Pragmatic Leftist Theory
The neolibs are too far right. The tankies are doing whatever that is. Where's the space for the people who want fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism, but realize that it's gonna take a while and there are lots of steps between now and then? Here. This is that space.
Here, people should endeavor to discuss and devise practical, actionable leftist action. Vote lesser evil while you build grassroots coalitions. Unionize your workplace. Participate in SRAs. Build cohesion your local community. Educate the proletariat.
This is a place for practical people to develop practical plans to implement stable, incremental improvement.
If you're dead-set on drumming up all 18,453 True Leftists® into spontaneous Revolution, go somewhere else. The grown ups are talking.
Rules:
-1. Don't be a dick. Racism, sexism, other assorted bigotries, you know the drill. At least try to default to mutually respectful discussion. We're all on the same side here, unless you aren't, in which case kindly leave.
-2. Don't be a tankie. Yes I'm sure you have an extensive knowledge of century-old theory. There's been a century of history since then. Things didn't shake out as expected, maybe consider the possibility that a different angle of attack might be more effective in light of new data.
-3. Be practical. No one on the left benefits from counterproductive actions. This is a space informed by, not enslaved to, ideology. Promoting actions that are fundamentally untenable in the system in question, because they fulfill a sense of ideological purity, is a bad look. Don't do that.
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Here is my timeline. This is based in the US.
Now - May 1, 2026 : Plan and organize for what follows, start saving and building up a war chest.
May 1, 2026: General strike, funded by the aforementioned war chest. Push for unionization everywhere.
July 4th, 2026: Massive protest for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Mirror the original Declaration with a new list of grievances. These protests also provide powerful networking opportunities for organizers.
Midterm elections, 2026: Massive primary turnout, get leftists into as many offices as possible, even when that means masquerading as Republicans in Red Country. Ultimately though, vote strategically in the general. Defeating MAGA is still the primary goal right now, and this is too soon to try risky, idealistic votes. Feel free to vote 3rd party in blue states, but vote blue no matter who in swing states and even red states (unless you got an undercover leftist through the Republican primary).
2027-2028: Keep up the organization and pressure to unionize. Hopefully we got enough opposition to slow down MAGA, and hopefully we got enough local representatives to start rolling out leftist policy.
Election, 2028: Hopefully some of those local representatives are popular enough to bump up to higher offices, though the same strategies as above apply. All the while, we're still pushing unions. By now, a few of them should have converted to co-ops.
Mid-Terms, 2030: If we've been flooding primaries, turning out, and building class-consciousness in our workplaces and communities, progressives should be picking up steam. Three election cycles of unified action should start significantly shifting Congress. If that's the case, we can start actively pushing broader legislation.
Election, 2032: By now we should start seeing significant progressive representation, and people should begin to see the positive effects locally. With enough turnout every cycle, we should be effectively crushing Republicans. Democrats should have a clear majority across the board (with maybe a few secret leftist RINOs). We could possibly even swing a truly progressive president, if there's a good option available.
Once we have total Democratic domination, there are two possibilities. Either we take over the Democratic party outright, or we split the progressives off to their own party.
Rinse and repeat with the Progressive party, until we have enough domination to call a constitutional convention and start the serious work.
The crux of the plan is local action. Organization, unionization, participating in local elections and primaries. Encourage leftists to run for office and campaign for them. Promote candidates and policies on social media and in your social circles.
The goal of this plan is to establish a reasonable time frame for building the confidence of the general population in bolder actions.
A general strike is a massive commitment for a country that hasn't had one since 1946, and, for that matter, would seem to me to be a tool for acquiring more concrete demands.
On the whole, I generally dislike timetables. There are years in which nothing happens, and weeks in which years happen, as the saying goes (Lenin, I think?). There will be moments to be seized as time goes ahead, and there will be unexpected setbacks, and trying to constrain either to a timetable will damage efforts - either by overcaution/underutilization of the moment, or by sapping morale from not reaching timeline 'goals'.
More generally, I would say that, going forward, the two most important aspects are agitating for unionization and shifting safe and moderately-contested seats to progressive challengers by primary participation - assuming, of course, that elections matter going forward, which is... not as certain as I would like it to be. Midterm elections are unlikely to mean much - even a sweeping Dem victory would ultimately not do much more than unfuck the budget going forward - due to the Trump regime's reliance on extralegal methods of rulemaking and enforcement. I think my opposition to third-party votes going into the 2026 midterms has more to do with how immensely shitty the only big third parties in the US are.
I would say that the focus up towards 2028 should overwhelmingly be towards the support of extant progressive politicians (in the hope of cinching the nomination in the Dem 2028 primaries) and work towards progressives in local elections to help the progress(ha) of those politicians to higher office, and that a progressive success in 2028 is both more valuable and more likely, as progressive demographics which are harder to get out during midterms are more likely to vote during a presidential election - if there is an electoral victory available, it is here.
However, I must qualify this with personal experience in closely following local government: many of the issues in local government are not clear-cut progressive-conservative split issues, and many of them are founded on immensely fucked legal and economic knots. This is not to discourage progressives from running, only to warn that local politics often have a much more technocratic, bureaucratic, and personality-oriented tint to them, and that decisions made, even from a progressive position, may not do much to convince people of progressivism itself. God, you ever been in a town hall where folk are arguing over recycling because the only recycling company in town is a fucking joke, so you have folk who are progressives arguing for abolishing recycling, and local conservatives arguing that it's good for local businesses, and vice-versa on both sides? Insane shite. Doubly so when municipalities often run on a shoestring budget.
Point there is just that there is that progressives going into local government should be aware of that much more detail and compromise-oriented bend - many of the precepts we work on are concerned with national or state-scale government; there are fewer opportunities - though certainly not no opportunities - for strict progressive policies.
My one disagreement is that timetables get people moving in a specific direction. If the timetable has to be extended, or shortened, with new developments, so be it. I presented a timetable (and a particularly optimistic one at that) to consider the feasibility of a course of action, and approximately how long such a course would take to yield results.
Yes a failed milestone can be disheartening, but the momentum has the potential to carry enthusiasm regardless. The way I see it, the discourse as it stands is too vague, concerned more with romantic idealism than specific, coordinated action. A timeline creates urgency and immediate direction, which are valuable features for the cause.
Well said, though in truth my primary goal with winning local office is less about direct action at that level (though that is also a desired effect) and more about building a roster that can be gradually elevated to higher office.
A general strike in 2026 seems unrealistic to me. With union membership in the US at around 9.9% in 2024 according to the BLS the impact wouldn't be big enough. There also aren't any key sectors that could strike (Table with union membership per sector). It would probably fail at forcing compliance from politicians and be made an example of for why strikes don't work making it harder to organize further strikes.
How do you recommend preparing for a general strike?
I'm not from the US just to make that clear. I believe in order to realise a general strike, higher union membership is required. In order to reach that you need more people to join unions. As for how to achieve that I won't pretend like I have an answer. I know a bit about unions in Germany but I don't know a lot about the history and legal framework of unions in the US. What I've heard from union representatives in Germany is that when unions are successful in forcing an employer to accept/negotiate workers demands in the context of their workplace the people are like: 'Hey, unions are actually useful and maybe I should be a member.' In order for an action to be successful though you already need high membership at that workplace which is a hard process that requires at least a few people in the workplace that are already on board and are willing to talk to others. Sometimes in secret.
When you want to do a general strike, you also need a quite big warchest since you need to be able to believably uphold the strike for a long time, I don't know how long though. For that you need time to build those funds by having people be union members for some time. Members in Germany are usually required to pay one percent of their income to the union which means that for someone being a member for one year, he can at best strike for 3,6525 days a year. But idk how much of the money is needed for other union costs.
So basically you need more time. Or you don't pay people while striking but they would need to be very desperate to do that.
I totally agree on needing more time to properly organize, that was a driving force behind the creation of this community.
The next 10 months would be for saving up and spreading the message, engaging with coworkers and collaborating with existing unions and pro-union organizations. 10 months of saving 5% of your income would give you a couple weeks. Ideally this would happen collectively, but even individual savings would be helpful.
Even still, a 2026 strike date would be more symbolic than anything, a demonstration that it can happen, and a promotion of wider unionization. Right now in America, companies put in quite a lot of work to advocate against unions, they're not very much trusted along the working class. A symbolic major strike that makes the news could certainly help to spread awareness.
But you're right, a truly effective strike isn't going to happen until that becomes much more widespread. Despite the focus I put on electoral action, the real progress is going to come from widespread unionization.