Disclaimers
tl;dr at the end
My perspective comes from living in part of Burgerland (aka the US) and will be focused on the left “movement” in this country. I’m not going to do the typical American thing of assuming my experiences and perspectives are the only ones that matter, so please let me know in the comments how other countries handle what I’m about to cover.
Also this post has been kicking around my head for a while, so apologies if it ends up long-winded or hard to read. The way I think is all over the place, so I have lots of headers and sections to keep things organized.
Intro: Messaging from the left = Capitalist Realism
Mark Fisher (RIP) wrote a very important book about a phenomenon he called Capitalist Realism.
I highly recommend every leftist reads at least the opening chapter to this book.
In this piece Fisher describes a widespread cultural attitude that Capitalism is inevitable, the only system that can exist in this “end of history”. No alternatives are possible, so don’t bother trying. And if you do try, you will be made an example of, another reason on a long list of reasons not to try again, so don’t even bother. Or worse, your criticisms of Capitalism are used to help keep Capitalism going! Your efforts co-opted and integrated seamlessly into the machine. “Sorry To Bother You”, but I doubt “Don’t Look Up” got throngs of people who never heard of Socialism to sign up with 
The left, unknowingly(?), contributes to Capitalist Realism
Look at the news feeds, the posts on here, all of the updates on all of your favorite Reddit subs, left Twitter, etc. Overwhelmingly negative stories about how Capitalism is screwing us, how this week a company is caught poisoning food, or how capitalist governments are suppressing speech, or some shitty Conservative politician pushing the latest woman-hating bill. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Capitalism sucks. No one here needs convincing of that.
What I want you to focus on is how this deluge of negative stories affects activists and organizers. More in comments.
1 - Capitalist Realism dampens organizing
Again, this is a US-centric take borne from my own experiences. I believe that we have a lack of good left organizing, of any kind, partly because of the effects of living in the heart of the Capitalist empire. It’s hard to imagine a revolution in the belly of this beast. This place is depressing in a way that is hard to explain to folks who don’t live here. What I can say is that seeing Teslas and $70k pickup trucks zoom past homeless tents day in and day out, and no one around me really cares… it sucks. There’s no great way to put it. Electoralism at the local level is the same handful of perennial losers shuffling seats around every two years. It’s nice seeing some “Free Palestine” stickers around where I live so it’s not all bad, but I know just a few miles out of town and the scenery changes fast.
Also a lot of “Jesus Saves” and similar Christian stickers everywhere.
It’s already hard enough to be motivated to act under Capitalism, and our current messaging “non-strategy” only makes it worse. I believe that the sum total of the culture adds up to creating cynicism, defeatism, depression, and ultimately a lack of motivation to act.
“Why bother? No one really cares about any of this stuff, and it’s not like those other countries are doing any better. This is it, just worse and worse for the rest of life. Maybe I should keep myself with porn/games/hobbies/TV and keep my head down like everyone else. At least some of them look happy.”
2 - What about the left orgs?
I don’t want to be a downer on the orgs we have! I appreciate the organizing being done by groups such as CPUSA, PSL, and DSA. I don’t want to get into any fights over which org is “best” or is most effective, rather I’m arguing that all of them combined do some good local work. That is something positive and something that I think we could work on spreading more often. BUT, the way leftists are organizing under these headwinds of constant doom-and-gloom Capitalist Realism is leading to too much burnout. This causes great organizers to leave or take long breaks, leading to membership churn, brain drain, and an ever-weakening organizing base. Without a clear goal to strive for at a national level (electing Bernie), groups like DSA are seeing membership drops that are leading to budget issues that are leading to layoffs… and I shouldn’t have to explain why a socialist org doing layoffs is a bad thing!
3 - The revolution will be won by paid staff
I don’t believe we will get to where we need to be as a movement without more people being paid to organize full-time. I’ll try to elaborate on why that is in the US in other sections. In a nutshell: Individualism of the American variety, Capitalism taking our free time, Capitalist Realism, and lack of a tangible end-goal are all combining to keep unpaid volunteering at a minimum. Our entire society is structured in such a way that makes it that much harder to organize! Someone on here had an excellent comment about “car culture” and how the car-centric designs have led to so much atomization among our communities. America isn’t like Europe where organizers can be linked by a cheap, convenient train ride. Here it’s cars all the way with maybe a few exceptions in major cities like Chicago.
4 - So what is the end goal for American Socialism?
We should have a clear, easy to understand, easy to repeat goal for the movement as a whole: We need a new Constitution
Why not just call for a “revolution?” “Revolution” is too vague, abstract. Can’t get too specific because of state power. It is a loaded term which implies a lot of bloodshed, violence, and death. And yes America is a country full of bloodthirsty hogs, but most of those hogs are cheering for the blood to be spilled somewhere else.
Calling for a new Constitution is materially similar to having a revolution, but comes with several rhetorical advantages:
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It is a more “serious” sounding goal than revolution
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It is an easy way to instantly separate us from liberals/Democrats. This is a BIG problem in mainstream politics here. Democrats want to co-opt us outside of election years, then scapegoat us after they lose elections. They pretend to support us, but I guarantee a liberal will NEVER agree to wanting to throw out the whole Constitution. It’s the most sacred of sacred cows in American politics.
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Is does not immediately come off as “anti-America”. It’s not that we want to destroy America with a bloody revolution. We just want to make American so much better with a new Socialist Constitution. Especially one that helps us build the society closer to what our AES neighbors have…
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Gives us a unassailable distinction between us and Democrats. What is the Dem plan if they have power for 50 years? Do they even have a plan?
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Something we can actually build towards with a real end goal.
It’s still revolution, just with a re-brand. And better branding is how we build a larger, more resilient movement.
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