Why is the Left No Fun? - by Eric Blanc - Labor Politics

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Why is the Left No Fun?<br>Bouncy Castle Communism is the Solution

Eric Blanc<br>May 26, 2026

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Why has the US right since the 1970s been more effective than the left at grassroots community organizing? Part of the answer is that our side has no events with bouncy castles.<br>We have a lot to learn from the Waldoboro Republicans’ recent “Great American Picnic” in Maine:<br>For children, there will be a “Bouncy House” as well as assorted games to play. For those who want to “take a whack” at something, there will be a “High Striker” available for those looking to try and ring the bell. There will also be some young rabbits available to purchase, as well as a chance to win door prizes.

The scarcity of similar social events on the left is a big political mistake, reflecting and worsening our weak roots among working people. It’s also a relatively new problem.

Put the Social Back in Socialism

When activists today look back at the mass working-class parties of the early 20th century, it’s often assumed they grew because the political-economic context was more favorable, because these parties centered workers’ material needs, or because they did the ABCs of organizing we’re trained in today, like one-on-one conversations and escalating campaigns.<br>Those theories capture parts of the picture, but they all overlook one thing: social events were key to recruiting and retaining working-class people. Fun, community-building social activities weren’t an afterthought to “real politics,” but a central mechanism for organizational growth.<br>Working people joined and stayed in the old US Socialist Party via picnics, choirs, volunteer orchestras, Sunday schools, weekend campouts, and baseball leagues. One hundred years before megachurches and Turning Point USA insisted on the same point, American Socialists in a typical 1913 article stressed that you can’t recruit most people to a boring movement:<br>Few young people will come to a dry business meeting; it is difficult to get older people out. Very few more will attend a lecture or similar affair. Other methods must first be used to interest them in the work of the movement. They must be reached by interesting them in something in which they naturally delight. Every young heart wants the joy that comes from an evening of merriment—a dance, a party, an entertainment. Young folks like to gather at places where they can meet their associates. Churches have long served this purpose, many of them depending upon this desire for association for their very existence.

These organizers understood that the feeling and culture of a movement mattered just as much as its program. Here’s how another 1913 piece, “Sociability and Socialism,” described the importance of reaching out warmly to any newcomer who found their way to a social:<br>It is the little things which people notice most in life. Grasping a person by the hand and speaking a friendly word may seem a small thing, but it may be the means of bringing a person into the Socialist movement, who may prove an exceedingly valuable worker. As the Young People’s Socialist League of Rochester says, “Let us put ‘social’ in Socialism.”

Sports and physical fitness activities were another pivotal way to make socialism more social. When asked what work young socialists should initially do locally, organizers replied—in addition to obvious things like educational classes—with the following activities: “form baseball and other athletic teams; run excursions; […] take cross-country walks, distributing literature on the way.”<br>Crucially, these events were open to anybody, not just socialists (or the feuding factions thereof). An advertising poster for the week-long “MAMMOTH TENTH ANNUAL SOCIALIST ENCAMPMENT” in rural Grand Saline, Texas during the summer of 1913 thus concluded: “Grand Saline is the place. August 18 to 23 the dates. Everybody Invited. Tell Everybody. Come Join the Mammoth Merry Throng and Have Your Part of the Fun.”

These events had plenty of political speakers, but what attracted people was community and fun for the whole family. One Socialist instruction manual from that year stressed the importance of preparing “lemonade stands, hamburger stands, doll racks, pounding machines, merry-go-rounds, shows.” Socialist agitator Oscar Ameringer recalls that the whole morning of the first day of camp in Oklahoma was dedicated to a “singing school” where “a mixed chorus was organized and rehearsed in Socialist songs, usually of Populist origin, sung to familiar melodies.” And after a full day of camaraderie, music, and politics, “discussions around the glowing campfire continued on into the small hours.”

“The shortest road to the [socialist] understanding of the majority is via brass band and vaudeville,” concluded one report on a 1910 Socialist camp in Klamath Falls:<br>What impressed even the most casual observer at the Encampment was the Spirit...