Author: Isaac Cheung (in Chinese)
Reasons why the left has failed and failed in recent years:
1. Long term alliance and compromise with the liberals. The left effectively gave up scrutinising neoliberalism and went over to the side of its beneficiaries. It unknowingly declared war on the traditional working class, and as a result conceded its own historical class foundation to the right.
2. The intellectuals' decoupling from the trade unions. On one hand, the movement became increasingly elitist: intellectuals of the left moved virtually all practice of their theories into the confines of universities. On the other hand, the trade unions lost their natural visionaries. They no longer claim to have a blueprint for class struggle. They became short-sighted and rarely saw beyond protecting their respective industries. This laid the ideological foundation for nationalist protectionism of the right to take over the working class.
3. Ideological confusion within the left itself. It spent too many years away from labour movements. It spent too many years being the junior partner of the liberal mainstream. It does not only lost its identity. It also lost its framework of thinking. For example, the left adopted the liberals' moralistic perspective to politics and forgot how to objectively analyse the interests of different social classes. Some leftists even chose to see the working class as 'amoral' and 'unenlightened' and preferred the alliance with a 'rational' and 'noble' middle class with little revolutionary potential.
If the left hopes to ever regain its political energy to challenge the right, it must first review how the liberals' way of thinking has infiltrated its own. And then, it must examine whether its alliance with liberals still makes sense: perhaps, it was not in spite of, but because of this alliance, the right has risen.
(by Isaac Cheung)
原文：
講講左派近年不斷失敗的原因：
1. 長期跟自由派妥協、結盟：這相當於放棄在批判新自由主義上的 commitment，站到新自由主義得益者的邊上，暗地裡向傳統工人階級開戰，結果就是將整塊傳統的左翼階級基礎讓給了右派。
2. 知識份子與工會的 decoupling：一方面是左派知識份子的實踐基礎幾乎全面轉移至大學，造成了左翼運動的菁英化；另一方面工會則失去了長遠的階級抗爭藍圖，視野日益狹小，向保護主義傾斜，實際效果就是在工人階級之間為右翼的民族主義保護主義打下意識形態基礎。
3. 左派自己的 ideological confusion：長期脫離工運、寄生於自由派主流的結果，就是左派在喪失自己的 identity 同時，也在喪失對事物分析的能力。例如學自由派以道德化視野去分析政治，而不是唯物地分析不同社會階級的利益基礙。這導致這些左派選擇繼續將工人階級視為「不道德」和「愚昧」的，並選擇了跟那些「理智」而「高尚」、卻沒有多少革命潛力的中產階級結盟。
左派若要重新獲得能與右派抗衝的政治能量，恐怕最首要的一件事就是去重新檢視左派思想當中自由派思考風格的影響，而第二件事就係去反省「與自由派聯盟對抗右翼」呢個策略本身仲 make 唔 make sense，定其實正正由於呢種結盟右翼勢力先可以養到今日咁大。
