strategy for two main reasons. History teaches us that the law is not some persistent, neutral phenomenon that apportions justice without fear or favour. It has been historically used far more often to curtail the left and reinforce property rights, than it has for progressive purposes. And we know that fascism enjoys support from elements within the police force.
He also advocates a strategy of defending Ukraine by rallying the ‘progressive’ and
‘non-imperialist’ west. Leaving aside the highly problematic nature of Zelensky’s regime, Mason invites us to believe that the west (Sunak, Biden/ Trump, Macron et al) is largely a progressive bulwark against a backward and expansionist Putin. The preposterousness of this formulation requires no comment.
Blair was socially progressive, but sided with the bosses against the unions and workers. The LibDem coalition with Cameron propped up a vicious Tory government. The Green led council in Brighton attacked the (highly organised) refuse workers (and got a bloody nose). They sat on their hands as an academy chain carried through the forced academisation of local schools. And their handling of missing refugee children can best be described as, at best, inept.
I say this not as some sort of ultra-left shot at the Greens, but to highlight the dead end that is an alliance of progressives and liberals with leftists. To erase class from the formulation is simply a disastrous strategy. France in 1936, following Stalin’s latest flip-flop, saw communist parties instructed to enter alliances with liberals. Leon Blum’s government, containing socialists and communists, unleashed repression against striking workers. Once the threat of strikes had receded, the representatives of capitalism turned on the left, paving the way for Hitler. Similar story in Spain, where a popular front government featuring communists and anarchists butchered the revolution, ushering in thirty five years of fascist dictatorship under Franco.
However superficially attractive some alternatives sound, there just ain’t no way of circumventing the problem of the haves and the have nots.
