Nasser Paydar October 28, 2007
Sectarianism is the attempt to establish a group, organization, or party whether within or, more commonly, outside the ongoing class struggle of the working masses and to pursue policies, tactics, and strategies that divert the labour movement from the path of challenging the dynamics of capitalist production and organizing its nationwide struggle against capitalism through council-based power structures, compelling it instead to submit to the political authority of the organization and its leadership. There exists a common, naive narrative regarding sectarianism that: firstly, distorts the reality of this tendency; secondly, obscures the danger it poses to the labour movement; thirdly, erroneously labels certain essential approaches of the anti-capitalist movement as “sectarian”; and fourthly for all these reasons confuses the minds of the working masses regarding the true nature and implications of this tendency. In this latter narrative, sectarianism is equated with the various squabbles and critical disputes arising among labour activists over diverse issues. These disputes may reflect the natural need for drawing lines of demarcation and the maturation of the movement against wage labour; they might demonstrate the complete irrelevance of the disputants and the content of their arguments to the labour movement; or, finally, they could prove deeply detrimental to the working class’s anti-capitalist struggles. But, in none of these instances do they necessarily constitute a manifestation of sectarianism or even reflect the sectarian inclinations of the individuals involved.
Sectarianism cannot be explained merely by authoritarianism, monopolistic tendencies, or the power-seeking nature of specific individuals within various movements or activist circles. While individuals can certainly be and often are sectarian, sectarianism itself cannot and should not be reduced to the personal temperaments of specific people. In a class society specifically, one based on wage-labour relations even the most principled, cohesive, and sincere workers carry with them a host of behavioural traits and character flaws incompatible with the processes of collective, movement-based, and class-oriented action; such tendencies and behaviours can indeed inflict significant damage on the development and maturation of movements. But sectarianism is not merely a manifestation of certain individuals’ personality aberrations; quite the contrary, it is an institutionalized political choice a normative and organic approach adopted by the bourgeoisie (or segments thereof) regarding the working class’s anti-capitalist movement. To attribute sectarianism solely to ideological disputes, factional infighting, or interpersonal tensions among political activists is to obscure its stark and tangible class-based reality.
Sectarianism typically anchors itself to a specific set of beliefs, convictions, and doctrinal or political formulations, establishing its foundation upon them. This, in turn, paves the way for certain erroneous and misleading assessments regarding the class nature of the phenomenon in question. Sectarianism cannot be reduced merely to the gathering of a group of people united by doctrine and ideology. Ideas, analyses, and plans are the crystallization of the social existence, expectations, critiques, and consensus of a class or segments thereof; consequently, the political, philosophical, doctrinal, and ideological formulations of sectarianism must be viewed as the vehicle and distilled expression of the social and class consensus of the bourgeoisie (or a stratum within it) vis-à-vis the reality of the global working-class movement. Marx’s dictum that “it is people’s social existence that shapes their ideas, and not the other way around” naturally holds true in this context as well.
The foundation of sectarianism lies in its opposition to working-class socialism and the movement to abolish wage labour. Therefore, to gain a profound understanding of this phenomenon, one must examine how it interacts with the labour movement and the anti-capitalist stance of the working masses: How does it fundamentally view this movement? What role does it assign to the working masses? From what perspective does it assess the current content of global workers’ struggles? What horizon does it set before the labour movement, and through what trajectories, twists, or challenges does it bridge the gap between the daily struggles of the working masses and this ultimate vision? What strategies and prescriptions does it offer the labour movement throughout this process? And finally, in each of these realms and dilemmas of the workers’ class struggle, what alternatives does it substitute for the genuine approaches and solutions of the anti-capitalist movement? It is through this array of substituted alternatives and strategies that sectarianism advances its agenda; it manifests as a material phenomenon both within and outside the workers’ class struggle, exerting pressure on the labour movement commensurate with its own capacity for influence and undermining the proletariat’s anti-capitalist struggle. Understanding sectarianism requires an examination of its role in these specific areas; relying on other premises in this analysis would be incorrect and misleading, ultimately serving various forms of right-wing and left-wing reformism.
Proletarian socialism is a movement that manifests the fighting power of the working class as a class capable of burying capitalism. This movement does not necessarily command the acceptance or support of all segments of the working class, nor do all workers view it as the sole arena for their confrontation and struggle against capitalism. While the proletariat’s social existence defined by the conditions of life, labour, exploitation, subordination, oppression, and disenfranchisement within the capitalist labour process constitutes the real driving force behind the socialism that abolishes wage labour, the workers’ level of consciousness, their capacity to open up new horizons, and their preparation for class struggle are also integral parts of that very social existence. Furthermore, the defining components of workers’ social and class existence are not necessarily uniform or identical; this heterogeneity and differentiation significantly influence their approaches to the various and sometimes contradictory options for confronting capitalism. One point here is decisive and fundamental: the material foundations of all solutions and approaches within the working class and its movement that are alien to the communism of abolishing wage labour are deeply unstable and ultimately destined for certain, inevitable collapse. It must not be forgotten, however, that the inevitability of this collapse is not synonymous with the inevitability of the victory of socialism. The latter is a separate issue and bears little relation to the subject of our current discussion. A crucial point to note here is that working-class socialism is, on the one hand, a movement arising from the social existence of the working class itself possessing the extensive material foundations necessary for its genesis, growth, flourishing, strengthening, and ultimate victory within the labour movement while, on the other hand, it requires the employment of its own specific mechanisms, strategies, and approaches in all these areas, as well as for the consolidation and stabilization of the foundations of its existence at every step and stage. An omnipresent sectarian tendency operates in this regard and across all these spheres to push back the strategies, options, and class alignments of the working masses against capitalism, replacing them with specifically bourgeois alternatives.
The anti-capitalist organization of the working masses with the aim of abolishing wage labour is a matter of decisive importance for proletarian socialism. This process embodies a specific class and social content. It is the comprehensive effort to organically integrate the current level of workers’ struggles, fundamental anti-capitalist demands, class-based organization against capital, and class consciousness regarding the living reality of capitalist society; to encompass the various spheres of working-class protest and social conflict; and to drive the entire process of mobilizing the class forces of the working masses all in preparation for the dismantling of capitalism and the establishment of a council-based system enabling the direct, conscious participation of every member of the working masses in the socialist planning of labour, production, and social order that defines the objective and movement-oriented content of this formulation. Sectarianism is the basis of the bourgeoisie’s attempt to disintegrate all of this articulation, to spin in the lapel of all its tissues, to empty the vital fabric of the workers’ anti-capitalist movement of mortar and radical class content, and to cultivate all kinds of ideas, right and left reforms, and bourgeois diversionary alternatives in the depth of this fabric and this whole organism.
The practical implication of the organic nature of the aforementioned phenomena within the working-class struggle is that every level of worker protest even the most elementary, such as the fight to recover unpaid wages must be linked to the central conflict against the very foundations of capitalism. The specific role of every level of exploitation and every form of worker disenfranchisement within the anatomy of capital’s labour process and the reproduction of social capital must be thoroughly analysed, and the insights gained from this analysis must be integrated into the proletariat’s day-to-day consciousness. Workers’ immediate demands should constitute a specific link in the chain of their anti-capitalist struggles, with the organization of the working masses around these demands taking a council-based form that ensures the active participation of individual workers in advancing the class struggle. All solutions and strategies lying in wait to divert the labour movement into the various dead-ends of the wage-labour system regardless of the labels or guises they adopt must be subjected to explicit and rigorous criticism. The diverse arenas of working-class struggle must be unified into a single, cohesive bulwark within a nationwide class campaign. Struggles against unemployment, unjust gender and ethnic discrimination, child labour, dictatorship, repression, and political or social oppression as well as the fight to secure all social freedoms and rights must each find its organic place within the overarching, nationwide struggle to abolish capitalism.
Sectarianism is an approach that disregards all the aforementioned fundamental determinants and criteria. Undoubtedly, sectarianism is not the only tendency to do so; all other currents opposed to the socialism of abolishing wage labour share in the violation of these criteria. The difference between sectarianism and other approaches lies in the fact that, historically and traditionally, it dons the mantle of the “Left” when engaging with the labour movement. It lacks roots in the actual working and living conditions and struggles of the labouring masses; it speaks in ideological and dogmatic terms; its starting point is always its own specific party organization, and it seeks everything for the sake of its own party, group, or sect. Its prescriptions for the labour movement are directives aimed at aligning the very existence of that movement with the interests and agenda of the sect. It views itself as the guardian of the labouring masses and regards its own tutelage over the working class as the sole path to proletarian emancipation. It reduces the entire world to the confines of its party or even a small group of a few individuals equating the interests of the sect’s growth and survival with those of the labour movement and humanity at large, while mistaking an ideology rooted in party interests for the theory of human emancipation. Within the confines of its boundaries, the party constructs a society for itself a farcical, artificial replica of the existing capitalist order. Inside this insular realm, it establishes a state, reconstructing and embedding a bureaucratic apparatus along with the political and civil order that springs from wage-labour relations within that very space. It walls off its domain with rigid sectarian, political, and ideological barriers, conditioning the crossing of these boundaries upon adherence to the party’s interests or, more precisely, the interests of its leadership. Under the guise of being “pilgrims on the path to a classless world,” it institutes a terrifying class hierarchy, dividing people into “visionary geniuses” versus “opinionless subordinates,” decision-making policymakers versus passive executors of others’ wills, thinkers versus those reliant on the thoughts of others, writers versus distributors, and planners versus implementers along with a long list of similar roles. It compounds the alienation experienced by the wage labourer in the system of wage slavery with the alienation of individuals caught in the labyrinth of sectarian interests.
Sectarianism views itself as the alternative to and the guardian of the labour movement; consequently, it prioritizes the seizure of political power acting as the working class’s self-appointed guardian above all else. In this vein, it implicitly and organically demands that workers abandon the substance of the class struggle against wage labour in order to prepare for a supra-class assault on the regime. From the sectarian perspective, it is not the proletariat through the continuation of a flourishing, visionary, anti-capitalist struggle that sounds the clarion call for the final battle against the wage-slavery system or transforms the socialist manifesto into the content of the masses’ own council-based planning. That task lies solely within the Party’s competence; the monumental duty of the labouring masses is, inevitably, to serve as the catapult that launches the sect onto the seat of political power. If workers do this, they have fulfilled their historical role! They have entrusted the task to the “experts,” and from then on, it is the Party that will transform the existing reality and steer the vessel of socialism toward the shores of a society free from classes and the state.
Sectarianism rejects and vilifies the organization of the working masses against wage labour. It treats socialism merely as a science on par with other existing sciences, seeking its discovery within the special talents of university-educated intellectuals; it effectively dismisses the reality of socialism as a genuine movement to transform existing objective conditions across all spheres of life, reducing it instead to a handful of doctrinaire formulas and rigid ideological jargon. It views working-class consciousness not as an outgrowth of the workers’ own anti-capitalist existence, but as the academic discovery of highly educated individuals from other classes. It portrays the movement’s intellectual, active, and astute leaders not as figures emerging from within the realm of labour, exploitation, and the class struggle of the working masses, but as enlightened, self-sacrificing saviours hailing from other classes.
Based on the aforementioned beliefs, sectarianism reduces the entire potential of the global working class to mundane, day-to-day struggles over the terms of their livelihood, categorically denying the possibility of their conscious emergence and ascent onto the battlefront against the wage-labour system. It completely divorces the working class’s economic struggle from its political struggle, telling workers to form trade-union organizations to improve their living conditions while turning to an “elite party” for their ultimate emancipation. It erects a Great Wall between the workers’ ongoing movement against exploitation, disenfranchisement, and oppression and the cause of socialism, viewing any anti-capitalist interpretation of that movement as an act of sacrilege against the sacred tenets of its own brand of “communism.”
Sectarianism tears the labour movement apart in the worst possible way, driving different segments of the working class categorized by age, gender, type of work, place of residence, foul ethnic delusions, and similar factors to pursue specific, isolated agendas. Ultimately, the one thing left off the agenda for these workers is the struggle against capitalism and the movement to abolish wage labour. It assigns women the task of building women’s organizations and compels children to establish children’s institutions; it orders workers from different regions to form *peshmerga* militias to defend ethnic causes, while tasking the unemployed with organizing “armies of the jobless” to fight for wage employment. It effectively sells off workers in the education sector at no cost to serve as a fighting force for bourgeois democracy. It admonishes nurses and the global mass of non-productive workers to feel ashamed of identifying as workers and to seek their true place among the cultured, intellectual strata of non-workers.
Sectarianism reproduces a world of artificial contradictions within the narrow confines of its own ideological fantasies, zealously and devoutly cloaking them as the social and class contradictions of the actual society. The material basis of this process lies within the material existence of the sect itself. Sectarianism conceals all the aforementioned approaches and defining characteristics beneath a mass of distortions, masquerading its own existence as that of the working class and portraying its petty, sectarian practice as the decisive struggle of that very class. Thus, sectarians make the claim of fulfilling tasks that are fundamentally at odds with their own material and social reality a glaring dichotomy that shakes the very foundations of the sect at every step of its political activity. Isolation, desperation, the exposure of ineptitude, repeated failures, and the discrediting of all their claims combined with the relentless, acute pressure of current societal realities and the class struggle conspire to crush the sect’s artificial, hollow existence beneath the wheels of history. This process manifests itself and repeatedly recurs through successive splits and hostile confrontations within the sect among erstwhile comrades who once shared the same ideology and beliefs.
Sectarianism through all the aforementioned actions and a long list of similar ones challenges the very foundation of the struggle against capitalism and for the abolition of wage labour. It imprisons the labour movement within the dungeon of “Left reformism.” It blocks every path for the proletariat to approach a genuine socialism that rejects wage labour; ultimately and only if all necessary preconditions were to converge under conditions history appears to have long since left behind it might merely replace the current form of social labour and production planning with state capitalism. No sectarian is readily willing to accept this truth about themselves; indeed, a vast number of sectarians and sectarian groups imagine the exact opposite to be true of themselves! But judgment regarding various social tendencies and their approaches should not rely on their ideological claims and formulations, but rather on the stark reality of their actual social practice. As a prime example of sectarianism, Iran’s “Left reformism” embodies in every fibre of its political existence all the characteristics and functions briefly outlined above; consequently, its ultimate impact on the working class will be nothing other than what we have described.
Regardless of whether the material force bearing it consists of workers or non-workers, sectarianism reflects the expectations, aspirations, and ideas of a segment of the bourgeois reaction manifesting either within or on the fringes of the labour movement. One cannot speak in generalities about any phenomenon. Society represents a concrete level of a specific labour process; within it, classes and individuals are divided based on their specific positions relative to that labour process or mode of production into distinct social classes and, within each class, into varying political tendencies. While it is entirely true that diverse social tendencies exist within the working class, we must not forget the underlying reason for this: it is not a convergence of the proletariat’s conscious class interests with some of these tendencies; rather, it stems from the “Achilles’ heel” of worker ignorance and the illusions they harbour regarding the strategies and visions propagated by various segments of the bourgeoisie. Sectarianism is one such approach and indeed, one of the worst. The sectarianism currently manifesting itself and holding sway in Iranian society is not, at its core, merely the blind, unwitting, and authoritarian posturing of a handful of self-serving individuals. We have explained this point repeatedly, and at times in great detail. Contemporary leftist sects are the dying remnants of the “people’s” and national-leftist movements of past eras. To understand this sectarianism, one must necessarily look to the history of class struggle. The seeds of this approach were sown deep within the anti-imperialist “people’s” alliances spanning the “Three Continents” and the socialism of the Eastern Bloc. It is there that the living form of what has now become a fossil can be clearly discerned. What confronts the Iranian labour movement today as sectarianism was at that time and within those specific historical conditions not a fossilized sectarian carcass, but rather a powerful outgrowth of a distinct class movement; one possessing a relatively broad social base rooted in the economic and historical context of that era. It was a movement that was certainly not a labour movement, nor did it represent the expectations, class perspectives, or the social and historical objectives of the working class yet it was not confined within the narrow boundaries of the political and ideological sects of the day.
That movement was an uprising of the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; driven by a fundamental conflict between its own horizons, demands, and expectations and the imperialist mode of wage-labour development within society, it sought alternative paths to realize its ideals namely, the “establishment of an independent national industry” and saw the pleasing reflection of its own aspirations in the “Camp.” It exploited the weakness and backwardness of the contemporary labour movement, using it as a stepping-stone to ascend to the position of a reputable “radical socialist”!! and “anti-capitalist”!! opposition force. It transformed a vast number of the movement’s activists into promoters of its own policies and strategies among the working masses. It cast the entire movement as the vanguard of a “people’s anti-imperialism,” reducing trade-union struggles to a mere platform for asserting the workers’ identity and the class existence of the labouring masses. It propagated unwavering allegiance to the Party as the sure path to working-class salvation in short, it inflicted upon the labour movement all the calamities enumerated earlier. The sectarianism that exists today is a lingering, evolved remnant of that movement; the various stages of its evolution, as well as its ebbs and flows, are topics worthy of discussion in their own right. Suffice it to say here, briefly and in outline, that the life of that movement ended long ago.
The capitalist development of countries across three continents and the comprehensive dominance of capitalism within those societies coupled with the unfolding class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, which has long been heavily weighted in favour of the latter effectively put an end to the historical relevance of that movement years ago. This process inevitably led to the fragmentation of the forces that constituted the movement and compelled each faction to gravitate toward its true class alignment. What confronts the Iranian labour movement today manifesting as sectarianism and a disjointed chain of rusted, sect-like groups espousing radical-sounding, anti-regime rhetoric largely consists of elements drawn from the movement’s weakest, most oppressed, and downtrodden social strata.
The past of this political spectrum is inextricably linked under the pressure of that era’s historical factors to an embrace of “communism” and a focus on the working class viewed through its own specific class lens. The trajectory of the century’s political and social events, coupled with the relentless, savage blows dealt by the rabid dictatorship of the bourgeoisie throughout this period, left little room for these intellectual and political representatives of the stratum to simply dissolve into the power structure or status of the bourgeoisie. For all these reasons, it is entirely natural for the remnants of this movement to continue donning the mantle of the Left, constantly invoking the working class, and struggling to carve out a niche within the labour movement engaging in a flurry of activities to that end. While the architects of these sects do indeed undertake such actions, we must not forget that the legacy of the past with all its accumulated weight presses heavily upon them; they have not truly integrated with the working class, and they continue to view the labour movement through the prism of bygone eras. They harbour the same expectations of the working class that they held in the past, yet they lack their former authority; they have descended from a position of movement-wide strength to one of sectarian weakness becoming, in short, marginal figures hovering alongside the labour movement yet disconnected from it.
The Bahman Revolution and the class struggles surrounding it severely destabilized the very foundations of this sectarianism. The pressure exerted by the labour movement during those years shattered the ties binding its various factions together. Many of these groups struggled by resorting to abstract, doctrinaire critiques of specific ideological practices associated with the “Populist Left” to launch new operations that retained the same rigid sectarian structure but were adorned with a pro-worker veneer. Over the course of twenty years navigating numerous twists and turns, repeated splits, and a long path of fragmentation and disarray these groups (or at least some of them) have generally ended up anchored in a particularly deranged form of sectarianism. They aggressively lash out against any movement opposing the wage-labour system, wherever it may arise. They stoop to any vile act to sow division among workers aiming to “poach” individual workers from the ongoing class struggle and display them as trophies in their sectarian shop windows and forge alliances (even if tacit) with the internal and external enemies of the proletariat. In pursuit of these goals, they sometimes trample upon standard norms of human morality, stopping at nothing in their actions.
Let us not forget that a segment of Iran’s working class along with political activists loyal to that class’s socialist ideals was also confined for years within the very same sectarianism. As previously noted, the political and class forebears of what is today genuinely sectarianism once played the role of a powerful movement a movement operating within the confines of a “popular anti-imperialism” that simultaneously regarded itself as the all-powerful authority, the guiding star, and the sole proprietor of the labour movement. For a long time, that movement subjected the working class’s processes of struggle, protest, and social expression to the pressure of its own political horizons, policies, and approaches. Precisely for this reason, many radical labour activists and genuine communists emerging from the depths of the proletariat’s working and living conditions, exploitation, and class struggle were also held captive for a long time by the solutions proposed by that movement. But, from the 1980s onwards, some within this group have in a reversal of the trend seen among others striven with all their might to help practically eradicate the destructive effects of sectarianism from the labour movements in Iran and across the globe.
Throughout these years, everything they have said or written, every step they have taken, and every decision they have made has been aligned with this objective. For this very reason, they have constantly been the targets of the vitriol and vindictive, “camel-like” spite of sectarians. Claiming to be untainted and absolved of the burden of all past errors would be highly naïve perhaps even foolish and these individuals certainly make no such claim.
Nor is it implausible that some, even while ostensibly fighting against sectarianism, might themselves fall into that very same trap. They might reduce their entire role to warring against cults and factionalism, treating the labour movement just as sectarians do, while simultaneously using their stance against sectarianism as the defensive bulwark for their own sect’s survival. All of this is certainly possible; but it is quite easy to distinguish genuine activists of the anti-capitalist and wage-labour-abolitionist movement from sectarians who merely lay claim to that role. Genuine activists consistently champion the cause of the working class’s anti-capitalist movement in every arena and strive to join hands with fellow activists across the globe. They do not set up their own groups, sects, or bureaucratic apparatuses; instead, they reject any form of organization-building that arises outside the actual practice of the ongoing mass labour movement, viewing such attempts as sectarian.
They do not publish a periodical based on the banal notion that a “group,” “party,” or faction simply *must* have one; rather, they have serious messages to convey to the masses of their own class their fellow workers bound by the same chains on an international scale. In every publication, regardless of language, they analyse the unfolding events of the working class’s anti-capitalist movement. They critique both right-wing and left-wing reformism not merely in terms of ideological tenets or doctrinal formulas but based on the practical necessity of refining the workers’ day-to-day anti-capitalist struggle and they present an alternative to the wage-labour system while explaining the nature of reformist solutions to the workers. They are workers themselves, and wherever they are, they strive to advance all their anti-capitalist activities alongside the workers and fellow militant labourers in their own communities. Among themselves and in their relations with all workers fighting against capitalism they maintain bonds that are deeply cordial and based on council-style principles, entirely free from hierarchies, bureaucracy, or any distinction between decision-making and executive roles.
To combat sectarianism, one must recognize the political and class-based reality of this phenomenon. Disregarding this fact by ignoring the actual determinants and components that define sectarianism, overlooking the historical context of its emergence and its trajectory within the history of the working masses’ class struggle, and conflating it with any political or theoretical dispute, challenge, or clash between different approaches, currents, or movements blocks the path to effectively combating sectarianism.