Progressive Labor Party

[The Douche]

Anybody on here a member? Know/work with them? Have comments on them?

[Palingenisis]

In reality they are Council Communists who uphold Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC as noble experiements...They mostly work within the Black/New African nation.

[The Douche]

In reality they are Council Communists who uphold Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC as noble experiements...They mostly work within the Black/New African nation.

Yeah, I mean, I know of them. I am honestly pretty fascinated by them and I'm hoping to find people with first hand experience of their party/members.

Also, I think they tend to be a bit more radical than council communists. (they advocate the abolishment of money on day 1, for instance)

[penguinfoot]

In reality they are Council Communists who uphold Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC as noble experiements...They mostly work within the Black/New African nation.

I doubt that they would refer to their work as taking place amongst a Black or "New African" nation (however you refer to it) because they were one of the first and only groups on the Maoist left to come out against all forms of nationalism in the late 1960s (having previously drawn a distinction between progressive and reactionary nationalisms), citing the willingness of the NLF and DRV to participate in negotiations over Vietnam as evidence of the corrosive impact of nationalism on radical politics. In fact, their rejection of Black nationalism in particular was one of the factors that led to the disintegration of SDS, because they were openly attacked by speakers from the BPP for being chauvinist.

They are not council communists either. They were a left-wing split from the CPUSA and had ties with the CPC during the first few years of their existence, even whilst they later broke with Mao and Maoism as a result of rapprochement between the PRC and the United States, and are generally regarded as the first sign of an emerging anti-revisionist or New Communist trend on the left in the United States during the 1960s. There is some quite good primary material on Marxists.org as well as on their website, but the best statement of their views is a book that they put out in 1970 called Revolution Today: USA, which includes both Road to Revolution I and Road to Revolution II, which are two of their most important documents from a historic perspective, along with quite a few other important essays that reveal the party's ideological evolution, such as Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism. They are most famous for being the first US Communists to send delegates to Cuba during the early 1960s, when they were still called the Progressive Labor Movement, and in contravention of the travel ban, way before the setting-up of the Venceremos Brigades, and it is also alleged that they played a central role in the 1964 Harlem Riots.

[Kassad]

I've only encountered them once and that was at the One Nation Working Together where they alienated everyone by screaming about communist revolution into the speakers at their booth. I don't think their organization is very widespread.

[Devrim]

In reality they are Council Communists who uphold Stalin's USSR and Mao's PRC as noble experiements...They mostly work within the Black/New African nation.

Of course they are not council communists in any way.


Also, I think they tend to be a bit more radical than council communists. (they advocate the abolishment of money on day 1, for instance)

As do council communists as far as I know.

Devrim

[RedTrackWorker]

I've only encountered them once and that was at the One Nation Working Together where they alienated everyone by screaming about communist revolution into the speakers at their booth. I don't think their organization is very widespread.

I noted on another thread about the PLP how they combine sectarianism and opportunism in an extreme way: like Kassad said, at demos they'll call for "communism now" (their "theoretical" contribution to the analysis of Stalinism is that a "transition period" doesn't work, so just skip straight to the good stuff) but in the unions they typically appear as the "best militants" and don't even talk about revolution (at least in NYC, a good number of them have union positions).

[penguinfoot]

I don't think their organization is very widespread.

Maybe not now, but my impression is that they were really a major force on the left in the 1960s, certainly more powerful than the PSL (or any other party) is today. They were fiercely opposed not only to the CPUSA but also to the SWP, alleging that they both had a pacifist and conciliatory orientation towards the Vietnam War. Their faction within SDS, the Worker-Student Alliance, which supported building links between radical students and the working class, managed to get a majority at national conference before the entire organization split, which was largely a result of all the forces that were opposed to the PLP coming together in order to undermine the PLP's position within the organization, not least by making use of the BPP, and then disintegrating once their only basis of unity had ceased to be relevant - as is well-known, the Revolutionary Youth Movement became the WUO, which was arguably a logical consequence of the social base and political outlook of most of the individuals who were part of that faction, and the Revolutionary Youth Movement II fragmented, with many of its activists later going on to play important roles in the New Communist Movement.

[syndicat]

PLP is a strange kind of Stalinist group. They believe it is possible to go straight into communism in a revolution and thus differ from Leninist orthodoxy yet they have this weird defense of Stalin schtick. I once dated a member of that group and she took to me one of their meetings which was just a showing of the Battle of Stalingrad.

A bunch of them colonized in the '70s and '70s in industries such as health care and transit. I'm sort of acquainted with 2 members who are my age who recently retired after 20 eyars driving buses with the local transit system. back in the '70s when i was organizing with a grassroots union at UCLA i found them very irritating and obnoxious, like Sparts.

They are resolutely anti-racist and "from below" in their conception of struggle....their good points. but they combine this with some weird "Communist" tripe.

[28350]

They mostly work within the Black/New African nation.

They're pretty anti-nationalist

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Back in 1999 one of their members infiltrated a KKK rally in Manhattan in order to punch the grand dragon in the face.

[Kassad]

Maybe not now, but my impression is that they were really a major force on the left in the 1960s, certainly more powerful than the PSL (or any other party) is today. They were fiercely opposed not only to the CPUSA but also to the SWP, alleging that they both had a pacifist and conciliatory orientation towards the Vietnam War. Their faction within SDS, the Worker-Student Alliance, which supported building links between radical students and the working class, managed to get a majority at national conference before the entire organization split, which was largely a result of all the forces that were opposed to the PLP coming together in order to undermine the PLP's position within the organization, not least by making use of the BPP, and then disintegrating once their only basis of unity had ceased to be relevant - as is well-known, the Revolutionary Youth Movement became the WUO, which was arguably a logical consequence of the social base and political outlook of most of the individuals who were part of that faction, and the Revolutionary Youth Movement II fragmented, with many of its activists later going on to play important roles in the New Communist Movement.

I'm aware of their history. They got a lot of attention in the 60's and 70's for, as you stated, providing a very militant opposition to groups like the SWP and CPUSA that had such skewed orientations that they failed to mobilize revolutionaries in the slightest. However, it's not like they had the support or anything to mobilize incredible force on the left to the extent of becoming the most predominant revolutionary party. I'm not the kind of guy who likes to downplay the successes of revolutionary groups, but the PLP is so fucked up ideologically that it's hard to even convince myself that they are even Marxists in the same sense that many of us are.

We can fetishize their mobilizations in the past, but the present suggests that they are one of the many organizations that is dwindling in support. They have failed to mobilize in the past from what I've seen. At this point, they're just deranged.

Also, no party on the left is "a powerful force" at this point in our development. It sure as hell isn't a revolutionary situation and there aren't millions of people promoting radical anti-establishment ideologies like there were in the 60's that made it a breeding ground for Marxism. You can point to the PSL and say we're not as good as whoever were in the past, but we're one of the only ones that are growing and one of the largest, so your comment doesn't mean much.

[Communist]

I respect PLP for having the passion about revolution that they do, and for the fact they don't make distinctions between capitalist parties and politicians, which is correct. Ideologically speaking, they blend elements from several currents together and it is confusing.
I've corresponded with PLP and they appear to be very disorganized, but that's not unusual among a lot of the US left groups.

[penguinfoot]

as you stated, providing a very militant opposition to groups like the SWP and CPUSA that had such skewed orientations that they failed to mobilize revolutionaries in the slightest.

I don't really think that's the reason they got so much attention, at least as far as people outside of the left were concerned. They were more noteworthy for being one of the first parties both in the US and in the developed world to openly champion China as an alternative model of socialism and a model of what revolutionary foreign policy should be like, when the full consequences of the Sino-Soviet Split were just beginning to manifest themselves, and when most of the official Communist Parties were still dealing with the consequences of the 1956 invasion of Hungary, which anticipated the 1960s insofar as it massively downgraded the standing of the official parties for most people on the left, including a large part of their own memberships. Beyond their pro-China stance, they also drew attention for their travels to Cuba - including the fact that they had to go all the way via Eastern Europe in order to avoid the travel ban - and Bill Epton's trial, who, being chair of the Harlem branch at the time of the riots, was open about his beliefs when in court, just like the members who had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee because of the Cuba expedition, whose open political allegiances and disruption of the process set a precedent for other activists in the same circumstances. These particular actions were supplemented by a broadly confrontational and radical stance in other areas as well, such as their Hazard solidarity campaign. It was these concrete actions rather than any abstract opposition to pre-existing organizations that drew attention and respect.


However, it's not like they had the support or anything to mobilize incredible force on the left to the extent of becoming the most predominant revolutionary party

Numerically, it's entirely possible that they might have been the dominant party at some point, given that the CPUSA experienced drops in membership over the period, and that the SWP managed only incremental growth in comparison to Stalinist parties, as well as the fact that an enduring weakness of the left both during the 60s and the New Communist Movement that followed it was a commitment to a "study group" mode of organization that kept the left in a highly fragmented condition and prevented the emergence of a nation-wide party that could unite the efforts of a larger number of regional and ethnically-orientated bodies, in spite of the efforts of the Guardian to achieve exactly this outcome. In addition to having a relatively large membership, the PLP did also have larger mobilizing potential in that they were able to gain a substantial majority in SDS through the WSA, the SDS being, of course, one of the biggest umbrella organizations on the student left - and, even after the split, which resulted in the RYM taking control of the national office and the assets of the organization, and involved allegations being made about the PLP having aimed to break the organization apart, they were able to keep the SDS going for some time, despite having to rely on only a skeleton budget.

It's up to you to show that they could not mobilize significant forces and were certainly not predominant.


but the PLP is so fucked up ideologically

What is "fucked up" about them?


You can point to the PSL and say we're not as good as whoever were in the past, but we're one of the only ones that are growing and one of the largest, so your comment doesn't mean much.

I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about the PSL, because the PSL already receive far too much attention, given their actual importance, on this forum, but I will point out that even significant levels of growth don't really mean much if the political line of an organization is fundamentally flawed, which I believe is true in the case of the PSL, given your/their implicit belief that socialism can be established without the active involvement of the working class, and your/their failure to defend stances such as your support for the actions of the Chinese government against the Tiananmen protests when challenged.

[Kassad]

I truly think you have some kind of fetish for pestering me about issues that have nothing to do with the thread. Because you obviously hold some inner strife regarding me, my stance on the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the issue of Tiananmen Square in 1989, I'm going to address all of it now so you will shut the hell up.

I do see your perspective in your first point. Of course the Chinese Revolution received massive support from most revolutionaries in the United States and the issue of the Sino-Soviet split was definitely a dividing line between many socialist groups in the United States. The reason I stated that I believe they posed an alternative to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is that at that time, both organizations were nothing short of tanking ideologically. CPUSA's tailing of the Democratic Party and reformist politicians had begun long before the 1960's and more radical organizations were replacing it. SWP completely lost its purpose around the time of the late 1950's when they began aligning with imperialism on foreign issues and they utterly forsook revolutionary internationalism. Since both of these organizations were quite large and were losing a lot of members due to internal strife and their ideological degeneration, I think organizations providing an alternative view and a more revolutionary view played a decent role in siphoning members away from the organizations that were degenerating.

It appears you know a lot more about PLP than I do, as I didn't know some of the things you're mentioning right now, so let me take a moment and thank you for informing me regarding some of these issues. It's a pretty interesting topic, if you ask me.

However, here is where I think we're colliding. You mentioned that PLP gained a majority at the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) convention and this led to massive disputes and fragmentations. In hindsight, is anyone surprised? The student movement is constantly an ally of revolutionaries building socialist organizations and movements, as seen by the uprisings of students across the globe to combat austerity and the student movement fighting budget cuts in the United States. That also leads to a pretty tremendous problem: the student movement is fickle, it is quite divided and it rarely ever maintains momentum. Students for a Democratic Society was a potent force on the left during the 1960's, but what eventually happened? Divisiveness and infighting led to the organization all but dissolving. The current SDS is nothing but a former shadow of what it used to be.

And the problem here is that this fact is inherent with the student movement. My organization, other organizations and the movement as a whole consistently work within the student movement to recruit new cadres and revolutionaries. However, how well has that worked for some organizations? PLP invested such a massive amount of its resources in the student left and its current state shows that it was not ready to evolve along with the social order. That's why it is an unorganized and irrelevant organization. There are organizations today that rely purely on the student movement and though this brings about some success, it is not the only means of struggle by a long shot. Relying on the student movement brings about a revolving door in an organizational sense.

So do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not trying to downplay the role the PLP played in the student movement. However, a majority in SDS would be nothing compared to something along the lines of a revolutionary organization holding the majority of leadership positions in the AFL-CIO or something along those lines. That was the only point I was trying to raise. Also, I don't think obsessing over their history is going to change the present.

Their line is "fucked up" because it is probably the most anti-Marxist and absurd line I've ever heard. Firstly, going to a union-led rally screaming into a megaphone about communism isn't going to do a single thing for workers. That's why PLP's newspaper practically wallpapered The Lincoln Memorial. It was everywhere. People got it and threw it on the ground. Of course there were different newspapers that had been thrown away, but I saw copies of The Challenge everywhere. The PLP clings to this absurd line that it's communism or nothing. First of all, the proletariat doesn't work that way and it never has. The monumental revolutions in Cuba, Russia, China and elsewhere did not and could not jump straight to communism from capitalism because imperialism is a potent force that prevents any revolution from blossoming. PLP also holds up the absurd theory of state capitalism, which I'm not really looking to talk about here. They're just generally anti-Cuba, anti-China and way too pro-Stalin for my tastes.

Now, on to Tiananmen and I'm going to make this succinct. I have discussed Tiananmen at length with dozens of people on this forum. If you knew BobKindles, he would tell you that we probably could have published a book with all the text we wrote back and forth debating the issue. The reason I'm not looking to do that again is that 1) I don't have time and 2) the information is already available to you. There is a pretty sizable public debate in publication between the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). We also have several articles about the events providing our perspective. All you have to do is look up the articles. They say it better than I probably could.

Anything else?

[Rushistheshit]

Has anyone forgotten that communism is a failure over and over again. I mean even china is turning capitalist. So tell me what is the point in evenattempting to create a peoples labor party. You will get nowhere except for a weird op Ed story in the NYT.

[28350]

Has anyone forgotten that communism is a failure over and over again. I mean even china is turning capitalist. So tell me what is the point in evenattempting to create a peoples labor party. You will get nowhere except for a weird op Ed story in the NYT.

Remember when anti-Communists were invited to participate outside OI?
Yeah, neither do I.

[penguinfoot]

SWP completely lost its purpose around the time of the late 1950's when they began aligning with imperialism on foreign issues and they utterly forsook revolutionary internationalism

You're going to have to offer more substantive analysis than that. I've no interest in defending the SWP and wouldn't have joined it if I had been alive during the 1960s because it was in the process of becoming a decrepit organization, but it was not guilty of any betrayal of internationalism - in the anti-war movement it raised the slogan "Troops out now" and in doing so contrasted itself markedly with the CPUSA, which called only for negotiations between the major combatants, and that was one reason it was able to dominate that movement in organizational terms for such a long period of time. Its main strategic flaw and one of the reasons I wouldn't have joined it is the fact that it allowed the anti-war movement to remain a single-issue struggle rather than seeking to follow the lead of smaller organizations in linking it up with other struggles such as the anti-racist struggle and the struggles of the working class, the latter just beginning to pick up in the 1960s after a period of relative social peace, as linking up these struggles would have amounted to providing an analysis of capitalist society as a social totality, demonstrating the ways that different forms of oppression intersect with one another.


And the problem here is that this fact is inherent with the student movement

This seems far too simplistic an analysis. I would argue that whilst student movements can play a role in sparking resistance on the part of the working class - at the moment we're seeing trade unionists in the UK express their admiration for the students who are leading the fight against the cutbacks, for example - the strength of student movements is more commonly dependent on the state of the working class and that it is during periods of working-class militancy that student movements are able to gain real momentum. It is especially when workers and students link together or when students seek to inspire action by the working class that the bosses and their state are more likely to make moves to suppress students and their organizations. In the US, the 1960s did, as I've already mentioned, witness a revival of working-class militancy - in 1965, for example, you had the beginning of the strike and boycott campaign by the United Farmworkers, which, being comprised largely of Chicano and other racially oppressed workers, eventually led in 1970 to twenty-six grape growers being forced to sign contracts with the union leaders Cesar Chavez, which was one of the most stunning union victories for farm workers in modern US history. The postwar record for strike actions was set in 1969 only to be surpassed in the following year. What, in this context, allowed for the disintegration of the SDS in spite of the dynamic class struggles that were going on in other areas of US society was the fact that the SDS leadership and a substantial part of the membership beyond the WSA had no interest in forging links with the working class - ironically, their refusal to make these links took the form of altering their understanding of what the working class was, by arguing that students even at the most elite universities were workers in their own right or workers in training, and that the university was a factory of sorts, in order not to face pressure to link up with actual workers at the point of production. In this sense, I would agree with Elbaum that the turn of the RYM to underground insurrection was a logical consequence of the sustained isolation and social and cultural base of the individuals who made up that faction, which included most of the SDS leadership. The lesson to be drawn from the history of the SDS is not that student movements are unstable as some metaphysical or general principle, but that they need to join with the working class in order to sustain their strength over the long term.

In this context, and against what you say about the PLP being too student-based or investing too much energy in the student movement, a major strength of the PLP was precisely that it sought to build a base amongst the working class and build links between the student movement and the working class - hence their faction within SDS, the Worker-Student Alliance. The writings and conference speeches of the organization show a recognition that their initial social base was overwhelmingly middle-class in nature insofar as they did draw strength mainly from students as well as those sections of the working class that are widely seen as "middle-class" in nature, such as teachers, other education workers, and so on, but these writings also show a recognition that the party needed to move beyond these groups, and that in order to do so it was necessary for members to entrench themselves in working-class communities, and cultivate social relationships with ordinary workers, which in the case of students led to the PLP following the policy of "colonization" that was also followed by other left-wing organizations, whereby students moved into industry, and were even ordered to assume what were seen as working-class patterns of dress and appearance, by cutting their hair short, for example. Whatever else these impulses show, they suggest a refusal on the part of the PLP to limit themselves to student politics.

[penguinfoot]

Their line is "fucked up" because it is probably the most anti-Marxist and absurd line I've ever heard. Firstly, going to a union-led rally screaming into a megaphone about communism isn't going to do a single thing for workers

I don't see what's inherently "anti-Marxist" about the position that a communist society should be brought about as quickly as possible rather than there being a lengthy transition phase, whether that transition phase is given the label of socialism or something else. In textual terms, it possibly has more in common with Marx's positions than many other perspectives on the transition from capitalism to communism because there is little if anything in Marx's works to show that he believed that there would be anything like a long historical stage between capitalism and communism, which is what the notion of socialism implies. From a more strategic standpoint, the PLP has recognized that the left faces an important task in that it needs to provide an account of why the revolutions that took place in Russia (and some, including the PLP, would say in China and other contexts as well) have ultimately been defeated, insofar as these countries have all witnessed the restoration of capitalism in one form or another - the PLP has not shied away from this task or taken refuge in more or less individual explanations that say the collapse of the USSR was all the result of Gorbachev or that Khrushchev was solely responsible for the restoration of capitalism in the 1950s, but has sought to explain defeats in ideological terms, that is, in terms of the commitment of socialists to the ideological position that a distinct historical phase called socialism is necessary before communism can be obtained. This explanation can be contested, and I would argue that it rests on a whole set of faulty assumptions, such as that the USSR was socialist or progressive up to the 1950s, that there was ever something non-capitalist about the PRC, and that ideas can have historical primacy, but the fact that they've provided an explanation suggests a degree of flexibility that many on the left lack. I'm not aware of any convincing explanation that the PSL has offered - and by convincing I mean one that does not rest on individual desires or moral defects.

I'm generally adverse to accusations that some organizations are "anti-Marxist" because arguments along those lines tend to assume that Marxism is a static bodies of eternal truths that cannot be deviated from, rather than a pluralist and evolving tradition in which disagreement and contention should be encouraged. Why not just accept that the PLP are Marxists with whom you disagree rather than people who are not Marxist in contrast to yourself and the PSL?


PLP also holds up the absurd theory of state capitalism, which I'm not really looking to talk about here.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't object to the idea that societies can be described as state capitalist, because most Marxists in the Leninist tradition would agree that capitalist societies in the age of imperialism exhibit progressive intersection between capital and the state, as marked by increasing state involvement in the economy and the transformation of private enterprise into state concerns, so I'm guessing that your objection here is to the theory that societies like the USSR and the PRC were or are state-capitalist in terms of their mode of production. Quite simply, it's a big statement to say that all theories of state capitalism are "absurd", because, whether you like it or not, most sections of the left have believed that certain societies that have proclaimed themselves socialist were actually state capitalist at some point - this is true most obviously of Anarchism, Left-Communism, and heterodox Trotskyism, but it's also true of orthodox Maoism and most other anti-revisionist currents, insofar as most Maoists hold that the USSR was state-capitalist from the late 1950s onwards and use the same term to refer to China after 1976/8. In fact, just about the only left currents that have applied concepts other than state capitalism to self-proclaimed socialist societies throughout their histories are orthodox Trotskyists (most of whom would say that capitalism has been restored in China) and the official (that is, pro-Soviet) Communist Parties, in whose tradition the PSL stands in certain respects, and who were without doubt some of the most conservative and regressive forces on the left in the countries where they existed, including the United States.

Is it really fair to dismiss as "absurd" a set of theories that have been applied almost universally on the left, albeit in very different ways? Again, the thrust of your argument is that there is a single truth that must not be departed from, which strikes me as the exact opposite of how we should understand the Marxist tradition and relate to other currents on the left.

Incidentally, the PLP's paper is called Challenge, not The Challenge =p, and I don't actually live in the United States - I just know a fair amount about them because they're part of a thesis I'm currently working on.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Boots Riley of The Coup was a member of the PLP.

[Tablo]

Love Boots. Honestly I think they are taking a positive direction. They make me think of anarchists with a Stalin fetish. xD

[DiaMat86]

Progressive labor party's line is consistent with the communist manifesto. "The complete overthrow of all existing social conditions". Kassad, I don't think you understand the nuance of left wing criticism of left wing movements.

Socialism is a class collaboration with the "progressive bourgeoisie". The "Great Leaders" would want us to learn from their mistakes. Mistakes such as the failure to abolish money, privilege and the wage system. That's what revisionism is, lack of confidence in the working class' ability to run society.

Obviously social transformation doesn't happen overnight. Still, there is still no practical evidence the socialism leads to communism. It has only been theorized. Just as Marx theorized that the revolutions would occur in countries where capitalism is most mature. China and Russia disproved that.

Marx's quote “I’m not a Marxist” is a warning against the kind of dogmatic practice much of the movement has not yet recognized.

Keep on eye on theory and one on practice comrade.

[Kassad]

That's cute. It also utterly contradicts the obvious necessity for a transitionary state, being a proletarian dictatorship. People in the PLP remind me of anarchists, in that they are delusional in thinkinking that the capitalist order will magically be overturned, the bourgeoisie will not exercise violence to defend its control and the people will live happily ever after. History has a different tale to tell. Try again.

[DiaMat86]

That's cute. It also utterly contradicts the obvious necessity for a transitionary state, being a proletarian dictatorship. People in the PLP remind me of anarchists, in that they are delusional in thinkinking that the capitalist order will magically be overturned, the bourgeoisie will not exercise violence to defend its control and the people will live happily ever after. History has a different tale to tell. Try again.



Magic is not part of PLP's line. Avoid the logical fallacies of "guilt by association" and "ad hominem".

The problem with the "transition state" is that the transition led back to capitalism. The "transition" does not have to happen under "Socialism".

Everybody knows the bosses use violence! Communism is not anarchism!
What is your Party's line?

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Marx's quote “I’m not a Marxist” is a warning against the kind of dogmatic practice much of the movement has not yet recognized.
You're using that quote completely out of context. He meant that in a different manner, so that's pretty sad you'd use it for other reasons.

Communism is not anarchism!
That made me cringe, bad.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Communism is not anarchism!
That made me cringe, bad.
seriously.


leninist marxism advocates a classless stateless society. pretty much a society without rulers because class does not exist and therefore the state does not exist and therefore the whole basis for individual leadership is eliminated. anarchy.

leninism is not about building a permanent and perpetual state. it is about using the state as a weapon of class warfare just as the bourgeoisie do against the working class, we will do against the bourgeoisie with the proletarian state.

the state is meant to "fade away" again, it is not built to perpetuate itself for eternity!

[Os Cangaceiros]

People in the PLP remind me of anarchists, in that they are delusional in thinkinking that the capitalist order will magically be overturned, the bourgeoisie will not exercise violence to defend its control and the people will live happily ever after.

That's not really the anarchist position, though, historically-speaking.

This can be demonstrated with a simple exercise: if anarchists thought that the ruling classes could be reasoned with, why were they so intent on stabbing, shooting and bombing them?

In the words of Signal Fire:


In fact in the whole period between the founding of the German Social Democratic Party and the Russian revolution it was the anarchists who were distinguished by their advocacy of class terror and violent suppression of the bourgeois from the hegemonic “legal Marxists” entrapped in electoral activism and gradualist and pacifist schemes.

You can argue against the merits of such a campaign, but the thought that anarchism has historically been marked by Proudhonian gradualist ideas is simply not the case. In fact many anarchists, when speaking of the ruling classes, spoke of utter extermination (such as Lucy Parsons).

Not trying to be a pedantic dick about this point, either, btw. Just want to clarify.

[graymouser]

That's cute. It also utterly contradicts the obvious necessity for a transitionary state, being a proletarian dictatorship. People in the PLP remind me of anarchists, in that they are delusional in thinkinking that the capitalist order will magically be overturned, the bourgeoisie will not exercise violence to defend its control and the people will live happily ever after. History has a different tale to tell. Try again.
The PLP's concept of a fight "directly for communism" is quite violent, I'm not sure where you get a non-violent aspect from it. They talk openly about the need for a mass Red Army led by the PLP - and as such would literally use force to dissolve the entire old order and reorganize society.

It must be really surreal for the people who were in PL and its rather large periphery in the '60s to read Challenge today. It was a tremendously different party back then, more or less the first "anti-revisionist" group and one with some history in the CPUSA. Now you read their paper and the most striking thing is the violent force of the rhetoric.