The contemporary Left does not suffer from a lack of ideals. It suffers from a refusal to differentiate responsibility according to power.

For more than a century, internal debates have treated left-wing organisations as if they occupied comparable positions in the world system. They do not. Some hold state power, legislative leverage, regulatory capacity, and international access. Others hold little more than critique, memory, and moral pressure.

To offer identical advice to these actors is not principled—it is evasive.

Power changes responsibility. What counts as failure, compromise, or courage depends not on intention, but on the resources one commands and the consequences one can produce.

This essay therefore offers two distinct sets of advice: one to the Socialist International (SI), and another to the Fourth International (FI). Not because one is morally superior to the other, but because their positions impose fundamentally different obligations.

The problem facing the Socialist International is not insufficient radicalism. It is directional paralysis.

SI-affiliated parties govern or co-govern states, shape legislation, influence trade negotiations, regulate labour markets, and maintain privileged access to international institutions. These are not symbolic resources. They are levers capable of reshaping material conditions across borders.

Failure to use such power is not neutrality. It is choice.

Winning elections is not transformation. At best, it is an opportunity.

SI’s comparative advantage lies not in rhetoric, but in rule-setting capacity:

• Binding labour standards in trade agreements

• Supply-chain due diligence with enforceable sanctions

• Transnational minimum wage coordination

• Social protection floors linked to market access

• Digital and neural rights embedded in regulatory regimes

These are not utopian demands. They are administrative possibilities already within reach.

To refuse to deploy them is to concede definitional power to capital, technocracy, and nationalist reaction.

Migration is not a cultural anomaly or a policy inconvenience. It is a boomerang effect of exported exploitation.

No border regime can compensate for:

• Labour arbitrage

• Environmental offloading

• Welfare asymmetry

You cannot manage migration while exporting precarity.

The only durable response is rule externalisation: raising labour, safety, and welfare standards beyond national borders. Anything else merely shifts instability downstream—into domestic politics, where it reappears as resentment and authoritarian temptation.

The state is usable. The state is seizable. The state is not sacred.

SI’s drift toward conservatism has not occurred because it embraced the state, but because it mistook state control for historical completion.

Treat the state as a temporary bastion for dignity and coordination. Use it instrumentally. Revise it relentlessly. Prepare for the day when less coercion—not more—becomes necessary.

Fail to do this, and you will govern competently while losing history.

The problem facing the Fourth International is not incorrect critique. It is permanent non-assumption of responsibility.

Operating without state power does not absolve movements from strategic accountability. Moral clarity without organisational capacity produces purity without consequence.

Revolutionary politics cannot remain in a waiting room indefinitely.

The belief that construction must wait until “conditions mature” has become an alibi for inactivity.

History has shown that:

• Capacity does not appear after power is taken

• Democratic skills cannot be improvised under emergency

• Organisation deferred is organisation denied

Revolution must begin before authority is available, or it will reproduce domination when authority arrives.

Vanguardism was not betrayed. It was structurally falsified.

By substituting organisation for society, it inverted trust, rewarded opportunism, and normalised sacrifice in the name of future abstractions. Its failures were not contingent. They were architectural.

Persisting in vanguard fantasies today does not signal commitment. It signals refusal to learn.

The future of revolutionary politics lies not in seizing power, but in building democratic capacity ahead of power.

This means:

• Recursive democratic organisation

• Cooperative ownership and labour institutions

• Non-violent coordination with real defensive constraints

• Electoral engagement without electoral fetishism

This is not moderation. It is maturation.

To become effective, FI must accept that social democracy is not the enemy—it is the terrain on which post-vanguard revolution becomes possible.

The Left does not need unity of doctrine. It needs clarity of obligation.

Those who hold power are responsible for using it without myth—to reshape rules, not merely manage decline.

Those who lack power are responsible for building capacity without illusion—to construct democracy before commanding it.

Power changes responsibility.

If the Socialist International refuses to use its levers, alternative infrastructures will become necessary.

If the Fourth International refuses to outgrow its myths, it will remain correct—and irrelevant.

History will not wait for either.

The contemporary Left does not suffer from a lack of ideals. It suffers from a refusal to differentiate responsibility according to power.

For more than a century, internal debates have treated left-wing organisations as if they occupied comparable positions in the world system. They do not. Some hold state power, legislative leverage, regulatory capacity, and international access. Others hold little more than critique, memory, and moral pressure.

To offer identical advice to these actors is not principled—it is evasive.

Power changes responsibility. What counts as failure, compromise, or courage depends not on intention, but on the resources one commands and the consequences one can produce.

This essay therefore offers two distinct sets of advice: one to the Socialist International (SI), and another to the Fourth International (FI). Not because one is morally superior to the other, but because their positions impose fundamentally different obligations.

The problem facing the Socialist International is not insufficient radicalism. It is directional paralysis.

SI-affiliated parties govern or co-govern states, shape legislation, influence trade negotiations, regulate labour markets, and maintain privileged access to international institutions. These are not symbolic resources. They are levers capable of reshaping material conditions across borders.

Failure to use such power is not neutrality. It is choice.

Winning elections is not transformation. At best, it is an opportunity.

SI’s comparative advantage lies not in rhetoric, but in rule-setting capacity:

• Binding labour standards in trade agreements

• Supply-chain due diligence with enforceable sanctions

• Transnational minimum wage coordination

• Social protection floors linked to market access

• Digital and neural rights embedded in regulatory regimes

These are not utopian demands. They are administrative possibilities already within reach.

To refuse to deploy them is to concede definitional power to capital, technocracy, and nationalist reaction.

Migration is not a cultural anomaly or a policy inconvenience. It is a boomerang effect of exported exploitation.

No border regime can compensate for:

• Labour arbitrage

• Environmental offloading

• Welfare asymmetry

You cannot manage migration while exporting precarity.

The only durable response is rule externalisation: raising labour, safety, and welfare standards beyond national borders. Anything else merely shifts instability downstream—into domestic politics, where it reappears as resentment and authoritarian temptation.

The state is usable. The state is seizable. The state is not sacred.

SI’s drift toward conservatism has not occurred because it embraced the state, but because it mistook state control for historical completion.

Treat the state as a temporary bastion for dignity and coordination. Use it instrumentally. Revise it relentlessly. Prepare for the day when less coercion—not more—becomes necessary.

Fail to do this, and you will govern competently while losing history.

The problem facing the Fourth International is not incorrect critique. It is permanent non-assumption of responsibility.

Operating without state power does not absolve movements from strategic accountability. Moral clarity without organisational capacity produces purity without consequence.

Revolutionary politics cannot remain in a waiting room indefinitely.

The belief that construction must wait until “conditions mature” has become an alibi for inactivity.

History has shown that:

• Capacity does not appear after power is taken

• Democratic skills cannot be improvised under emergency

• Organisation deferred is organisation denied

Revolution must begin before authority is available, or it will reproduce domination when authority arrives.

Vanguardism was not betrayed. It was structurally falsified.

By substituting organisation for society, it inverted trust, rewarded opportunism, and normalised sacrifice in the name of future abstractions. Its failures were not contingent. They were architectural.

Persisting in vanguard fantasies today does not signal commitment. It signals refusal to learn.

The future of revolutionary politics lies not in seizing power, but in building democratic capacity ahead of power.

This means:

• Recursive democratic organisation

• Cooperative ownership and labour institutions

• Non-violent coordination with real defensive constraints

• Electoral engagement without electoral fetishism

This is not moderation. It is maturation.

To become effective, FI must accept that social democracy is not the enemy—it is the terrain on which post-vanguard revolution becomes possible.

The Left does not need unity of doctrine. It needs clarity of obligation.

Those who hold power are responsible for using it without myth—to reshape rules, not merely manage decline.

Those who lack power are responsible for building capacity without illusion—to construct democracy before commanding it.

Power changes responsibility.

If the Socialist International refuses to use its levers, alternative infrastructures will become necessary.

If the Fourth International refuses to outgrow its myths, it will remain correct—and irrelevant.

History will not wait for either.