It is so interesting to me how people seem to imagine a working-class party with considerable power and influence appearing out of thin air and without any work. … Like, yeah, that would be great, but it isn’t the world we live in yet. But the reality is that building a meaningful “left” means being highly committed to doing the work of actually building it. That is the whole point of a vanguard (if that is your thing) anyway, that people who reach a certain level of ideological advancement begin to do the work, and apply it to the real work, collectively, and begin the arduous task of winning over the masses of people. They treat it something like a second job, and do everything they can to build a real institution of working class power that has integrated, or build ties, into whatever organic efforts the working class has made to self-organize.

If you read the guidelines and expectations from the Black Panther Party, for instance, it sounds incredibly intense. They were expected to do work every day organizing, to report their work daily as well, to read theory for an hour a day, as well as the news. The BPP started off with just two college friends who read a lot of theory, they only had any meaningful impact, and could punch way a ove their weight because thousands of people joined and made a commitment to build it. If you are discouraged because it doesn’t exist yet, or seems anemic, maybe the problem is that too many people have a liberal attitude, that they see that the work needs to be done but expect others to do it for them.