Let me end by paraphrasing Che from his Man and Socialism in Cuba: the pipe dream that socialism can be achieved through capitalist accounting and capitalist concepts of efficiency can lead into a blind alley. And you wind up there after having travelled a long distance with many crossroads, and it is hard to figure out just where you took the wrong turn.

Mitch is constantly thinking of where to go next. His medical problems have given him plenty of time for introspection and he wards off any negativity by staying focused on his projects. Throughout the years, Mitch has kept in touch with his siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces. He appreciates family and the connections it brings. He calls it the core Podolak: people caring about other people.

The legacy of the October Revolution for the left today is, in fact, the least ambiguous. It can be summed up in two words: “They dared.” By that, I mean that the Bolsheviks, in organizing the revolutionary seizure of political and economic power and its defence from the propertied classes, were true to their mission as a workers’ party: they provided the workers with the leadership that they needed and wanted.

During and in the immediate aftermath of tragedies, we are told it’s not the time for politics. As a nation, we love the spectacle of what author Teju Cole called “the white-savior industrial complex,” in which justice is replaced by a “big emotional experience that validates privilege.” While we take a respite from breathing this week, let’s try justice instead.

We will not live under the cloud of right wing capitalist triumphalism forever. There will be renewed episodes of progressive, egalitarian politics even in America. And when such episodes occur, basic income should be high on the agenda not simply because of the ways it directly deals with a range of fundamental issues of social justice, but because of the ways it may contribute to a broader transformation of capitalism itself.

Disparaged and smeared for almost two years, Momentum came out fighting during the general election campaign, spurred on by a sense of idealism which ended up bringing us close to sweeping Labour into government on the most transformative manifesto for a generation. We’ve already achieved a huge amount, transforming Labour into the largest left-of-centre party in Europe.

A reframing is a necessary condition for gaining a popular hearing electorally. Certainly, the rightward move towards a self-satisfied consensual centre, highlighted by Mouffe, left the electoral battlefield wide open to the populist right. But breaking the constraining hold of liberalism – and a proper challenge the inequalities that feed the right –– requires a more structural reconfiguration of politics and capitalism than this.

Capital is foremost a dissection of the historical social relations and mode of production of capitalism. From its initial publication, Marx’s Capital steadily gained prominence as the indispensable point of departure for understanding the inner workings of the capitalist system and the forces polarizing the accumulation of wealth on the one side and poverty on the other.

In our previous issue, George Martell laid out a multi-faceted strategy to take the Leap Manifesto to the next level by giving it an action plan. Dimension invited several activists to respond to Martell’s proposals in a special section, “Leap, the Left and the NDP.” Contributors included Greg Albo, Ian Angus and John Riddell and Herman Rosenfeld. In this response, George Martell continues the conversation.