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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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.