Recommend them The Red Pen or Dessalines instead. Western Marxism is better not receiving any traction at all. Fucking dogmatist Piece of shit!
Recommend them The Red Pen or Dessalines instead. Western Marxism is better not receiving any traction at all. Fucking dogmatist Piece of shit!
I think we should end this here. This is the problem with vibes based marxism. There’s no substantive critique, just feel-good sports-based groupism.
The rest of the post is not a reply to you because you give the impression of being completely fucking disingenious - you’re accusing me of not reading a book which you posted as proof as a retort against my critcisms against PSL, which you now say you haven’t read youself and then have the gall to call my comment as cheap for - get this - not reading the book
For anyone else lurking: the book is an excellent insight into the problems of the PSL. I thoroughly recommend everyone who is interested in understanding why US domestic politics is so lacking is to read how a self purported ML party considers itself. You can easily search it on annas-archive if the pdf copy difficult to download elsewhere.
Broadly speaking the book describes some of the ills of capitalism, mainly illusions to corporatism, and then says socialism will help provide a better welfare state. It prefaces it by attempting to establish its Marxist credentials for example by naming some of Marx and Engels works. This is not an ML book: it offers nothing that a social democrat who has read marx could not offer. Kautsky was better than this a century ago. This is at best a Kautskian party. Even its advertisment quotes Cornel West’s praise of it as some sort of badge of honour.
An ML analysis would at least consider, actual class analysis (afterall the book is called socialist reconstruction):
Actual ML analysis will tackle difficult questions, not just say there are difficulties and hope for the best by reaching popularity first somehow. And you know have at least give an impression of a political campaign of an actual understanding of capital beyond corporatism
So have you read the book or just skimmed it? You haven’t exactly said one way or the other. It’s interesting that saying you haven’t read it would get this kind of response. I said I didn’t read it, twice. I said it when I linked it. I inked it because you said they did no analysis. I provided you a list of analysis. The book is easy to get, I’ve had it on my digital book shelf for a while now. I think we are done here since it seems like you’re not interested in having a conversation, just a platform for you brand of pessimism. That’s fine, you should start a blog if that’s what you’re looking to do.
So now the accusation is skimming rather than not reading to the standard you have not set from someone who has not even read it. And you still have not read it but feel confident that what they did counts as ML analysis. If there’s any consolation is that your brand, as you put it, of Western hubris is really common.
Did you read the book?
Yes. It’s a few years old, to the point when you first said it I thought it may have been a different book ie did they have more to say since that book was written, I looked it up realised it was same book and edited my comment to reflect what I felt about it in brackets. When looking up what a party is about I try to look up what’s closest to their equivalent of a manifesto and this came up as reading material. From what I gather whatthey have been doing since really has not really been promising but if this project is the best US has to offer then for the sake of the rest of the world I hope I am really really wrong.
Thank you for a direct answer. See its good to know this type of information before engaging. I always try to be up front with what I have read and what I haven’t. You presented your position without even mentioning what you’ve read. That would have saved both of us a lot of time, don’t you think?
Yeah, fair enough. Thank you
This is something others in this thread are accusing you of too by the way. Posting vaguely. Don’t be vague here. This isn’t twitter. Were all capable of reading and understanding your POV if you lay it out directly. We can’t do that if you’re just gesturing and making vague claims. This also goes with linking other peoples analysis. Linking to redsails is fine if your going to then explain how that link supports your position. Otherwise people have no idea what your take is from that piece.
Your communication style feels hostile and defensive and vague from my perspective. I felt like I was engaging with the shadow of your perspective, and not your actual perspective and where it comes from.
I don’t know what your critique is if you’re just going to make rhetorical statements. Those only work if the other person understands your perspective already. “What is the PSL doing … ?” Only reads as a question you don’t have the answer to. It’s not a critique. But it also implies you know what they should be doing. Those ideas would have been something someone could engage with. And if you don’t have those ideas, that’s OK too, but you have to say so.
You can be critical of the PSL, like anything else, but you have to state your critiques directly or no one will be able to engage with them. Instead they’ll try to figure out your position through inquiry and assumption, which is also what was happening here.
The accusations of vague posting are effectively deflection - the PSL does not have a meaty position on anything I have said in their literature or videos though I am happy for them to be answered
They are vague about this hence my questions. I am saying they have a lack of stances and that is worrying for a party that claims to be ML. Not once does anyone actually says: well the PSL says this about XYZ, it is all variations of “well it is challenging, what more can you expect” without ever addressing anything and then have the gall of blaming me for being vague.
The longer this thread is going on the more obvious the PSL has nothing to offer and the reasons for the empty defences is because it fits into westerners petite-bourgoisie sensibilities of empty protesting and trade unionism as a subsitute of doing the hard work of actually figuring what went before and what should be done instead going forward. It requires susbtantive investigations and class analyses.
You cannot answer these questions simply because the PSL has no answer for them otherwise you would have pointed them out. Instead you linked to things you have not read and called it a day, and then double down when called out on it.
You seem to misunderstand the point of the book. PSL’s analysis is that people in the US are so thoroughly propagandized against socialism that they have no idea that the mounting crises facing our class do have solutions, but that those solutions only exist outside of the neoliberal framework that totally dominated all political discourse. It never purports to be a theoretical work on how to achieve revolutionary change, because that is not its goal. Rather, its goal is to convince people that socialism is worth fighting for because it is actually equipped to address their needs. But the PSL’s position is that a revolutionary reorganization of society is a necessary precondition to achieve this, and agrees that ML organizing principles are the means to achieve that.
The problem with social democrats is not that they, too, advocate for a society that offers more favorable conditions to the workers. The problem is that they reject the necessity of a worker’s state and are content to build welfare off the ill-gotten gains of imperialist extraction. The PSL absolutely rejects this.
No work can address every aspect of every debate. That’s a ridiculous standard, and if you attempt to meet it you will fall short every time. It’s entirely disingenuous to dismiss PSL as revisionist or socdem based on one piece of literature just because it is not attempting to present a framework for achieving revolution.
Right, so what does the PSL propose to do where revolutionary parties before them have failed to do? They purport they are an ML party, not another socdem, so is there an actual answer to this, ie what’s the susbtantive scientific approach on offer? And if that’s too hard to answer (it shouldn’t be, it’s the lowest bar for every ML party but let’s make it even easier), have they at least said was wrong with these previous revolutionary parties ie what was wrong with their political theories given they have failed?
The PSL recognizes that the workers movement was so thoroughly defeated and dismantled in the US that the masses lost any sense of connection to the actual history and lessons of worker struggle. The PSL sees its task as reinjecting revolutionary Marxism into mass struggle, but also that ultimately the masses will need to learn these lessons by experiencing essentially the same failures of previous movements which have been erased from mass consciousness. The PSL cannot directly teach these lessons or directly manufacture the conditions to activate revolutionary potential, but it has an opportunity to reach more and more people as they experience the failure of other methods.
https://liberationschool.org/theory-and-revolution-addressing-the-break-of-ideological-continuity/
Ultra-leftists are quick to complain that PSL’s tactics are clearly not “producing revolution”, as evidenced by the continuation of imperialist rule in the US. But despite all of their supposed superior analysis, they fail to put forward a specific agenda that can accomplish that task, let alone actually carry it out themselves. In other words, why should anybody listen to a bunch of belligerent assholes on Twitter (as you have literally suggested), if they haven’t even done the bare minimum of organizing a more effective alternative? Is the PSL building an organization that is up to the task of carrying out a revolution? Who knows? But at least they are building an organization, and one which is explicitly ML.
No we are not anywhere near about “producing a revolution”. We are at the level where the PSL cannot even offer a substantive analysis of failed revolutionaries before them and the lessons they have learned in an attempt to become successful this time.
I mean why call themselves ML if you can’t even do this.
Which “belligerent asshole” are you even talking about? I pointed to one twitter channel about class analysis and then you have twisted into whatever the fuck you wanted it to be in a non-defense about the PSL.
“At least they’re trying” is the most pathetic call of the privileged westerner. Where’s the science in that.