The only honest answer is that no one has the least fucking idea. Hence what follows is noodling along, not laying down a formula.
When, some 4 or 5 years ago I suggested that a real left, when it came into existence, would (among other things) demand that the Prison System be abolished one responder said that such a demand would turn off 98% of the population. Well, most activists now _are_ close to demanding that, and I suspect that it would be attractive to about 5% of the population. Let's explore the idea of The 5%.
I believe the local population here (Bloomington/Normal Illinois) is about 150,000. Five percent of that would be 7,500. Assume a third of that would be old, youngsters, or in other ways not 'fit' for the struggle. That leaves 5,000 people in B/N who would (given the chance) go along with the demand to Abolish the Prison System. (That, of course, to head off silliness, would not mean that no one would be placed under restraint of some sort, but we don't need to write legislation here.) Of that 5,000, I would venture as a rough estimate it would take about 100 activists/organizers to 'reach' the majority of that 5,000.
(Now understand: 5000 people seriously active in this area would paralyze the state of Illinois; among other things, that much activity here would be inciting similar activity at some level all over the place, including some out of the way spots. Back in the '50s or '60s a strike in a chemical plant in Arthur Illinois almost generated civil war in that conservative little burg. At least the governor could not risk committing the whole National Guard to B/N.)
Incidentally, I think there has been some indications that a sort of inchoate anti-capitalism is reflected in various opinion polls. I don't take them very seriously, because opinion has no necessary relation to practice, but still it gives one to think about what kind of dry grass is out there. Nevertheless, any continuing mass movement implies a reasonable seasoning of reasonably conscious revolutionaries. And that means that among that 100 (and eventually among a scattering of the 5000, there need to be some who recognize, deeply, whether on Marxist principle or some other set of principles, that "The problem is not the Republicans, or even the vicious policies of the Obama Administration, but capitalism."
Perhaps then if 3 or 4 groups of 15 to 25 each became active on various issues (local, national, global) here in B/N, and if some of those issues led to some shared principles among those groups, we would be on the way to both having the people and finding the issues that would activate that 5000.
Anyone should be able to speculate on various not unreasonable scenarios as that gestured at above.
Now I don't agree with Democratic-Centralism or with Jodi Dean's call for a Party. That assumes that politics can be theorized in the way chemistry or physics is theorized. (I'm not sure just what Lenin meant when he argued that there could not be a revolutionary party without a revolutionary theory, but at least in most, reasonably rigorous, conceptions of theory I don't think there can be such a thing as a Theory of Revolution. History is too messy; too grounded in contingency.
The proposition, "The problem is not the Republicans, or even the vicious policies of the Obama Administration, but capitalism," is a theoretical proposition concerning political reality in the United States." It is unacceptably dogmatic to directly draw _any_ tactical conclusions from it, and hence no criticism of it on "practical" or "tactical" grounds is relevant. The only question is, Is It True?
Carrol
.*********** Carrol Cox wrote:
Those who pretend or attempt to lead the struggle had better have a firm theoretical grasp of who or what the enemy is. There is huge empirical evidence overe the last two centuries that the best reformists (most effective) are those who think in revolutionary terms.
We have a double problem here: anti-theoreticism and dogmatism (the assumption of a direct relation between theory and practice).