What does this look like on the ground, and what are people doing about it now?
See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.
The old strategy debate is not settled history. It is the live argument in every organization on the left right now: run candidates or build movements, reform the police or abolish them, take state power or build power outside it. This lens brings the theory down to the ground, the actual campaigns, mutual-aid projects, and dual-power experiments people are running, and the tools they use to defend themselves from the state while they do.
Anchor questions
- Should the left run candidates, build movements, or both? What has worked?
- What happens to socialists who win office? What can they actually do?
- What is mutual aid, and what does it do that the state does not?
- What is “dual power,” and has anyone actually built it?
- How do communities defend themselves without relying on the police?
Materials
Free unless marked otherwise.
Journalism and reporting
- “Tribunes for Socialism” (Meagan Day, Verso, 2019). A practical case that socialists should treat electoral campaigns as organizing vehicles that build class consciousness and infrastructure, not ends in themselves. Free: versobooks.com
- “From Rebellion to Revolution” (Kali Akuno, Viewpoint Magazine, 2020). Lays out a dual-power strategy anchored in mutual aid, food sovereignty, cooperative economics, and federated People’s Assemblies, from an organizer with Cooperation Jackson. The dual-power case, applied. Free: viewpointmag.com
- “The Ballot and the Break” (Eric Blanc, Jacobin, 2017). The canonical “dirty break” essay, using Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party to argue socialists can run on the Democratic ballot line while building toward an independent workers’ party. Now behind Jacobin’s paywall; noted here as the reference point of the electoral debate. Paywalled: jacobin.com
Podcasts and interviews with organizers
- The Dig, “DSA at the Ballot Box” (Daniel Denvir, Jacobin). Works through DSA’s electoral strategy and whether socialists build power through the ballot box, the dirty-break argument in practice. Free: thedigradio.com
- Upstream, “Abolish the Police” (2020). A documentary episode featuring Alex Vitale, Cat Brooks, and others debating whether policing is reformable and what non-carceral alternatives look like. Free, with a transcript: upstreampodcast.org
- Srsly Wrong, “Library Socialism and Usufruct” (2019). An accessible episode building out “library socialism,” a dual-power and mutual-aid vision of shared provision as an alternative to both market and state. Free: srslywrong.com
Films and documentaries
- The Weather Underground (Sam Green and Bill Siegel, 2002, 92 min). The Oscar-nominated history of the 1970s clandestine group, useful as a critical case study of insurrectionary strategy and its limits against the state. Free with a library card on Kanopy or Hoopla: justwatch.com
- The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1975 to 1979). The landmark three-part chronicle of Allende’s government, popular power, and the 1973 coup, a primary source on state power and the fragility of the electoral road to socialism. Free to stream: archive.org
- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson, 2015, 115 min). A feature history of the Panthers, including the survival programs as dual-power provision and the state repression that followed. Free via Kanopy with a library card; background at pbs.org.
Practical handbooks and how-to material
- Mutual Aid Toolbox (Dean Spade, Big Door Brigade). Concrete step-by-step tools across roughly seventeen areas, food, housing, bail and legal support, health, immigration, childcare, and prisoner support, for starting and maintaining mutual-aid projects. Free: bigdoorbrigade.com
- Berkeley Copwatch Handbook (Berkeley Copwatch, 2024). A community-defense manual on patrolling and documenting police, running know-your-rights workshops, and responding to ICE raids. Free: berkeleycopwatch.org
- Know Your Rights: Protesters’ Rights (ACLU). A plain-language guide to First Amendment protections and limits for demonstrations, with a downloadable PDF and a Spanish version. Free: aclu.org
Explainers on video
- “How Can I Help? Mutual Aid 101” (Second Thought, 2021). Roughly 14 minutes, about 162,000 views. Introduces mutual aid and building dual power outside the state. A strong companion to Spade’s toolbox. youtube.com/watch?v=4HESYrW-0eg
Further reading
For resources behind a paywall, see the note on access.
- Dean Spade, Reading Questions for Mutual Aid Class (2019). A ten-week set of reading questions and a teaching guide from the author of Mutual Aid, given away free. The most usable free scaffold for running this material as a course rather than reading it alone. Free: deanspade.net
Status
First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Contributions welcome, especially accounts from groups running electoral campaigns, mutual-aid projects, tenant unions, and community-defense work, and material on what socialists have done once in office.