Why Left Unity?

RIMAC conference room, 4th floor. Enter through north entrance across from Ridgewalk Social and take the elevator up. Parking in Hopkins garage.

Panelists:
Labor Solidarity Action Network
A UCSD activist
San Diego Green Party
A Wobbly

The panelists will respond to the following prompt:

The history of the Left is, to a significant extent, the history of organizational splits and associations. Although calls for “unity” seek to overcome factionalism by political agreement, the basis for such unity remains unclear. If splits emerge from subjective disagreements over particular prospects of overcoming capitalism, associations have more typically been forged out of objective necessity. Past unity efforts — from the Third and Fourth Internationals, the Popular Front in Spain, and formations like SDS and the Rainbow Coalition — were undertaken as necessary responses to concrete conditions. Yet their outcomes suggest that the demand for unity frequently produces contradictory results. This raises the question of how unity relates to political tasks.

We ask panelists:
Is there a need for Left unity today? If so, on what basis should it be pursued?

Where does the rejection of Left unity stem from?

Does Left unity bring us closer to forgetting or overcoming historical disputes?