Don’t Confuse the Tactical and the Strategic Outlooks
One basic principle . . . is to not confuse the tactical and the strategic outlooks. The forces of the dying society, because of their control of all the social structures, and because of their patterned habits of command, can almost always bring great pressures to bear in any limited situation and force the outcome their own way. In order to do so, however, they must always weaken themselves drastically somewhere else and create severe problems for themselves in the next stage of the struggle, intensifying the inherent and insoluble contradictions with which they are saddled by the nature of the society itself.
The wide world changer should never be demoralized by apparently “losing” any particular battle. Her or his opponent, the disintegrating society, has lost more in the long run.
From page 158 of The Reclaiming of Power
(Present Time 190, January 2018)