I’ve read a few different takes on strategy recently. Here’s mine. Strategy, as I learned it in the Communist Party and from reading Lenin is wide angled and dynamic. Never narrowly focused, Its field of vision is the larger political landscape on which competing coalitions (or, in Gramsci’s language, blocs) collide and compete for advantage (war of position), and power (war of maneuver). It brings into focus the main class and social constituencies in that field of struggle, clarifies where they stand in relation to each other and the main issues of struggle, and, above all, takes into account the distribution of power – the balance of power – in the moment between/among the contending coalitions.

A strategic excavation doesn’t stop here though. It goes on to specify the key alliances that are crucial to each side’s success, the key constituencies to be won, and the key democratic and class issues that, if settled in favor of one or another coalition, will either move the whole chain of struggle to a new, higher stage or in a backward direction. And of course, any strategic rendering is set within and deeply informed by a particular economic and political conjuncture.

In today’s circumstances, the main clash is between two competing cross class coalitions, each with its own distinct class and social makeup and politics.  One is right wing, white nationalist, authoritarian, and if need be, fascistic. While socially diverse, it skews toward white billionaires, millionaires, and middle income Americans. The other is  democratic minded and leans in a progressive direction. Unlike its rival, it can claim a majoritarian status and skews toward working people, people of color, women, and young people. While it scored victories last fall at the ballot box – the biggest the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – and legislative breakthroughs this spring, the outcome of what can fairly be described as an existential clash of these two grand coalitions is still to be decided.

To see economic and political processes in the present and future as simply a continuation, with slight modifications, of the past is analytically mistaken and politically counterproductive. A vibrant, open ended Marxism should take into account discontinuities, changing conjunctures, and new phenomena at the national and global level that emerge in the course of capitalist development and modify, not only the conditions for the production and realization of surplus value, but also class and democratic struggles at the national and global level. When these modifications are deep going and thus possess potential for far reaching economic, social, and political change, adjustments in strategy and tactics in an expansive and flexible direction are usually in order.

If the review is a fair representation of Bhaskar’s Sunkara’s new book, “The Socialist Manifesto,” I like the questions that Sunkara is exploring and the direction that he is suggesting. I’m impressed that he has the temerity to mention, according to the reviewer, the “counterrevolutionary” Kautsky in a favorable light.

Against the background of a left in the U.S. that hasn’t come close to “storming heaven” on the one hand and the experience of existing socialism in the 20th century – much of it went belly up – on the other, you would think that new thinking about socialism – what it looks like, who its protagonists are, and how to get there, not to mention the causes of its crisis and collapse in the first place (simply blaming “imperialism” is insufficient to say the least) – would be in high demand. But that isn’t the case. Old ideas, even when evidence isn’t on their side, resist burial, thanks to their zealous defenders of the faith who are captives of what my old friend Fred Gaboury called, the “politics of assertion,” while new ideas that challenge old understandings are quick to meet resistance by the same crowd.

I have said before that if anyone worries too much about defending yourself from criticism from the defenders of the faith on the left, they will probably serve up nothing but old bromides and formulas, dressed in a slightly different clothing and tone deaf to actual experience. The pressure to be “right” on the left militates against thinking that goes against the grain, as it applauds at the same time the repetition of received wisdom. And who needs that? Anyway, I look forward to reading Sunkara’s new book.

What is missing in Vanden Heuvel’s analysis is the imperative of popular action at the local and national level. Vocal support outside the halls of Congress, history tells us, complements the Biden-Democratic legislative initiatives and bills inside the House and Senate. Biden, Bernie, and Pelosi need the leverage of millions on the street to rein in their own caucus, defeat GOP opposition, and pass legislation that is game changing – a break from neoliberal economics and Trumpian politics. Nothing is more important at this moment. All eyes and energies – people and social movements – should be trained on this Congressional battle.