Kevin Donaldson, Queen’s University ‘17

The left wing is in an interesting position. We are dominated by reformist white men attempting to bring awareness of economic injustice to societies that have forgotten the concept. Leaders like Corbyn and Bernie are all well and good but they are not socialist. They are doing us a favour by bringing the concept of socialism and economic justice back into the ‘mainstream’ but their speeches are merely a renewed call for welfare state reformism. These reforms merely attempt to ease the symptoms of capitalism while allowing the sickness to remain. Welfarism allows those who control capital to remain upon their thrones while we argue and bicker over the scraps thrown to us. It never resolves the inherent injustice that is created by the worker-employer relationship. It maintains capital’s ability to pay workers less than the amount of value they create. The only movements taking this injustice seriously are massively divided. Any semblance of unity among the left has dissolved into a tattered red banner. The proud flag of the working people is torn apart by various groups, each hoping to be the Bolsheviks, each member hoping to be Lenin. None of these groups want to work together because they all want to lead. As they bicker over minor interpretational disputes and print petty newspapers that no one is going to read, they ignore the continued suffering of the people they claim to represent. At the very minimum the popular reformist movements are going somewhere and while our criticism of their lack of radicalness remains valid, at least they are doing more than most of us to try and help. Going forward, we need to have more humility. We need to stop arguing with each other as though the group we belong to has a more objective understanding than another. We need to start talking so that we can figure out how to use our theories to help people. It is not a socialist’s job to interpret capitalism, but to change it.