S4A rejects China as being AES, which is why I call him an ultra-leftist. For him, China allowing some limited capitalism in the short term for the purposes of rapidly building the productive forces means that China is capitalist, end of story. He fears the scroll.
Edit to add: I’m generally put off by S4A’s vibe of the unearned confidence that comes with chauvinism. He sounds like your standard imperial core white cishet male labor aristocrat who always thinks he knows best, despite having no experience with real-world socialism.
Why is trotsky on the scroll… why did you make me look at pictures of TROTSKY
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very much agree. He was my first intro to reading Marxist texts so I appreciate his work, but when I heard him being a white Amerikkkan that rejects the Black Panthers as a “true communist project” in a livestream really pushed his settler communist tendencies to the forefront and I haven’t listened to his livestreams since.
Only slightly related, but Palestine really shows how much of a fool so many of these settler communists are. Even MAGA communists and trotskyists have changed opinions on the resistance to be respected in left leaning spheres at all because of how well documented this genocide is but only third/fourth world nationalists and decolonial Marxists have beliefs where this kind of support was always there. Sure as hell don’t see him talking about Burkina Faso and I’m sure if he did he’d call them non-Marxist because they’d rather look to Sankara than Lenin and they’re supported by “Imperialist Russia”
Lol really nice scroll of marxism knowledge. Saving!
Isn’t the Green party a big tent party, and isn’t their vice presidential candidate transphobic?
The one thing that gets me is, is PSL trying to be a vanguard party? I’ve had conversations with recruiters before and been told they aren’t looking to be the vanguard party. They could be better and more direct advertising for socialism if they get enough votes to be a known name but from what I’ve been told they lack ambition and preparedness for anything past electoralism.
PSL’s pro china stance is probably the big stinker for him which is lol, thinking Greens is going to be a mass worker’s party is lol (especially since they 100% would be co opted and deradicalized if they had a chance to win), but that first point is where I’m at with, what I see, as different social democrat parties that need rn to disrupt votes to stop people from only considering red and blue as the extent of politics and clearly showing that this is because of their vocal opposition to genocide.
That said, it’s American bourgeoise electoralism so it’s hard to care any which way, imo just matters we don’t sell our souls to don or harris and do politics outside of these structures, best organizers I know just aren’t voting this year
I think they are, there was a lot of rhetoric a few years back about how they’re a “vanguard cadre”.
The way I see it is that they use correct revolutionary rhetoric but funnel it into ineffective American protest culture, and while the national org may call themselves the vanguard or even Marxist-Leninist from time to time they don’t do these things in action (I personally don’t understand why a group would call themselves ML but not conform to a Leninist party structure) to that point where I’ve heard cadres say they aren’t either of these things
Regardless of what they’ll say as well, the real vanguard for the true American revolution will be the native and hyper exploited black/“illegal” populations, and in the era of imperialism the proletarian nations subjected to US rule and their movements. Something that Claudia and the Beckers are verifiably not a part of despite having oversized control over the party (thus not conforming to democratic centralism), and neither is their largely settler base.
IMO their worth is in the support they throw towards these vanguards which is legitimate and good but things like their plan for socialist reconstruction as detailed in their book are far too eurocommunist/“imperial marxist” to consider them a vanguard, even if they’re trying to place themselves in that place. A lot of this is informed by when the Red Nation split ties with them and the accusations of “adventurism” members have thrown around towards ppl that try and escalate the more toothless actions they have a large presence in as well
In your view, how does the PSL’s structure differ from what you would consider to be a Leninist party structure?
Leaders, sometimes democratically elected committee members and sometimes established cadre with connections to the party’s founder and source of funds the Becker family, often make decisions without informing cadres publicly or privately and they are expected to follow without discussion.
This has been very evident and unfortunate in times when people are accused of abuse within the organization (https://commiewife.medium.com/a-brief-criticism-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation-95923b8cae6)
Or when they take unpopular stances like the Covid ad for the campaign they had to take down that heavily downplayed masking (with Claudia still not wearing masks at events) unfortunately I cannot find a re-upload of this.
The prohibiting of communications between branches except through leadership, the fed/badjacketing of people who don’t accept decisions made by leadership, the history of shutting ppl down when questioning national leadership in general, leading to more of a just centralism rather than any kind of democratic centralism
Contrast this with the PSL’s own publications, for example, this one regarding “Social media and democratic centralism” from an internal document circulated first in 2015, which has since been substantially rewritten and appears on the Liberation School website: “Communication between members in different branches that does not first go through the leadership bodies of the respective branches — which can be called ‘horizontal communications’ — is generally prohibited.”
Sources and more in-depth explanations:
Idk if I said it right, but I meant to communicate that they seem to consider themselves a vanguard party, not that I necessarily do.
I think this is a pretty good take, I’ve got a lot of reservations with PSL that I usually hold back on because they’re kind of the best of a bad lot here in the U$.
Makes sense. Seems to depend on who you talk to it seems. Also tons of people attack them for being ML at all or blame their problems on the inherent issues of Stalinism or some bullshit like that so I get you
I mean PSL are explicitly socialist whereas the Greens are not, but i’m not gonna get upset at someone for voting Greens (unless it’s the German Greens; they’re total lunatics). Neither is perfect, and I think voting either is fine if you live in the US, depending on which you think makes more sense for your district/state. What matters is that you vote against the duopoly and their genocidal warmongering.
Also, S4A is an ultra, they’re anti-China, they’re not exactly the most credible judge of who is and isn’t revisionist.
I think the logic behind that person’s thinking is that the Greens have the best chance of breaking the 5% (or is it 15%?) national vote barrier, which gets them federal funding for campaigns and they get recognised as a party equal to Dems and Repubs.
I’m not American, but I can see the reasoning, for a real party to challenge Dems and Repubs, they must first destroy the two-party system. No third party is going to break the 5% (or 15%) barrier if you have: Libertarian Party, Greens, PSL, and others. They’re “diluting” the 3rd party vote, regardless of what their policies are.
What do the Greens even do? Who is that familiar with them?
Greens are a big tent party. Literally best way you could describe it. They shelter libertarians with left-leaning values when I used to door-knock and organize with them, from my experience they tend to attract disgraced liberals with another part of it having left-leaning nationalists. You’d think there’d be more “green environmentalist” but that entire movement on a grassroots level was destroyed nationally during the early 2000s.
That was my experience in my area. They’re literally the “third party” in the sense that many left-leaning ideologues would generally align with them that feel disenfranchised by the American electoral system. Are they for any good? No. They are essentially a Euro-liberal party in America which is a fresh breath of air for some and a threat to others in the status quo.
