I seriously think a lot of lefty activism doesn’t get the traction it deserves because so many folks keep using jargon people find obtuse or inaccessible.

For example, the phrase ‘material conditions’. Leftists use the term to refer to real-world concerns like food, housing, healthcare and jobs, as opposed to abstractions like liberty or democracy, but they don’t come out and SAY that.

And when people use ‘materialist analyses’, they mean how people’s life circumstances affect their political behaviour, both individually and in groups, but again, they don’t just say that.

(I also have problems with how materialist analysis turns into class reductionism, even though you can clearly link other forms of marginalisation to economic issues.)

Why can’t you just say ‘people want things to change because they don’t have jobs’?

The right has learned how to express their abhorrent views in language anyone can understand. Everybody knows what ‘they’re taking our jobs’ means. Why not the left?

Leftists, progressives and left-liberals value egalitarianism. Shutting people out with jargon isn’t particularly egalitarian.

But Trump’s soundbites are easy to digest: ‘Make America Great Again!’ ‘China is beating us in trade.’ ‘You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. What do you have to lose?’