The Republican Party has been vocally anti-system, anti-government, anti-mainstream politics. Yet behind the scenes, they've been very systematically altering - and working within the area of - mainstream politics. The left's mistake is to take the anti-system rhetoric at face value. And they too have turned away from mainstream politics, but the left have not been doing the behind the scenes work of actually gaining influence over that crucial territory.

Writer Eliane Glaser calls for the left to return to politics and reclaim the power of ideology, authority and the state - as a way to unify a working class splintered into identity groups in the absence of mainstream organizing, and a means to combat decades of right-wing control of a system it both rules and claims to resent.

Eliane is author of Anti-Politics: On the Demonization of Ideology, Authority and the State from Repeater Books.