Lenin, reflecting on the lessons of the Russian Revolution for Western Communists, warned them of the danger of ultra-leftism. He defined ultra-leftists as people who elevated purity of principle over effective political practice. They refused all compromise with reformist workers or reformist workers’ associations like trade unions.

Lenin was scathing in his criticisms:

“The conclusion is clear: to reject compromises “on principle” … no matter of what kind, is childishness.”(21)

“We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary dispositions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions … that it is necessary to … create a brand new and immaculate “workers’ Union” invented by very pleasant (and probably, for the most part, very youthful) Communists.” (33)

Lenin thus distinguishes between sounding revolutionary and being able to build a movement that can actually overcome the existing state of affairs. While typically dismissed as a blood-thirsty autocrat, Lenin actually understood as clearly as any deliberative democratic that politics is about argument with people who might not only disagree, but might start from positions that are diametrically opposed to revolutionary demands. What mattered for Lenin was not what individuals workers believed, but the underlying interests that they shared with all workers. The goal of political argument was to uncover this common ground. Political argument proceeds by accepting what is the case; ultra-leftists from what they think workers ought to believe. “We can (and must) build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, it is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.” (34)

We do not inhabit the same political universe as Lenin. The political problem of our time is not the construction of a vanguard party out of raw working class material. That way has been tried, and failed. At the same time, Lenin’s arguments against ultra-leftism can help us understand the political problems caused by what I call “left-wing moralism.” Left-wing moralism is found in the pages of liberal newspapers like the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Toronto Star, across the twitter-verse, and in the more earnest sections of student activists and the academic left. The main problem with left-wing moralism, as I see it, is that it fails to adopt a properly social-philosophical, historical, and dialectical understanding of the development and internalisation of human values. Instead of examining how the values that circulate in society are produced, and whose interest they serve, and how groups whose interests they do not serve nevertheless internalise them and act as if those values do serve their interests, left-wing moralists tend to condemn in one breath and proclaim their own political purity with the next. They see polar opposition instead of contradiction. Since contradictions– in social institutions and individual consciousness– are the space that makes change possible, ignoring them in favour of self-righteous condemnation of the politically incorrect impedes the solution of the problems to which the moralist rightly objects.

Left moralists treat both individual moral character and cultures as fixed wholes divided by a Manichean opposition of good and bad. I will examine the dimension of individual character here, and the cultural dimension in Part Two.

I realise that I am constructing an ideal-typical definition, but by abstracting from the details of specific examples the core practical problem can be isolated for analysis. The actual nuances and complexities of particular expressions of left-wing moralism can only be properly addressed in real political arguments. I also want to add right at the outset that I am not claiming that political argument can be a substitute for political struggle. If far-right racists are mobilising and marching, we must mobilise, march, and deny them access to public space. I am also not so naive to believe that the leadership of these movements of mainstream political parties are ever likely to yield simply to political and philosophical criticism. Nevertheless, no political victory of any sort can be achieved without building numbers through argument, and political argument will inevitably bring critics into contact with people who espouse views that are ill-informed, ignorant, and offensive. Not everyone lives their lives in a universe of intense political engagement. Many people unreflectively internalise the easy-answers that the right-wing demagogues spread. The question is: how do we understand that problem? Is it a problem of the ideas that the person espouses, to be addressed by argument, or is it the person themself, to be addressed by shaming and shunning?

The left-wing moralist tends to adopt the latter strategy., demonizing as the enemy anyone who in anyway expresses less than perfectly politically correct attitudes, dispositions, and values. They think that the secret to change is to make people feel guilty about the values they identify with and the choices they make. However, by focusing on guilt, values, and choices in abstraction from the way in which established structures of power influence and shape peoples’ values and choices, they ignore the decisive issue: how people come to be the people that they are, believing in these values and not those, and make choices that they find reasonable. Simply condemning people who, in a given moment, identify with conservative social values or make individual choices which contribute to patterns of destructive behaviour does nothing to help build the social movements the solution of those problems will require. Instead of abstract critiques of character, left-wing activists have to engage people on their own turf and work towards the discovery of common ground.

How can one discover common ground with climate deniers, or racists, or sexists? Perhaps one cannot. Some people deeply committed to a violent, oppressive value-system sometimes will not give it up no matter how much evidence of the wrongness of their view one marshals. However, even in those cases, there really is common ground there to be found. Everyone alive must breath, appropriate resources from nature, have accesses to potable water, shelter from the elements, and find care when sick. There is thus a basis to argue with climate deniers and supporters of private health care systems about the self-undermining and unjust implications of their commitments. The collapse of natural life-support systems will kill climate deniers and supporters of private health care that cannot pay the bills deprive themselves of what they might one day need. From a social perspective, the plasticity of the human brain and the creativity of the whole being mean that everyone requires education and opportunities to creatively contribute to the world. Racists and sexists who insist on deep natural differences that make white men superior to everyone else simply ignore the histories of achievement of people who have freed themselves from different forms of oppression. The manifest capacities of the purportedly inferior thus offer an objective basis for argument against racism, sexism, and all oppressive value systems. Every argument is a risk, but the common ground really is there. Effective argument uncovers it and thus produces a deep normative change in the former opponent.

The moralist does not see the false value system and the ruling class which uses it to perpetuate its rule as the key problem, but rather the assumed values that mechanically attach to being white, or male, or heterosexual. But people are not white, or male, or heterosexual by arbitrary free choice, but by birth and history. One cannot just wish away one’s genome, family, upbringing, culture, or the relative statuses that attach to them. No one chooses the world into which one is born or the values with which one is raised. To be sure, these markers of identity are not absolutely fixed, as in the case of gender, which some people do decide to change, or in terms of their social effects, which can be altered by political and social struggles to attenuate privilege on the one hand, and increase the scope for free activity of the historically subaltern on the other. Nevertheless, we are shaped before we learn to shape, and this fact has important political implications.

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When people hear arguments that sound as though they are asserting that everything a person is and identifies with is morally wrong, they will not typically be moved to change, but to dig in their heels. A white working class Trump voter in Arkansas or an ex-Newfoundlander working in the oil sands have reasons for choosing what they have chosen. Effective political argument has to start with inquiring about those reasons, not with a lecture about why they are wrong. The Trump voter might well have racist beliefs, but maybe they are mixed with a sense of betrayal by past Democratic governments and motivated by real concern for the future of his family and community. The Newfoundlander might not like working in the oil sands, and he might well understand the environmental damage caused by their exploitation. But he might be there because the cod fishery collapsed thirty years ago, and now he has built a life, and sees no other options. One cannot job shame him and expect him to change, just as one cannot attribute the Arkansas voter’s racism to some unchanging essence of racism deep in the heart of Southern US whites. We have to do better than ad hominem Twitter wars between left-wing moralists and right-wing bigots. Instead, conflict has to become an opportunity to provoke critical reflection on problematic expressions of dominant identities.

On the other side, self-righteous posturing about one’s own purity can almost be guaranteed to produce backlash effects. No matter how loudly educated, well-paid white men acknowledge their privilege, the historical forces that created the institutions and structures that produced that privilege are completely unaffected– and therefore privilege remains through all declamations about how guilty one feels at enjoying its benefits. The right-wing will always happily point this fact out. The solution is not to reject the benefits, which is impossible, in practice, for the most part, but to build movements to changes the institutions that confer unequal and unjust benefits on some. The goal is a future state in which everyone’s natural and social needs are comprehensively satisfied so that they can become the people that they want to become. That which is past cannot now be changed.

Does this argument let individual bigots off the hook? After all, racism, sexism, and other invidious forms of domination are not simply structures that exist apart from peoples’ beliefs but live on in and through them. I do not think that it does. Individuals must be challenged for their beliefs and actions, but they must be challenged in ways that do not make the individual persons, or abstractions like “white culture,” the enemy. There is nothing intrinsically racist about white people, any more than there is anything intrinsically misogynist about gay men. There is no more a uniform “white culture” than there is a uniform “black culture.” Being a woman does not preclude one from being a violent imperialist; being straight does nor preclude one from accepting all manner of alternative sexualities and gender identities. Making sure every imaginable difference is represented in proportion to their average distribution in the population will not solve the major structural problems of the world. Changing the identity of the rulers without changing the structure of control over resources or the drivers of the global economy will not solve any fundamental problems. Left wing moralism takes the enemy to be individual character and not the structures of power that allow the ruling class to rule.

The power of the ruling class grows up out of their control over natural resources, territory, and labouring bodies. Therefore, effective change requires that these structures be changed. Control over territory was established through the enclosure of common lands and colonial expropriation of indigenous territory. Control over bodies was direct, as in the case of the slave trade and the patriarchal domination of women, and indirect, as in the case of legally free labourers who had no real choice but to accept paid work in emerging capitalist industries. The modern histories of capitalism, racism, and sexism are thus inextricably intertwined (but the experiential contours of the experience of racial or sexist domination are unique and irreducible to objective structural economic forces).

Politically, therefore, progressive social change requires everyone to identify with the properly human good that anti-racist– indeed, all struggles against all forms of oppression– serve. That good is general and not the property of any particular group. All forms of oppression are systematic ways of depriving demonized groups of the full set of natural and social resources that they require in order to develop their creative, sentient, cognitive, and relational capacities. All ways of realizing these capacities are good if they are: individually meaningful, socially valuable and valued, and consistent with the carrying capacity of the natural world. When we think of the human good in this general way, and different concrete historical groups of people as struggling to realize it in their own chosen forms, then political argument is an attempt to bring out the shared humanity at the root of different identities and ways of living.

Arguments that are effective in helping people change their value commitments must start from accepting the humanity of the people who hold positions that might sound or be offensive. Everyone alive wants in some way to survive and flourish. Along the way, anyone can be seduced by false arguments about the best way to ensure that common goal. Instead of shaming people who hold false beliefs, anyone genuinely concerned with social change (rather than their own beautiful soul) has to work with people to and trace the internalization of false beliefs back to their social and political causes. That work involves helping people to see that what they want for themselves does not depend upon taking it from others who have the same shared goals in life. Achieving their goals depends upon changing the rapacious social system and ruling class that despoils the earth, exploits the labour of people of all cultures, races, sexes, genders, and ranges of ability (or wrongly excludes them from the labour market and renders their life precarious), and then blames the victim. Once shared needs have been identifies, the process of shedding the old and exclusionary value system can begin.

Like everything important in life there is no guarantee that political argument will work. However, to not argue with individuals (as opposed to organized far-right movements) whose positions one finds offensive assumes that no one can ever change their values or politics. If that is the case, then (to focus on the American example) the working class members of the set of 59 million Americans who voted for Trump seem to be a lost cause. If they are, then the future of America seems to be political stasis (where neither side can attract such overwhelming numbers to push forward decisive change). However, we are in the midst of intensifying social and environmental crisis. Standing still in the midst of unfolding catastrophe ensures that it will only get worse. Unless the left learns how to argue with the “deplorables,” it is hard to see how a movement of the “immense majority” (as Marxists like to say) can be built. Unless that movement is built, not only will the right-wing forces that support Trump not be defeated (even if he is), but the left will also fail to start realising the anti-capitalist agenda gaining currency in the Democratic party.

Human beings share a life-interest in living in societies that utilise natural and social wealth to satisfy real needs. I take this lesson to be taught by all struggles of subaltern groups over across millenia of struggle against domination, deprivation, and oppression. When societies are organized so that our needs are satisfied because they are human needs, then our capacities to create, relate, feel, and act in individually meaningful and socially valuable ways are enabled. When these capacities are enabled, groups and individuals can freely create themselves through sharing their stories, imagining new ones, cooking, singing, dancing, and loving as they choose. They can invite others in, ask to keep some space for themselves, or anything in between. New forms of expression can be invented and new ways of making collectively binding decisions enacted. Differences then become the free product of a capacity for self-creative activity shared by all human beings.

Left-wing politics in the most general sense aims to overcome the commodification of nature and labour, the life-threatening damage to the natural life-support system, and gross material inequalities the exploitation of labour causes. It must reject all the invidious ideologies that have exacerbated, reinforced, and justified capitalist society. Still, if society can be changed, it is only because the people decide to change themselves (individuals are social beings, as Marx argued). There is little evidence to support the belief that people can be changed by shaming or shunning them. The only alternative is to engage their practical intelligence through sharp political arguments aimed at locating the common ground from which solidarity can be built.