Ayo Awujoola delineates the relationship between theory and practice, affirming Marxism as the key to the contemporary left’s ability to merge these elements into a revolutionary politic.

The world can be a demoralizing place for leftists. From the climate crisis to the genocide in Palestine, many can critique the oppression, exploitation, marginalization, and devastation that they see, and even explain its structural nature, and yet it can seem almost impossible to do something about it all. Many leftists are faced with the major problem that they lack an idea of how they might be able to act to transform society for the better. This problem can encourage them to engage with social and political issues as merely ‘idealists’ or sympathizers, and not activists or organizers – leftists ‘in theory’, but not ‘in practice’.

Beyond this divide between left idealists and left activists, much of the existing left-wing politics and activism also lacks a plausible understanding of what kind of action is capable of transforming society for the better.

On the one hand, transformative long-term goals are often treated as though they were short-term goals, which makes them impracticable. An example would be a socialist organization that campaigns for its long-term goals by mere sloganeering, as if raising awareness of a radical slogan like ‘abolish capitalism’ would be enough to actually abolish capitalism. The point is not that these long-term and ultimate goals are impossibly idealistic, but that this strategy lacks an adequate explanation as to why these goals might actually be possible, and what concrete steps might be likely to achieve them. In these cases, not enough emphasis is placed on building up the collective capacity of left-wing activism with precise, shorter-term goals that are likely to create the conditions to be able to struggle for larger, longer-term goals.

On the other hand, goals considered to be long-term should often be considered shorter-term goals, because they don’t go far enough in contesting the ruling order. In other words, long-term and ultimate goals are often reformist, in the sense that they are consistent with the survival of the existing social order. The problem with this approach is that the existing social order – characterized by global capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, cis-hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy, xenophobia, ableism, and so on – constitutes exactly the structures we need to overcome to transform society for the better.

Somewhere in the middle, even when organizations have transformative ultimate goals, these goals often fail to be connected to the comparatively shorter-term concrete goals that the organizations campaign for, therefore failing to account for whether their methods are also sufficient for achieving the ultimate goals. For instance, the concrete activity of many socialist organizations is to try to organize working-class people into labor unions. Such campaigns are certainly worthwhile, but their worth does not mean that the methods they require are equivalent to the strategy required to achieve socialism. These strategies too may ultimately be reformist, even though this is not their intention.

The point of this analysis is to make clear that it is necessary to identify shorter-term goals in order to achieve longer-term goals, and that it is also necessary to identify a path to achieving ultimate goals in order to be able to direct the comparatively shorter-term goals in an effective way. The problem we face, therefore, is that much left-wing politics and activism lacks a robust strategic orientation that takes us from where we are now to all the way to where we want to be: in other words, a credible and complete ‘theory of change’. These incongruencies are problems of inadequate practice, but they derive from an inadequate understanding of our present circumstances and how we can change them. What should this mean for those of us invested in the success of left-wing struggles?

The Role of Theory in Left-Wing Practice

How we engage with the social world depends on what we want to achieve in it. If we want to transform the entire social order, we have to act in a way that can achieve this, which requires understanding how we can act to achieve it. But if people believe that they lack an understanding of how it could be possible to transform the entire social order, they will not try to do this, even if they remain committed to the ideal. Instead, they will narrow their engagement to goals that seek to transform only a part of the oppressive social order, or to reformist goals – or to no leftist goals at all, thus becoming left idealists.

From the other direction, if someone is actively trying to transform the entire social order, they must have some underlying theory about how their action might contribute to its materialisation. This theory – or strategy, or theory of change – is effectively a predictive claim about how their action is likely to affect the social world, and is itself premised on more or less explicit explanatory claims about how the social world works. What this means is that our activist practice – like all our conscious practice – is always guided by some form of explanatory and predictive theory, whether this theory is based on our casual, anecdotal observation, or on systematic inquiry and analysis.¹ We always theorize about how to achieve the goals we consciously pursue. The more accurate, coherent, systematic, empirically informed, thorough, extensive, tested, and revised our theory, the more capable we will be of achieving our goals.

The role of ‘practice’ for left activists is to transform society in our vision. The role of ‘theory’ for the left should be to help us understand whether this is possible – and if so, how. This means that it is necessary for the left to develop an explanatory theory with predictive power adequate to the task of long-term social transformation. The predictive power of an explanatory theory derives from its generality – that is, its abstraction from the specificities of concrete cases to the underlying structure that they share. The generality of an effective explanatory theory enables us to identify the underlying mechanisms that contribute to producing a given outcome, and therefore allows us to better understand how to achieve that outcome by affecting the relevant mechanisms. For the purposes of left-wing practice, this means that it is by understanding the general mechanisms that shape the social world that we can come to understand how to change it.

As such, left-wing theory must include: (1) general explanatory claims about how the social world works; (2) analysis of specific social circumstances using these claims; (3) strategies for achieving our goals on the basis of this analysis; and (4) revision of these explanatory claims, analyses, and strategies in the light of relevant new information. It is through exposure to left-wing theory that people can move from hopeless discontent with the state of the world to the belief that another world is possible, and to adherence to a leftist strategy for social transformation – from this world to the next. For our practice to build the capacity to transform society, it needs to be informed by an understanding of what kind of practice has this potential, which we will be most likely to attain through intentional, critical study.

These points imply that it is possible to approach any question about how to achieve something, or why a sociological phenomenon is the way it is, in a more systematic or less systematic way. The more systematic and empirically informed our theory, the more likely it is to lead us to success in understanding and action. This implies that in answering questions about how the social world works and how to change it, we should not be content with conclusions derived from our casual consideration. Rather, we should seek as best as we can to approach our questions more systematically and intentionally, in order to arrive at conclusions that take into account the most coherent reasoning and the most important evidence available.

The more we understand that better explanatory theory can improve our practice, the more we can recognize that we can appeal to history to improve our theory and practice. This is because, on the one hand, our present situation is the result of the historical events that led into it. As such, the past has shaped the possibilities for action in the present, which means that it also shapes the possible future outcomes of present actions. Future possibilities are not determined simply by what we do now; they are also shaped by what has already happened, because what has already happened has determined the resources and strategies available in the present. In this sense, the past also constrains future possibilities, imposing limits to the contingency of history by making some outcomes less likely than others.

Specifically, it is by understanding the general sociological dynamics that shape and constrain the contingency of historical events that we can come to develop a theory that is capable of offering plausible predictive claims about how to transform the social order. The more we understand how the present state of affairs came about historically, as a combination of both contingent factors and general sociological factors, the more effectively we will be able to pursue the future possibilities we strive to achieve.

On the other hand, history can inform us of the likely outcome of strategies that have been used in the past to pursue the same or similar goals under similar conditions. Left-wing social movements are not a new occurrence, and because of this we have the opportunity to conduct our practice from a more informed perspective by learning from the historical experience of these movements, and hence avoiding mistakes that we might otherwise repeat. We can only seize this opportunity by engaging with the history of the movements that came before us. It is therefore crucial that we seek out the best lessons that history can offer us – from both the dynamics that resulted in the present state of affairs (including the actual experience of our movements) and the theories or strategies that informed them.²

Theory, Practice, and Urgency

It is important to be clear that these arguments about the importance of theory do not imply that left activists should refuse to participate in left-wing organizations that currently lack a complete, historically-informed theory of change. The reality of our social context is that many people who turn to left-wing activism want to act urgently, either because they face the direct pressure of the oppressive social order or because of moral concern for those who do. In particular, those activists who are under greater oppressive pressures will tend to be less able to postpone taking action in order to work out their theory of change, precisely because the oppressive pressures force them to act without delay. As a result of these pressures and concerns, it is easy for left activists to neglect the type of theory that I have been discussing.

This feeling of urgency is entirely appropriate and not taken seriously enough on the left as a whole, because the problems are urgent. Part of the difficulty in getting people to understand and act on this urgency is that people tend not to develop a pervasive practical concern for oppressive structures if they are not forced to do so by the oppressive structures themselves – and even if they do, the fact that these structures don’t affect them personally will tend to reduce the urgency of this practical concern to them. The problems we face as leftists could not be more urgent – especially for the people they immediately affect – but the fact that they are not materially or practically urgent for many leftists makes them less likely to treat these problems as urgent, which limits the possibilities of our practice. For many leftists, treating the social and political problems that concern them as urgent would imply a drastic change in their priorities.

But this urgency does not imply that we should direct all our energy to trying to resolve the immediate problems we encounter through strategies that are limited to providing immediate or short-term support. The attraction of ‘doing something concrete’ for exploited, oppressed, or suffering people is powerful, and of course justified. But though they commonly do vital work, such short-term strategies are not good enough at ‘doing something concrete’, because they fail to address the structural factors that produce and reproduce the oppressive situation.

Our theory of change cannot be limited to building alternatives, either. A significant amount of left-wing activism is engaged in building alternative structures through mutual aid, service provision, and cooperatives in order to mitigate the harms of the oppressive social order. While also doing important work, what this approach shares with the exclusive focus on short-term support is that they avoid the difficult problem of figuring out how to transform the ruling order, and hence avoid the fact that most left-wing theories are inadequate for this goal. By trying merely to mitigate harm and detach people from the oppressive social order, these approaches effectively presuppose that we cannot transform it, giving up before we even start.

In other words, because they are not connected to a long-term theory of change that explains how to weaken or overcome the oppressive social order, short-term strategies and alternative structures fail to address the conditions creating the need to ‘do something concrete’ in the first place. This is why they can only be oriented towards (relatively) small groups of oppressed people, rather than oppressed people as a whole – or to small parts of the oppressive social order, rather than the oppressive social order as a whole. At best, they will empower and durably improve the lives of (relatively) small groups of oppressed people; at worst, they will perpetuate oppressed people’s dependence on external support. These problems reflect the broader reality that unless we are able to confront the oppressive social order – and in particular, the capitalist class and state which shape economic and political decision-making – our efforts to transform the world will remain vulnerable to its interests, and will tend to be overwhelmed by its sheer destructive power.³ As such, short-term goals and alternative structures will never suffice to transform the oppressive social order. They must be combined with a long-term strategy that confronts and undermines it.

Of course, this problem is only practically meaningful if a viable long-term strategy exists. If it really is possible to weaken or overcome the oppressive social order, then we should not prioritize short-term support that is not connected to this strategy. This might look like a harsh judgement, because it seems to imply ‘leaving people behind’ in the short-term. On the one hand, it is true that without increasing the resources we have available for leftist politics and activism, taking the time to develop a long-term strategy implies reducing the scope of our short-term practical goals. But on the other hand, the idea that this orientation uniquely implies leaving people behind is misleading for at least three reasons. The first reason is that in reality, short-term strategies themselves leave people behind, by failing to address the oppressive structures that make some people exploited and oppressed in the first place. Second, the goal of short-term support can be achieved without relying on short-term strategies; in my opinion, a viable long-term strategy is compatible with and will require short-term support as one of its short-term goals.

And third, people are always already being left behind because we don’t have enough resources to do everything we need to do at the same time, so it would be false to suggest that this problem is unique to long-term strategies. On the one hand, short-term strategies are incapable of not leaving people behind, since they fail to extend their scope to oppressed and exploited people as a whole and the oppressive social order as a whole. But on the other hand, even if all left activists suddenly agreed on and pursued a viable long-term strategy that involved short-term support, it seems very likely that people would still be left behind in the short-term, because we don’t have enough resources among ourselves to do all that would need to be done.

This is the reality of the historical situation we have inherited, and its problems of theory and practice. On one side, many leftists are merely idealists, and fail to commit practically to their own values and goals. This reaction is practically self-defeating, because it is only by pursuing our leftist goals that they have been realized in the past, that they are defended in the present, and that our unrealized goals can be realized in the future. As such, left idealism guarantees our defeat and demoralization, reinforcing itself in a vicious circle, as defeat and demoralization are then used to justify further retreats into left idealism.

It is also morally self-defeating. Left idealists rely on left activists to pursue shared leftist goals without their involvement, thus ‘free-riding’ on the sacrifices made by others – others whose tasks demand even greater sacrifice because left idealists are not involved. And because some people will always be forced by oppressive pressures to resist the oppressive social order, this also means relying increasingly on more oppressed people to do this work. So left idealism should be problematic for left idealists by their own leftist standards, because it expresses a failure of solidarity with both oppressed people and their fellow leftists.

To say this is not to blame left idealists for failing to have already become activists. As I have said, a common reason for left idealism is not knowing what to do about the problems we face. But since it is true that leftist goals have been won in the past and are maintained in the present by the effort of left activists, we have very strong reasons to believe in the potential power of left-wing activism. Once we recognize this, we become responsible for trying to find out how to achieve our leftist goals, as well as the fact that left idealism is both practically and morally self-defeating. And once we acknowledge this responsibility, it should become obvious that taking it seriously requires left idealists to become activists. The term ‘activism’ does not specifically mean organising demonstrations and leading chants, but rather using your time and capacities to contribute to a cause greater than yourself, which can take many forms. Activism is not a ‘calling’ that only some leftists are responsible for assuming; it is the only viable option for every leftist.

But on the other side, not all left activism has the same strategic relevance. Compounding this problem is the fact that it is very common for left activists to become so involved in pursuing merely short-term goals that they make themselves unavailable to participate in attempts to construct projects for long-term transformation. This reaction is practically self-defeating for our long-term goals in two ways. Not only does it direct leftists to an inadequate form of practice, but it also hinders their ability to develop an adequate practice.

Again, what this all speaks to is the urgency of the situation. People will always be left behind in the short term. If we really care about this tragic fact, our response should be to ensure that as few people as possible are left behind, which implies (1) resolutely taking the time to develop a coherent, long-term strategy; (2) connecting this strategy, as much as possible, to goals for short-term support; and (3) treating this whole situation urgently – because the more urgently we treat it, the more of our own resources we will mobilize to pursue these goals. This is why I said that taking seriously the problems that concern us on the left would require drastic changes to the priorities of many on the left, most of all left idealists. We need urgently to develop and pursue a robust long-term strategy, and engage in concrete, short-term support as much as possible – but in a way that actually empowers people and addresses underlying causes. And the more leftists there are engaged in this practice, the more capable we will be of achieving these goals.

In our engagement with existing organizations, therefore, we should strive to promote the importance and urgency of developing a rigorous and complete strategy, with the aspiration of leaving behind as few people as possible. If efforts to reorient the priorities of such organizations fail consistently, we should form independent platforms with those who take this demand seriously. The extraordinary difficulty of accomplishing the emancipatory goals of the left implies that there is a definite tendency for left organizations that fail to develop a rigorous and complete strategy to fail to achieve their goals. When this happens, it is imperative that there be organizations that can both explain this endlessly repeated occurrence as well as pose an alternative to it. And as long as our strategy requires winning over large numbers of people to this perspective, it will be necessary to engage with left organizations whose politics differ from ours.

But to ensure that we promote theory for the practically relevant role we want it to have, we need to understand what exactly we should want our theory to do for us.

The Tasks of Theory on the Left

The most substantial task of theory for those on the left who seek to transform the social order must be to provide an understanding of how we get from where we are now to where we want to be. In particular, such a theory of change needs to:

Explain what’s wrong with the current political, economic, and social order
Specify what a better political, economic, and social order might plausibly look like, especially in terms of:
1. How people would be motivated to work, and how work tasks would be allocated
2. How work would be organized and the fruits of labor distributed
3. How political decision-making would be organized
4. How public safety would be ensured and the social order defended from invasion or usurpation
5. How the social inclusion of all the currently marginalized and oppressed social groups who would live within its territory would be ensured
Identify a strategy that can build enough power to transform the social order along the lines set out in point (2) above, including:
1. Its relationship to electoral politics
2. Its relationship to existing left-wing social movements, including the labor movement
3. Its relationship to violent methods, including insurrection
4. Who the agents of transformation are and how they would be organized – in particular, how their organizational forms would ensure effective action and accountability to their membership and their values
5. How we should respond to the dire conditions that people endure in the immediate present
6. Why this strategy would be likely to lead to this better vision, and not something else
Identify and respond to challenges that have existed in this strategy or similar strategies

Every left-wing organisation that aims to transform the entire social order should be able to account for these criteria. I include point 3(e) because as I have already mentioned, we should want to achieve our long-term goals while leaving behind as few people as possible, which means accounting for the relationship between our long-term strategy and the practical goals of short-term support and empowerment. If you are a left activist and you have no idea how to account for these criteria – including how you could confront and overwhelm the destructive power of the capitalist class and state – then this fact means that your theory fails to give you adequate strategic resources.

Now, it is perfectly valid to object that it is not in fact possible to provide answers for all of these criteria in advance of successful struggle that greatly empowers the left from its current position of weakness. But regardless of whether this objection is likely to be true, it still amounts to accounting for these criteria, because it makes a claim about how it will be possible to address them. As long as the aim is to transform the entire social order, it will be necessary to engage with these criteria.

Beyond a macro-level theory of change, our theory should also be able to provide insight into the practical demands of the day-to-day activities of left-wing politics and activism. Another major problem often found within left-wing organisations is that internal decision-making procedures are either too strict and hence inaccessible, or too loose and hence disorganised. Whichever is the case, both situations make organisational work ineffective. So, our theory should concern itself with identifying effective organizational best practices.

Our theory should also concern itself with inclusive and socially sustainable practices to prevent, as much as possible, people burning out and leaving the movement, as well as marginalizing, exclusionary, or violent behavior, which also forces people out of movements. Lastly, our theory should help us with the practical demands of organizing people, so we can better understand how to win people to our cause.

In sum, the theoretical tasks that I have outlined are to answer these questions:

How, on a macro level, do we get from where we are now to where we want to be?
How do we persuade the relevant actors to join our struggle?
What theoretical and organizational principles can help us work effectively and inclusively?

Besides the feeling of urgency, another reason that the role of theory can be underappreciated on the left is that it is often informed by inadequate questions – questions unlike those posed above, and with little explicit or actual relation to them. This reflects the fact that the role of theory on the left is often understood in different ways. For example, the role of theory is sometimes understood in a way that reflects the idea that we can change the social world merely by improving people’s understanding of its oppressive nature, and therefore that the purpose of theory is merely to improve our critique of the oppressive social order. While it is certainly necessary to be able to convey a coherent critique of the social order, this necessity arises from the need to transform that order, and therefore to develop a strategy for social transformation.

This focus on critique alone reflects an inadequate understanding of (or conviction in) the potential of theory to help us arrive at a plausible long-term strategy. In contrast to this perspective, the questions and criteria above give direction to our theorising, helping to prevent us from getting lost in a universe of scholarly detail and mere critique. The type of theorising in this article strives to help people understand the world they actually inhabit, the decisions they actually make, and how to make a possible world actual.

Marx and Left-Wing Theory

Part of the problem of strategic inadequacy comes from the fact that many leftists don’t have adequate theoretical tools for social analysis. This leads me to a slightly similar point, which is a third reason for the left’s neglect of explanatory and predictive theory: many leftists don’t know that better tools exist. Insofar as this is accurate, it should come as a relief, because it partly explains why social and political problems can seem so intractable. Better tools for understanding the social world will make us better able to change it.

This brings me directly to Karl Marx. Marx’s prominence on the left can be off-putting, because he can be seen to have an imperious and dogmatic influence over those who call themselves Marxists. And this is partly true; many on the Marxist left lack the critical approach that is fundamental to developing robust analysis and argumentation.

But the dogmatic tendencies of some Marxists do not reflect the thought of Marx himself. Rather, his shadow continues to loom so large over leftist politics for very important reasons. Marx completely reshaped the premises of social theory with his distinctive approach, which emphasised understanding the social, historical, and material conditions in which human action necessarily takes place, and how these conditions shape and constrain that action. Using this approach, Marx profoundly advanced the analysis of the workings of capitalism, the role of class struggle in social transformations, and the relationship between class struggle and political power in such transformations. These aspects of Marx’s approach are fundamental for understanding the general sociological dynamics that shape and constrain the contingency of historical events within global capitalist society. It is these aspects – among others – that make it possible to understand how to transform the social world, even over the course of long periods of time in which unpredictable, contingent events will occur. For these reasons alone, Marx’s relevance is enormous for strategic thinking on the left. His framework remains crucial for understanding today’s social order and how to transform it.

This does not mean that I agree with everything that Marx said, or that those who identify as Marxists all agree on which of Marx’s claims should be essential to a theory of social transformation. To understand Marx’s intellectual legacy in a non-dogmatic way, I think the point can be made as follows: Marx was not a god, but rather a genius, as his lifelong collaborator Friedrich Engels declared after his death.⁴ And it should be more than enough for Marx to have been a genius. No-one thinks that Marx was actually omniscient, so there is no reason to believe that he was infallible. In contrast, if we understand that Marx was a genius, we can understand that he was not absolutely right about absolutely everything he wrote about, but that the framework he established enabled him to be so right about so much that it is fundamental for anyone who wants to understand today’s social order – especially if they want to surpass it. We should regard him as highly perceptive, but not as infallible. We should, like Marx himself, regard him as fallible, and welcome only serious criticism of his work.⁵ We should regard all thinkers in this way.

Marxist Theory and Strategy

This article serves as a point of departure to present three basic claims to a broad leftist audience: first, that the work of developing a robust left-wing theory is crucial to the success of our efforts to transform the entire social order; second, that another, better world really is possible, but only if enough of us act; and third, that there is a coherent, worked-out strategy to get there that accounts for the criteria that I have detailed above, and that can therefore unite and lead the struggles of existing left-wing movements. This strategy is most commonly described as ‘Marxist’, which I understand primarily to mean a historically, materially, and empirically grounded approach that aims to be scientifically rigorous. Like the classical Marxist concept of ‘scientific socialism’, this is a ‘scientific’ approach to politics, as opposed to a variety of ‘unscientific’ approaches that treat political strategy casually, ahistorically, unempirically, as a lifestyle interest, and so on.⁶

The reason for presenting this article to such a large audience, as well as for situating it in terms of the relationship between left-wing theory and practice, is that there is an enormous ecosystem of competing strategies on the left that need to be engaged with, and seen as part of the same broad effort to make the world a better place. What we have on the left is a myriad of different reactions – from reformist to revolutionary politics; grassroots groupings to global institutions; and single-issue campaigns to totalising programs – to the same general problem: the oppressive social order. There are likely to be at least superficial reasons to support every approach, but if we are willing to systematically investigate their relevance to achieving our goals, we will be able to go beyond superficial reasoning and more fundamentally assess their plausibility. This means that I am also advancing a fourth claim, presupposed by the others, that it is possible to convince people on the left whose views do not already align with those set out here.

The final underlying claim that I want to mention is that you are capable of understanding the core arguments of Marxist theory and strategy. Just as a casual, anecdotal understanding of the social world gives superficial reasons to believe that social change depends only on the actions of great individuals, on electing the right people into office, or on waiting for the new generation to take power, it can also encourage us to believe that intellectual capacity is something entirely fixed, rather than something sufficiently socially conditioned to make a difference to our own intellectual capacity. My point, then, is that it is possible to become capable of making sense of the world, even if you don’t have a pre-existing aptitude for this.

Theory As Practice

When I say that there is a worked-out strategy to get to another world, I do not mean that every aspect of either the strategy or the ideal to which it is directed is fully fleshed out, but rather that it is fleshed out enough to understand that the problem of unanswered questions exists within the limits of either the strategy or the ideal social order. In other words, the unanswered questions do not compromise the credibility of the strategy or the ideal.

That said, the process of constructing a theory of change in a rigorous way requires intense scrutiny of the credibility of our ideals. As we think more critically and sceptically about them, we may become persuaded that some are less credible than others. When this happens, we come to realise that the world is more complicated than the commitment to some ideals might allow us to admit. This requires us to alter our ideas of what would suffice for our ideals, or to state our ideals with greater specificity. Additional specificity can be necessary to arrive at ideals that we can grasp concretely in their relation to our present circumstances, in order to be able to articulate how we might be able to get from here to there. In other cases, we may become convinced that we have to treat some problems as unavoidable factors of human social life – at least as far as we can currently see – such as disagreement about the priority of human values, certain types of harmful behavior, and non-compliance with rules.

To speak of a “process of constructing a theory of change” also helps us to understand that studying or developing theory is itself an activity, and in this sense is a form of practice. By studying or developing theory, a leftist is doing something; they are engaging with the existing theoretical context that they encounter, and they will be changed by having done so. Understanding this makes it easier to ask ourselves about how we engage in the study or development of theory, and whether we should impose any limits on this practice. The main questions I refer to are: how much theory is necessary to be able to proceed effectively to broader political practice? Is it possible to focus too much on theory – that is, at the expense of our broader political practice?

These questions are rarely treated as being worthy of systematic discussion in their own right. To treat them as such would require one to believe that the practice of theory is relevant to our broader political practice (which opponents of theory broadly deny) and also to believe that the practice of theory might, at some point, interfere with our broader political practice (which most theorists and proponents of theory do not very explicitly assert). We should not want to be barren of theory, but we should also not want to be so focused on theory that we lose sight of opportunities for broader political engagement. By increasing our focus on theory, we may risk losing the moral motivation and sense of urgency that requires us to appeal to theory in the first place. Somewhat perversely, this risk will tend to be greater for leftists who are less oppressed by the existing social order, since they will tend to be more able to postpone taking action to engage with theory. In other words, accepting the relevance of theory can lead to another problem of inadequate practice: prioritising theory even beyond its relevance to our practice.

One can accept the existence of this problem in principle, but the difficulty in practice is that it is not always obvious how relevant the theory we study will be to our practice. To some extent, all theory will be relevant to our practice in some way. So it may well be unclear whether, at any given point, it is more relevant to substitute intellectual development for engagement in broader political practice. What seems likely to me is that there are enough theoretical issues to make it always possible to yield strategic insight from additional theoretical study, and therefore that, for the sake of taking action, it is necessary to trade off the insights that one would gain from additional theoretical study for broader political engagement. The greater one’s sense of urgency, the greater the ‘downward’ pressure of their reliance on theory. This is not necessarily a zero-sum situation, because political engagement itself can yield strategic insights that may be more relevant to one’s practical efforts than what one can access through theoretical study. Insofar as it is worthwhile to people, this article will be a case in point, since it stems primarily from my reaction to a variety of organisational and personal experiences, and is supplemented by engagement with existing theoretical texts.

From Hesitation to Conviction

To speak of transforming the entire social order is to speak of social revolution. This term can be helpful when used in this undiluted, non-metaphorical way, because it characterises the magnitude of the tasks we face and the pervasiveness of the commitment required to achieve them. I mentioned earlier that treating the problems that we face as urgent would imply a drastic change in the priorities of many leftists. It is just as true that addressing these problems at all – that is, regardless of whether one believes in their urgency – requires such a change. This should not be surprising. The task of transforming the oppressive structures that shape our world requires extraordinary commitment and action, because these structures are enormously powerful and will not be overcome without great struggle.⁷ As such, it is a vast, all-consuming, world-historical task, which means that to have any chance of success, our priorities and conduct as leftists must be adequate to the task. This means that we need to see ourselves as world-historical actors, as having world-historical potential, and hence that we have to demand more of ourselves than we ordinarily would, because we are now engaged in the task of changing world history.

Making a revolutionary commitment is often a slow process, as leftists wrestle with the conflict between their individual interests and the practical demands of their moral and political ideals. Recognising that this is a process should make us patient with people going through it, but nonetheless firm about the importance of seeing it through. And it is possible to see it through. People can change so much in their social and political engagement that they can become unrecognisable from their previous self, as I have. But no-one else can make this change for them. For it to happen, you have to be motivated by a priority to find out what can be done, and further, actually to do it. In other words, you have to be willing to step out of the sphere of your individual interests; you have to be willing to reorient your priorities along political lines; and you have to be willing to participate, one way or another, in left-wing politics and activism.

Each of these changes becomes easier to accept and easier to achieve with practice. In contrast to the vicious circle of left idealism, left activism is a virtuous circle in which the relevance of practice becomes clear through practice itself. The more you participate, the more you will recognise the moral and practical importance of participation, which will reinforce your commitment to participate, and to participate effectively. So even if you’re not yet ready to get involved, it is still important to strive to become ready, because your participation matters – both for yourself and for our goals as leftists. As long as we are committed to transforming the oppressive structures that shape today’s world, our commitment is to revolutionary transformation. If we can arrive at a worked-out theory of revolutionary change and can form organisations that apply it, we will become revolutionaries.

Theoretical writings like this one often contain heavy statements, and they reflect, in their limited way, the weight of the oppressive social order on so many people – dead, living, and yet to live. As you confront these realities, it may be helpful to bear in mind that you are not responsible for the state of the world, both in the sense that it is not your fault, and that it is not up to you to solve all of the problems. It is not up to you to solve all the problems, specifically because you cannot solve them all. You alone are not capable of solving all or any of the problems of the oppressive social order. You are only responsible for the action you can take, which includes your ability to influence or affect other people by your action. Only in concert with other people can your action contribute to overcoming oppressive structures – few of them, or all of them.

It is also worth bearing in mind that such heavy statements are not gratuitous; rather, they are crucial to the emancipatory potential of theory and strategy. More than anything, this article aims to be an antidote to despair, and a call to embrace a world-historical purpose. The antidote consists in the fact that it really is possible to understand how the social world works, and how to transform it into a vastly better one. But it is only possible to do this by coming to terms with the difficult realities that we might rather bracket out – like the fact that people will always be left behind in the short term, and the implication that taking this seriously implies not pursuing short-term strategies, but pursuing long-term strategies that demand more of ourselves to ensure that as few people as possible are left behind. Coming to terms with these realities will not only urge you to do something about them; it will also make it possible for you to understand how to do something about them. The call to action consists in the fact that your participation actually matters. Whatever can be won without you, is far less than what can be won with you.

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By ‘practice’, I simply mean the actions that people take; in other words, what people do.
The relevance of history in fact goes further than this. The knowledge we have and the assumptions we take for granted are always already socially and historically situated, which is to say that we always already operate on the basis of perspectives that have survived long enough to form part of our local context, rather than those which, as the result of contingent historical events that could have been different, have died out – even if these historically buried perspectives might be more useful to us than the ones that we have inherited. This means that we need to better understand both the history of leftist struggles and the contingency of our historical and social position in order to expand our perspectives beyond those available in our local context, and thus to find out the best lessons that history can offer us. Works of intellectual history like Quentin Skinner’s Liberty before Liberalism, Lars T. Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered, and William Clare Roberts’ Marx’s Inferno can expand our perspectives in this way, and thus become relevant to our activist practice.
This point has been made since as early as 1864, when Karl Marx argued that the development of the working class’ cooperative movement would always be undermined by the “political privileges” of capitalists and landlords, leading him to the classic Marxist conclusion that “to conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes.” See the “Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association,” in Karl Marx, The Political Writings (London: Verso, 2019), 764. Marx repeated this argument two years later in the “Instructions for Delegates to the Geneva Congress,” Political Writings, 774.
Engels describes Marx as “the greatest living thinker.” See Friedrich Engels, “Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx,” in The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), 681. Engels’ speech is also available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm.
“I welcome every opinion based on scientific criticism.” Preface to the First Edition of Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume 1 (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 93. The preface is available online in a different translation at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm.
For a classic exposition of scientific socialism, see Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in The Marx-Engels Reader, 683-717. This text is available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm.
This is why I do not think that voting in elections and ballot measures is sufficient to make a leftist a ‘left activist’.