Well, guys, there are more alternatives than (c)---joining the establishment Democrats and mounting criitque within. I am thinking of critique and education on the outside. There are huge numbers of people in the working class who may not be ready for the picket line, but there is a lot of work to be done on the ground, one on one.
I think in some very slow motion way, more and more working people are getting the used to the idea that there are stuck things as `ideas', and that many of the internal battles in capitalism and society circle around this mysterious realm of ideas.
It doesn't happen very often, but every now and again, I will meet somebody on the job who has poundered the problem of society and work and has essentially run aground for want of some approach. At that particular moment, it is moderately easy to introduce them to different ways of looking at their condition and the structures of society that have trapped them into enacting their `fate'....
One of the good impacts of the US right bas been to make `ideas' part of political discourse in a way that the left was never able to do. So it is necessary to come up with easy to understand counter-ideas and serious reasons to reject whatever is the current righwing banter.
If you don't have easy come backs, which I usually don't, it requires a certain amount of realistic thinking to figure out what's wrong with these new fangled fascism with Jesus frosting. I think I am slowly evolving some of that background by studying Strauss.
I decided that much of the early 20thC labor movements outside the US, must have been taken up with education on the means and ways of capital, in order to expand awareness among the rank and file.
Anyway more later at home....
CG