We will mostly lose 🤷🏼‍♂️
Okay, Gindin & Panitch are brilliant, & the book is worth reading, & I love that Canada has this Marxist heavyweight duo — but these two also have an incredibly annoying habit of using the phrase “building capacities/capacity building” in the same way the writers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles used to have Donatello say he would “reverse the polarities” of such & such a thing — it’s basically meaningless, but does a major amount of heavy lifting to move the plot forward. One of the most consistent mistakes made by very smart people on the left is to assume that our side hasn’t won because we haven’t “figured it out” yet; we accordingly sink into recriminations & pedantry. But the reason the left has trouble is because we’re the side of people who have less — less money, less power, fewer weapons, fewer well-placed friends. That’s just how it is. We’re going to lose most of the time, just like we always have. But we keep fighting because to stop would be to abandon our dignity & our humanity, & because every now & then we win one. It’s a downer, but them’s the breaks. If you wanna win a bunch, play for the capitalists; make like LeBron & get traded to the Lakers.
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