this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
chapotraphouse
13669 readers
923 users here now
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not that I can tell, what did you think of the article?
It's interesting how you only draw comparisons with CPUSA. You claim that it has "the most potential to be the groundwork for a future party." I would contend, however, that the
is a current party that people can organize with today.
You're Marxist Leninists, yet you do not organize under the principles of democratic centralism. Why not? Do you intend to somehow transform the DSA into a democratic centralist organization? Do you really believe that the liberals, social democrats, and democratic socialists that comprise most of the DSA would just go along with that? You can't expect to just take the existing membership of the DSA and magically convert them into a committed Marxist Leninist cadre.
As it stands, the DSA are not principled anti-imperialists, as evidenced by their failure to take a principled stance in support of Palestinian resistance in the wake of Al-Aqsa Flood, or their anti-communist stances on Cuba and AES. This isn't a "past" issue, it's ongoing. How do you address that? Why is it the "correct" strategy to attempt entryism into the DSA instead of joining a real, existing Marxist Leninist party?
I guess I haven't been particularly impressed by PSL from the outside? It seems like they put a lot of effort into presidential runs and that doesn't seem like a very good use of time?
At the local level, DSA folks are active in local Palestinian stuff, we see PSL folks at actions but we don't see them integrating as much into the logistics or trying to elevate the struggle. We see them agitating and mobilizing but not doing a good job organizing, and maybe that is because they keep it entirely internal but I'd expect to see more local PSL folks integrated by now if that was happening.
??? Has red star said they aren't demcent?
I don't think you can magically make them MLs, but over the last few years DSA has moved significantly left, it can absolutely be made into a non-cringe org
I think the natural momentum of DSA is toward it being a more reliably anti-imperialist org, and I think it is worthwhile to add to it.
But on a more practical level, if in my local area there are more DSA folks engaged in pro-Palestinian actions than there even are PSL folks total, why would I join PSL? What practical advantages are gained by moving the pro-Palestine folks out of DSA?
The presidential runs aren't an attempt to gain power by being elected to office. They are a propaganda campaign to spread a socialist platform. The campaign process itself is an opportunity to have tens or hundreds of thousands of conversations about our socialist platform. The amount of votes in the election are an interesting metric, but not a key objective.
This is actually absurd. The PSL has been organizing in the struggle for Palestinian liberation for decades. They were organizing demonstrations on October 8th while almost everyone else was still condemning Hamas. They've organized like 5 mass protests on Washington. I don't know what your local scene looks like, but the PSL is the most important socialist org that is organizing for Palestinian liberation on a national scale.
This still seems like a waste of time? Why not do something that can allow for conversations and also might have utility outside of allowing for conversations?
Is PSL actually demcent though? Is it true that up to 40 percent of the delegates are picked by the central committee? https://archive.org/details/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-psl-constitution-2022/page/6/mode/2up
How can you engage in demcent when the highest body can pick 40 percent of the delegates? That sounds like a recipe for bureaucratic ossification?
All I can speak to is my local conditions, and my local conditions are we have two PSL folks who think passing out PSL stickers at protests is worthwhile but going to planning meetings isn't. We're trying to get folks to think more strategically, about what they're trying to accomplish and how to meet those goals, and it feels like PSL is just interested in shallowly engaging for recruitment.
Genuine question, I spent time with CPUSA and DSA, and still will go to events if they align with my values, but have largely found that the membership are primarily liberals who are very socially progressive, but ultimately only really care about domestic policy. Is the PSL considered more serious? I felt burned by the other two, but want to still be involved in local efforts where I can.
Yeah, in my experience across the board the PSL is a robust and ideologically coherent party with an incredibly engaged membership. Biased though, as this experience is colored by my experiences working as a member of the party. I think that one should join whatever principled and (importantly!) effective ML org in their area, but I'm happy to say that for me and my area it fills this role exactly.
May be a dumb question, but is PSL Trot?
Has Trot roots, but generally works as a regular Marxist-Leninist party now. Same with Workers World Party and a few others. They're cool now.
Cool, was curious because of their roots. Thanks!
They support AES and anti-imperialist movements. Not "trots" in the same way those wreckers are.
Wait, so is PSL somehow Trot then? I'm confused now.
The PSL split from a party that was, many decades ago, a Trot party. But the PSL itself has never been a Trot party (split memes notwithstanding), and that history is pretty irrelevant to what the party is today.
The PSL doesn't really bother to have "a line" on Trotsky or Stalin. Rather, it correctly eschews that "great person" framing of history and instead analyses the historical material conditions of the Soviet Union etc. It's certainly not "anti-Stalinist" like Trots always are; nobody is going to look at you strangely for speaking positively of Stalin.
No no, I'm saying that PSL doesn't do any of the shit we hate trots for. They're cool.