Welcome to Rome.

So, how’s your current approach working out for you? Are you getting the results you want? Do you even know what the results you want are?

I’ve been saying for a long time that the left will not win anything until it grapples seriously with the implications of pareconish theory. I’ve also said that the left — which is deeply classist and deeply coordinatorist — will never do this. It’s the overseers, and has no intention of ever getting out into the fields and doing it’s fair share of picking the cotton under the hot sun.

The left will never, ever even consider the possibility that it should do it’s fair share of shit work. The coordinator-class left wants to overthrow the capitalist class and take over the economy; it doesn’t want to spread the real work equitably. However, the left doesn’t hold any of these views consciously. It doesn’t consciously know that its goal is a public-enterprise economy (either with market allocation or centrally-planned allocation). But this theory explains and predicts everything the left does.

So, in a nutshell, I am saying that nothing will ever change — except that to get worse. I’d like to be wrong about that, but I see no evidence that suggests I am. When I see such evidence, I’ll modify my theory accordingly.

I look for actionable, low-hanging fruit in my own life — things I can control, and I focus on those. Anything else is a recipe for misery and failure. A left that were serious about winning would do the same thing: It would focus on things it can control, particularly the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

I claim this low-hanging fruit is a simple acknowledgement of the existence of pareconish theory. Of course, acknowledging parecon would lead to all sorts of deleterious consequences from the standpoint of the deeply-classist, coordinator-class left — it’s not no simple as simply acknowledging it.

But it is low-hanging fruit. I claim there’s no other way for the left to threaten the system, and I claim that it is sufficient to threaten the system. In the same way that I say parecon is a necessary and sufficient condition for the liberation of the working class, I also say that pareconish theory is a necessary and sufficient condition for building a left that’s capable of winning anything in the United States.

Of course, you have no idea who I am. You’ve never heard of me. What do I know? That’s all true, of course: I’m nobody in the world.

But here’s what I do know: The left hasn’t won anything since Nixon left office. It’s broke. You might try fixing it.

Do I think this will happen? Do I think the left will ever start taking parecon seriously? Of course not. But I’m still right, and no one has presented any other theoretical way for the left to move forward.

If you don’t like my theory, fine. Let’s see yours. Or just stay comfortable with losing. Because things getting worse is never going to be enough to foment change. It wasn’t in Greece. It’s not in Brazil, or Mexico. And it won’t be in the United States. If people don’t stick together in the good times — and they don’t — then they won’t stick together in the bad times.

You need something to transcend all that, but with actual institutional teeth. You need horizontal organizational structure. Without that, you may as well just accept the fact that you live in the declining days of the Roman Republic.