“For the oppressed to think they need to reach a winning state after which they can relax is a myth. Think Egyptian Revolution – overthrowing Mubarak then Morsi were not winning end-states (though they ended state heads) they were beginning points for further praxis and hard work – little of which happened.”

Such an excellent point. The context is very different, of course, but your example here reminded me of the election of Pres. Obama in 2008. Certainly, the Obama Administration has had many problematic & outright harmful policies, from a corporate approach to education policy to the drone strikes that have killed civilians in Pakistan & Yemen (and possibly elsewhere in the Middle East; those are the countries I know about). However, the Obama campaign in 2008 was an exceptional example of grass-roots mobilization, especially of young people & people of color; people were excited about voting for Obama and they showed up at the polls. One might argue that failing to turn this enthusiasm into a movement that would pressure Obama into governing in line with his campaign rhetoric was a tremendous missed opportunity for the U.S. left.

Certainly, the situation is more complicated than this. There are certainly people out there at the grass-roots level doing hard work in organizing, while in Washington, some of the President’s more progressive proposals have been blocked by an idiotic Congress – but perhaps if we’d capitalized on Obama’s momentum in 2008-09, we’d have a Democratic majority in Congress. That, of course, wouldn’t automatically result in social justice; the Democrats can be just as horrible, in practice if not in rhetoric, as the Republicans, and we would still need to put pressure on Democratic lawmakers to enact equitable policies – but then this only illustrates your point, that there is no permanent state of winning, only a continuing struggle to make our world move closer to justice.