Marv, On the subjective-objective divide, I’m not set on using 'crisis of leadership' as the main explanation, and I don’t need it to make my case. I agree with your structural account: deindustrialization, capital mobility, the opening of Eastern Europe and China, and a more scattered service workforce with less power. Your explanation is mostly right, and it describes the decline in class struggle better than blaming bureaucrats for holding back militancy. Still, while it explains the decline, it doesn’t address what the organized left actually did during that time, which is what I’ve been asking about. Structural decline sets the boundaries of what was possible, but it doesn’t mean the only response had to be forming sects, splitting over a rise in activity that never came, and eventually leaving for private life. I’m not saying workers made mistakes; I’m saying there were other possible responses, and some people chose them. So the structural story and the story about organizational forms aren’t in competition; they answer different questions. You keep turning my point into 'the workers were wrong,' but that’s not what I’m saying. About whether union leaders were ahead of or in touch with their members instead of lagging behind, I’m open to that idea, since it complicates the bureaucracy argument I might make. Still, leaders can be attuned to a cautious, insecure base and also manage a settlement that closes off fights that could have changed how the base felt. Leaders can respond to their members’ immediate concerns and still end up making those concerns permanent instead of challenging them. I’m not criticizing the officials you knew. I’m talking about what happens to organizations over many years, no matter who is in charge. You mention 1917, 1918, and 1936, starting with democratic demands, and you don’t put Portugal ’74 or France ’68 on the same level. That’s fair, and I don’t really disagree with your war-revolution argument. I just want to point out that the metaphor we both use—'nothing left to lose' to describe a ruling class that can’t provide basic security—sets a very high bar. If that’s the standard, then most socialist organizing in the twentieth century, by your own view, was aimed at a moment that would only come rarely and unpredictably. That actually supports my point: if an organization is built for that rare moment, it needs a plan for what to do during all the other years. You ask a good final question, and I want to give you an honest answer. I don’t have a formula to solve a problem that generations of serious people haven’t solved, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who said they did. What I can defend is more limited: we should stop treating reform work as just a waiting room for revolution, and instead treat steady, unglamorous work—real reform efforts, real union roles, real regrouping with people who don’t yet agree with you—as the main task, for as long as it takes, without any promise about when it will pay off. That’s my main point: it’s about changing our mindset, not finding a new tactic. It doesn’t guarantee we’ll get past the deadlock, but it does help stop the kind of burnout we’ve both talked about as if it were a mystery. -- Tony
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