Beyond Left and Right

I have been trying to write this for months, but the urgency sharpened recently — watching repression justified in the name of anti-imperialism, dissent dismissed as “counterrevolutionary,” and loyalty to movements confused with loyalty to power. The political moment we are living through demands clarity. Across the world, authoritarianism is resurging — not only from the right, but increasingly from within spaces that call themselves left, radical, or revolutionary. That is what finally pushed this piece onto the page.

I keep asking myself how to write this without immediately being criticised by anarchists or leftists who will say this is just another liberal reflection with no real power analysis — the kind that feels good but leads nowhere near liberation. That critique is already present in my head before anyone else has articulated it. And maybe that alone says something important.

Why does this matter?

It matters because I use Marxism — not as dogma, but as a tool. A way to analyse power, exploitation, and material conditions. A way to imagine futures beyond capitalism, extraction, and domination. I organise as a leftist. I work in left spaces. And yet, the term the left is not always helpful — especially now.

Not because I reject its history of struggle, resistance, and collective gains, but because I increasingly believe that left and right are inherited binaries we also need to escape. They are political shortcuts shaped by modernity and colonial logic — frameworks that flatten complex struggles into a single spectrum and often obscure more than they reveal.

When the political horizon is reduced to left versus right, power learns how to survive anywhere along that line. Violence can be justified. Repression can be excused. Authoritarianism can be defended — so long as it wears the correct ideological uniform.

And this is not theoretical.

We see it when state violence is excused because it is framed as “anti-imperialist resistance,” even when it targets workers, journalists, feminists, or ethnic minorities. We see it when internal dissent in movements is silenced through loyalty tests — where questioning leadership is treated as betrayal rather than accountability. We see it when socialist language is used to justify prisons, censorship, or militarisation, and anyone who objects is accused of helping the enemy.

This is where I draw the line.

If being a loyal “leftist” means protecting corrupt leaders, excusing state violence, or suppressing critique simply because those in power claim to act in the name of Marxism, socialism, or revolution, then that loyalty is not liberatory. It is authoritarian. And at that point, it becomes structurally indistinguishable from the forces it claims to oppose.

Following a revolutionary script without asking who holds power, who is silenced, who is sacrificed, and who benefits is not material analysis — it is ritual. It is faith. When ideology becomes untouchable, when it cannot be criticised or abandoned, it stops being a tool for liberation and becomes a structure of domination.

That is why I believe the real divide is not left versus right, but authoritarianism versus liberation.

This divide cuts across ideologies, movements, and histories. Authoritarianism can be wrapped in red flags just as easily as nationalist ones. Liberation can emerge in places that do not fit neatly into any ideological category. If we refuse to see this, we are not analysing power — we are defending identities.

Communist and anarchist traditions have long warned against this. Communism, at its core, rejects identity as a political anchor. So what is “the left,” if not an identity in itself? Labels carry histories, exclusions, and unspoken rules about who belongs and who does not. There are good reasons why some people refuse the label communist, just as others refuse anarchist. And yet, the underlying commitments — equality, freedom, collective care — often overlap far more than these identities allow us to recognise.

Peter Kropotkin understood this when he wrote: “Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality.”

Personally, I organise as a communist in left spaces because that is where I find people committed to collective struggle, economic justice, and dismantling capitalism. But I refuse to treat “the left” as sacred. Treating it as immune from critique is not radical — it is dangerous. It mirrors the same logic that sustains white supremacy: the belief that a particular tradition, lineage, or framework is inherently righteous and therefore beyond questioning.

White supremacy does not only operate through explicit racism. It also operates through rigidity, hierarchy, and the insistence that certain ways of knowing are universal and superior. When left politics replicate those patterns — when they demand loyalty over accountability, discipline over care, unity over truth — they reproduce the very systems they claim to oppose.

If we are serious about collective liberation, then nothing — not Marxism, not the left, not our own political identities — can be above critique.

What does that require in practice?

It requires organising cultures where dissent is treated as care, not sabotage. It requires refusing to excuse repression simply because it comes from “our side.” It requires building movements where leadership is accountable, power is reversible, and solidarity does not mean silence. And it requires grounding politics not in ideological purity, but in whether our actions expand freedom, dignity, and collective life.

Liberation requires movement, not fixation. Humility, not purity. And the courage to abandon inherited binaries when they no longer serve life.

That is not liberalism.
It is responsibility.