>Perhaps the place to begin is with a practical, leftist
>vision of how things might be?
You seem to think that that's straightforward, almost self-evident. It's not. Lots of very smart and dedicated people have spent their lives trying to figure it out, and how to do something about it. We're going up against very formidable institutionalized power, power that works in some large part because it's programmed into our heads. Practical types like to make fun of theorists, and sometimes the theorists deserve it, but one reason people do theory is to figure out just why the status quo has its staying power.
Doug