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 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 among 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.
The problem is that 5% is simply too much for people who are at the moment already sceptical of joining a union. If you want higher cuts you need to convince already joined members of that as well.
As for organzing a strike for awareness: I don't have any data backing that up but I believe people are already aware of unions they just don't think they are a good deal for them (which is wrong btw.) . A failed strike would reinforce that.
I also believe that increasing union membership should be among the highest priorities , since the workforce is getting smaller through demographic change, which gives it more power to achieve a more equal society. I think that this can't be achieved quickly though.
Agreed. That is the primary goal. Electoral efforts are secondary and supportive. It's much easier to push the ideals we advocate when they are witnessed directly at the level they are most effective. In America, the major obstacle is the perception that unions are not good for the workers. This is a perception built and bolstered by propaganda. It will take a great deal of effort to reverse.
The primary goal is to identify and promote a course of action that reverses that perception.