Part of taking a sober view of the current economic, political and social conditions is asking ourselves what the method, if not the form, of organization should be.
In any scientific pursuit and any aspirations for building a better world, setbacks are not signals to give up. They're lessons to learn from. The sooner people come to realize the fate of the USSR as not the "end of history" for socialism but the first step, the sooner the long march can begin.
How do we build a class-conscious movement in the midst of propaganda and control over education, media and law by the capitalist class? How do we reorganize a workers' movement which today is atomized and timid, using the tools we have?
Socialism won't come about through a segment of the working class, or self-styled organic intellectuals, storming Congress or Parliament the way the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace. Nor will it come about through socialists entering those same halls via official channels.
Yet, the Bolshevik Revolution teaches us an invaluable lesson about the commitment necessary for building socialism out of a hitherto backward society. It shows that the fatalistic attitude of letting economic developments in the market build class consciousness for us is not good enough.
Liberals portray the victory of the most reactionary elements as evidence of the need for the disaffected to "do their civic duty" and re-engage with the system. If revolution is ever to even enter the discussion, we must encourage workers to instead engage in an alternative.
This cannot be limited to ad-hoc demonstrations or counter-demonstrations, though these can be useful. While action spurs reaction in the dialectical tug-of-war of class conflict, a workers' movement can still take initiative by building collective bodies for those who fall through the cracks of bourgeois state and private capitalist institutions. We can be bold, and while many understandably don't feel safe openly identifying as communists, it's still imperative to openly question ideological assumptions driven into those around us. We can pick our battles and not shy away from them when it matters.
Often, we run into the same tired phrases and rehashed arguments, and we need to find ways to move the discussion beyond them, whether "It's a nice idea in theory, but can't work in practice" or "People are inherently greedy." Trying to proselytize with party papers or chant slogans in the streets won't change this. Instead, the more examples we can build to challenge them, the more we can undermine these assumptions.
In concrete terms: Join a party, build a "People's Library", organize in non-profits trying to operate within the capitalist system and help them find ways to rely less and less on private business donations. Challenge the wasteful closures of factories or other productive workplaces, and the reliance on bureaucracy for union activity. These are a few first steps.
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
