"We" aren't going to do _anything_ this year or probably next year. If we merely add ourselves on to some "realistic" goal being pursued by nominal liberals, (1) we are not enough to make a difference and (2) it the goal is achieved, it would have been achieved without us . So we will have done nothing.
The world changes. It is after such a change has BEGUN, that leftists, if they are visible at all, suddenly become important to more people. But they do have to be visible, and mere DP tails are never visible.
And in such periods (as has been true for over two centuries, all sorts of allegedly ''fantastic' goals become the order of the day.
I am not talking about revolution, though revolutions when they occur are surprises during such periods of schange, not planned programs. I am merely talking about the inevitabiligy of periods when large numbers (still small minorities in mere deographic or voting terms) suddnnly become active and committed to substantial change in one area or antoher. Those large numbers are partly recruited by ongoing work from left activists, partly recruit themselves and coalesce aground visible points of activity. "Quiet" groups, long committed to mere tiny steps, also change internally, radicalizing themselves, splitting to form new activist groups, and so on.
In the past there has always been a Party which could assert or attempted to assert hegemony and discipline over such upsurgesd. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. My sense of how people activate themselves in the u.s., and the variety of causes which could, under the right conditions, activate tehm, is that there will not again be a hegemonic Party on the u.s. left but a movement of movements, with serious but not fatal divisions among them, coalescing at key points.
And so to go back to my iniital point: "We" aren't going to do _anything_ this year or probably next year Why not think about the future: What woujld we _really_ want, and what would thousands or millions of newly activated people want under changed conditons.
I'm not quite positing a "Final Goal," but I am asserting that under present conditons left activity not enerized by concrete goals far beyond present possibility is not left activity; it is merely muddling around, hoping liberals will do somethkng we can cheer. They won't. We have nothing to lose by positing and proclaiming some such list of real goals as I listed in my previous post. Anything less is nothing. It might be nothing anyhow but ....
Carrol