Things to avoid

Here are a few things to avoid in the coming year.

* A belief that the danger of co-optation is reason to keep a distance from reform struggles and electoral politics.

* An understanding that politics has few complexities, change is solely driven from the ground up, and stages of struggle are for the fainthearted and “reformists.”

* A notion that differences within elite circles on foreign and domestic policies are of no strategic or tactical significance.

* A belief that the two main parties of capitalism are carbon copies of one another.

* An attitude that the left’s role is to double the bet and up the ante no matter what the circumstances.

* A commitment to a politics that subordinates the struggle for racial, gender, and other forms of equality to the exigencies of the class struggle.

* A disposition to under appreciate the role of labor.

* A habit of creating false oppositions between electoral forms of action and direct action.

* A tendency to elaborate strategy and tactics apart from a concrete examination of the balance of class and social forces at a given moment.

* An insufficient appreciation for the struggle for democracy.

* A penchant to squirrel itself away in self enclosed organizational silos disconnected from broader forms of social organization and action.