Pragmatic Leftist Theory
The neolibs are too far right. The tankies are doing whatever that is. Where's the space for the people who want fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism, but realize that it's gonna take a while and there are lots of steps between now and then? Here. This is that space.
Here, people should endeavor to discuss and devise practical, actionable leftist action. Vote lesser evil while you build grassroots coalitions. Unionize your workplace. Participate in SRAs. Build cohesion your local community. Educate the proletariat.
This is a place for practical people to develop practical plans to implement stable, incremental improvement.
If you're dead-set on drumming up all 18,453 True Leftists® into spontaneous Revolution, go somewhere else. The grown ups are talking.
Rules:
-1. Don't be a dick. Racism, sexism, other assorted bigotries, you know the drill. At least try to default to mutually respectful discussion. We're all on the same side here, unless you aren't, in which case kindly leave.
-2. Don't be a tankie. Yes I'm sure you have an extensive knowledge of century-old theory. There's been a century of history since then. Things didn't shake out as expected, maybe consider the possibility that a different angle of attack might be more effective in light of new data.
-3. Be practical. No one on the left benefits from counterproductive actions. This is a space informed by, not enslaved to, ideology. Promoting actions that are fundamentally untenable in the system in question, because they fulfill a sense of ideological purity, is a bad look. Don't do that.
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Firstly, Red Star is not opposed to electoralism, they are critical of it, reserving the the right to critically support a candidate, or even run candidates on this or that ballot line, depending on the objective conditions of where the race is held, and against whom. Red Star is ML, but in order to dismiss their campaign strategy, you have to be able to counter it with something better. If you read this you will find something much more worked out and coherent than the bad faith mid representations in the Atlantic.
Secondly, the left is not ML. MUG are not ML theyrf like neo-Kautskyists, R&R are Trotskyist and ideologically anti-ML, Libertarian Socialist caucus are more anarchist (though they accept many different forms of Libertarian Socialism, not just one interpretation of anarchist), Liberation is Maoist, which is ideologically ML adjacent but actually much different in character, Mountain Caucus are like Gramsci-ist, and so on.
Leninist groups, which includes Trots, MLs and Maoists all have different approaches to some of the same problems. All of these groups agree on a kind of organization called Democratic Centralism. If it is too centralized it is authoritarian, but if it is too democratic then it becomes slow, horizontalist, factional. Lenin often pushed for more democracy in the decades leading up to the civil war. He always gave space for factions and minority tendencies -- until he and the Bolsheviks banned factions. And unlike a lot of conservative criticisms which dont really stick to Lenin, imo that one does.
But the fundamentals of Democratic centralism are sound. Its just like, the way a healthy organizing structure should operate. But DemCent was just recently unbanned from DSA, and we have yet to see how that change will affect the org. In every case, organizers of all tendencies are more concerned with Democratic Socialism than Centralism.
You can't just boil it down to an oversimplification and call that understanding.
The dynamics of a socialist campaigns are completely different, because our objectives aren't to win this or that election, it is to radically change the whole social order. We can lose an election but gain a ton of capacity and knowledge in the process, and it is still a win. But in order to accomplish that, we still need to run very compelling campaigns that try to win.