If it were ever necessary to bring someone up to speed, quickly, on the state of the left, and its conundrum of a cul-de-sac, there would perhaps be no better nutshelled summary than the new pamphlet by Derick Varn and Daniel Tutt: The People are Not One. Despite its short length, at just 80 pages, it grasps the minutia of the broad left-wing spectrum far better than many pop retellings which dominate the discourse, something that’s perhaps not surprising to those familiar with the two and their near-encyclopedic knowledge of left-wing theorists and sects.^[1] Of course, in order to have such a short book, what we are treated to is less of that exhaustive history and more of a gestalt portrait of the political orientations and theorists that have brought the left to its current impasse. The past few decades have been dominated by various stripes of left populism, and in many ways, it has been the left-wing common sense that has laid behind every left-wing political and social movement of the past 50 years. It is this common sense, and its various theoretical justifications, that is taken to task by Varn and Tutt.

Whether tailing the Democratic party or spontaneous mass protests and riots, left populism puts its faith in the existing consciousness and practices of “the people” at large. On the theoretical side, this approach has had obvious appeal for the various post-Marxist tendencies which have dominated the left since the decline of genuine Marxist orthodoxies and the party form. Within neoliberalism, to say there was no alternative was not just a piece of Thatcherite dogma but a material reality on the ground; there was practically no organized political project capable of posing a serious alternative to neoliberalism. The neoliberal project itself was originally thought of as a populist one, and the most salient feature of this populism was appealing to the mass of people without class division, but rather as a set of atomized individuals. The error of populism can be summarized as this inability to think through the divisions and contradictions within the people.

Unlike populism, which saw politics purely as the popular mass of “little guys” Vs the elites, socialist politics historically opposed itself to petty-bourgeois interests, as was the case for the SPUSA and Eugene Debs in the early 20th century. Varn and Tutt point out, via the intellectual development of theorists such as Christopher Lasch, that this distinction began to dissolve in the second half of the 20th century^[2], such that any particularity to socialist politics began to be reduced to this division between people and elites, the 99% Vs the 1%. The contradictions that socialist politics had been attempting to overcome did not go away, however, but became transformed into a distorted version through the various attempts to articulate the concept of the “professional managerial class.” Varn and Tutt, correctly in my opinion, conclude that this “PMC” is not genuinely a class in a Marxist sense of the term, but acknowledge the serious problem this strata poses for socialist politics.^[3] The divisions with the strata, and the potential for “class traitors," also lead the authors to resist the simplistic “New Class” frameworks that make this strata out to be a new elite to be pitted against the masses.

It is true that the PMC are largely at the center of what has been called “woke ideology” with all the associated deleterious effects for the left, as well as the main force for the coopting of radical demands back into the status quo, as was seen with both the Sanders campaign and the 2020 George Floyd uprisings. And it’s also true that connections between the PMC and Marxism, as has been asserted by many conservatives and even more thoughtful commentators, are often shallow and tenuous. The Marxism which is often professed by sections of the PMC is usually a radical signifier, distorted by decades of academic, often literary rather than economic or political, interpretations. However, when the authors say “If the professional class is wholly compromised - condemned to forms of resentful projection and managerial control - then the possibility of what Lenin once called the “professional revolutionary” disappears,”^[4] I think it is necessary to pause and reflect. As necessary as it might be to find “class traitors” among the PMC, it doesn’t quite follow that the PMC is necessary to have what Lenin thought of as a professional cadre. Professionalism in that context does not mean the same as professionalism for the PMC, which is an ideology instilled in individuals through bourgeois state ideological apparatuses, particularly liberal education in universities. To be sure, there is some overlap; both bourgeois professionalism and Leninist professionalism require instilling a higher duty into individuals, and the creation of a corporate body separate from broader society. So too is there a required technical expertise. But these structural similarities do not extend to the substance. The ideology of bourgeois professionalism is mutually exclusive with that of a properly Leninist and proletarian version. The professionalism of the “professional revolutionary” must therefore come from a totally separate system of ideology production, with different sets of values, institutions, and even technical knowledge depending on the application. Any PMC individual would therefore need retraining as a professional before being fit for this role, just as anyone else would, and just as well, such a category would not depend on the existence of the PMC.

This necessity of building up independent institutions was definitely apparent to the authors throughout the book, and this is one of the key applications of the merger formula that is constantly impressed. I believe this connection, however, between the problem of the PMC and this necessity of new civil society institutions could have been formally developed as a concept to make the book stronger in its argument. The dynamics of the PMC are described as consistently producing deleterious consequences for the left, the sort of moral panic and culture war politics that threaten to suffocate genuine socialism. Varn and Tutt focus on the economic incentives that drive these dynamics, the downward pressure towards proletarianization and even lumpenization. However, the ideological dimension is somewhat neglected. After all, unlike ordinary workers, non-professional petty bourgeoisie or the high bourgeoisie proper, the PMC is marked by their intellectual and ideological specialization; they work as the producers and disseminators of ideology. In a world of collapsing organic civil society, it is the PMC that has taken over educational institutions, unions, non-profits, and media. They are perhaps the only group in society which we may authentically speak of as having “false-consciousness,” as, while everyone in bourgeois society must be interpellated and socialized into bourgeois ideology (as Zizek might say, most people go along with it whether they “really believe it” or not)^[5], the PMC must, due to their structural role, be real “true believers”. They must pursue their ideological role, whether superficially radical or conservative, with a fundamental zeal because their primary function is as evangelizers of bourgeois ideology, and the most effective evangelizers are those genuinely committed to the cause. Thus, everywhere on the left we find the most virulent defenders of bourgeois ideology, earnestly speaking in the name of radical and emancipatory politics. This is an important part of what makes them so destructive on the left.

While it is true that it is divisions within the PMC and other classes and strata that make it possible to have class traitors, the idea of class traitors itself seems to somewhat complicate the book’s thesis as well. The concept of class traitor implies the possibility of switching sides, something which is perhaps not so clean in such a model of multifaceted class divisions. Similarly, it is not only post-Marxist theorists who occasionally paper over such divisions; from the very beginning of the Marxist tradition, in the Manifesto, we see: “Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”^[6] It is the division of society into two great hostile camps that Marxism was premised upon, and as Varn and Tutt suggest in a few remarks, this is premised on the possibility of a class being a bearer of a particular mode of production. While I suspect that the response to this legacy of Marxism would perhaps be that the political economy situation has changed, or that a more sophisticated class analysis was always going to be necessary, addressing these issues would have been helpful. Certainly, the question of just how the working class and socialists are to be unified such that a hostile camp may become a more concrete phenomenon is essential to socialist politics; this is the purpose of the merger formula after all.

As Varn and Tutt point out, the various strains of post-Marxism have also not abandoned the merger formula; they merely embrace a lopsided version of it in which the role of the socialist intellectual is limited to cheerleading and nothing more. For the communization theorists, academics and intellectuals must identify the revolutionary social movements, usually big protests and riots, and act to try and legitimize the struggles and lead them towards solidarity with other left-wing movements.^[7] And of course, we are all familiar with the way that contemporary social democratic types found in Jacobin, generic progressives, and even socialists in the name of Gramscian strategy (such as at Geese Magazine^[8]) tail the Democratic party, reducing the role of the socialist intellectual to either pulling the Democrats left or chastising leftists to vote for them. In either case, the socialist intellectual is reduced to a hanger-on to the real movement, and the way that bourgeois ideological state apparatuses, such as non-profits, think tanks, organized donors, and media institutions, directly coopt the demands and energy of radical movements whether in the streets or at the ballot box is summarily ignored, or rather, only pointed out when ignored by ideological opponents on the left. While not discussed much in the text, we can also speak of lopsided mergers in the various left-wing sects that cling to the ideal of the Leninist cadre without much connection at all to real movements, despite their best efforts as gadflies. The insignificance of these groups in broader politics perhaps can go without saying.

Fortunately, there is an alternative, as Varn and Tutt say:

There seem to us two ways that we might challenge the hegemony of liberalism: the first is political, and involves the development of socialist political power and the strengthening of the labor movement. The second is cultural, and involves a series of civil society institutions that can mediate with the political growth of socialism in intellectual, aesthetic and cultural means.^[9]

While they admit the necessity of relying on bourgeois institutions in the near term, given the lack of resources and organization available to a renewed working class movement, they are quite right to demand a constant awareness and vigilance for any socialists engaging with bourgeois institutions, about the role those institutions play and the necessary unyielding focus on socialist goals. The aim must always be towards working-class independence. In the small islands where independence from bourgeois institutions exists, whether in para-academic organizations or in a handful of publishers and magazines, there tends to be isolation and a lack of coherence with party organization. The fusion of the still nascent cultural and political movements of socialists and the working class is necessary to build an alternative organic civil society, and this organic civil society is, in turn, absolutely necessary to build a genuine political alternative to hegemonic liberalism.

I would add that it is essential to learn from the past history of parties, and that such a fusion should not entail the absolute subordination of this associated civil society to the party. Such heavy-handedness was a major reason that the socialist and communist parties collapsed and gave way to the various strands of post-Marxism that are the focus of this book. Varn and Tutt are also right to cite Macnair with regard to the importance of building up working-class institutions and domestic working-class struggle. This is the foundation for any durable transformative change, as well as relevance internationally, and, as they point out, will likely curb many of the various identitarian and non-universalist excesses on the left.

I understand that this book had originally begun as a smaller pamphlet, but I’m glad it grew into something more and only wish it could have been even longer. An intervention against left populism, in all its forms, is of the utmost urgency for our moment, not least because the liberal order seems to be less tenable than ever before. Too few socialists are even debating the question of left populism or the merger formula in explicit terms; even within DSA the liberal Democratic hegemony has strong sway, to say nothing about those who engage in political discussions more generally, whether online or in person. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that the future of socialism in our time may well depend on this debate, and so I am glad to see such works as this from Varn and Tutt, which bring attention to the finer details. The tying together of so many disparate aspects of left-wing history makes it clear just how stubborn this problem of left populism has been, and the awareness that this problem is hardly new is one of the first requirements for attempting a solution.

1. This can be seen on their respective youtube shows “Emancipations with Daniel Tutt” and “Varn Vlog.” I’ve occasionally appeared as a guest on both shows.

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2. Varn, Derick, and Daniel Tutt. 2026. The People Are Not One. Oulu, Finland: Revol Press. Pg 12-16.

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3. Ibid. Pg 17-32.

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4. Ibid. Pg 26.

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5. Slavoj Žižek. 2008. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso Books. Pg. 27-30.

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6. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1848. “Communist Manifesto (Chapter 1).” Marxists.org. 1848. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007.

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7. Varn, Derick, and Daniel Tutt. 2026. The People Are Not One. Oulu, Finland: Revol Press. Pg 53-59.

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8. See my previous debate with Geese Magazine authors: Villarreal, Nicolas. 2025. “On Bird-Brained Readings of Althusser: A Response to P.K. Gandakin and Scottie O.” Cosmonaut. 2025. https://cosmonautmag.com/2025/02/on-bird-brained-readings-of-althusser-a-response-to-pk-gandakin-and-scottie-o/.; Villarreal, Nicolas. 2025a. “Letter: What Do Geese Know?” Cosmonaut. 2025. https://cosmonautmag.com/2025/03/letter-what-do-geese-know/.

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9. Varn, Derick, and Daniel Tutt. 2026. The People Are Not One. Oulu, Finland: Revol Press. Pg 65-66.

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