Our Road to Power” explored the relevance of the Bolshevik experience for left organizing today. Charlie Post’s rejoinder to it offers a welcome opportunity to clarify its main claims and to develop them. Much of Post’s essay agrees with and repeats what was in mine. But some of it is tendentious, representing claims that aren’t implied in “Our Road to Power,” much less advocated.

Two structuring conditions confront the Left today, and both differ from the situation a hundred years ago. The first is that the Second and Third Internationals were operating in an era of state breakdown — what we might call a “revolutionary era.” Across much of the capitalist world, this opened up possibilities for socialist parties to attempt a capture of power. This effort was only successful because of the Left’s deep roots in the working class and its ability to mobilize it to deepen the political crisis and displace traditional power centers.

The socialist left today is lacking both of these conditions. Across the advanced capitalist world, the ruling class is completely unified, the state is stable, and there is no structural political crisis. There is deep disenchantment with neoliberalism, and this is what has allowed the astounding success of Sanders and Corbyn. But it is impossible to take this as a political crisis.