You Have to Deliver
Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.
The US Left is having a renaissance. It's more visible now than it has been for generations. Left ideas have wide exposure and most Millennials oppose capitalism.
So why is the Left so weak?
The Left's growth hasn't translated into concrete power for the working class. It hasn't developed a mass base of participation (at least outside of the pre-existing protest subculture and the "weird Twitter/Facebook" corners of the internet).
Now, some of that can't yet be helped. After barely existing for decades, the Left has re-emerged into an environment dominated by neoliberalism. But ultimately, external conditions don't excuse its failure. Yes, the rules of the game are stacked against it. You can curse that fact all day and all night, but in the end, leftists have not adapted to a situation that they know will remain hostile. Sure, they're hampered by unfriendly conditions - but the Left's internal problems are what prevent it from meeting that challenge. Unless revolutionaries change their political practice, they will remain what they are now: visible and ineffective.
But what can radicals do differently?
Your ideas do not entitle you to be taken seriously.
Socialists know their theory and they know their Russian history. So what? That by itself does no one any good. Nobody owes you a hearing - the people you want to organize don't owe you a single thing.
How many times have you seen socialists show up for something they have no prior connection to, thinking that they'll "explain the revolutionary perspective" and then, somehow, be welcomed as leaders on the sheer strength of their ideas? Activists keep hopping from cause to cause based on whatever's currently getting media attention. Does that develop collective power for anyone? Political ambulance chasing is fine for NGOs (and the micro-sect fronts that impersonate them). Unless they're on top of whatever's in the news, they're at a disadvantage in competing for donors. Besides, the lack of deep and sustained community work lets the activist scene's big fish keep their pond nice and small. But revolutionaries aren't after careers in the nonprofit-industrial complex. If you want a mass revolutionary movement, you can't afford that provincialism.
This isn't about branding. Should radicals say "communism," "socialism," or a euphemism like "economic democracy?" Should they drop 20th-century leftist iconography? Who cares? The issue isn't which symbols the Left uses. Rather, it's the way radical organizing so rarely commits to specific communities, stays for the long haul, builds up useful institutions, and lays the groundwork to expand them.
Sure, it's better to have compelling rhetoric than not; neither talking down to people nor academic obscurantism does leftists any favors. The dichotomy between impenetrable theory-speak and over-simplified sloganeering both proceeds from and reinforces the distance between most socialists and the constituencies they seek. Those are bad habits not only of speech, but also of thought. If you don't talk like a human being to people, it doesn't matter if what you're saying is true. It ends up irrelevant to real life, and it makes you sound like a jackass.
In the end, though, language and presentation aren't the root issues. Your ideology isn't necessarily what you believe. It's what you've internalized through practice. If that mostly consists of debating on Facebook and reading articles, then your language and thought patterns will reflect that. Intentionally or not, you learn to think and speak in the way that works best for what you're actually doing. Similarly, if most of your activism involves going to protests with liberals, then you'll learn to be concerned with how to make radical ideas sound good to moderate ears. Why wouldn't you bend over backwards to avoid scary words like "communism?" (Of course, that does mean other activists will think you've got something to hide. They aren't fools - if you aren't quite saying what you mean, then people will treat you accordingly. Trying to dodge the stigma attached to radicalism rather than confronting it just comes off as dishonest.)
That said, though, revolutionary leftism does still carry a lot of stigma. Most people's default attitude towards it is skepticism. But if innovative rhetoric isn't enough to push past that, what is?
What does get taken seriously?
You have to deliver results. You have to prove that when you act on your ideas, your community's life gets better. You have credibility only to the extent that when you organize a project, it gives people more power and a better conditions in a concrete, tangible, material way. If you put that off until after the revolution (or after your socialist candidate wins), your revolution will never arrive. No one will support you besides a few political hobbyists - and why should they?
Are your ideas insightful and true? Prove it. If you can't deliver, your ideas are wrong. No one will or should listen to your arguments unless you show, in practice, that they mean something (no matter how hostile the external conditions).
In Washington State, Tacoma Clinic Defense believes that anti-abortion fundamentalists should not be allowed to picket in front of clinics. Its participants began claiming that when anti-choicers are marginalized and isolated, life improves for the whole community. So, they went out to prove it: they physically placed themselves in front of the protesters at reproductive health clinics. By providing a calm, positive, and visible pro-choice presence, they functioned as a "lightning rod," drawing the anti-choicers' attention away from their intended targets. They did so every time the fundamentalists showed up - and, over time, the picketers got demoralized. Fewer and fewer of them turned out, and those who did became less bold. Now, after several years of attrition, the fundamentalists no longer come to the clinics at all. They've been reduced to holding small, silent prayer circles several blocks away, out of sight of the patients. People respect Tacoma Clinic Defense and its ideas - it got results. It went into the field and proved its ideas true.
How many socialist groups can say the same?
And a lot of people will tell you, by the way, Well, the people don't have any theory, they need some theory. They need some theory even if they don't have any practice. And the Black Panther Party tells you that if a man tells you that he's the type of man who has you buying candy bars and eating the wrapping and throwing the candy away, he'd have you walking East when you're supposed to be walking West. Its true. If you listen to what the pig says, you be walkin' outside when the sun is shining with your umbrella over your head. And when it's raining you'll be goin' outside leaving your umbrella inside. That's right. You gotta get it together. I'm saying that's what they have you doing.
Now, what do WE do? We say that the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people basically that by practice, we thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What's more important? You learn something just like everybody else.
Why do so many working-class people align with Protestant fundamentalism?
Christian Right churches give them reasons to join. Their safety net often out-competes the government's; they offer food and clothing and shelter, community, existential purpose, social support, help with childcare and elder care, and even mental health services (through pastoral counseling and 12-step groups). That's how the Christian Right has gotten such a massive and well-organized base. Its network of parallel institutions allows it to wield disproportionate power. In Texas, for instance, the Christian Right dominates state politics - but only 31% of Texans are evangelical Protestants! There is power in a base of autonomous institutions.
The revolutionary Left doesn't offer much competition. Why not learn from the enemy? Radicals can prove through practice that they can build programs that not only improve people's material conditions, but also operate according to participatory democracy (which Christian Right churches do not). If that alternative was there, how many more poor and working people might become radical? Most people don't choose to become socialists because socialism isn't offering them anything they need. It's perfectly reasonable to reject an ideology that talks big but isn't actually improving your life.
If you want support, build something that works.
Nothing better defines Trump’s appeal, nor Obama’s before it, than a feeling of finally being heard. Though Trump made some memorable campaign promises (the wall, the travel ban, etc.), he offered participation in an affect — despair where Obama once offered “hope” — more than he appealed with plausible political proposals. And the liberal reaction to the Trump presidency continues in this political mode. When liberals insist that the point of protest is to “have your voice be heard,” they are actually describing the fascist mode of political participation. To be satisfied with “feeling heard” in and of itself, as the goal of political activity, without pointing that expression toward building real material power, is to be a contented fascist subject.
Ideas come from social practice. Whether or not you're conscious of it, your worldview is made of the lessons your practice has taught you. For instance, most working-class people reject electoral politics not due to revolutionary theory, but because it's shown itself to be useless - no matter which politicians win, things keep getting worse. Until revolutionaries start delivering actual results, the class they want to organize will not embrace their ideas, either. All the rhetoric in the world means nothing if it can't help feed your kids.
The approach most US leftists take isn't working. However, a few groups have found success by taking a different approach:
The socialist Black nationalists of Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi recently won their city's mayoral election. They've spent three decades cultivating a network of community farms, co-op businesses, and neighborhood people's assemblies, thus earning enough credibility to win the public's support.
The nondenominational radicals of Philly Socialists have brought hundreds into their organization and its larger projects. Their free food service, ESL classes, and tenants union materially improve people's lives and offer the experience of participatory democracy, albeit on a restricted scale.
In the 60s and 70s, the communists of the Black Panther Party and its counterparts (the Young Lords, the Young Patriots, Rising Up Angry, and others) attracted thousands of participants. Their Breakfast for Schoolchildren programs, Freedom Schools, health clinics, and armed patrols against police racism fed people, treated people, educated their children, and reduced the danger of police brutality.
In the 20s and 30s, the Communist Party grew to nearly 100,000 and influenced millions more. It established effective labor unions and led victorious strikes, organized Southern sharecroppers to improve their lives and resist white supremacist terror, fought Depression-era evictions by physically breaking open the doors of tenants' former buildings to let them go back in, and created a legal aid and social services infrastructure. Several institutions still important to the contemporary Left (including the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild) were created by the Communist Party during those years.
Don't believe it when people say that there could never be a mass revolutionary movement in the US. It won't be easy to create one. The Left will be struggling every step of the way, since larger political conditions do make a difference. But so do conditions within the Left. The US Left may not succeed. But, if it adopts a strategy of institution-building through confrontation, construction, and deep organizing, then it will, at least, stand a chance.
The only alternative is to keep failing.
Sophia Burns
is a communist and polytheist in the US Pacific Northwest. Click here to support her on Patreon.