Something happened recently that reminded me of a rich woman’s exclamation once in New York. “Socialism! But wouldn’t it do away with charity? And what would we do without charities? I love my work for the poor more than anything else I can do.”

 — Lincoln Steffens

In 2015, Mark Dudzic and Adolph Reed Jr made a sad pronouncement: if “by left we mean a reasonably coherent set of class-based and anti-capitalist ideas, programmes and policies that are embraced by a cohort of leaders and activists who are in a position to speak on behalf of and mobilize a broad constituency,” then “there is no longer a functioning left in the United States; nor has there been for a generation.”¹ Not long after, the Left was jolted back to consciousness by the first Bernie Sanders campaign, but now, following a brief and jubilant period of populist revival, it has been chastened into disheartening sobriety. In the words of Matt Karp, “the Left, after Bernie, has finally grown just strong enough to know how weak it really is.”²