*21st century, American questions of tactics* would include:
*1) **Whether or not the traditional union should the primary organ of class organization for the 21st century workers?*
--- I personally don't know the answer to this question. I'm just a student organizer and a pretty mediocre one at that. But my experience with DC JwJ and their SLAP has made me wonder whether the 19th century forms of organization, like the "city-central" have been reborn out of necessity with the efforts of groups like Jobs With Justice to create alliances across the whole working class (the employed and the unemployed). The conditions that the city-centrals were born under in the 19th century were ones that sort of mimic in a way conditions today. The lack of a strong labor movement, low union density, lack of capitalist regulation, a social safety net that was in its infancy (now its decayed).
* 2) **What does independent political action mean in the 21st century (electorally) / the left and the Democratic Party?*
-- It's a term that a lot of Trot-sects throw around and the principle of course its an important one. But is the SWP running its own Presidential election candidate every year and garnering like 7,000 votes what independent political action amounts to electorally? There is definitely something to do the old point by "popular-frontist" segments of the left that progressive forces--- our labor movement, people of color, feminists, etc. are already based in the Democratic Party and that we can't "will" a new working class into being. Historically there is much to backup the claim that the Democratic Party, as a bourgeois party bound to the logic of capital and managing the capitalist state, is the "graveyard of social movements".
But if there was left "movement of opposition" why couldn't the vehicle of Democratic Party primaries be used in urban environments and other places were the Democrats have a monopoly to advertise the views of and promote this new "early SPD-style organization"? With open-primaries and no dues, how much of the party are the Democrats really. The point here wouldn't be to take over the Democrats (entryism) or to push them to the left (CPUSA's masterplan) of course.
Obviously I have no answers and I have a fraction of the intellectual ability and organizational experience of many other members of the list, but the aforementioned book is recommended for the broader strategic questions. My experience as a C-list organizer in a D-list student movement has shown me that at least among young people there is a willingness and an understanding of the necessity of organization as long as our organizations are multi-tendency, open and democratic. It's clear that there is little future following around the Democrats *or* building sects like the PSL or the ISO. That being said the on-the-ground organizational ability of the tiny PSL and the slightly larger (and better ideologically oriented) ISO are harbingers of some of the latent talent we have hanging around on the left. What Doug correctly called "activist-ism" is a very understandable reaction to present conditions and unfortunately it won't change anytime soon.