[yareal]

The leftists I know are socialists, anarchists, and communists. They are very much doing the work both politically (I live in the Pacific Northwest, where socialists are on the ballot regularly) and locally (e.g. via Food Not Bombs or restoring land to natural states).

There definitely are academics, in organizations like the DSA. But there's practical folks too.

[rayiner]

Virtually no one who calls themselves socialists in America are actually socialists. They’re social libertarians and neoliberals cosplaying as socialists.

You can’t have a workable left-wing movement that prioritizes social libertarianism because workers invariably will be more traditional than elites. You can’t tell factory workers they can’t say this or that and that they need to learn to like foreigners. You can think it, but you can't say it, and you certainly can't call them "racist, sexist, and homophobic." If your platform morally reforming workers and their manners becomes core to your platform, then it's not a workable left-wing platform. All you'll do is split the workers and push them away: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/postcard-from-the-hispanic-....

What you'll end up with is a coalition where economic left-wingers are the rump of a neoliberal party. The neoliberals will never give the left-wingers anything, because they don't have to. Neoliberals have no reason to do anything other than pay lip service to leftists who can't actually unify and rally the mass of workers.