Serious question to anyone here well-versed in theory, history, and organizing. From all viewpoints (ML, Trot, Anarchist, MLM, etc).
I'm specifically talking about the US, but other perspectives welcome. From what I see, it's grim, but I don't want to lose hope. I was super excited by Bernie 2020 and the leadup to that (2018-2019) seemed like a super hopeful time. Trump was showing even dumb liberals how messed up the system was, deep to its core. There was a real movement with the Bernie thing, but we all know what happened. After that, COVID and the George Floyd protests showed us the true rot of the system, but the vaccine rollout and Biden's win really made most libs go back to brunch (ugh). Post Biden inaguration there's been some labor action, but it seems limited to little pockets here and there. Even big events like the East Palestine derailment only capture attention for maybe 2 weeks max. The media has really sharpened themselves in how to spin shit and selectively feed the public on what's "bad" (e.g. Russia) while ignoring other stuff (like the Indian farmer protests or even now what's going on in France). So I feel like we're in a valley right now instead of a peak.
On the other side of the world, COVID and things like the Ukraine shit really mobilized the Global South to try and get their shit together, which is great! But will it be enough when the west is pretty much willing to annihilate everyone just to hold on to power a little longer?
From what I see, all the issues we face today: discrimination, inequality, healthcare, science research, climate change, war, etc. all hinge on capitalism (I guess that's obvious but I still wanna get my words out).
Countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. are all charting out their path, and I suppose all we can do is critically support them. So my long-winded question boils down to this: What do we do in the US?
I know the answer will be something like "organize" but part of me thinks that there's more to it. Most organizing I see is small-scale stuff like helping people avoid eviction or food shelters or some other kind of mutual aid. Also some local political organizing. But there doesn't seem to be a "5 year plan" kind of thing. Maybe that's asking too much, but I guess I'll try to outline something (feel free to critique/add).
So I guess things can be divided into:
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- Local (mutual aid, forming local parties, face-to-face education, e.g. panther style party)
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- Electoral (national is hopeless, local is limited to city-council type stuff)
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- PR (we're getting owned in the battle of ideas tbh, and idealistic as it sounds, youtube, reddit, forums, etc. play a role in educating people)
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- International (leave AES countries alone, advocate for multipolarity even if some of the countries aren't exactly left-friendly, e.g. Russia) (also link up with overseas comrades)
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- Individual (try to stay positive, exercise, diet, go on walks, link up with IRL people and have fun, educate yourself but also apply it, etc.)
As for other categories, I guess I'll just leave it up to others. There's so many fields (science, sociology, psychology, climate science, forestry, economic development, whatever...) that I guess I'm missing, but there's gotta be something. Anyone who's familiar how the Chinese 5-year plans work, feel free to suggest some kind of outline (and no, it doesn't need to be some kind of lame Elizabeth Warren "plan" just a broad overview of ideas is good for now).
Sorry for the rant, but I guess I feel that something needs to be done. Thanks for reading!
you more or less listed out what a bunch of parties are, generally speaking, doing. key problem that is usually run into is the many kind of 'lacking's, i.e lacking money, time, coordination, planning, communication, teamwork, etc so on and so forth. those lackings go quite literally up and down all levels of political organizations as quite a lot of the issues comes from a lack of experiences and a lack of skills that comes necessary for all the shit that comes from building and running an organization. These usually can be sorted out by growing the collective pool of bodies that contribute actively to whatever work's needed or designated and by gaining experience over time through active participation in whatever work's needed or designated.
In regards to 5 year plans, those are primarily relating to economic planning. Now this doesn't necessarily mean you got to own a factory or run a state in order to make a 5 year plan. An organization can create a 5 year plan with the goal of increasing member employment in designated key industrial sections for the purposes of integrating and radicalizing. Something I believe the Wobblies call 'salting'. Further plans are more for larger groups as they have more to be able to execute tasks set by the plan.
TL:DR
I'm actually somewhat with Wolff on this. The issue you're pointing out here is costs almost all the time. The cost of a fulltime revolutionary, or the cost of resources that those fulltime revolutionaries need. The solution to this is economic and it must come from either companies that will give money to the socialist movement because they see it as opposing their enemies or from a centralised proletarian headquarters (like a socialist country). Wolff's belief is that coops in competition with traditional capitalist companies would feed resources into socialists as they would see it as in their interests to (essentially lobbying and political donations in favour of politics that would help coops). I see merit in this, but there is a big question mark over the "when?" that this will reach a critical mass to occur.
If it's not coming from coops then the only options I see are criminal or hoping it will come from China eventually.
socialist hedge fund managers, damn that is some deep fucking cover
Completely forgot about co-ops. Makes sense that Wolff really pushes those, as they are a relatively easy sell for your average person ("the workers should control the workplace"). But yeah they're still at a huge disadvantage because they won't take drastic measures like normal companies do to ruthlessly cut costs and increase profits, which means that they'll need some kind of support to stay afloat.
Even if he turns out to be wrong about coops he's still on the right track with the problem being an economic one, solving it is about creating the conditions where someone gives money to leftist orgs. I'm inclined to think it needs to be someone like China, but I don't know if they are willing to flex their economic muscle internationally the way the US has all these years. I hope so. Even just small amounts (comparatively to the bourgeoisie) could have monumental effects in terms of what leftist orgs can achieve given the shoestring that current things are being achieved through.
There is another alternative and it's that the money comes directly from unions. But it could be some time before the union movement is large enough to flex like that.