“Unity” is a tricky slogan. Every trade unionist knows that the foundation for a successful strike is unity in the ranks—if a majority supports the strike, all workers, no matter how they voted, must honor the picket line and not cross. That’s a pretty clear-cut case where unity advances the struggle. But depending on who is using it, and for what purpose, “unity” doesn’t always mean the same thing. As the election draws near, for example, the drumbeat message, “Unite around x Democrat to beat Trump,” is going to pound stronger and stronger. This will certainly “advance” that Democrat’s chances in the election—as whichever Democratic candidate is sidelined is brow-beaten into switching their allegiance; but what struggle, what movement, and whose interests, does backing the Democrat—any Democrat—advance?

Cries of “unity” are as often used to squelch dissent or compel conformity as they are to strengthen social struggles. As the Russian socialist Vladimir Lenin wrote in 1914, “Nothing is easier than to write the word ‘unity’ in yard-long letters, to promise it and to ‘proclaim’ oneself an advocate of unity.” Engels noted that some of those who cry loudest for “Unity” have the aim either to “to stir everything up together into one nondescript brew,” or “people who consciously or unconsciously … want to adulterate the movement.”

There is a difference, then, between a unity of five fingers that makes a fist and the unity of disparate ingredients that creates a “nondescript brew.” The question, then, is: unity between whom and to what end? Is it a unity that weakens or strengthens the cause? And how is that determined?

There is an obvious way in which the terms is abused: for example, when it is used to create a false unity among classes and individuals with competing interests. When bosses talk about “unity,” “togetherness,” “cooperation,” they are attempting cover up the antagonistic interests of capitalists and workers—“we’re all in the same boat!” But in reality someone is in a mahogany-paneled suite in first class sipping champagne while someone else is in the boiler room shoveling coal into the engine.

The appeal of politicians to “national unity” has the same purpose—to create a false sense of unity between exploiters and the exploited based on accidents of geography and birth. Patriotism’s purpose is to chloroform you while certain other “patriots” pick your pockets or pack you off to war, and convince you that the workers on the other side of your gun site are your enemy.

The apparent simplicity of the idea of unity can be deceptive. For example, it is not uncommon for environmentalists to call for all of humanity to unite in order to solve the climate crisis. The position has an impeccable logic to it: the accelerating climate crisis affects us all, so naturally all of us should be able to come up with an effective plan to solve it. Surely the fact that it is a global disaster should be a strong enough incentive for a unified response. But this is only true if you abstract from the very real economic and class interests that dominate our capitalist world, interests that contradict the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants.

The world’s rulers are not equipped to solve the climate crisis because their interests depend upon a system—which is bent toward relentless profit-making—that is incapable of solving the crisis. It is this that explains the string of international conferences of world leaders that each time fails to devise a workable plan—though the resources and the know-how exist—to deal with the climate crisis.

Cries of unity and disunity have been used historically among the (broadly-defined) left in not dissimilar ways. During the period beginning in the mid-1930s—and later during World War II—The Communist Parties around the world were directed by Stalin to support “anti-fascist” alliances with bourgeois parties and governments, and, after Hitler’s defeat, used their influence to squelch potentially revolutionary mass action from below. The policy of “united front” promoted by the Comintern in the early 1920s—essentially proposals for joint struggles around commonly agreed upon demands between revolutionary and reformist workers organizations, but without burying fundamental differences—became transformed into the “people’s front”—calls for permanent electoral alliances with capitalist parties.

Trotsky noted that the so-called “people’s front” in Spain was based on a spurious unity between forces that had opposing class interests:

The theoreticians of the Popular Front do not essentially go beyond the first rule of arithmetic, that is, addition: “Communists” plus Socialists plus Anarchists plus liberals add up to a total which is greater than their respective isolated numbers. Such is all their wisdom. However, arithmetic alone does not suffice here. One needs as well at least mechanics. The law of the parallelogram of forces applies to politics as well. In such a parallelogram, we know that the resultant is shorter the more component forces diverge from each other. When political allies tend to pull in opposite directions, the result proves equal to zero…. [A] political alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, whose interests on basic questions in the present epoch diverge at an angle of 180 degrees, as a general rule is capable only of paralyzing the revolutionary force of the proletariat.

Popular-front style politics are still around. For a more recent example, in 2016 election cycle the CPUSA is predictably backing the Democratic Party, which they view as part of “building a unity of a broad left-center, multi-class, multi-racial, male-female, multi-generational alliance of forces” in order to “defeat the extreme right and GOP, its oligarchic backers, defend the presidency and break the GOP grip on Congress, statehouse and governorships.” Note that “multi-class”—which means unity of exploiters and exploited—is thrown in as if it is not different from calling for multi-racial unity! According to the CP, “Clinton carries a lot of historic baggage including her ties to Wall Street, hawkishness on foreign policy, etc.” Nevertheless, “On all the major democratic issues and demands, i.e. collective bargaining rights, racial and gender equity, climate change, immigration reform, etc., Clinton is on the right side.” One can only wonder how a hawkish candidate tied to Wall Street could possible be “on the right side” of any of the issues they list.

Regarding Sanders, the CP notes that while they have some concern about his campaign, they are satisfied that, “Building such a multi-class alliance that includes the Democratic Party establishment or corporate wing will be a greater challenge if Sanders is nominated, but not impossible.” They are heartened by the fact that Bernie “appreciates the right danger and will be part of the anti-right coalition even if he loses.”

The easiest way to avoid false unity—that is, unity between heterogeneous forces working at cross purposes—is to reject all unity. Certainly that is the road taken by sectarians: we will only unite with those who already agree with us! For revolutionaries, it is also a recipe for cutting yourself off from people and groups who are beginning to seek ways to change society but haven’t yet reached revolutionary conclusions. For some radical activists, it’s a way of maintaining moral purism in the movement—a kind of political policing or gatekeeping—forgetting that they themselves didn’t “get it” all at once and had to go through a process of radicalization. Either way, it isn’t a way to build up bigger forces on the left, but a way to hive off from that potential. Small, self-satisfied elites don’t change the world—masses in movement do.

So what’s the answer?

Marx famously wrote that, “The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.” Compressed into the statement was a whole approach to human liberation that set itself sharply apart from other concepts of radical change. It declared that the alteration of society depended upon the self-activity of the mass of exploited and oppressed rather than the actions of an enlightened few—whether the enlightened few were utopians devising blueprints for a better world or a band of conspirators hoping to use the masses as a stage army to hoist themselves into power.

To paraphrase Marx—only a revolution involving millions can succeed in overthrowing capitalism, and only in and through the process of mass mobilization can ordinary people become conscious that another world is possible, that it is within their grasp, and that they have the capacity to run it. When struggle is at its lowest point, labor competition and the division and discord deliberately sown between workers and the oppressed exerts its greatest influence on the class. But as struggle mounts the conditions are created for overcoming disunity and building solidarity.

This concept guides the way in which socialists approach all struggles. The success of any struggle, be it a strike or a social movement, a small, local battle or a nationwide revolution, depends on many things, but the starting point must be a movement that brings large numbers of people into united collective action around a goal or a set of common goals.

But this raises a number of questions. The first is: how can such unity be achieved? And secondly, on what basis should it be established? As we have already pointed out, we know from experience that appeals to “national unity” or fighting the lesser evil (by voting Democrat) are invariably used as a means to conceal divergent class, social, and political interests and to subordinate those interests to those of the ruling class or classes.

Moreover, the reality is that workers and oppressed people are not united most of the time, and the ruling powers try very hard to keep it that way. Achieving unity in struggle is not an automatic process. As the Russian revolutionary Trotsky noted,

“The progress of a class toward class consciousness…is a complex and a contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at different times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions, or utilizes those already existing, in order to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it remains split politically. The problem of the united front – which arises during certain periods most sharply originates therein.”

It is only in and through struggle that this changes, and it does so, because of the episodic nature of struggle, haltingly and episodically. The question, therefore, of finding a way to identify and organize those in each struggle who are drawing more radical, far-reaching conclusions from their experience of struggle so as to influence wider layers to a socialist perspective is key. Any serious commitment to this approach must reject the idea that the “pure” or the most “radical” should stand aside and scoff at movements, struggles, or even individuals, who are not yet “radical enough.”

The aim for socialists is always to create the maximum unity of forces while at the same time advancing the struggle in a more militant, effective direction, without counterposing our more radical aims with the more limited aims of the current struggle. Seeking broader alliances based on agreement on limited demands is crucial to winning. Socialists in trade unions don’t demand as a condition of involvement that the union support the overthrow of capitalism. We seek ways of advancing the self-activity, organization, and militancy of the struggle by pushing each one as far as it can go in the context of a united fight.

But that’s not the same as arguing that unity must always be based on the lowest common denominator, and that bringing in other issues—like combatting sexism or racism, for example, into a strike struggle—is “divisive.” What that really means is that it might alienate some men or some whites. Indeed, not supporting demands that improve the conditions and rights of the most oppressed is divisive, in that it accedes to the divisions and oppressions already foisted on the class by the system. Combatting oppression is combatting division, which is the precondition for a higher unity of the class.

I remember clearly a meeting at Occupy in Washington, D.C., in which one liberal activist argued that the unity of the movement around the question of economic inequality—the 1% versus the 99%—meant that the movement shouldn’t take up issues of racial oppression. But clearly a movement that links economic inequality with racial inequality would unite larger forces on a stronger basis of solidarity—this was certainly a key to the success of the 2012 Chicago Teachers’ strike. A refusal to champion the demands of the oppressed, and to challenge the prejudices of those who fail to support them, means to reinforce the divisions among workers and weaken their solidarity.

Forging unity in struggle does not uniformity of ideas, or burying differences. Every social movement involves more or less definite arguments—sometimes several contending ones—about the best way forward. How one defines “best way forward” is intimately connected with what the purported aim of the struggle is, and who is defining it. Unity is advanced not by hiding differences, but by encouraging a tradition of rigorous debate in which issues are clarified and tested in practice.

Lenin on more than one occasion criticized conciliating, or concealing differences on the grounds that disagreements create disunity. But this kind of unity is a passive unity that prevents ideas from being tested in practice. In such cases he would argue: you cannot have genuine fighting unity—whether unity of purpose for limited objectives, or unity on a more programmatic, long-term basis—unless there are clearly drawn lines of demarcation based on a willingness to debate and test different ideas and proposals.

For Lenin, conciliatory unity was crippling because its results was, at best, a lack of clarity on aims, and, at worst, an organization working at cross-purposes. “If they do not agree on carrying out a common policy,” Lenin wrote of this false form of unity, “that policy must be interpreted in such a way as to be acceptable to all. Live and let live. This is philistine “conciliation”, which inevitably leads to sectarian diplomacy. To “stop up” the sources of disagreement, to keep silent about them, to “adjust” “conflicts” at all costs, to neutralise the conflicting trends—it is to this that the main attention of such “conciliation” is directed.”

For revolutionaries, unity therefore does not mean “let’s forget our differences and unite.” It means: Let’s unite and argue, too. Time and struggle will show who is right and who is wrong.