If you do keep the faith and continue to be radical, very bad things can and do happen to you. At the very least you will be marginalized. Same if you are poor and strike out. Prison awaits you in the USA.

The main dividing line is still race. This is the issue that must be focused upon in all working class organizations.

Racism is the most divisive force in our society, so until it is dealt with we cannot hope for much.

Young people are more likely to be idealistic and think that radical change is both necessary and possible. They may not yet be stuck in the routinized and sterile life that work and age often bring, nor stuck in any kind of rigid way of thinking. They have great energy and can get things done.

Capitalism is a powerful producer of output, crisis-mongering on the left notwithstanding, and this too makes the system seem to have a lot of promise. This is why it is so important to agitate against the system in good times and bad. We can't depend on some super crisis to get folks thinking but instead have to focus on all of the contradictions of the system which cannot be ultimately resolved by it.

Without an understanding of the issue of race and a willingness to confront it head on, the working class will not build its strength.

What needs to be grasped is that the system itself is the cause of all of the misery in the world. This is a simple but powerful idea.