I met Tommy Dennis in Detroit in 1974 at a youth conference on jobs sponsored by the Young Workers Liberation League (not sure how we cooked up that name). Tommy was the Party leader in Detroit and he spoke to the conference attendees. In his remarks – which blew me away at the time – he said, “There is nothing that Black people want that white people don’t need.” That caught my attention, even though I didn’t immediately understand what he was saying. It took a little reflection on my part to digest Tommy’s observation. I can be slow.

More than a half century later that seemingly simple observation of Tommy’s hasn’t lost any its resonance for me. In fact, in the midst of an interlocking crises and an astonishing uprising against racism, it resonates even more. As I see it, If we are to emerge out of this catastrophe, decisively defeat Trump in November, and set our country on a new anti-racist, working class, and democratic trajectory part of the reason will be that significant numbers of white working people come to appreciate the wisdom of Tommy’s remarks.

Trump said yesterday that his administration is “developing a plan” to address the coronavirus. Tell that to the 140,000 dead and their grieving families. Or to vulnerable seniors. Or to communities of color who have experienced the heaviest loss of life. Or to first responders and essential workers.

An inflection point, as this moment arguably is, requires not only big solutions, but also – and no less importantly – expansive and broadly constructed politics.

Once again we are going through another momentous re-imagining and remaking our society, economy, and culture. While it didn’t begin with the interlocking political, economic, and health crises that tightly grip the country or the sudden, sustained, and massive marches protesting the brutal murder of George Floyd, both greatly accelerate this process.

This crisis like earlier crises in the 20th century will be resolved politically, that is, in the course of a fierce political struggle between contending political blocs and coalitions. And there is little doubt that the outcome of the November elections will play an over sized role in determining the outcome this crisis, with the winner gaining enormous advantage over the loser to shape and reshape the future.

The principal role of the left is to lend its energy and ideas to the empowerment of much larger class and social constituencies. In doing so it gains in experience and understanding as well as earns its leadership credentials in this wider social-political complex. Any idea that the left on its own can effect major social transformations finds no historical confirmation.

That understanding should deeply inform the politics of the left in these tumultuous times, when racial and class inequalities are so evident and the opportunity to clear the way for a new era of progress is within reach, only a election away.

And yet more than a few conversations on the left are primarily focused on the building of its own power apart from broader and powerful forces of social change.