The problem: a school of thought can be built around a theoretical framework and analytical tools, but a social movement cannot be. A social movement, especially one with an ambition to present a superior alternative to capitalist modernity, needs a world view, a world view that inspires people to have faith in the work they must do in the face of adversity. Have Marxists in particular and socialists and leftists in general invented a new world view? No.
The vacuum has been filled by religion, in the Middle East and the United States of America, most obviously, but also increasingly in the rest of the world as well (with the exception of Western Europe, Australia, and Canada where organized labor and left and right social democratic parties had built durable mass institutions before the loss of the aforementioned world view, and East Asia, where -- thanks probably in part to Buddha and Confucius and in part to preference for aesthetics over philosophy -- none of the religions of the book ever caught on really big-time even before the rise of capitalist modernity).
What to do in the USA? It's time for leftists to get religion, in two senses, for working masses at home and in the countries Washington militarily, politically, and economically invades are both unquestionably religious and will remain so in the near future:
1. Work with the religious on the very broadly defined left and engage the religious on the rest of the political spectrum, at home and abroad;
2. Get together and work out a new secular -- but not secularist -- world view that can inspire and move as many people as a religion of the book does. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>