When you are strategizing, the most important thing you can have is clarity about where you’re going: What’s the goal? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want the world to look like after you’re done?

The question in life is never, “What do I do?” The question in life is always, “What do I want?” Once you figure out what you want, the question of what to do answers itself.

The left fails not because it doesn’t know what to do, or because it’s doing the wrong things or not doing the right things. It fails because it doesn’t know what it wants and it refuses to discuss or think about what it wants.

People on the left want wildly disparate things. Some people want mild reforms. Others want revolution. But even in these two camps, there are wide disagreements. And there’s the added problem that discussions of theory put people to sleep, and few wish to participate.

I don’t know what the answer is. But the capitalists always know what they want, which is why they’re so ruthlessly able to pursue it. The left never knows what it wants, which is why it always … not fails, but actually succeeds: When you don’t know what you want, you get it.

The capitalists all hate each other, but they understand their common class interest. Workers all hate each other too, but they don’t understand their class interest at all.

I believe the goal of the left should be working-class liberation. I believe the discussion of the left should be on how those details are filled in.

I believe anything short of this will just leave the capitalists in charge.