chapotraphouse

You need both. Federal and State government can undermine municipal governments, while some things like labor laws are only defined in the state and federal level.

There's also a capillarity issue, socialist parties are usually small, so they can't organize effectively in every municipality, so they need to focus on a few key regions where their bases are strong.

For now. When you first build your local bastions, you can later start playing a national role. All large, national movements which we know from history are build on the local organising of unknown and unsung comrades.

There's a definitely a lesson here to run more socialists locally.