We don't need the whole of the working class to be equally organized.

History shows us again and again that what matters is that there is this core, not just one or two ringleaders, which is how the bosses always think, but really a core of respected, trustworthy, socialist activists who can build relationships and who think before they speak and who don't embark on

futile crusades who keep their powder dry but carefully cultivate patiently gardeners Mike Davis would

say and in the process have patient conversations for people about the state of the planet

and what can be done and they build up goodwill and trust and

organizing ability and that will do a hell of a lot more i think to avoid anomic violence and

political apathy and deaths of despair and to persuade people than all the professional communications

on the one hand or the propaganda of the

deed on the other hand or even, you know, civil disobedience by heroic minorities. I'm not, by the

way, I'm not dissing anyone. I respect those, you know, the young activists who are ready to face

police violence, who are ready to be arrested and go to jail.

I don't like the cheap and easy scolding. If we were as good as all that, we would already

have launched the left climate front, and it astonishes me that we don't have anything like

that. And Marxists in particular took a long time to get to this struggle, so we have to be humble.

But we also have to be confident in our ideas, right?

We're not just dawling the hair of show.

Our ideas concentrate a unique body of historical experience of struggle,

often heroic struggle that no one seeking to seriously transform our society can afford to dismiss.

And just because we don't know everything, I still fancy that we know

more collectively than a couple of interesting scholars with their interesting theory of nonviolent

resistance. And if we come at people like that, not bragging, but open-minded and confident

our ideas, and not rising to any bit and not feeding any outrage machine, but ready to learn

...