I have met people who say that they do not, but I am not sure if they are just misinformed.
CutieBootieTootie [she/her] - 1.0yr
There is no vanguard party in the United States, and it's not the party's position that it is the vanguard at this moment. It and it's membership is building to either create a working class party that the working class can join and utilize to push forward a revolutionary situation in whatever crises unfold in the imperial core, or be that party that the working class can join, direct, and utilize to push forward a revolutionary situation into a legitimate revolution.
A socialist party won't be a vanguard until it meaningfully represents and is connected to a large section of the revolutionary working class, and with all due respect absolutely no organization or party is at that point or anywhere near it yet, it will require an absurd amount of work, and we in the membership are trying to get that ball rolling but it's clearly not a finished task
25
StalinistSteve - 1.0yr
When I did my recruitment phone call, I was told they were not looking to be the vanguard party but rather agitating/educating. I've also been told this but also the opposite from cadre I've met, because it was a point of confusion for me as well. I took the recruitment call as the more authoritative answer, however the ambiguity and the disorganization that caused it was one of the red flags (not the good kind) that had me leave.
The heavy focus on their electoral campaigns paired with their "working class needs to stop Trump" rhetoric they've been pulling lately puts them functionally as a social democrats in my head. Would love to hear about them building dual power or something though! Also would love for them to distance themselves from their settler communist tendencies... I want them to be good, I do. I just don't think the structure is there, and as it is it's another org that needs people to "agitate to radicalize" within like CPUSA or DSA
16
The Free Penguin - 1.0yr
The truth is that, at least currently, the socialist movement in the USA is at the "agitate to radicalize" step, and if you try to go further without having a large number of leftists who support you, that's called adventurism
35
☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺 - 1.0yr
I think the frustration is that there are lots of orgs here who seem to have no idea what to do or when the crtitical mass. It feels as if all they intend to do forever and ever is agitation, and the education is not quite a priority.
we also have a large amount of the parties throwing mud at each other. We simply have too many in the US that are all reduplicating effort
21
StalinistSteve - 1.0yr
But there's a huge difference from not getting the support of the masses (who's interest is in socialism) and the masses (who's interest is in the continuation of settler colonialism/imperialism). Communism will not be popular in America. The majority of people in PSL are settlers/labor aristocracy and have a qualitatively different class conciousness from the world proletariat, and this point isn't made by the org at all.
Thing is, tons of people in America are dying everyday due to the horrors. Many homeless, indiginous, and black people do not need "agitation" but food and means to defend themselves. In addition, many more dying because of US imperialism need someone to smash the war machine by any means necessary, something that will be inevitably be unpopular within America as the majority of American jobs are the managerial work of imperialism. As George Jackson said in "Blood in my Eye"; "If revolution is tied to dependence on the inscrutabilities of long-range politics, it cannot be made relevant to the person who expects to die tomorrow."
I've seen PSL cadre call those who think self defence needs to be involved or toothless protests escalated, "adventurists". And yet they never move beyond electoral campaigns and educational events. This is why I think PSL is a danger, they effectively deradicalize their cadre and call people who don't stand for it adventurists or wreckers.
Edit: I also want to make a point here about "leftists". I hold no weight to the opinion of Americans who self identify as leftists and they are not the material basis for revolution. As communists we are to express the material necessity of the aformentioned hyper exploited populations, organizing them and tying their struggles together while building alternative structures to the ones America has as to materially improve the lives of the enslaved and cast aside. These are people that are willing to throw their lives down for revolution, because they're doomed to die as it is. Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose, and if we're doing our organizing based on an idealist self identifier we're confusing praxis by throwing dialectical materialism out the window in favor of an ambiguous "people of good conciousness" that just needs education to grow and not the blood soaked pacifier ripped away from the nation's so called proletariat.
15
Pathfinder - 1.0yr
I actually agree with your broader point in your edit, but I just happen to think the PSL is not as bad in that area as you perceive it. Or maybe I’m sympathetic to the notion that we are trying to build communism from zero roughly 15 years ago in this country, when the conditions are currently stacked against us as they are. We just don’t have the vision and leadership right now because of this so I can’t blame PSL for that. I appreciate that PSL is at least trying. And maybe they are fumbling around a bit but I think they are moving in the right direction, and are nothing like say DSA.
Also
toothless protests escalated
I don’t know specifically what you mean but tbf if I’m at a protest and someone wants us to escalate beyond what is useful I’m gonna be suspicious that person is a fed (of course not implying you are one, just that I get the impression PSL takes opsec seriously since they definitely are a fed target).
14
StalinistSteve - 1.0yr
I understand, and I've met quite a many cadre that are really trying to do good work. My main problem is with leadership, the lack of democracy in appointing said leadership, tactics, and their analysis of America's specific conditions. This is why I mentioned DSA and CPUSA, because while
we are trying to build communism from zero roughly 15 years ago in this country
the CPUSA has been trying for 205 years with the same problems leading to the modern day consenus that they aren't worth being a part of and communism has yet to be built.
I really think PSL could have a place, but cadre need to see themselves as the labor aristocracy many of them are and recognize an absolute need for more radical black panther esk action. They shouldn't be trying to be the vanguard and cadre should know that. That and founder/millionaire Brian Becker can't be appointing him and his family members as leaders without DemCent, it's just nonsense for a so called ML org and prevents any of this needed change from being possible.
Also my main point with the toothless protest comment is that protests should not continue in the American protest tradition. There is no point to coordinating with police to walk in a circle for a few hours other than for us to feel like we did something and say we took part when related change occurs, but when South African apartheid ended or the Vietnam war or whenever Israel falls it was/will be because of military action on the ground and at home and not at all due to these protests. I think it's very frustrating PSL will attend a protest and say they "own" it due to some amount of organizing surrounding it and thus have the right to police what actions people are willing to take, especially when these actions need to be done or else the protest was functionally useless.
8
Pathfinder - 1.0yr
Yeah I’m down with everything you said.
8
amemorablename - 1.0yr
Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose
Nah, part of educating is getting through to people on the fact that this can't last as it is and it's never going to fundamentally improve unless the colonial, imperial, and capitalist structure of power is dismantled. According to the most recent information I can find, something like 78% of USians are living paycheck to paycheck
describes a financial scenario in which an individual or family’s income barely covers essential living expenses like housing, utilities, groceries and transportation. One missed paycheck would put someone living paycheck to paycheck in a difficult spot.
And that's not going to get better with the way things are being run. I don't know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they're settlers. They can live a more comfortable life relative to other, more exploited groups, generally speaking, sure. The system does not guarantee them comfort, nor want to. Very few are guaranteed any kind of comfort in a system such as this.
8
StalinistSteve - 1.0yr
I don’t know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they’re settlers.
The oppurtunities settlers have do amount to a sizable level of comfort even for people living paycheck to paycheck. Packed grocery stores, tech products, every expanding media sphere, often a family member to fall back on, legal and plentiful drugs, favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality, the relative attainability of the "American dream", and the fact that we've never been subject to America's imperial violence. Hell this phenomena has been observed in much worse conditions by the likes of Fanon, and I doubt you've never been told to read Settlers.
2
amemorablename - 1.0yr
Maybe you and I have different meanings of the word "comfort" in use here.
Packed grocery stores
Which requires money to buy from and the prices keep going up.
tech products
Unless you mean convenience increases like washing machines, I don't know what you have in mind here and again, people have to be able to afford it.
every expanding media sphere
Which oozes dehumanizing imperialist propaganda into them.
often a family member to fall back on
"Often", you have numbers to back that up? And that's not even getting into how this has to do with comfort, we are just talking about not being completely destitute at this point.
legal and plentiful drugs
* in some states and again, you need to be able to afford them.
favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality
Not being specifically targeted for terror by cops based on the racialized group you belong to isn't a comfort. It's better living conditions than what marginalized groups face, for sure. It doesn't mean US cops are a good and healthy institution for everybody else. They're still neglectful, if not abusive, overall.
the relative attainability of the “American dream”
It isn't attainable. It is, at its best, akin to a lotto draw.
and the fact that we’ve never been subject to America’s imperial violence
Directly as a targeted group, correct. Indirectly, absolutely. That stuff is not contained into a bubble. And those who challenge it do face violence for sure.
Ultimately, there is suffering that isn't very visible to the "settler" in the US. That doesn't mean they're comfortable as a whole. It does mean that when considering how to deal with people who fit in that group, it's important to make sure they come to see and understand what has been invisible to them. That's part of what happened in 2020, I think. Some still refused to see it for what it is, but there were those who understood and were radicalized to some degree by it, myself being one of them.
As far as I can tell, insisting that the average USian has a comfortable life is just feeding into imperialist/capitalist propaganda. I understand the importance of analyzing people's conditions and understanding how those conditions will bias their actions, but in this case, it's coming across to me more like "you don't know how good you have it" from a pseudo-socialist lens.
Edit: wording
8
StalinistSteve - 1.0yr
American settlers are simply a seperate class, a way of life entirely predicated on their parasitical relationship with the rest of the world on the stolen land and labor in which they rest. Yes we are all oppressed by capitalism even the burgeoise, that doesn't mean the ways in which they are oppressed are equal to that of the child that knows nothing but hunger and war, and the key here is understanding that that kid goes hungry so Americans can have a constant feed of new phones and cheap bananas, and in America the black man is overpoliced so they can be paid dirt and taken out when they become a problem and the natives are on reserves so they can be forgot about.
I would really suggest reading Settlers, Gerald Horne, and everything by Fanon, this has always been the way the US has been. The entire project was built on creating an in group (white ppl) to help manage the hyper exploitation of the out group (black slaves/indigenous, and in the age of imperialism the global south). It's why people are afraid of immigrants, it's why we have "leftists" that care more about losing out on treats like starbucks rather than stopping global imperialism, it's why attempts to head communist movements by white people always fail. Our "left" wants different things, our class conciousness is different. If we want groceries to go back to a more reasonable price, we are asking for greater exploitation of those we exploit to get them.
3
amemorablename - 1.0yr
I'm well aware the exploitation is not equal and that the plunder of imperialism is tied, in some part, to what people have in the US. I feel like I need to circle back here. My disagreement with you was originally based on you saying the following:
Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose
Which is, at best, stretching the meaning of comfort a hell of a lot and ends up sounding like any issues people have who don't belong to the most exploited groups are just "first world problem" inconveniences, rather than "real suffering."
I had a recollection that we've talked about something similar in the past. This is what I could find on it:
I don’t believe the settler population ought to be twiddling their thumbs, but they need to be led by the proletarian vanguard
This seems to be the crux of your problems with PSL (correct me if I'm misrepresenting you). That you believe it's not doing that and therefore is a failure, fait accompli. It's all a little too oversimplified for me, like we can summarize it all into neat little boxes and say what will come of it as a result. Certainly, don't put your time into a party like that if you don't think it's going to advance the goals of the most exploited. But this phenomenon of online US "leftists" summing an entire party effort with a few vague posts and then saying it's a dud, end of story, drives me up the wall. It feels like a bad game of telephone and is embarrassing for proper dissection of what is actually going on, on a granular level. Some of which I would expect will not be granular public knowledge for opsec reasons, but the least people can do is say less about things they don't have detailed backing for and get used to the idea of not having all the answers. And that's a criticism I take on myself as well.
8
senseamidmadness - 1.0yr
I'm worried about the PSL. I don't hear a lot of good things about it relative to the bad, even from other leftists.
SovietReporter in psl
Is the PSL trying to become a vanguard party?
I have met people who say that they do not, but I am not sure if they are just misinformed.
There is no vanguard party in the United States, and it's not the party's position that it is the vanguard at this moment. It and it's membership is building to either create a working class party that the working class can join and utilize to push forward a revolutionary situation in whatever crises unfold in the imperial core, or be that party that the working class can join, direct, and utilize to push forward a revolutionary situation into a legitimate revolution.
A socialist party won't be a vanguard until it meaningfully represents and is connected to a large section of the revolutionary working class, and with all due respect absolutely no organization or party is at that point or anywhere near it yet, it will require an absurd amount of work, and we in the membership are trying to get that ball rolling but it's clearly not a finished task
When I did my recruitment phone call, I was told they were not looking to be the vanguard party but rather agitating/educating. I've also been told this but also the opposite from cadre I've met, because it was a point of confusion for me as well. I took the recruitment call as the more authoritative answer, however the ambiguity and the disorganization that caused it was one of the red flags (not the good kind) that had me leave.
The heavy focus on their electoral campaigns paired with their "working class needs to stop Trump" rhetoric they've been pulling lately puts them functionally as a social democrats in my head. Would love to hear about them building dual power or something though! Also would love for them to distance themselves from their settler communist tendencies... I want them to be good, I do. I just don't think the structure is there, and as it is it's another org that needs people to "agitate to radicalize" within like CPUSA or DSA
The truth is that, at least currently, the socialist movement in the USA is at the "agitate to radicalize" step, and if you try to go further without having a large number of leftists who support you, that's called adventurism
I think the frustration is that there are lots of orgs here who seem to have no idea what to do or when the crtitical mass. It feels as if all they intend to do forever and ever is agitation, and the education is not quite a priority.
we also have a large amount of the parties throwing mud at each other. We simply have too many in the US that are all reduplicating effort
But there's a huge difference from not getting the support of the masses (who's interest is in socialism) and the masses (who's interest is in the continuation of settler colonialism/imperialism). Communism will not be popular in America. The majority of people in PSL are settlers/labor aristocracy and have a qualitatively different class conciousness from the world proletariat, and this point isn't made by the org at all.
Thing is, tons of people in America are dying everyday due to the horrors. Many homeless, indiginous, and black people do not need "agitation" but food and means to defend themselves. In addition, many more dying because of US imperialism need someone to smash the war machine by any means necessary, something that will be inevitably be unpopular within America as the majority of American jobs are the managerial work of imperialism. As George Jackson said in "Blood in my Eye"; "If revolution is tied to dependence on the inscrutabilities of long-range politics, it cannot be made relevant to the person who expects to die tomorrow."
I've seen PSL cadre call those who think self defence needs to be involved or toothless protests escalated, "adventurists". And yet they never move beyond electoral campaigns and educational events. This is why I think PSL is a danger, they effectively deradicalize their cadre and call people who don't stand for it adventurists or wreckers.
Edit: I also want to make a point here about "leftists". I hold no weight to the opinion of Americans who self identify as leftists and they are not the material basis for revolution. As communists we are to express the material necessity of the aformentioned hyper exploited populations, organizing them and tying their struggles together while building alternative structures to the ones America has as to materially improve the lives of the enslaved and cast aside. These are people that are willing to throw their lives down for revolution, because they're doomed to die as it is. Many self described leftists especially settlers will never be comfortable putting their lives on the line because they could always live a comfortable life if they so choose, and if we're doing our organizing based on an idealist self identifier we're confusing praxis by throwing dialectical materialism out the window in favor of an ambiguous "people of good conciousness" that just needs education to grow and not the blood soaked pacifier ripped away from the nation's so called proletariat.
I actually agree with your broader point in your edit, but I just happen to think the PSL is not as bad in that area as you perceive it. Or maybe I’m sympathetic to the notion that we are trying to build communism from zero roughly 15 years ago in this country, when the conditions are currently stacked against us as they are. We just don’t have the vision and leadership right now because of this so I can’t blame PSL for that. I appreciate that PSL is at least trying. And maybe they are fumbling around a bit but I think they are moving in the right direction, and are nothing like say DSA.
Also
I don’t know specifically what you mean but tbf if I’m at a protest and someone wants us to escalate beyond what is useful I’m gonna be suspicious that person is a fed (of course not implying you are one, just that I get the impression PSL takes opsec seriously since they definitely are a fed target).
I understand, and I've met quite a many cadre that are really trying to do good work. My main problem is with leadership, the lack of democracy in appointing said leadership, tactics, and their analysis of America's specific conditions. This is why I mentioned DSA and CPUSA, because while
the CPUSA has been trying for 205 years with the same problems leading to the modern day consenus that they aren't worth being a part of and communism has yet to be built.
I really think PSL could have a place, but cadre need to see themselves as the labor aristocracy many of them are and recognize an absolute need for more radical black panther esk action. They shouldn't be trying to be the vanguard and cadre should know that. That and founder/millionaire Brian Becker can't be appointing him and his family members as leaders without DemCent, it's just nonsense for a so called ML org and prevents any of this needed change from being possible.
Also my main point with the toothless protest comment is that protests should not continue in the American protest tradition. There is no point to coordinating with police to walk in a circle for a few hours other than for us to feel like we did something and say we took part when related change occurs, but when South African apartheid ended or the Vietnam war or whenever Israel falls it was/will be because of military action on the ground and at home and not at all due to these protests. I think it's very frustrating PSL will attend a protest and say they "own" it due to some amount of organizing surrounding it and thus have the right to police what actions people are willing to take, especially when these actions need to be done or else the protest was functionally useless.
Yeah I’m down with everything you said.
Nah, part of educating is getting through to people on the fact that this can't last as it is and it's never going to fundamentally improve unless the colonial, imperial, and capitalist structure of power is dismantled. According to the most recent information I can find, something like 78% of USians are living paycheck to paycheck
And that's not going to get better with the way things are being run. I don't know where in the capitalist fantasy you get the idea US people can live a comfortable life if they choose just because they're settlers. They can live a more comfortable life relative to other, more exploited groups, generally speaking, sure. The system does not guarantee them comfort, nor want to. Very few are guaranteed any kind of comfort in a system such as this.
The oppurtunities settlers have do amount to a sizable level of comfort even for people living paycheck to paycheck. Packed grocery stores, tech products, every expanding media sphere, often a family member to fall back on, legal and plentiful drugs, favor from legal systems including exemption from the commonality of police brutality, the relative attainability of the "American dream", and the fact that we've never been subject to America's imperial violence. Hell this phenomena has been observed in much worse conditions by the likes of Fanon, and I doubt you've never been told to read Settlers.
Maybe you and I have different meanings of the word "comfort" in use here.
Which requires money to buy from and the prices keep going up.
Unless you mean convenience increases like washing machines, I don't know what you have in mind here and again, people have to be able to afford it.
Which oozes dehumanizing imperialist propaganda into them.
"Often", you have numbers to back that up? And that's not even getting into how this has to do with comfort, we are just talking about not being completely destitute at this point.
* in some states and again, you need to be able to afford them.
Not being specifically targeted for terror by cops based on the racialized group you belong to isn't a comfort. It's better living conditions than what marginalized groups face, for sure. It doesn't mean US cops are a good and healthy institution for everybody else. They're still neglectful, if not abusive, overall.
It isn't attainable. It is, at its best, akin to a lotto draw.
Directly as a targeted group, correct. Indirectly, absolutely. That stuff is not contained into a bubble. And those who challenge it do face violence for sure.
Ultimately, there is suffering that isn't very visible to the "settler" in the US. That doesn't mean they're comfortable as a whole. It does mean that when considering how to deal with people who fit in that group, it's important to make sure they come to see and understand what has been invisible to them. That's part of what happened in 2020, I think. Some still refused to see it for what it is, but there were those who understood and were radicalized to some degree by it, myself being one of them.
As far as I can tell, insisting that the average USian has a comfortable life is just feeding into imperialist/capitalist propaganda. I understand the importance of analyzing people's conditions and understanding how those conditions will bias their actions, but in this case, it's coming across to me more like "you don't know how good you have it" from a pseudo-socialist lens.
Edit: wording
American settlers are simply a seperate class, a way of life entirely predicated on their parasitical relationship with the rest of the world on the stolen land and labor in which they rest. Yes we are all oppressed by capitalism even the burgeoise, that doesn't mean the ways in which they are oppressed are equal to that of the child that knows nothing but hunger and war, and the key here is understanding that that kid goes hungry so Americans can have a constant feed of new phones and cheap bananas, and in America the black man is overpoliced so they can be paid dirt and taken out when they become a problem and the natives are on reserves so they can be forgot about.
I would really suggest reading Settlers, Gerald Horne, and everything by Fanon, this has always been the way the US has been. The entire project was built on creating an in group (white ppl) to help manage the hyper exploitation of the out group (black slaves/indigenous, and in the age of imperialism the global south). It's why people are afraid of immigrants, it's why we have "leftists" that care more about losing out on treats like starbucks rather than stopping global imperialism, it's why attempts to head communist movements by white people always fail. Our "left" wants different things, our class conciousness is different. If we want groceries to go back to a more reasonable price, we are asking for greater exploitation of those we exploit to get them.
I'm well aware the exploitation is not equal and that the plunder of imperialism is tied, in some part, to what people have in the US. I feel like I need to circle back here. My disagreement with you was originally based on you saying the following:
Which is, at best, stretching the meaning of comfort a hell of a lot and ends up sounding like any issues people have who don't belong to the most exploited groups are just "first world problem" inconveniences, rather than "real suffering."
I had a recollection that we've talked about something similar in the past. This is what I could find on it:
source for context: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6154815/5451636
This seems to be the crux of your problems with PSL (correct me if I'm misrepresenting you). That you believe it's not doing that and therefore is a failure, fait accompli. It's all a little too oversimplified for me, like we can summarize it all into neat little boxes and say what will come of it as a result. Certainly, don't put your time into a party like that if you don't think it's going to advance the goals of the most exploited. But this phenomenon of online US "leftists" summing an entire party effort with a few vague posts and then saying it's a dud, end of story, drives me up the wall. It feels like a bad game of telephone and is embarrassing for proper dissection of what is actually going on, on a granular level. Some of which I would expect will not be granular public knowledge for opsec reasons, but the least people can do is say less about things they don't have detailed backing for and get used to the idea of not having all the answers. And that's a criticism I take on myself as well.
I'm worried about the PSL. I don't hear a lot of good things about it relative to the bad, even from other leftists.