Cornel West recently revealed his appointment of Jill Stein as campaign manager for his third-party presidential bid, sparking discussions amongst the socialist left of the United States about the way forward for their political movement. Eric Blanc, assistant professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave (Verso, 2019), Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) (Historical Materialism) (Haymarket Books, 2022), and the newsletter laborpolitics.substack.com, and a member of NYC Democratic Socialists of America, discusses the state of the American left pre-2016, how its evolved over the last 7 years, and his theory for how the left should build power moving forward.