The left-wing has a real tendency to regress into ridiculous infighting.
I'm hardly going to be winning any awards for being the first person to make this observation.
Often the infighting consists of battles over terminology or obscure ideological tenants.
Battles have to be fought, but unlike battles over issues or substance all these arguments do is bore folk senseless and achieve nothing. The people who indulge in this type of argument have absolutely no concept of compromise.
If you’ve ever been to a political meeting you’ll know the type. That guy who spends an hour hijacking the meeting to stress the need to open up discussion for instance, ironically dominating the conversation and making it more difficult for the quieter folk in the room to contribute.
To make matters worse these discussions are rarely constructive, with an hour spent waxing lyrical about the problem without any kind of constructive plan to fix it emerging. This self-indulgent behaviour chases away those who would otherwise pull-up their sleeves and contribute simply to satisfy the ego’s of a few.
For any major change to be achieved there must be compromise and teamwork. Compromise doesn’t mean veering to the right or adopting “realistic” centrist policies but it does mean being willing to let some things go by without digging trenches and declaring war.
The left is at its strongest when it is a pragmatic coalition focused outwardly at changing society, any other route risks condemning our movement to irrelevance.
As I mentioned earlier these observations have been made countless times before however they bear repeating lest we forget the lessons of history.
