The historical problem of our time is proletarian disorganization. We have lost the class institutions and political habits of organized struggle. Building mass, militant class organization is the strategic question of our time. Addressing this historic problem will unlock a new phase of political potential.
The left, unable to plant its feet on the solid ground of class organization, oscillates between left-opportunism and right-opportunism; with right-opportunism, we see electoral substitutions for the most basic forms of struggle by and for the class; with left-opportunism, we see an impatient politics that demands wholesale social changes from thin air.
Proletarian disorganization makes movements susceptible to liberal capture.
“class” becomes increasingly abstract, and electoral politics ascends as the exclusive site of contestation. There, cross-class constituencies whose relation to the state is increasingly defined through the language of the individual emerge as the exclusive site of official politics.
Notes from a recent DSA’s NPC meeting show an ongoing membership retention problem and a growing capacity issue within the organization. People seem to be fading away from the organization. Under these conditions, success requires coming to terms with our temporary luck and setting ourselves on an intentional path.
In other words, you cannot organize an insurrection by circulating agitational media and by deploying replicable forms of tactical escalation. When class struggle reaches a fever pitch, it will take a densely organized working class to make history with any meaningful intention.
Proletarian disorganization calls for a comprehensive strategy of working within established unions to make them powerful and militant, and building new labor organization concurrently.
The tenant movement has taken on a new centrality as a site of struggle today.
The abolition movement also holds real promise for proletarian organization today.