By Fernando Buen Abad – Oct 21, 2026
Every political alliance contains a moral question that precedes its electoral calculations and survives its tactical justifications: why do those who aspire to wield power unite? The answer is not secondary, as it highlights the distinction between a historical convergence and a compromise, between the construction of a collective will and the factional distribution of institutions, between politics conceived as an instrument of social transformation and politics degraded to an administration of particular ambitions. It is not enough for two or more forces to declare themselves allies, sign documents, share platforms, or distribute candidacies for a common cause to exist. Unity is not a virtue in itself, nor is disagreement.
Both acquire relevance based on the interests they manifest, the principles they uphold, and the material repercussions they generate in the lives of communities. Collusion happens when vested interests are hidden under the guise of collective need, when the ambition of the leaders usurps the language of popular hope, and when disagreements over programs, instead of being resolved through sincere deliberation, are concealed under the mantle of electoral arithmetic. Then, the alliance ceases to be a mediation among historical forces and becomes a transaction among apparatuses; citizens are invoked as legitimacy but excluded as decision-making subjects. The popular will appears in speeches, although it remains absent from decisive negotiations.
The term “people” is pronounced during the distribution of positions; social justice is proclaimed during quota negotiations; democracy is invoked while the elites reserve the privilege of determining who should represent others. The contradiction could not be more eloquent: power is sought in the name of an emancipation whose first victim is the political autonomy of those who should embody it. Critical political philosophy therefore demands distrust of alliances that confuse the sum of organizations with the construction of a transformative force. A coalition can gather acronyms, votes, resources, leaders, and territorial structures, and yet lack a historical project.
Because a quantitative sleight of hand does not guarantee a superior political quality. The sum of conservative interests does not produce, through a mysterious electoral alchemy, an emancipatory will. If each member joins the alliance with the aim of preserving their privileges, negotiating their survival, or securing a share of influence, the result will be an association of convenience, not a community of purpose. Where there is no shared orientation on inequality, exploitation, sovereignty, social rights, and the democratization of power, unity runs the risk of being merely a truce between incompatible appetites.
However, it would be equally childish to condemn every alliance as a betrayal. Transformative politics is not built through the imaginary purity of isolated groups, nor does history grant its conquests to those who confuse coherence with the inability to reach an agreement. Societies are permeated by class differences, sectarian interests, ideological traditions, and historical experiences that do not disappear by decree. An emancipation strategy requires the articulation of diverse forces, the establishment of specific agreements, and the recognition that no organization possesses, by itself, the monopoly on truth or the absolute representation of the majorities. The decisive question is not to choose between unity and division, but to determine what unity is being built, around what objectives, under what procedures, and with what ethical limits. The fruitful alliance does not eliminate differences: it subjects them to a political discussion capable of producing verifiable compromises without turning principles into commodities.
In this distinction lies one of the cardinal responsibilities of the left and of any movement that claims to be committed to social transformation. It cannot invoke historical necessity as a letter of marque to justify any pact. The urgency of elections does not nullify the obligation to reflect; the threat from the adversary does not automatically transform those who contravene the essential objectives of the project into strategic allies; the possibility of obtaining positions does not represent a demonstration of innovative effectiveness. When immediate victory becomes the supreme criterion, means end up colonizing ends. What began as a tactical maneuver becomes a structural dependency, and what was presented as a provisional sacrifice ends up getting consolidated as a custom.
In this way, the most detrimental inversion of politics is established: positions are no longer occupied in order to transform social relations, but rather the promises of transformation are managed in order to preserve the positions obtained. The public office, considered in itself, is not an ignominy. It can be an indispensable tool for redistributing resources, guaranteeing rights, dismantling privileges, and subjecting economic powers to democratic will.
Therefore, perversion manifests when the position transforms into a responsibility and becomes a personal asset, when representation is interpreted as personal property, when activism is reduced to a rung of bureaucratic advancement, and political loyalty is quantified in obedience to the leader who distributes appointments. At that point, the apparatus that was supposed to serve society begins to reproduce itself at its expense. The organization becomes an end in itself, discipline degenerates into servility, and dissent is punished as if it were desertion. The language of the collective cause then conceals a small aristocracy of administrators of hope.
No alliance deserves to be called transformative if it demands its members to renounce criticism, cover up corruption, or silence contradictions in the name of fictitious unity. The deepest loyalty to a political project does not consist in protecting its leaders from any challenge, but in preventing them from straying from the commitments that justified their authority. Internal criticism is not necessarily a concession to the adversary; it can be the condition for the moral survival of a popular force. An organization incapable of examining its mistakes ends up turning its victories into dogmas and its defeats into external conspiracies.
Where self-criticism disappears, opportunism finds refuge, because it no longer needs to prove that its decisions serve the common interest: it is enough to demand trust, invoke unity, and discredit those who question the results. Unity for transformation, on the other hand, requires democratic institutions, transparency in agreements, effective deliberation, accountability, and mechanisms that prevent the private appropriation of collective decisions.
It requires programs that are subject to evaluation, public commitments that cannot be clandestinely modified, and criteria for the distribution of responsibilities without confusing representation with commodities. It demands, above all, that organizations understand that their legitimacy does not arise exclusively from their background, their symbols, or their leaders, but from the overlap between what they promise and what they actually do. No heroic genealogy absolves a present practice of domination. No slogan of justice can indefinitely compensate for the absence of justice. No popular rhetoric can make a decision taken to the detriment of the interests of those who materially support the movement.
We know that the fundamental question is who retains the power to decide after the alliance is formed. If the majorities participate solely to legitimize previously decided agreements, the unity will be vertical, even if the documents repeat the word democracy. If the grassroots lack the ability to oversee their representatives, revoke political mandates through legitimate procedures, and demand explanations, the coalition would have replaced citizen sovereignty with the sovereignty of its intermediaries. And if the public agenda is subordinated to the interests of those who finance, administer, or condition the alliance, the transformative project will have begun to reproduce the same dependency relationships that it claimed to combat.
It is not about demanding impeccable organizations or agreements free of contradictions, which are impossible in any pluralistic society. It is about distinguishing between the contradictions that a political community honestly confronts and those it hides to protect unspeakable interests. The first type can drive learning, maturation, and new forms of cooperation; the second accumulates resentment, demobilization, and cynicism. Opportunism does not always annihilate an alliance through a spectacular dissolution: it often disintegrates it gradually, until its symbols are maintained, its leaders continue to utter the usual words, and its initial objectives have been replaced by the preservation of the machinery.
A true political unity does not consist of everyone thinking the same, obeying the same leaders, or renouncing their convictions to preserve a picture of harmony. Political unity implies the construction of a collective capacity that surpasses the sum of the participating forces, without compromising the dignity of its members or the sovereignty of the society that they aspire to represent. It is an architecture of responsibilities, not a market of candidacies; a convergence of purposes, not a trade of silences; a form of common action subject to the judgment of its historical consequences.
Ultimately, the distinction between collusion and a transformative alliance does not lie in the formality of the manifestos, but in the effective distribution of power, wealth, rights, and opportunities to participate in common decisions. History does not absolve those who confuse their personal careers with the fate of the people, nor does it automatically make a coalition emancipatory simply because it has electorally defeated its adversaries. Victory can open a historic opportunity, but it does not replace the duty to make the opportunity materialize. The power gained without a transformation of its uses can reproduce, under new emblems, the old hierarchies it promised to abolish.
Therefore, a critical political philosophy worthy of the name must establish an unavoidable demand: no alliance can be considered transformative if the unity of its leaders is more important than the emancipation of society, if the preservation of positions prevails over the fulfillment of commitments, and if discipline is used to protect privileges instead of defending fundamental rights. Unity is legitimate when it multiplies the ability of peoples to decide their destiny; it becomes a conspiracy when it turns that ability into a bargaining chip. Between these two possibilities lies a more crucial aspect than the success of a candidacy or the survival of an organization: the very integrity of politics, understood as a practice of freedom, as an exercise of collective responsibility, and as a deliberate effort to build a society in which no power is above human dignity.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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