Ultra-leftism - Ultra-left As A Pejorative Expression

Ultra-left As A Pejorative Expression

Used pejoratively, the term generally identifies and criticizes positions, especially by those in the mainstream historical Marxist parties, to describe a position which is adopted without taking notice of the current situation or of the consequences which would result from following a proposed course—leftist positions that, for example, overstate the tempo of events, propose initiatives that overestimate the current level of militancy or which employ a highly militant tone in their propaganda.

The mainstream Marxist critique of such a position began with Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, which attacked those (such as Pannekoek or Sylvia Pankhurst) in the nascent Communist International who refused to work with parliamentary or reformist socialists.

Trotskyists and others see the Communist International's Third Period—when it described social democratic parties as "social fascist" and therefore essentially no better than Adolf Hitler's Nazis—as a strategy of ultra-leftism.

The term has been popularised in the US by the Socialist Workers' Party, who have used the term to both describe opponents in the anti-war movement and opponent Trotskyists including Gerry Healy. Ultra-leftism is often associated with left sectarianism, in which a socialist current might, for example, attempt to put its own short-term interests before the long term interests of the working-class and its allies.