Socialist parties in the U.S. [Archive]

View Full Version : Socialist parties in the U.S.

eric922

22nd March 2011, 03:26

I've been doing some reading on the various socialist/communist parties in the U.S. and I've got a question. I've read over the platform of both the Communist Party U.S.A. and the Socialist Party U.S.A. and honestly they both same very similar and I was just wondering if anyone here was familiar with either of them could maybe tell the difference? I read the wikipedia articles and it says the Socialist Party spilt from the Communist Party because they support Trotsky as opposed to Stalin.

wunderbar

22nd March 2011, 08:49

CP-USA is generally not popular among most of the American left because they typically support the Democratic Party in most elections, buying into the "lesser of two evils" race to the bottom.

SP-USA has many tendencies ranging from social democrats to revolutionary socialists, and has some degree of popularity on the left (certainly more than CP-USA at least). I hope you've been reading about other parties on the American left, because there's tons of socialist/communist parties.

Paulappaul

22nd March 2011, 08:55

I read the wikipedia articles and it says the Socialist Party spilt from the Communist Party because they support Trotsky as opposed to Stalin.

You're thinking of the Socialist Workers' Party of America, a Trotskyist Organization which split from the Communist Party. That Party is no longer active though.

I've read over the platform of both the Communist Party U.S.A. and the Socialist Party U.S.A. and honestly they both same very similar and I was just wondering if anyone here was familiar with either of them could maybe tell the difference?

The Communist Party still adopts some tenets of the Comintern and lays Claim to the Leninist ideology. The Socialist Party is multi-tendency, you can even be an Anarchist and be a Socialist party member. The Communist Party USA still calls for revolution, while it being pacifist it is still different from the Socialist Party which rejects revolution.

Honestly both Parties aren't amazing. The Socialist Labor Party is nice Revolutionary alternative to both, although it is pretty much dead. If I had to choose one of the parties, Socialist Party USA hands down for its plurality of currents.

Rusty Shackleford

22nd March 2011, 10:25

Dont bother with the CP-USA

The Vegan Marxist

22nd March 2011, 13:16

Who do you align with more? If Trotsky, then parties like ISO and SPUSA is your choice. If with Lenin and Mao, then you're best to join with PSL and WWP. If you favor Lenin Mao and Stalin, then it's the FRSO(Fight back!) and FIST.

28350

22nd March 2011, 13:23

Chimurenga.

22nd March 2011, 14:48

If with Lenin and Mao, then you're best to join with PSL and WWP.

The PSL (and WWP for that matter) is not Maoist and we don't see Mao as a major ideological figure.

Zeus the Moose

22nd March 2011, 15:34

The Communist Party still adopts some tenets of the Comintern and lays Claim to the Leninist ideology. The Socialist Party is multi-tendency, you can even be an Anarchist and be a Socialist party member. The Communist Party USA still calls for revolution, while it being pacifist it is still different from the Socialist Party which rejects revolution.

Honestly both Parties aren't amazing. The Socialist Labor Party is nice Revolutionary alternative to both, although it is pretty much dead. If I had to choose one of the parties, Socialist Party USA hands down for its plurality of currents.

I wouldn't say the Socialist Party rejects revolution, though there isn't a clear revolutionary socialist orientation either. It's gotten to the point where even what I would consider the right wing in the SP-USA uses the term "revolution," but only in certain circumstances and qualified by other terms.

The SLP is certainly an interesting organisation, but it seemed to have problems with political rigidity ever since the mid-20th century. That said, if DeLeonist politics do end up appealing, either the IWW, Workers International Industrial Union, or possibly the SP-USA as well, might be good organisational fits. The SP has at least a couple former SLPers in its ranks who are still basically DeLeonists.

Kassad

22nd March 2011, 15:43

I don't know why someone would try to label the PSL as ideologically affiliated with Mao. We're Marxist-Leninists with a strong historical background that is grounded in anti-imperialism. We uphold Mao as a revolutionary leader, but many of his actions and theoretical contributions were absolutely terrible.

If you want to look into a party that Glenn Beck called "the enemy within" and the racist John Birch Society called "the most active communist party today", look into the Party for Socialism and Liberation. www.PSLweb.org

eric922

22nd March 2011, 16:17

Lenina Rosenweg

22nd March 2011, 16:23

You're thinking of the Socialist Workers' Party of America, a Trotskyist Organization which split from the Communist Party. That Party is no longer active though.

The Us Socialist Worker's Party (which should not be confused with the British organization of the same name) is still active but it no longer regards itself as Trotskyist.They do not seem to be as active as they could be, many of their cadre are elderly or seem to be middle aged academics and they seem to be somewhat fossilized.They are active in anti-war work, etc.The SWP still jealously guards the copyright on most of the Trotskyist classics so you can only buy books by James Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, etc. though them.

Other Trotskyist organizations view them as a "traveling bookstore" they usually sell their stuff at demos.

Their history is fascinating and important. Most of the "57 varieties" of USTrotskyism split off from them at some time or another.

http://www.themilitant.com/index.shtml

Lenina Rosenweg

22nd March 2011, 16:25

If you are interested in Trotskyism, this organization follows the original version

http://www.socialistalternative.org/

Kassad

22nd March 2011, 17:11

Thanks for all the responses everyone. Honestly I didn't know there were so many Left parties in the U.S. I'll look into some of the others you mentioned. I had no clue the CP-USA supported the Democratic Party, that may seriously change my views as in my mind the Democrats have became just another wing of the Corporate Party.

As for who I identify with the most, honestly I'm not sure as I'm still doing research. I have learned a few things though. I do not agree with Stalin or Mao. I admire Trotsky and really learned a lot from the Revolution Betrayed and I am still doing research on Lenin.

I would recommend checking out the works of Sam Marcy. He is one of the theoretical foundations of the PSL. In his writings, he upholds Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and his analysis of the Soviet Union.

Mao was a great revolutionary leader, but his theoretical analysis (calling the Soviet Union capitalist, etc) was just plain wrong. It is necessary to understand that many of the workers states at that time were deformed, but they still required and require our defense from imperialism and counterrevolution.

graymouser

22nd March 2011, 17:40

When the Socialist Workers Party abandoned Trotskyism in the early 1980s, it purged many of its members. Some of them formed a new organization that more or less continued its old politics, Socialist Action. SA is now one of the more dynamic Trotskyist parties - we're playing a significant role in the antiwar movement, and we've recruited a new layer of youth. There are links in my signature.

eric922

22nd March 2011, 17:51

Thanks. I am checking out your links now. I think it might be a good fit for me. because as I said I am strongly opposed to the polices of Stalin and Mao, and SA is as well it seems.

Kassad

22nd March 2011, 17:57

Red_Struggle

22nd March 2011, 17:57

The American Party of Labor if you're into anti-revisionism:
http://americanpartyoflabor.org/

RED DAVE

22nd March 2011, 18:08

I've been doing some reading on the various socialist/communist parties in the U.S. and I've got a question.What periods are you reading about? These parties changed tremendously during the course of the 20th Century.

I've read over the platform of both the Communist Party U.S.A. and the Socialist Party U.S.A. and honestly they both same very similarWhich platforms and for what years? Their platforms, especially that of the CP, changed a hell of a lot.

and I was just wondering if anyone here was familiar with either of them could maybe tell the difference?The differences varied as the parties changed.

I read the wikipedia articles and it says the Socialist Party spilt from the Communist Party because they support Trotsky as opposed to Stalin.This is absolutely incorrect. You are probably speaking of the Socialist Workers Party, which is different from the Socialist Party. The Socialist Party never supported Trotsky. But the Communist Party may be said to be Stalinist until comparatively recently.

RED DAVE

The Vegan Marxist

22nd March 2011, 18:11

The PSL (and WWP for that matter) is not Maoist and we don't see Mao as a major ideological figure.

You don't have to be a Maoist organization to favor Mao. Most of the members I've met of the PSL are in favor of Mao. Do you deny this?

The Vegan Marxist

22nd March 2011, 18:12

FIST is the youth branch of WWP.

I know this very well, but most of FIST that I've met has a more open stance towards Stalin than that of the WWP as I've noticed. Just stating what I've personally noticed as someone who's close to many members of the PSL, WWP, and FIST.

Kassad

22nd March 2011, 18:16

You don't have to be a Maoist organization to favor Mao. Most of the members I've met of the PSL are in favor of Mao. Do you deny this?

PSL members uphold Mao as a revolutionary leader. We recognize the Chinese Revolution as a monumental historical event that initiated socialist construction in China. However, Mao's criticisms of the Soviet Union were baseless and the Sino-Soviet split was a tragedy for the socialist movement, in that it divided the international socialist bloc. Today, we defend China from imperialist intervention, dismemberment and counterrevolution.

We don't uphold Mao's characterization of the Soviet Union as capitalist. That's why we're Marxist-Leninists.

eric922

22nd March 2011, 18:24

I just thought I'd clarify something on the platforms I'm reading. They are all from the various parties current websites so I'm assuming their up to date.

The Idler

22nd March 2011, 19:56

If you haven't studied all (or at least most) of the left parties in the US, don't join one until you have. Plus it depends what you want from a party.
World Socialists (http://www.wspus.org/) are the party I would join.
Platforms can always be vague (programs are generally more specific) and opportunistic, so if you can get a plurality of views (Wikipedia etc.) it helps.
list of Left-Wing Parties in the United States of America (http://eng.anarchopedia.org/list_of_Left-Wing_Parties_in_the_United_States_of_America)

wunderbar

22nd March 2011, 20:10

That said, if DeLeonist politics do end up appealing, either the IWW, Workers International Industrial Union, or possibly the SP-USA as well, might be good organisational fits. The SP has at least a couple former SLPers in its ranks who are still basically DeLeonists.

I don't know if the IWW might be a good fit for a DeLeonist, mainly because the IWW as a union rejects political action in favor of direct action. The Workers' International Industrial Union (WIIU) split apart from the IWW in 1908 to work as a political union aligned with the Socialist Labor Party. The WIIU was revived last year as a DeLeonist industrial union, but I have no clue how large their numbers are, certainly much smaller than the IWW.

NoOneIsIllegal

22nd March 2011, 20:16

Even though I'm opposed to parties in general, I wouldn't mind if the SLP (or a new DeLeonist party, though I like the original name) came back. I'm interested in DeLeonism. I'm also interested in seeing if the new WIIU will grow. They're making branches in several different spots, including Texas, Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota.

thriller

22nd March 2011, 20:18

chegitz guevara

22nd March 2011, 20:32

If you want to look into a party that Glenn Beck called "the enemy within" and the racist John Birch Society called "the most active communist party today", look into the Party for Socialism and Liberation. www.PSLweb.org

Well, Beck is scatter shot and will attack whatever socialist group is in his sights for the day. He's gone after ISO, PSL, SPUSA, etc.

The Birchers are probably correct. From what I see, PSL is definitely the most active group in the American left. I have two rather serious differences with the organization, that would probably keep me from joining them if I were in the market for a new group, but I work with them on most occasions I'm able.

The real question you should consider is, who is in your area and what are they doing? Being the only member of a group in your area sux week-dead donkey nostrils.

chegitz guevara

22nd March 2011, 20:35

Just a clarification, SP-USA does not allow social democrat's "officially" in the party, but it's easy to see there are some in the party.

Running the paper and the National Action Committee. :cursing::cursing::cursing:

The Vegan Marxist

22nd March 2011, 20:43

PSL members uphold Mao as a revolutionary leader. We recognize the Chinese Revolution as a monumental historical event that initiated socialist construction in China. However, Mao's criticisms of the Soviet Union were baseless and the Sino-Soviet split was a tragedy for the socialist movement, in that it divided the international socialist bloc. Today, we defend China from imperialist intervention, dismemberment and counterrevolution.

We don't uphold Mao's characterization of the Soviet Union as capitalist. That's why we're Marxist-Leninists.

I know this very well. All I stated was that if he was looking into a organization that favored Lenin and Mao, then the PSL's a best bet. Since the PSL doesn't really favor Stalin as much as the FRSO and others, the PSL was the logical choice for someone who only favors Lenin and Mao, but not Stalin. I didn't intend to make it out as if I was saying the PSL's a Maoist organization. You know me well enough to know I wouldn't make that mistake.

eric922

22nd March 2011, 20:49

The real question you should consider is, who is in your area and what are they doing? Being the only member of a group in your area sux week-dead donkey nostrils.
That is my biggest problem. I'm in east TN which is pretty much the heart of the Bible-belt and conservatism. Theses are the people who run campaign adds talking about stopping Obama's socialist machine. So I'm kind of alone out here.

chegitz guevara

22nd March 2011, 21:19

I really, really hate to suggest this, but Solidarity is active in East TN. The organizer in the area is much better than the group, though.

Zeus the Moose

22nd March 2011, 22:25

I don't know if the IWW might be a good fit for a DeLeonist, mainly because the IWW as a union rejects political action in favor of direct action. The Workers' International Industrial Union (WIIU) split apart from the IWW in 1908 to work as a political union aligned with the Socialist Labor Party. The WIIU was revived last year as a DeLeonist industrial union, but I have no clue how large their numbers are, certainly much smaller than the IWW.

I don't disagree about the IWW and DeLeonists not being the best fit, but to be honest I was kind of reaching for potential groups, since the SLP is more or less dead and there aren't any other "pure" DeLeonist options out there (at least to my knowledge.) That said, the IWW is open to basically all workers regardless of their politics otherwise, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch; I'd identify as a Leninist in some respects (and am very pro-party otherwise), but I'm a member of the IWW as well as the SP-USA and don't see much contradiction. I just know better than to ask the IWW as a whole to support any of our candidates ;)

eric922

22nd March 2011, 23:24

I really, really hate to suggest this, but Solidarity is active in East TN. The organizer in the area is much better than the group, though.
I know someone who is part of it, he is a Trotskyist. He is also part of the Progressive Student Allaince at UT which is where I first got interested in. Marxism. What is wrong with Solidarity by the way?

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 00:30

I know someone who is part of it, he is a Trotskyist. He is also part of the Progressive Student Allaince at UT which is where I first got interested in. Marxism. What is wrong with Solidarity by the way?

Solidarity seems to have a sizable base of members, but they intervene in struggles in such an odd manner that it weirds me out. I've never had a member of Solidarity tell me they were a member of Solidarity. They tend to do united front action, but they don't really focus on building a revolutionary party in Leninist terms.

NoOneIsIllegal

23rd March 2011, 00:39

I'm pretty sure I've heard of every socialist party and organization in the United States except Solidarity.

I've never had a member of Solidarity tell me they were a member of Solidarity.
Aaaaaannnnddddd that probably helps as to why I'm clueless about them.

gorillafuck

23rd March 2011, 00:42

I've never had a member of Solidarity tell me they were a member of Solidarity.That's pretty funny.:laugh:

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 00:55

That's pretty funny.:laugh:

I know, right? I'd been working with a group of people in Ohio for a while and I found out several months into a project that they were Solidarity members. However, Chegitz might have over criticisms of Solidarity that I'm not aware of.

Rusty Shackleford

23rd March 2011, 01:10

NoOneIsIllegal

23rd March 2011, 01:18

Is this the same solidarity as the one that was in Poland? ive seen people in my area with the Polish solidarity logo on their pins at left-wing rallys.

if that is the case, then i would say a problem with them is they basically opened the door for an extremely right-wing period in poland that still exists.
Nope.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/

Rusty Shackleford

23rd March 2011, 01:26

Nope.
http://www.solidarity-us.org/
phew ok.

28350

23rd March 2011, 01:30

party that Glenn Beck called "the enemy within"

It's a staple of Beck's fear-mongering to call Obama a socialist, but that doesn't make him one.

Geiseric

23rd March 2011, 01:34

http://www2.socialistorganizer.org/

We're a trotskyist group, the U.S. branch of the 4th International. Check us out or shoot me a DM if you're intrested :D

graymouser

23rd March 2011, 01:50

Where does SA have branches? I've never seen them at protests around here or in bigger cities.
Our largest branches are in Connecticut and San Francisco, though we have people across the country. There's a list of all the places here (http://www.socialistaction.org/contact.htm). I'm in the Philly branch. At protests we mostly focus on building the larger event, although some comrades will sell papers. We don't usually have "Socialist Action" signs and banners. A lot of us will be in New York for April 9, but I would imagine most of the signs etc will be for UNAC and not SA as such.

23rd March 2011, 01:53

http://www2.socialistorganizer.org/

We're a trotskyist group, the U.S. branch of the 4th International. Check us out or shoot me a DM if you're intrested :D

Spotting note to outsiders: Socialist Organizer is part of the "Lambertist" Fourth International (after Pierre Lambert, one of its most prominent members), as the Fourth International (La Vérité) (after its international theoretical journal La Vérité), or as SIQI (for the French Secrétariat International de la Quatrième Internationale (International Secretariat of the Fourth International), the name of its leading body).

The earlier mentioned Solidarity has a "Fourth International Caucus" which is also part of the Fourth International, more commonly known to outsiders by its pre-2003 name the USFI (United Secretariat of the Fourth International), the "Mandelite" Fourth International (after Ernest Mandel, one of its most prominent members) or, more obscurely, Fourth International (International Viewpoint) (after its international theoretical journal International Viewpoint).

Socialist Action, the group graymouser is in, has a sympathiser status on the latter international grouping.

Sources on both:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_(ICR)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_(Post-Reunification)

gorillafuck

23rd March 2011, 01:58

graymouser

23rd March 2011, 02:00

I know someone who is part of it, he is a Trotskyist. He is also part of the Progressive Student Allaince at UT which is where I first got interested in. Marxism. What is wrong with Solidarity by the way?
During the period when the Trotskyists were expelled from the SWP, a minority of the people who went into Socialist Action began talks with a small group called Workers Power (not related to the British group of the same name, or the current American group) that was a split off from the International Socialists. The minority was basically asked not to continue discussion but did anyway, and were expelled or left to form a small temporary group, "Socialist Unity." They began regroupment with Workers Power, at which point the larger International Socialists grouping got involved. The three groups merged into a common grouping called Solidarity. Nobody was quite a majority, and the group was never actually Leninist in any sense.

In a lot of ways, Solidarity is the worst of all its forbears. The IS was an extremely economist grouping, and that's been the shade of all of Soli's trade union work - they organize mainly around workplace issues, and refuse to bring politics into the unions at all. The social movement work has resembled what the SWP did, taking on a role where they seek to be the best builders and recruit on that basis, but without the sharp political line the party had, it more or less becomes endless movementism. It's been observed that Solidarity is "less than the sum of its parts." Having been in it, I have to agree.

graymouser

23rd March 2011, 02:13

Spotting note to outsiders: Socialist Organizer is part of the "Lambertist" Fourth International (after Pierre Lambert, one of its most prominent members), as the Fourth International (La Vérité) (after its international theoretical journal La Vérité), or as SIQI (for the French Secrétariat International de la Quatrième Internationale (International Secretariat of the Fourth International), the name of its leading body).

The earlier mentioned Solidarity has a "Fourth International Caucus" which is also part of the Fourth International, more commonly known to outsiders by its pre-2003 name the USFI (United Secretariat of the Fourth International), the "Mandelite" Fourth International (after Ernest Mandel, one of its most prominent members) or, more obscurely, Fourth International (International Viewpoint) (after its international theoretical journal International Viewpoint).

Socialist Action, the group graymouser is in, has a sympathiser status on the latter international grouping.

Sources on both:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_(ICR)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_(Post-Reunification)
Yeah, the Voorhis act actually prohibits being part of an international organization. We maintain the same status that the SWP had with regard to the FI from 1940 onward. Also, we've always been a part of the critical currents in the Fourth International, since its line especially after Mandel's death has really been almost liquidationist.

Socialist Organizer was a split from Socialist Action in 1991. Our party had been in talks with Lambert but decided against being part of his "reproclaimed Fourth International" in Barcelona. Alan Benjamin - who was at the time the editor of our paper - and a number of others attended the convention despite this decision; they were expelled and formed their own group. Since then they have been following the Lambertist FI. In my opinion the group has taken a rightward turn recently - they left the United National Antiwar Conference last year because it took up a position that the US should end all aid to Israel, and was big in pushing for the DREAM Act which would include a military "path to citizenship" for undocumented youth.

Iraultzaile Ezkerreko

23rd March 2011, 04:09

I know someone who is part of it, he is a Trotskyist. He is also part of the Progressive Student Allaince at UT which is where I first got interested in. Marxism. What is wrong with Solidarity by the way?

Do they use that name on every campus? It's the same at my school, but frankly, our local branch here is highly sectarian, organizes on a friendship-network basis instead of political principles and has no central politics apart from being some kind of hipster social club. It has everything from anarchists to Trots in it and has in many cases been a negative effect upon movements, forcing consensus on issues they disagree with and refusing to allow any centralized political structure in various movements. Although, I've heard that elsewhere their branches do exemplary work and are work in the best semblance of the united front with various other left groups across the US.

Impulse97

23rd March 2011, 05:30

A general list of US political parties.

http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm

Comrade Ian

23rd March 2011, 07:04

The largest revolutionary organization in the country is the International Socialist Organization, and we have a branch almost everywhere. We firmly stand in the tradition of Third Camp socialism which was characterized by the slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism", which is to say we supported worker's struggle on both sides of the Iron Curtain and saw as much potential in Prague 68 as there was in Paris 68. If you're interested in fighting for real workers democracy and real socialism we're the most consistent advocates of workers' power. If you agree with Trotsky's critique we're the largest most well known "Trotskyist" (Though we don't usually refer to ourselves as such, revolutionary socialist gets the job done) party in the US. If you're idea of socialism doesn't involve running around defending North Korea and China as "Socialist" or Iran and Zimbabwe as "Anti-Imperialist", and if you tend to side with the people and the working class rather then the bureacrats and the tanks, we're the group for you.

We have daily news and analysis at
http://socialistworker.org/

Longer more theoretical articles are published in the International Socialist Review
http://www.isreview.org/index.shtml

We're behind Haymarket Books
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/

And though not our publication if you really want to dive into the theory of our tradition the International Socialist Journal is a great resource
http://www.isj.org.uk/

Paulappaul

23rd March 2011, 12:57

The largest revolutionary organization in the country is the International Socialist Organization, and we have a branch almost everywhere.

Branch doesn't equal a fuck ton of members or the fact that it is revolutionary. The ISO is multi - tendency. There are Anarchists, Social Democrats and Left Communists in my local branch. People who attend the meetings are constantly fluctuating and can really on call on like 20 people. The only thing the ISO is radical for is the fact that it has the biggest dropout rates. Its mostly an entry level organisation for college kids, at least from what I've seen.

If you're interested in fighting for real workers democracy and real socialism we're the most consistent advocates of workers' power.

You fucking joking? I think the most consistent advocates of "workers' power" would probably be Social - Anarchists. They were calling for that shit while Trotsky was still sperm. Not to mention the ISO transitional program still calls for Workers' State with State Run Industries.

If you're idea of socialism doesn't involve running around defending North Korea and China as "Socialist" or Iran and Zimbabwe as "Anti-Imperialist", and if you tend to side with the people and the working class rather then the bureacrats and the tanks, we're the group for you.

If your idea of fighting for Socialism means selling Socialist Worker and marching in pacifist anti- war rallies, or in campaigning for the Green Party and Ralph Nader uh.. go for it. And who are the "people" from the working class? Are they someone else?

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 13:43

chegitz guevara

23rd March 2011, 20:00

Greymouser covered a lot of the problems with Solidarity. My issues with the group are its abandonment of socialism as anything more than a religion. I was a member of Soli twice, ten years apart. In 1997 and 2007, I was a dual member of the SPUSA and Soli. In 1997, the SPUSA was on Soli's right. In 2007, the left wing of Soli was about where the right wing of the SPUSA is.

Soli has become completely fixated on breaking the working class from the Democrats, and see the Green Party as the vehicle for this project. They've been at it almost fifteen years now. ("How's that working out for you?" I asked). They tried to get the SP to drop it's presidential campaign in 2008 (we won't get into a discussion of the putz we ran) in order to not divide the vote for McKinney. When Socialist Action endorsed all four socialist candidates running, one Solidarity leader described it as "silly."

Soli consider any socialist group to their left (which is about ALL of them) to be sectarians and/or ultra-left. Seriously, the described the SPUSA as ultra-left in an internal communication of their national committee (being a member, I had access at the time).

In their union work, which is really, really good, in and of itself, they refuse to bring in socialist politics. They are the very definition of economist, as Lenin described it. They put out what was a pretty good labor newspaper, Labor Notes, but I haven't read it in a long time. It is this work right here which gets them a lot of cred from people who don't know them better.

Lately, they have become fixated on NGOs and social workers. I have also, but I see them as symptoms of the current reality we're in and detrimental to the movement. Solidarity seems to think that they are fertile ground for political work.

Solidarity is also fixated on attracting more people of color to their organization. Much of the white radical left seems to think this will give them cred. Generally, however, the attitudes in the white left are creepy and patronizingly racist. As I told Soli, 'most people of color don't join Solidarity because you're racist. Try treating Black people as Black people, instead of as Black people.' But white radicals never believe they're racist.

Full disclosure: I've been tossed from Soli twice. Both times, it was for non-payment of dues while I was unemployed. I'm sure completely coincidentally, both times were right before a convention where I'd been organizing an opposition to the leadership.

In case anyone's interested in my position on NGOs:
aYJ3HB8xh_g

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 20:11

Kicked out for not paying dues while unemployed? That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.

chegitz guevara

23rd March 2011, 20:15

The great thing about dropping someone for non-payment is that you don't have to hold a trial.

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 20:17

The great thing about dropping someone for non-payment is that you don't have to hold a trial.

I'm just stunned that they seem to be such an odd group. To be honest, they are all very liberal in my area. Relatively open-minded, but they're definitely not talking about revolution. There are a lot of organizations that are aging quickly and their lack of youth recruitment is going to cause them to collapse or disappear in the next decade or so.

eric922

23rd March 2011, 22:52

All of these response, which I'm very grateful for, and my research into various leftist parties has led me to a rather disheartening conclusion. Does anyone else wonder if the Left is too divided?

Kassad

23rd March 2011, 23:06

All of these response, which I'm very grateful for, and my research into various leftist parties has led me to a rather disheartening conclusion. Does anyone else wonder if the Left is too divided?

You do have to realize that a lot of the groups you're looking in to are likely relatively small. The radical left in the United States is, obviously, small as a whole, but some organizations are sects of less than 100 people. I think the most important thing when looking for an organization is political line and if they are expanding their reach into the working class movement. The left is divided, but it is also growing and building a revolutionary party is the best use of our time as socialists.

Rusty Shackleford

23rd March 2011, 23:19

Because the left is divided doesnt mean it cant win.

the SPD, the first socialist party in the world, was massive in germany but never actually brought about revolution.

In russia, since the 1860s or so there have been hundreds of different groups, first with terrorism then to peasant populism(narodnik) and to more thouroughly marxist groups like the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party which initself had two divided wings. the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. Social Democracy then was something different than it is now, back them it was the term for socialist revolutionaries not for bourgeois reformists. not to mention the various anarchist trends.

out of that huge mess came the first lasting revolution under marxist principles and working class control.

when the struggle actually becomes a struggle in the US certain groups will dissolve, certain groups may merge, certain groups may be arrested, and certain groups will go under ground, and certain groups will become a mass organization. sort of a vetting process. out of it, there comes a vanguard, a class conscious and organized working class leading its class brethren to victory.

sure the left is divided, but dont lose any sleep over it. taking on an excessivley multi tendency position can lead to contradictions or inaction. im not attacking the SP-USA here im just saying, hoping that all tendencys unite is in itself a tendency :lol:

Comrade Ian

23rd March 2011, 23:39

The International Socialist Organization also has a very bad revolving door policy. In my city, their branch has all new members every year and they have absolutely no understanding of Marxism. At a recent meeting, many of them were saying that the invasion of Libya is justified because it has international support. They also endorse capitalist politicians during election time. Just because you have a bunch of people sign cards at rallies that say they are now members of the ISO doesn't mean they are committed activists.

A very poor understanding of Marxism? I should hope none of them have anything near what you'd consider a good understanding of Marxism, since for you that involves cheering on brutal dictators like Mugabe who actively persecute socialist activists, or meeting with and upholding Ahmadinejad who is the enemy of every revolutionary socialist group in Iran. The ISO has firmly come out against intervention in Libya and all members are required to uphold a position against the UN intervention there. You're understanding of ISO recruitment practices probably dates from the 90's when something of a revolving door/instant membership policy prevailed, but ever since I've joined and for some time before then an at least foundational understanding of Marxism has been required.

The ISO also loves to pretend it is a bastion of the working class, yet they cheered the counterrevolutions in the Soviet Union and across the world that brought about worse living conditions for millions of workers in the world. Justified? The ISO says so. A tragedy? That's what real Marxists say.

Trotsky called for the defense of the Soviet Union, while Socialist Worker in 1991 called the collapse of the Soviet Union something that should "have every socialist rejoicing." Despite the fact that the counterrevolution led to widespread death, disease, poverty and alcoholism, the ISO is still rejoicing at woe of these workers.

If you're idea of socialism involves Stalin, mass purges, immense bureacratic privilege and tanks running over protesters and breaking up strikes by workers, then the PSL is for you. If you want to cheerlead massacres like Hungary 56, Czechoslovakia 68, Tienanmen Square 1989, and if you're idea of revolutionary socialism includes Kim Jong-Il's private fiefdom, then the PSL is for you. If you want genuine liberation, the kind that Marx actually wrote about, then you'll want to side with people that support worker's struggle wherever it emerges.

Comrade Ian

23rd March 2011, 23:56

Branch doesn't equal a fuck ton of members or the fact that it is revolutionary. The ISO is multi - tendency. There are Anarchists, Social Democrats and Left Communists in my local branch. People who attend the meetings are constantly fluctuating and can really on call on like 20 people. The only thing the ISO is radical for is the fact that it has the biggest dropout rates. Its mostly an entry level organisation for college kids, at least from what I've seen.

Anarchist and Social Democrats? I doubt it, they're may be a broad number of people around the ISO from those sort of political positions but the core membership, people that are actually card carrying members will consistently have ISO/ISO-like politics, which can range a bit within the party from more left/libertarian socialist types to more orthodox trotskist types. We will sometimes have people that aren't quite there involved with us but that's because we think people will learn by actually being involved in the struggle and involved in study groups to gain a better understanding of Marxism, rather then sitting off to the side and making people jump through a million hoops to prove themselves worthy of membership.

If your idea of fighting for Socialism means selling Socialist Worker and marching in pacifist anti- war rallies, or in campaigning for the Green Party and Ralph Nader uh.. go for it. And who are the "people" from the working class? Are they someone else?

We haven't campaigned for Nader since I joined before the 2008 election, and in California at least we haven't been involved in the Green Party. The arguement for/against participation in the Green Party is a longer one, and one that different members within the ISO may come down on different sides of depending on the circumstances. I wasn't intending to specifically separate "the people" from the working class, my point was that the PSL rushes to praise whatever tinpot dictator happens to be smashing internal dissent and working class resistance in the name of "anti-imperialism." We do a hell of a lot more then march in pacifist anti-war rallies (That's really the PSL, see ANSWER coalition and every event they've put on), we do a ton of work in Unions and around broader issues like Palestinian solidarity and so on. When the pace of struggle has picked up somewhere, we're more intensly/militantly involved, we had a ton of people inside the occupation in Madison, and here in Santa Cruz we were very deeply involved in the occupations on different universities.

Also the College Student = petty-bourgouis/whatever line is bullshit. Most college students have to work to get through, and most college students graduate into working class jobs, especially if you're a revolutionary socialist. Hell I qualify as being from a lumpenproletarian background.

RED DAVE

24th March 2011, 00:03

They're all sell-outs, except me and thee. And sometimes i wonder about thee. :D

RED DAVE

manic expression

24th March 2011, 00:11

If you're idea of socialism involves Stalin, mass purges, immense bureacratic privilege and tanks running over protesters and breaking up strikes by workers, then the PSL is for you. If you want to cheerlead massacres like Hungary 56, Czechoslovakia 68, Tienanmen Square 1989, and if you're idea of revolutionary socialism includes Kim Jong-Il's private fiefdom, then the PSL is for you. If you want genuine liberation, the kind that Marx actually wrote about, then you'll want to side with people that support worker's struggle wherever it emerges.
The ISO: Bravely Defending Socialism Only When It Happens to Be Agreeable with Capitalist Perceptions!

Kassad

24th March 2011, 00:19

All we do is organize anti-war rallies? You're cute.

Maybe you should research the recent protests in solidarity with the Egyptian people. ANSWER organized those across the country. Or the largest anti-war rallies in recent history? ANSWER organized those. Protests against police brutality? ANSWER organizes those across the country. In Ohio, there certainly was no ISO presence at all. That might be why your coverage of the protests are non-existent. We consistently organize protests against budget cuts and tuition hikes at universities. We are leading the movement against war in Libya. We've organized some of the largest Palestinian solidarity rallies in the last several years.

I also recall an ISO member in San Francisco running as a Green candidate. They're a capitalist party that doesn't advocate revolution, in case you were wondering. On another note, you obviously don't know our historical tradition at all or else you'd understand our position on Stalin. Try again.

Sorry, Comrade Ian. Maybe you need to rein in some of your members because I'm hearing a lot of pro-US intervention from them here in Ohio. They also held a party when Obama was elected. There's a reason the PSL is growing rapidly across the country while the ISO revolving door continues to swing.

Comrade Ian

24th March 2011, 00:50

Kassad

24th March 2011, 00:58

Oh yes my apologies, I forgot that you guys only rushed to the defense of the Stalinist States after the tanks started rolling in 1956, doesn't change the fact that you guys now see North Korea and China as authentic socialist states, something many of the worst orthodox Stalinists aren't even guilty of.

I'll take that as a hint that your statement that "all we do is organize anti-war rallies" was false. Feel free to counter my points any time you're ready.

Impulse97

24th March 2011, 01:26

RATM-Eubie

24th March 2011, 01:29

The Green Party????
DSUSA?

Kassad

24th March 2011, 01:42

Does anybody have links to the Histories of the ISO and PSL? I'm relatively new and only have info dating back a few years.

Although, from what I've read and seen thus far it does seem like the PSL is a far better party. I've heard little good about the ISO and their members seem incapable of countering in a debate. Facts and solid points win a debate not abstract insults and assumptions. Even if what those of the ISO say here is true they have yet to provide any data (e.g. references and links) to back up their points. Not to say that those PSL supporters have been perfect in this debate by any means.

We don't really have a document that details our history. This was our founding statement back in 2004: http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/04-08-01-party-socialism-liberation.html

The font is absurdly small for some reason, which I'll attribute to the fact that the article has held up through several massive changes to our website, so it's likely just not been edited for its current format. If you can't read it, copy and paste it into a document and enlarge. This quote is historically important for our party and our existence:

While we are in the first stage of creating a new revolutionary party, we have a long tradition as leaders and organizers inside the Marxist movement in the United States, as well as in the anti-war and anti-racist movements, in the labor movement, and in the other mass movements inside the United States. As former leaders and members of Workers World Party, we defend that group's historical tradition and mission, particularly that of its founder Sam Marcy. Although we believe that the Workers World Party leadership is no longer capable of fulfilling that mission, we still consider it to be a progressive organization with many honest activists.

Paulappaul

24th March 2011, 02:16

Anarchist and Social Democrats? I doubt it, they're may be a broad number of people around the ISO from those sort of political positions but the core membership, people that are actually card carrying members will consistently have ISO/ISO-like politics, which can range a bit within the party from more left/libertarian socialist types to more orthodox trotskist types

That's funny. Last I checked, I was an ISO member. Hmm... Somebody fucked up. And yeah there are Social Democrats at my local branch, there are some flag waving pacifists too. Funny too, one of the most memorable ISO members is guess what? A Green Party nominee. Huh that's funny. Left - Libertarianism eh?

We will sometimes have people that aren't quite there involved with us but that's because we think people will learn by actually being involved in the struggle and involved in study groups to gain a better understanding of Marxism, rather then sitting off to the side and making people jump through a million hoops to prove themselves worthy of membership.

I've never seen an organisation where I have to jump through a Million hoops to be a member. The way the Socialist movement is right now, Membership is easy in any Political Organisation. The Hardest membership for me to get was the IWW and it only took a couple weeks.

We haven't campaigned for Nader since I joined before the 2008 election, and in California at least we haven't been involved in the Green Party. The arguement for/against participation in the Green Party is a longer one, and one that different members within the ISO may come down on different sides of depending on the circumstances.

So in other words, yes, the ISO campaigns and works with organizations for continuing exploitation of Workers. Ah yes, those Radical Socialists!

We do a hell of a lot more then march in pacifist anti-war rallies (That's really the PSL, see ANSWER coalition and every event they've put on), we do a ton of work in Unions and around broader issues like Palestinian solidarity and so on. When the pace of struggle has picked up somewhere, we're more intensly/militantly involved, we had a ton of people inside the occupation in Madison, and here in Santa Cruz we were very deeply involved in the occupations on different universities.

Palestinian Solidarity? You don't see how a free Palestinian State = the same exploitation of Workers only under a different set of rulers? Union work? The Local IWW branch has been picketing for the last 5 weeks. I have not seen 1 ISO member. There Union work means support, if anything, for Unions which are not revolutionary and not in the workers interests.

Also the College Student = petty-bourgouis/whatever line is bullshit. Most college students have to work to get through, and most college students graduate into working class jobs, especially if you're a revolutionary socialist. Hell I qualify as being from a lumpenproletarian background.

I never said that. I was implying that the ISO mainly organizes in schools and is an entry level organization for College students interested in Socialism.

Impulse97

24th March 2011, 02:20

Found an updated mission statement. Sorta. Not as good as the 04' one, but alright.

http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/pages/about-us.html

Zeus the Moose

24th March 2011, 02:29

The Green Party????
DSUSA?

You're funny.

EDIT: more seriously, I think very few people would consider the Green Party or DSA (which what I assume you mean by DSUSA) to be revolutionary socialist organisations in a meaningful way. Chegitz Guevara brought up some points about the Greens in an earlier post, mostly in relation to Solidarity's support for them, but most folks who promote a political strategy involving the Green Party tend to oppose themselves to at least revolutionary socialist politics (though that doesn't stop some self-described socialists from uncritically supporting the Greens.) As for DSA, they're even worse in this regard as they consider the Democratic Party to be a meaningful vehicle for change.

Now, if what you want to do is built a kinder, gentler capitalism, then working within the Democratic Party or working uncritically within the Green Party is a fine way to go. However, the vast majority of folks here (disputes between the ISO and PSL and various other groupings aside) consider themselves revolutionaries and socialists/communists/anarchists, and thus fundamentally opposed to the capitalist system.

Crux

24th March 2011, 02:57

The ISO: Bravely Defending Socialism Only When It Happens to Be Agreeable with Capitalist Perceptions!
In other words you would agree that Tankie, in the literal sense of the word, is very appopriate description of your position? I would love to see you more explicit in your endorsements of represson of working class militants. Which country has the most effective secret service? Is china or iran better at beating down worker's dissent? Why are there no statements of support in your newspaper when, to take one example, the iranian regime execute labour activists? After all that is your position. But I guess your silence is quite telling as well. Not to mention your comrade Mugabe has apparently arrested a bunch of those hated ISO:ers. Shouldnt that warrant you issuing a statement of support? For Mugabe, I mean.

robbo203

24th March 2011, 06:13

You could try this one - the World Socialist Party of the United States - or have a nosey around their website here

http://www.wspus.org/

Some interesting material

MarxistMan

24th March 2011, 06:42

Here is a great website about all the Leftist Parties in USA:

http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html

American Red Groups

Association of State Green Parties: See <A href="http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP">Green Party. Black Radical Congress (http://www.blackradicalcongress.com/): Left-wing coalition of African-American activists formed in 1998 in East St. Louis. This broad confederation seeks to increase radicalism among the impoverished Blacks of America, and denounces Black Capitalists who have become rich and abandoned their brothers and sisters. The BRC has many political tendencies, ranging from DSA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#DSA)’s Bill Fletcher, Jr. (one of the leaders of the AFL-CIO (http://www.aflcio.org/)) to the Communist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CPUSA)'s Jarvis Tyner and Humberto Brown. The BRC has numerous caucuses which seek to promote such left-wing goals as trade unionism, feminism, gay and youth rights, and (specifically) an end to the racist incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/mumia.html). BRC national headquarters is located in New York. Though still in its organizational infancy, the Black Radical Congress is direly needed in a world which has not seen wide-spread black radicalism for decades. Unfortunately, the dispersed nature of the BRC leadership has made it hard to organize anything — even a national convention.
Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (http://www.cofc.org/): This group was formed after the Soviet coup of 1991 by Manning Marable, Carl Boice, Leslie Cagan, Charlene Mitchell, Angela Davis (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/davis.html), Pete Seeger and numerous others who were expelled from (or left) the Communist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CPUSA) for supporting Mikhail Gorbachev and the pro-democracy faction of the Russian government. Free of the CPUSA, the CCDS founders hoped to unite the divided American Left, and received support from a number of well-known leftists, including Noam Chomsky (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/chomsky.html). However, this dream soon ran into the classic problem of sectarianism, and CCDS floundered. Over the years, the political alignment of CCDS shifted dramatically, from its infancy in Reform Communism (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#RC) to become a democratic socialist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#DS) organization, not very different from DSA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#DSA) or the Socialist Party USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPUSA). However, without a clear vision of where the organization was going (i.e., merge with another group or strengthen their own) CCDS's originally strong organization has begun to disintegrate within the last few years. Some of their members, inspired by the CP's new leader, Sam Webb, returned to the CP. Others joined Nader and the Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP) and forgot about CCDS. Further, CCDS's main office in New York was damaged in the September 11th attack. CCDS will be holding its tenth anniversary convention in July, 2002, in San Francisco. Hopefully, CCDS will be able to re-establish itself as an active left group in America.
Communist Labor Party: See <A href="http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LRNA">League of Revolutionaries for a New America.

Communist Party USA (http://www.cpusa.org/): Formed in Chicago 1919 as two Leninist splinters from the Socialist Party of America (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SPA): the Communist Party of America (CPA) and the Communist Labor Party (CLP). Both groups had supported Vladimir Lenin (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/lenin.html), the Bolsheviks and the new Soviet Union, but were different demographically (the CPA was mostly composed of immigrants and the native-born CLP was lead by journalist John Reed (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/johnreed.html)). Lenin's Communist International ("Comintern") forced these two groups to merge in order to become the official American section of the Comintern. The CPA and CLP merged in 1922 to become the United Communist Party and later the Workers (Communist) Party (WCP). The party went "underground" for the next few years during the 1920's Red Square the raids of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Communist William Z. Foster (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/foster.html) ran for President on the Workers (Communist) Party ticket twice during the 1920's. In 1928, following Leon Trotsky (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/trotsky.html)'s explusion from the Soviet CP, his supporters in the US (led by the party's first chairman, James P. Cannon (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/cannon.html)) were similarly expelled; subsequently, they formed the Communist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#CLA). In 1929, the newly Stalinist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#ST) WCP changed its name to the Communist Party USA, and William Foster became the national chairman in 1932. However, he was placed into the background of Earl Browder (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/browder.html) when he became CP-USA General Secretary in 1936.
Early during World War II, the CP-USA opposed American intervention against the Nazis (mainly because of the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact) and ran campaigns against Franklin Roosevelt. By 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the CP-USA called for the US to enter the war and took part in a "Popular Front (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#PF)" with the Democrats. Browder's CP-USA was renamed the "Communist Political Association" (CPA) and dissolved into the Democratic Party. After the war, the Popular Front came to an end as Earl Browder was expelled and the CPA returned to the Communist Party. Under the leadership of the returning Foster and Eugene Dennis (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/dennis.html), the CP entered the campaign of former Vice-President Henry Wallace (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/wallace.html)'s Progressive Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#PP2). During the 1950's, the McCarthy hearings and such laws as the Smith Act led to the indictment of many Communist leaders — including Eugene Dennis, Gus Hall (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/gushall.html), Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/flynn.html), and others.
Besides government crackdowns, the CP-USA also suffered from revelations put forward by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 (confirming the evils of Stalin in Russia), caused the further decline of the American party. Following the split between Khrushchev and Mao Zedong (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/mao.html) ("Sino-Soviet split"), the CP-USA sided with the Soviets, causing a number of pro-Chinese members to leave the party and forming the Progressive Labor Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#PLP). During the New Left of the 1960's, the CP experienced substantial growth due to publicity such as the imprisonment of black activist (and CP member) Angela Davis (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/davis.html). Gus Hall became general secretary and continued to keep the CP highly pro-Moscow; in turn, the Soviet CP secretly funded CP-USA activities. The CP stopped running candidates for President in the 1988 race, choosing instead to enter a new Popular Front with the left Democratic Party (http://www.democrats.org/) challenger, the Reverand Jesse Jackson. In 1989-1991, the CP faced the destruction of the Soviet Bloc. The CP-USA supported the Soviet CP's coup against Mikhail Gorbachev — causing the departure of some 2,000 pro-Gorbachev members to form Committees of Correspondence (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CCDS). The CP continued to shrink after the end of the USSR, and stopped fielding candidates in any races and instead endorsing the Democrat in any election. Since Gus Hall's retirement around 1999, the new general secretary is Sam Webb (http://reds.linefeed.org/samwebb.jpg). The new Webb leadership is working to open up the organization, including allowing dual membership with Committees of Correspondence (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CCDS). Though experiencing a new growth, the CP-USA still supports a number of unfortunate views, such as calling the current Chinese government "socialist" in their journals and backing the thugs of the Colombian FARC. The Communist Party publishes a newspaper (People's Weekly World (http://www.pww.org/)) and a magazine (Political Affairs (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/)).
Democratic Socialists of America (http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html): Confederation of socialists formed in 1983 when a splinter group of the Socialist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SPA) (Michael Harrington (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/harrington.html)'s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, DSOC) merged with the SDS (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDS) splinter New American Movement (NAM). DSA has many celebrity members, including feminist Gloria Steinem, actor Ed Asner, black activist Cornel West, and libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/chomsky.html). It is also the chief American member group of the Socialist International (http://www.socialistinternational.org/), which includes the British Labour Party (http://www.labour.org.uk/) and the French Parti Socialiste (http://reds.linefeed.org/france.html#PS). Until just recently, the main aim of DSA was to convert the Democratic Party (http://www.democrats.org/) into a social democratic (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#SD) organization. However, since the Democratic Party has been taken over by centrists such as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, many DSA members are finding it harder and harder to support this political party. Three DSA members are currently in the United States Congress: Bernie Sanders (http://bernie.house.gov/) (I-VT), Danny Davis (http://www.house.gov/davis/) (D-IL), and Major Owens (http://www.house.gov/owens/) (D-NY). At one point, DSA had a fourth Congressman, Ron Dellums (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000222) (D-CA) prior to his retirement in 1997. Also, the current president of the labor federation AFL-CIO (http://www.aflcio.org/), John Sweeney, is also a DSA member. DSA publishes a journal, Democratic Left, and has numerous commissions on specific issues, as well as a youth wing (YDS (http://www.ydsusa.org/)). Though it is still the largest socialist organization in the US, DSA has been diminishing in size recently. Following the November 2001 DSA National Convention, many members hope to find a new direction and regain membership.
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (http://www.freedomroad.org/): Like Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL), the group known as Freedom Road was an organization formed by the unification of three smaller groups in 1985 — the Proletarian Unity League (http://www.freedomroad.org/whoweare/familytree/groups/pul/pul.html), Revolutionary Workers Headquarters (http://www.freedomroad.org/whoweare/familytree/groups/rwhq/rwhq-bacu.html), and the Organization for Revolutionary Unity (http://www.freedomroad.org/whoweare/familytree/groups/oru/oru.html). Though coming from the Maoist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#MA) tradition, the FRSO began to look more critically at the role of Mao in his later years and the government he left behind. Like Solidarity, Freedom Road also began calling for "Left Refoundation (http://www.freedomroad.org/orgdocs/leftrefo.html)" beyond their traditional segment on the far left — desiring to create a "revolutionary socialist" organization. In 1988, the Amilcar Cabral - Paul Robeson Collective fused with Freedom Road, and in 1994, they merged with a larger organization — the Socialist Organizing Network (http://www.freedomroad.org/orgdocs/basic/unitystatement.html). Beyond revolutionary socialism, the FRSO also supported the right of oppressed ethnicities (especially Blacks and Hispanics) to self-determination. Freedom Road became very active, and consequently gained the support of such people as noted Black unionist Bill Fletcher, Jr., of the AFL-CIO. But by fighting sectarianism and "dilluting" their Stalinist ideology, critics began to arise. This authoritarian faction (composed of the Chicago and Minnesota branches) still called the Soviet Bloc "socialist" when the rest of the organization refused to. In 1999, the pro-Soviet and Stalinist faction broke off to form Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Fight Back) (http://www.frso.org/) — and affiliated with the hardline Belgian Party of Labour (http://www.ptb.be/) (PTB). The mainline Freedom Road has continued to grow despite Fight Back's opposition, and has discussed refoundation with revolutionary socialist groups as diverse as Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL) and League of Revolutionaries for a New America (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LRNA) (LRNA). FRSO publishes a good journal, Freedom Road Magazine (http://www.freedomroad.org/fr/fr.html).
<A href="http://www.socialism.com/" target=_blank>Freedom Socialist Party: The founders of the FSP were originally the Seattle branch of the Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP). This branch opposed many of the opportunistic and un-democratic methods of the SWP, including uncritically supporting Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, whose goals (in the FSP's opinion) would merely separate the American working class. This dissident branch left the SWP following the 1966 national convention, which was fought over the SWP's characterization of the left-wing of the anti-Vietnam War movement as "Stalinist." The FSP sought to help blacks through "revolutionary integration," (an idea later adopted by the Spartacist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPL)) which would not divide the working class in the manner that Black nationalism would. The FSP grew beyond Seattle, and eventually made all the way to Canada and Australia. Strongly feminist, internationalist, and anti-racist, the FSP combines traditional Trotskyist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR) ideals with more modern left-wing causes, including environmentalism, human rights, and gay liberation. The FSP has recently attempted to join the Trotskyist Fourth International (http://reds.linefeed.org/usfi.html) (USFI). Strongly anti-sectarian, the FSP often helps other socialist groups get on the ballot, most recently helping the Socialist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPUSA) get on the 2000 ballot in Washington; in turn, the Socialist Party of Oregon is helping the FSP gain ballot access in Oregon. Further showing willingness to work with others, the FSP supported the Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, and others during the 2000 elections. Current national secretary is Henry Noble. The FSP publishes a quarterly journal, The Freedom Socialist (http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/newspapr.html). The FSP is one of the most active far-left organizations in the Pacific Northwest.
Green Party (http://www.greenpartyus.org/): Founded in July 2001 by the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) and some supporters of the Greens USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GUSA), hoping to establish a strong, unified Green Party in the US following the success of Green candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 (2.75% in the presidential election). This new GP has formed a National Committee and is seeking recognition from the Federal Elections Commission (http://www.fec.gov/). However, the Green Party of the US mainly follows the center-left (social democratic (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#SD)) pragmatism of the ASGP, disregarding the more radical views of the Greens USA. Itis hard to tell whether this GP will increase its voting percentage in the 2004 Presidential election, but it is hoping to field a number of candidates in the 2002 elections. See the number of votes the Greens have received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#GP)
Greens USA (http://www.greens.org/): Environmental organization founded in August of 1991 after much effort to create a success story like the German (http://www.gruene.de/) and French (http://reds.linefeed.org/france.html#LV) Green parties. For ten years, the G-USA was known as the "Green Party USA." However, in 1996, a moderate GP-USA faction, frustrated that the party's radical politics were not winning converts, formed the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP). After an angry battle for power, the ASGP won, pulling in much more support than the older GP-USA. In the end, the ASGP let the GP-USA join them, but only after they took the "Party" out of their name. To the dismay of many, the "Greens USA" now serve only as the left wing (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#LW) of the new Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP). They publish a journal, Synthesis & Regeneration (http://www.greens.org/s-r/). See the number of votes the Greens have received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#GP)
Industrial Workers of the World (http://www.iww.org/): The IWW was a radical trade union formed in 1905 by radical Syndicalists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#SY) and other leftists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#LW) who opposed the pro-capitalist, conservative policies of the American Federation of Labor (http://www.aflcio.org/). "The Wobblies," as the IWW members were called, included many members of the Socialist Party of America (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SDUSA), the Socialist Labor Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SLP), and many other radical left-wing groups. During the 1910's, the IWW was of great influence in terms of the rights of American workers. Many well-known people, including John Reed (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/johnreed.html) (the only American ever to be buried in the Kremlin), Mother Jones (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/motherjones.html), Bill Haywood (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/haywood.html), Joe Hill, and others turned to the "One Big Union" idea of the IWW, hoping that all of the world's labor couldunite and stand up against their capitalist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#CP) oppressors. After the government intervened in IWW activity in 1917, the IWW's influence quickly fell off. The IWWalso became Anarcho (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#AN)-Syndicalist, driving many away from it (including one of its founders, Eugene Debs (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/debs.html)). The IWW today is more a support group for radical workers than an actual labor union. The only way this organization could succeed at reinvigorating itself is if it works to organize the segments of the working class the AFL-CIO is unwilling to touch — a mission members seem to be starting to realize.
International Socialist Organization (http://www.internationalsocialist.org/): Formed in 1977 by supporters of British theorist Tony Cliff (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/cliff.html) who had instigated a split in Hal Draper's International Socialists (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#IS). The new ISO, led by Cal and Barbara Wilson, quickly affiliated with the British Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukgroups.html#SWP) and its International Socialist Tendency (http://www.istendency.org/), as well as publishing a newspaper (Socialist Worker (http://www.socialistworker.org/). As the American wing of the SWP/UK, the ISO shared its mother party's views that Soviet Communism was "state capitalism" diverging from Draper's ideas of bureaucratic collectivism. In the early 1980's, the Wilsons were removed from the leadership of the ISO and replaced when Ahmed Shawki (a British SWP member) came to the US; the SWP/UK hoped to keep a shorter leash on the ISO this way. ISO member Joel Greier travelled to Canada and met with student activists in the New Democratic Party (http://www.ndp.ca/) and subsequently formed a sister group in Canada, the International Socialists (http://www.socialist.ca/). Under Shawki's command, the small ISO group grew by organizing on university campuses. They talked less and less frequently about Leninism, while more and more organizing around liberal hot topics. While claiming to have between 800-1000 members, the ISO goes through a high rate of member turnovers (i.e., people joining and leaving the group quickly). This is because they demand every member be a cadre (activist) — selling ISO papers, organizing and funding ISO events, and subordinating themselves to the rather undemocratic "regime" of Ahmed Shawki. In 2000, the ISO picked up a large number of new members by working and supporting the campaign of the Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP)'s Ralph Nader. In 2001, after a battle between Shawki and the leaders of the SWP/UK, the ISO was expelled from the International Socialist Tendency. A small group of ISO members broke off to form a new American section of the IST; this group calls itself Left Turn (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LT). Subsequently, the ISO has begun to establish new international relations, especially with the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (http://www.dsp.org.au/). Besides publishing Socialist Worker, the ISO also publishes a good magazine, International Socialist Review (http://www.isreview.org/). Unfortunately, the ISO regime has a stranglehold on internal debate, and puts forward whimsical theories — such as demanding that Israel and the occupied terrorities should be re-invented as "Secular Palestine" (a truly impossible dream considering that both Israelis and Palestinians are blinded by nationalism and religious fundamentalism).
Labor Party (http://www.thelaborparty.org/): Formed in June 1996 in Cleveland, Ohio, by Adolf Reed's Labor Party Advocates (LPA) — as well as a number of left-leaning unions, including the United Electrical Workers (http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/) (UE), International Longshoremen (ILWU), American Federation of Government Employees (http://www.afge.org/), California Nurses Association (http://www.igc.org/cna/), United Mine Workers of America (http://www.umwa.org/), and numerous locals of other unions. The union leaders that founded the Labor Party sought to pull the unions away from their traditional dependency on the Democratic Party (http://www.democrats.org/). Many leftist groups (from DSA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#DSA) to Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL) to Socialist Action (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SAC)) saw the birth of the Labor Party as the creation of the mass workers' party which they had been waiting to see for decades. Unfortunately, from the very beginning at the founding convention, the labor bureaucrats had more voting power than the rank and file, and were able to halt attempts to run candidates against Democrats until 1998. In 1998, the bureaucrats passed motions that basically prevented Labor candidates from running with the party's blessing unless there was a very good chance that they would win. Despite this, the Labor Party does good work — publishing the bi-monthly Labor Party Press (http://www.thelaborparty.org/a_lpp.html) and leading the "Just Health Care (http://www.justhealthcare.org/)" campaign for a national healthcare service. In Wyoming, where the Democrats are weak, the Labor Party also initiated an electoral bloc (a "Blue-Green Alliance (http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/)") with the Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP) in 1998. The LP has also initiated a think-tank organization, the Debs Jones Douglass Institute (http://www.djdinstitute.org/). Present national headquarters is in Washington DC, where the next Labor Party constitutional convention and conference will be held July 25-28, 2002. Though the LP suffers from stagnation due to the bureaucrats' stranglehold on the organization, hopefully this can change with the efforts of the rank and file activists.
Labor Militant: See Socialist Alternative (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SAL).
League of Revolutionaries for a New America (http://www.lrna.org/league.html): Founded in 1968 as the California Communist League by Nelson Peery and his supporters (former members of the Communist Party USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CPUSA)). In 1974, the CCL had a national convention and created the "Communist Labor Party" (CLP). The CLP considered themselves traditional Stalinists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#ST) and Maoists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#MA), and opposed the direction that the Communist Party USA was taking by supporting "revisionism" in Russia. Peery claimed that the millions killed in Stalin's purges were "counter-revolutionaries," and that the purges were the "most humane industrialization" of a nation in history. Nelson Peery blasted the Communist Party for being "anarchists" and "syndicalists." Peery's writings also seem to illustrate a deep-seated fear of automation and machinization. Shortly after the CLP's formation, it was one of the few Maoist organizations to move back toward the CP-USA — serving as a sort of orthodox opposition. Due to the fall of the Soviet Union and a near consensus of the international Left that Stalin was responsible for its demise, the Communist Labor Party dissolved in January of 1993 and reformed into the "League of Revolutionaries for a New America" (LRNA). Today, they try to downplay their Stalinist ideology, but that doesn't mean they no longer follow it. In 2000, the LRNA supported the Presidential campaign of the Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP)'s Ralph Nader. They are mostly located in Chicago, and have been rarely seen there since the days they were called the CLP.
Left Party: See <A href="http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SAL">Socialist Alternative. Left Turn (http://www.left-turn.org/): Formed in early 2001 by ex-members of the ISO (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#ISO) who still supported the British Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukgroups.html#SWP) (SWP). Left Turn quickly became the American affiliate of the SWP's International Socialist Tendency (http://www.istendency.org/) (IST) and is working to catch up with the ISO in terms of an activist base. It is unclear what course Left Turn will take. Though initially making postures at a merger with Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL), the group now seems happy to remain independent of any other organization. It is likely that, with the support of the British SWP franchise, Left Turn will continue to grow and perhaps eventually eclipse the ISO.
Maoist Internationalist Movement (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/): A tiny sect of Maoist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#MA) revolutionaries, formed in October 1983 from an old SDS (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDS) splinter, "RADACADS." Originally known as the "Revolutionary Internationalist Movement" (RIM), the MIM changed its name in 1984 after the Revolutionary Communist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#RCP) took the name RIM for its international organization. The MIM broke with the RCP officially over the issue of the war in El Salvador and the role of the FMLN. Virulently anti-Trotskyist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR), the MIM labels nearly every group it dislikes as demonstrating some form of "Trotskyist revisionism." They even label their fellow Maoists at the RCP "Crypto-Trotskyists (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/wim/wyl/crypto.html)"! Their organization's line also includes right-wing moralist ideas, including homophobia and refusing a woman's right to abortion. Obviously a group of aging New Left cooks, the MIM has only a small clustered membership in Western Massachussetts, Detroit and the Berkeley area. If the MIM used its time for positive organizing instead of blasting possible allies, perhaps some good could be accomplished.
News and Letters (http://www.newsandletters.org/): This entry coming soon.
Peace & Freedom Party (http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/): Founded in the 1960's as a left-wing party opposed to the Vietnam War, the PFP reached its peak of support in 1968 when it nominated Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver for President. Although a convicted felon, Cleaver carried nearly 37,000 votes. Famed "baby doctor" Benjamin Spock — a Democratic Socialist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#DS) and staunch opponent of the Vietnam War — was the PFP Presidential nominee in 1972. Since then, the PFP was often used by smaller extremist groups who were after its California ballot spot. In 1996, the PFP successfully blocked an attempt by the Workers World Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#WWP) to capture the PFP's Presidential nomination for the WWP's Monica Moorehead. The PFP 1996 Presidential candidate, Marsh Feinland, garnered over 25,000 votes in California. Unfortunately, in 1998, the PFP failed to attract more than 2% in any statewide election, causing them to lose ballot status in the state. There is currently a legal battle (supported by prominent leftists such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky) to get the PFP back on the California ballot. Hopefully, this initiative will succeed. [The PFP is not included in the chart at the top of this page because their individual members could literally occupy any part of this map, and it is hard to gage their true membership.] See the number of votes the PFP has received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#PFP)
Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plp.org/): Formed in June 1962 in New York as the Progressive Labor Movement by about fifty former members of the Communist Party USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CPUSA) who considered themselves Maoists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#MA). The founders of the PLM sympathized with China in what became known as the Sino-Soviet Split — putting them in direct opposition to the CP-USA's "revisionist" line. Early on in the organization's existence, the leaders of the PLM traveled to Cuba and defied State Department orders against this. The PLM was also one of the earliest activist organizations against the Vietnam war (through the PLM-dominated "May 2nd Movement"). By 1964, the PLM had about 600-800 members and growing. In the summer of 1965, the PLM was renamed the "Progressive Labor Party" (PLP), and in 1966 the PLP was given a highly centralized command structure and a mission to enter Students for a Democratic Society (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDS) (SDS). The PLP supported a very workerist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#WO) and "Old Left" perspective concerning its members, opposing drug use and counter-culture atire because the leaders felt these things alienated youth from the workers' movement. At the 1969 SDS convention, PLP succeeded in taking over the organization; while many remained with the PLP, most left to form other groups. During the 1970's, the PLP denounced Mao Zedong as a traitor when he met with Richard Nixon in 1972. The PLP took up an anti-revisionist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#AR) form of Stalinism and supported the "true socialist" regimes of Albania and North Korea. They are one of the few leftist groups that supports a violent execution of the entire upper class (à la Pol Pot's Cambodia). The tiny sect that remains of the PLP exists only in portions of California and New York. They publish a Stalinist newspaper, Challenge.
Revolutionary Communist Party (http://www.rwor.org/home-e.htm): Founded as the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU) in the early 1970's by Maoist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#MA) Bob Avakian. Avakian's Revolutionary Union was one of the factions of Students for a Democratic Society (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDS) who opposed the Progressive Labor Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#PLP). Since 1975, Avakian has created a web of youth/minority/worker protest groups, all quietly commanded by the RCP. These front groups would include Refuse & Resist (http://www.refuseandresist.org/) (founded by RCPer Clark Kissinger), the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru (http://www.csrp.org/), Mumia 911, and many others. The popular radical rock band Rage Against the Machine (http://www.ratm.com/enter.html) supports the RCP and many of its measures (including the right to burn the American flag). The black radical and deathrow inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (http://reds.linefeed.org/mumia.html) is also an RCP supporter, though probably not a member. Though very convinced it has the right answers to problems of minorities in America, the RCP has been blasted by groups such as the Black Autonomy Network (http://www.illegalvoices.org/apoc/knowledge/articles/ideas/jackson.html) for being a mostly white, mostly middle-class (yuppy) radical organization. Also, until very recently, the RCP took up the Maoist idea that homosexuality is "bourgeois decadence"; they finally came around to changing this in 2001 (http://www.rwor.org/margorp/homosexuality.htm) (just barely beating Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson at coming to this conclusion). The RCP publishes a newspaper, the Revolutionary Worker (http://www.rwor.org/). The RCP also has an international federation, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (http://www.rwor.org/s/corim.htm) (RIM), which includes the Communist Party (Shining Path) of Peru (http://www.pcp-mpp.org/) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (http://www.maoism.org/misc/nepal/nepal.htm). Chairman Avakian is currently in "exile" in France, hiding from the FBI. Overall, the RCP is a very centralized and authoritarian group. RCP email address. ([email protected])
Revolutionary Workers League (http://www.rwl-us.org/): Formed in 1976 as a split from the Spartacist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPL), the RWL is a dogmatic and intensely militant Trotskyist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR) group based in Detroit. Little is seen of them outside of Michigan and California state, and (like the Spartacist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPL)) they demand the devotion of all their members. They have set up a network of puppet organizations: the National Women's Rights Organizing Committee (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6428/) (NWROC, founded 1980's), the Committee to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary (http://www.bamn.com/main.htm) (BAMN, founded 1995), and others. These front groups are where the RWL's primary activism takes place. They often practice entryism — entering larger organizations and trying to bend them toward their own ideology. The most recent case of this occurred in Oakland, California (far from their home base), where BAMN supporters tried to take over the local teachers' union, the OEA (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2001-04-20/feature.html/printable_page).A group that split with the RWL during the Gulf War, the Trotskyist League (http://www.4intl.org/), would break from the RWL’s traditional entryism and work with Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL) and other groups, though maintaining their ultra-left stance. No matter what group they enter, RWL will never win many converts to their extreme tactics.
Social Democrats USA: This group is moribund and nearly completely defunct. See their entry in the Old American Red Groups (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDUSA).
Socialist Action (http://www.socialistaction.org/): Group formed by Nat and Sylvia Weinstein, Les Evans, and other Trotskyists in 1983 upon their expulsion from the Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP), which had replaced Trotskyist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR) ideas with those of Fidel Castro. Socialist Action began publishing a militant left newspaper and applied to join the Fourth International (http://reds.linefeed.org/usfi.html) (USFI), the largest federation of Trotskyists in the world. SA is a member of the USFI's left minority, which includes Socialist Action of Canada (http://www.socialistaction.ca/) and the Chinese Revolutionary Communist Party (http://members.tripod.com/~cpri/or.html). Les Evans left SA in 1985 and formed Socialist Unity, which would soon join other groups in forming Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL). Another SA split, Activists for Independent Socialist Politics (AISP), joined Committees of Correspondence (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CCDS) before eventually also joining Solidarity. SA has shown its still-close relationship with the Socialist Workers Party by supporting every SWP Presidential candidate and showing strong support for Cuban Communists and Fidel Castro. Though it had always been very small, SA had always been very active in labor, women and minority demonstrations. They strongly support Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners. In 1997, due to their group's increase in size, SA created a youth wing, Youth for Socialist Action (http://www.geocities.com/youth4sa/). Also, their Socialist Action newspaper has gained a circulation of thousands. Current national secretary of Socialist Action is Jeff Mackler, one of the leaders of the The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (http://www.freemumia.org/).
Socialist Alternative (http://www.socialistalternative.org/): Known as the Labor Militant until they changed their name in 1999. This group was founded in 1986 by supporters of the British Militant Tendency (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukpast.html#MT) (which had gained much attention for their clandestine entry into the Labour Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukgroups.html#LP) in the early 1980's) in the hopes of forming an international network. (They succeeded in forming such a network, which is now known as the Committee for a Workers International (http://www.worldsocialist-cwi.org/) CWI.) Socialist Alternative opposes both Black and Irish nationalism. They want an American style of the Labour Party to "fight for the end of domination of big business over U.S. society through nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy." They opportunistically backed Ralph Nader for President in 2000, but they want him to leave the Green Party and start supporting the party which he actually is a member of, the Labor Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LP). Recently, the CWI has been pressuring Socialist Alternative to compete with the ISO in organizing on university campuses. The CWI also wanted Socialist Alternative to de-emphasize support of Nader. These squabbles have caused a number of splits, including the New York Socialist Alliance (http://www.geocities.com/nysaproject/) and Labor's Militant Voice (http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com/). Recently, a Socialist Alternative faction (from Minneapolis and San Francisco) led by former Morenist (http://www.litci.com/) Carlos Petroni was expelled and "founded" the Left Party (http://www.leftparty.org/), a "paper" organization of about a dozen activists; their only success has been a terrific ability to promote their website on email lists. All in all, Socialist Alternative is a factionalistic and opportunistic group whose leadership jumps to any whim of the CWI and British Socialist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukgroups.html#SP).
Socialist Labor Party (http://www.slp.org/): Founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1877 as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party that would become the Socialist Labor Party was a confederation of small Marxist parties from throughout the United States, becoming the first nation-wide Socialist party and only the second one of the so-called "third parties" (the Prohibition Party (http://www.prohibition.org/) being the first). In 1890, the SLP came under the leadership of the famous (and infamous) doctrinaire, Daniel De Leon (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/deleon.html), a lawyer how lectured at Columbia Law School. From that point to the present, the SLP has adhered to the form of orthodox Marxism known as DeLeonism (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#DE). This caused De Leon's opponents, led by Morris Hillquit (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/hillquit.html), to leave the SLP in 1901. Hillquit's "Kangaroo" faction fused with Eugene Debs (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/debs.html)'s Social Democratic Party and formed the Socialist Party of America (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SPA). From that point forward, the SLP lived in the shadow of the much larger and popular Socialist Party. And later, the SLP lost even more footing when two other parties, the Communist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CPUSA) and the Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP) began capturing militant Marxists who would have otherwise joined the SLP. Always critical of both the Soviet Union and of the Socialist Party's "reformism," the SLP has been isolated from the majority of the American Left, and that isolation seems to be ever-increasing. In 1976, the SLP ran its last Presidential race, and hasn't run many campaigns since then. They recently have been having trouble even funding their newspaper, The People (http://www.slp.org/tp.htm). Due to their die-hard, puritanical politics, the SLP is likely to continue to whither away, much like the Prohibition Party has. See the number of votes the SLP received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#SLP)
Socialist Party USA (http://www.sp-usa.org/): The Socialist Party USA is one of the heirs to the Socialist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SPA) of Eugene V. Debs (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/debs.html) and Norman Thomas (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/thomas.html). Formed as the "Debs Caucus" in the old Socialist Party, the founders of the SP-USA were the most left-wing of the forces who opposed the right-wing leadership which renamed the old Socialist Party as Social Democrats USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SDUSA) (SDUSA). Leaving SDUSA, the Debs Caucus reconstituted the Socialist Party in 1973. Several old Socialist leaders, including Milwaukee Mayor Frank P. Zeidler (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/zeidler.html), Quinn Brisben and David McReynolds, became leaders of the new party, and the organization began fielding candidates once again for President in 1976. In 1980, the SP was the first party to field an openly gay man for President — peace activist David McReynolds. In the 1980's, the SP grew slowly, but this changed in the 1990's. Karen Kubby, a Socialist Party member from Iowa City, was elected to the City Council in 1990. More recently, black unionist Wendell Harris of Milwaukee won 20 percent of the vote in the 2000 Mayoral election. The party has consequently grown from 600 in nearly 1,500 in just the past 5 years. However, power struggles have arisen over recent issues between the ultra-left Boston local of the SP and several other locals. This infighting has caused a lot of effort to be wasted on negative factionalism, but hopefully this will soon pass. The SP publishes a magazine, The Socialist (http://www.sp-usa.org/socialist/), and an internal discussion bulletin, ARISE!. See the number of votes the Socialist Party has received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#SP)
Socialist Workers Party (http://www.themilitant.com/): Formed on January 1, 1938, from the Communist League of America (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#CLA) after it was expelled from the Socialist Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SPA) by the SP's moderate leadership. Leaders of the early SWP included James P. Cannon (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/cannon.html), Max Shachtman (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/shachtman.html), Martin Abern, George Novack, and others. The SWP had taken from the Socialist Party many sympathizers from their youth section, YPSL (http://www.ypsl.org/). The Trotskyists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR) of the SWP also had won over many militant unionists (such as Farrell Dobbs (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/dobbs.html)) after the success of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes on 1934. The SWP became one of the strongest groups during the founding of Trotsky's Fourth International on September 3, 1938. The SWP paper, The Militant (http://www.themilitant.com/), became one of the key papers of the American Left. However, political infighting occurred early-on; Shachtman left in 1939 and founded the Independent Socialist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#ISL). Because of their criticism of World War II (calling it a war between two rival imperialist alliances), many SWP leaders (including Cannon and Dobbs) were imprisoned under the Smith Act of 1941. Most of them spent their time in Sandstone Prison and were released after the war. When the pragmatic Trotskyist, Michel Pablo, became leader of the Fourth International's "International Secretariat" in 1953, Cannon's SWP joined the British Socialist Labour League (http://reds.linefeed.org/ukpast.html#SLL) and French PCI in forming a rival group — the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). However, in 1963, Pablo's Secretariat (now led by Ernest Mandel (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/mandel.html)) and the SWP (now under the leadership of Farrell Dobbs (http://reds.linefeed.org/bios/dobbs.html)) reunited to form the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (http://reds.linefeed.org/usfi.html) (USFI). A faction of the SWP, still loyal to the ICFI, founded the "Revolutionary Tendency" in 1959 and was expelled in 1964; this group became the Spartacist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPL) and Workers League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#WL). During the 1960's, the SWP became one of the strongest supporters of the Cuban Revolution, and played a strong role in the New Left through their youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA). In 1973, Jack Barnes replaced Farrell Dobbs as the SWP's national secretary. Barnes (who had come from the New Left and not the labor movement) was a Castroist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#CA) and expelled hundreds of Trotskyists during the 1970's and 1980's. He also ordered that SWP members "move into industry" and take factory jobs to get closer to the workers. He criticized Trotsky's theories and instead supported Lenin's idea of a two-stage revolution and the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (a dual government of farmers and workers which Lenin himself abandoned after 1917). This theory is very impractical in the US, because most farmers/peasants are very conservative. Internationally, Barnes formed a number of Communist Leagues (http://reds.linefeed.org/c_leagues.html), creating a small international SWP network. Most expelled American Trotskyists went on to form the groups Solidarity (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SOL) and Socialist Action (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SAC). The remainder of the SWP has became an isolated sect, doing little more than selling issues of The Militant and Pathfinder Press (http://www.pathfinderpress.com/) books to financially support Jack Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters. They came under severe criticism everywhere when they sued the Marxist Internet Archive (http://www.marxists.org/) for posting several Trotsky works that the SWP had copyrighted (http://www.seeseiten.de/user/prag/MIA-english.html). This shriveled-up and dying group is a sad end to the revolutionary party Trotsky hoped to see develope. See the number of votes the SWP has received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#SWP)
Solidarity (http://www.solidarity-us.org/): Formed in 1986 from the fusion of the International Socialists (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#IS), Socialist Unity (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#SU), and Workers' Power (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html#WPOW). Solidarity was named after the Polish Solidarnosc — at that time an independent labor union that challenged the Soviet Union from the left. From the beginning, Solidarity was an avowedly pluralist organization that included traditional Trotskyists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR), left-wing Shachtmanites (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#SH), and Luxemburgists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#LU). Founded on the basis of far-left regroupment, Solidarity sought to unite with other groups and create a large revolutionary-socialist and feminist party. Calling for a mass Labor Party, Solidarity also had substantial impact in the trade union movement, especially in Teamsters for a Democratic Union (http://www.tdu.org/) (TDU). It has also had great success in circulating thousands of copies of its journal, Against the Current (http://www.igc.org/solidarity/indexATC.html). During the 1990's, Solidarity has had two organizations merge with it — the Forth Internationalist Tendency (a group expelled from the SWP (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP)) in September 1992 and Activists for Independent Socialist Politics (a Socialist Action (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SAC) split that had previously worked in Committees of Correspondence (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#CCDS)). It has also initiated internal fractions that work inside the Labor Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LP) and the Green Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#GP). In 2000, Solidarity endorsed both the Green Party's Ralph Nader and the Socialist Party's David McReynolds for President. Recently, discussions of "Left Refoundation" have also been initiated between Solidarity and groups such as Left Turn (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#LT), Freedom Road Socialist Organization (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#FRSO), and Detroit's Trotskyist League. Further, many members of the organization are also interested in stronger relations (if not a merger) with the Socialist Party USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPUSA). Hopefully, this sort of initiative on Solidarity's part will continue. Besides publishing Against the Current, Solidarity also publishes an internal discussion bulletin, Solidarity News.
Spark (http://www.union-communiste.org/eng/dir-eng.htm): Formed in 1971 by Kay Ellens and supporters of the French group Lutte Ouvrière (http://reds.linefeed.org/france.html#LO) who left the Spartacist League (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPL). Like their French mentors, Spark suffers from a great deal of workerism (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#WO), often talking down to workers in their paper Spark. Spark makes a fetish out of faux Bolshevik clandestine activity — the identities of their commanders are never revealed, most Spark activists are not members of the organization, and Spark members use fake names to "fool" the authorities. The newspaper Spark has horrible layout, large print, and simple language to "appeal" to industrial workers, while Spark's journal Class Struggle is meant to be a "theoretical" publication. In general, all the isolationist and elitist mannerisms of the Spartacists are ten times worse in the sectarian sect known as Spark.
Spartacist League (http://www.spartacist.org/): Originally formed as the "Revolutionary Tendency" of the Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP), the Spartacist League was formed in 1964 when they were expelled from the SWP for not supporting the Cuban revolution, as well as opposing the SWP's part in the "revisionist" United Secretariat of the Fourth International (http://reds.linefeed.org/usfi.html) (USFI). Led by James Robertson, the SL was named after Rosa Luxemburg's Spartakusbund (the precursor to the German Communist Party). Though the Spartacists consider themselves to be orthodox Trotskyists (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR), their Trotskyism is infused with a great deal of Left Communist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#LC) ideology. The SL's international wing, the International Spartacist Tendency (now known as the International Communist League (http://www.icl-fi.org/)), was formed in 1974 and has managed to establish a number of small parties in numerous countries. The "Sparts" are known by much of the Left for their cult-like dedication to their group and their sectarian attitude toward other groups. In 1973, the SL tried to take over the Socialist Party USA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SPUSA) at its national convention, but were expelled. Since the 1970's, the SL has also been criticized for its strong support of "revolutionary" actions by the Soviet Union, including the Red Army invasion of Afghanistan and the repression of the Polish Solidarnosc trade union. During the fall of East Germany in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the SL attempted to organize the workers of those nations to oppose both Gorbachev and the western capitalists, but without much success. One of the Spartacist organizers in Russia, Martha Phillips, was murdered during this period — possibly by the Stalinist groups she was working with. The Spartacist League suffered two large splits: the first being the formation of the International Bolshevik Tendency (http://www.bolshevik.org/) in 1985 and in 1996 a group formed by the expelled SL newspaper editor, Jan Norden (known as the Internationalist Group (http://www.internationalist.org/)). The Spartacists have been known to get into brawls with far-right groups such as the KKK (http://www.kukluxklan.org/) and the World Church of the Creator (http://www.creator.org/main.html), but have also become violent at meetings of the ISO (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#ISO) and DSA (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#DSA). Two SL front organizations are the Partisan Defense Committee ([email protected]) (dedicated to "defending class-war prisoners") and the Prometheus Research Library (a collection of historical Trotskyist documents). Overall, the Spartacist League is one of the most sectarian and ultra-left groups in the American Left. Spartacist e-mail address ([email protected]).
Workers World Party (http://www.workers.org/): The Workers World Party was founded by Sam Marcy (http://www.workers.org/marcy/) in 1959 when he left the Socialist Workers Party (http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html#SWP). Over time, Marcy's political ideology had warped from Trotskyism (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#TR) to an unusual form of Stalinism (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#ST). The WWP claimed that it supported the rights of workers, but supported the overthrow of workers by the Soviet Union in places like Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The Workers World Party nominated its first candidate for office in 1980. Though the WWP is small, its membership is highly dedicated and can accomplish much. In 1996, the WWP succeeded in capturing a ballot spot in California which led to WWP Presidential candidate Monica Moorehead getting over 29,000 votes (mainly from California) in 1996. Moorehead once again ran for President in 2000 under the WWP ballot, but this time received less than 5,000 votes. The WWP has created a number of front organizations, including the International Action Center (http://www.iacenter.org/) (which has been involved in the anti-globalization demonstrations) and the newly-formed ANSWER (http://www.internationalanswer.org/) (an anti-war group). On May 10, FBI Director Louis Freeh named the WWP as a "domestic terrorist group" without providing any evidence, paving the way for future attacks on civil liberties on groups for merely having different opinions than the mainstream. This has brought sympathy from many leftists toward the WWP. However, the WWP continues to do things which will turn leftists away from them, including backing the Kimist (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html#KI) dictators of North Korea and supporting the efforts of the anti-Semitic, chauvinistic Russian Communist Workers Party (http://www.rkrp-rpk.ru/) (RKRP). Overall, Workers World is one of the most authoritarian groups on the Left today. See the number of votes the WWP received in Presidential elections. (http://reds.linefeed.org/votes.html#WWP)

Home (http://reds.linefeed.org/)
Red Vocabulary (http://reds.linefeed.org/vocab.html)
Old American Red Groups (http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html)
Links (http://reds.linefeed.org/links.html)

I've been doing some reading on the various socialist/communist parties in the U.S. and I've got a question. I've read over the platform of both the Communist Party U.S.A. and the Socialist Party U.S.A. and honestly they both same very similar and I was just wondering if anyone here was familiar with either of them could maybe tell the difference? I read the wikipedia articles and it says the Socialist Party spilt from the Communist Party because they support Trotsky as opposed to Stalin.

manic expression

24th March 2011, 10:19

In other words you would agree that Tankie, in the literal sense of the word, is very appopriate description of your position? I would love to see you more explicit in your endorsements of represson of working class militants. Which country has the most effective secret service? Is china or iran better at beating down worker's dissent? Why are there no statements of support in your newspaper when, to take one example, the iranian regime execute labour activists? After all that is your position. But I guess your silence is quite telling as well. Not to mention your comrade Mugabe has apparently arrested a bunch of those hated ISO:ers. Shouldnt that warrant you issuing a statement of support? For Mugabe, I mean.
Still sore over the last time we discussed all this? No matter. "Tankie" has no political substance, it's a pejorative used by those who aren't acute enough to grasp the matters at hand firmly. The re-liberation of Hungary was not a suppression of working-class militants but a defeat of imperialist collaborators who lynched socialists and promoted capitalist parties. Our newspaper concentrates on opposing imperialism and fighting the crimes of capitalism, not in joining the Sinophobic and anti-Iranian chorus as you do. It's unfortunate you don't see the difference. But what else can we expect from a tendency that thinks newspaper statements are the be-all-end-all of political activity?

Dear CWI,

We really appreciate all the great political work you've done over the past few years.

Sincerely,
No One

Crux

24th March 2011, 15:54

Still sore over the last time we discussed all this? No matter. "Tankie" has no political substance, it's a pejorative used by those who aren't acute enough to grasp the matters at hand firmly. The re-liberation of Hungary was not a suppression of working-class militants but a defeat of imperialist collaborators who lynched socialists and promoted capitalist parties. Our newspaper concentrates on opposing imperialism and fighting the crimes of capitalism, not in joining the Sinophobic and anti-Iranian chorus as you do. It's unfortunate you don't see the difference. But what else can we expect from a tendency that thinks newspaper statements are the be-all-end-all of political activity?

Dear CWI,

We really appreciate all the great political work you've done over the past few years.

Sincerely,
No One
I am sure Ahamadinejad appreciates your work. Oh let me guess antistalinism is "antirussian" as well? :laugh:
That's strange, I thought you liked lynchings of socialists? Of course I suppose it more pleasant to safely delude yourself over there in U.S. After all you run little risk of ever having to face up to your standpoints.

I see you're getting desperate. Just this week we saved a romani family's life here in sweden, by hiding the mother and the children and blockading the deportation of the father.
We've sometimes helped stop deportations to Iran and China as well, so clealrly that shows how "anti-iranian" and "sinophobe" we are. Although I guess with loyalities such as yours you would have probably helped the police send them back.
Of course these are just examples of one aspect of what we are doing here in sweden.

As for the OP, as has been mentioned before the american section of the organization I am in is Socialist Alternative, naturally much of what they are doing now is focused on the struggle in Wisconsin: http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1566

Chimurenga.

24th March 2011, 17:15

I am sure Ahamadinejad appreciates your work.

I see you're getting desperate.

More like you are getting desperate.

Crux

24th March 2011, 19:16

More like you are getting desperate.
Because you are not backing Ahmadinejad? Since when? I mean I can at least hope they're paying you, for your sake.

I was responding to one of your ever-full-of-themselfes comrades. I mean to be honest, your political record is quite shit and all you do is trying to evade that. Your own parties statements are clear enough though. What I am asking is: why deny it? No doubt there is enough executions for plenty of articles for Liberation about the elmination of the "enemies of the revolution" in Iran. Oh and I mean your stance on the ISO members in ZImbabwe is a given. Why not publicly state so? Orare you afraid that you will lose support if you openly state your positions?

Kassad

24th March 2011, 19:26

Because you are not backing Ahmadinejad? Since when? I mean I can at least hope they're paying you, for your sake.

I was responding to one of your ever-full-of-themselfes comrades. I mean to be honest, your political record is quite shit and all you do is trying to evade that. Your own parties statements are clear enough though. What I am asking is: why deny it? No doubt there is enough executions for plenty of articles for Liberation about the elmination of the "enemies of the revolution" in Iran. Oh and I mean your stance on the ISO members in ZImbabwe is a given. Why not publicly state so? Orare you afraid that you will lose support if you openly state your positions?

We're a lot larger, a lot more active and a lot faster growing than Socialist Alternative in the U.S. could ever dream of. It's safe to say that we're not exactly concerned about "losing support."

Os Cangaceiros

24th March 2011, 19:33

I'm gonna remember to thrown on one of these next time I read this thread.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/tng1.jpg

SocialismOrBarbarism

24th March 2011, 19:42

It's on some of the lists that have been linked to but here's the website of the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party in the US and it's sister parties:

http://wsws.org/index.shtml

black magick hustla

24th March 2011, 20:37

goddamn this is such a good thread. the one eyed king of the blind versus the penny wealthy. all of youse are so full of yourselves.

NoOneIsIllegal

25th March 2011, 06:23

When are one of you going to argue against my politics? How about more specifically, my political organizations? I want to talk shit on your local 10-person branch over the internet!
GET SOME!

Crux

25th March 2011, 08:35

We're a lot larger, a lot more active and a lot faster growing than Socialist Alternative in the U.S. could ever dream of. It's safe to say that we're not exactly concerned about "losing support."
Yes, yes you're enormous, I am sure. :rolleyes:
So you're response is "we're growing (and bigger than your U.S branch, nyah!) so we don't need to care about the massive betrayal of internationalism our party does anytime it opens it's mouth on foreign policy"? Hahahaha. You probably think you're winning too. But then again you are a member of a small, self-important, group in the U.S of A. I wouldn't expect you to have any self-insight.

Jose Gracchus

25th March 2011, 11:18

I'm not a professional sectarian, so I don't have any recommendations from direct personal experience. My current participation is in student activist politics like SDS. As for the sects, I know FRSO-FBites, who are very active and do a lot of good pavement-pounding work, but I don't know how substantively 'communist' it is. Their personal politics tend to be fucking terrible, as well as how well read they are. I also know ISOites, and I don't know if they just tend to do more work through their own group alone, or what, but I do not know or see them as much. Both seems to be mostly white students, but I know more working students in ISO, to be honest (though they exist in FRSO-FB). The sectarians tend to bother me in that they are not open and transparent about their politics (to be fair, somewhat due to extreme indoctrinated anti-communism in the U.S., but I also think there is a strong element of deceptive deceit involved). I only know from my personal education and interest in left politics, as well as reading between the lines, who is who. The FRSO-FBites are much worse in this regard. They also do not discipline misogynists in their midst (I can't speak for the broader organization, only the members I have met).

I will be moving soonly to the West Coast, where I plan to maybe be involved in the SP-USA, or inquire into the Workers' Solidarity Alliance (I admire their politics and respect syndicat, who is a member and in the Bay Area, but I don't know anything about what they do on the ground, so we'll just have to wait and see). I don't mind participating in broad activist groups, but I could never join a little sect whose politics and historical claims I cannot respect.

As an aside, I think I would never consider joining PSL, my personal politics aside, from Kassad's behavior alone. He behaves like he might be more of a cleverly-programmed tape-deck, than a real person, in his reflexive, stilted, and as if from rote stumping for PSL. He awkwardly repeats the same exact wording, as if memorized from a cut-out. It makes me concerned about the organizational dynamics of the sect. I say this seriously creeped out by his stumping (which reminds me of a door-to-door evangelist, peddling his wares). I say this as someone friends with guys who carry Mao's Little Red Book, and tried to talk up Gaddafi's Libya due to its "council system". Take that for what you will, but I don't discriminate amongst comrades based purely on sectarian politics.

manic expression

25th March 2011, 11:38

I am sure Ahamadinejad appreciates your work. Oh let me guess antistalinism is "antirussian" as well? :laugh:
Not only are you insipid enough to think that opposing US imperialism is wrong, but you're also thick enough to think Stalin was Russian. :lol: Try cracking open a history book before you open your mouth.

That's strange, I thought you liked lynchings of socialists? Of course I suppose it more pleasant to safely delude yourself over there in U.S. After all you run little risk of ever having to face up to your standpoints.No, I don't, and I support progressive forces putting an end to such atrocities. You, on the other hand, blindly cheer CIA and NATO collaborators who lynch socialists on the street.

And it's nice that you think the US state is friendly to communists such as ourselves. Too bad you have no idea what you're talking about. Och jag har bott i sverige, så jag kan säga om du är mer "säker"...men du kan inte, därför du vet inte. :laugh:

I see you're getting desperate. Just this week we saved a romani family's life here in sweden, by hiding the mother and the children and blockading the deportation of the father.
We've sometimes helped stop deportations to Iran and China as well, so clealrly that shows how "anti-iranian" and "sinophobe" we are. Although I guess with loyalities such as yours you would have probably helped the police send them back.
Of course these are just examples of one aspect of what we are doing here in sweden.Now, I'm not one to dismiss acts of charity, but we are discussing political struggle, political activity. Hiding families from deportation is all well and good, but how do you reach the masses with a revolutionary platform? How do you organize workers into a revolutionary organization capable of confronting and opposing the crimes of capitalism on a society-wide basis?

As for the OP, as has been mentioned before the american section of the organization I am in is Socialist Alternative, naturally much of what they are doing now is focused on the struggle in Wisconsin: http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article10.php?id=1566So you think Walker should be recalled as well. What daring leadership. :rolleyes: Got any other newspaper statements you'd like to show us? It's evidently the only thing you have.

Kassad

25th March 2011, 17:14

As an aside, I think I would never consider joining PSL, my personal politics aside, from Kassad's behavior alone. He behaves like he might be more of a cleverly-programmed tape-deck, than a real person, in his reflexive, stilted, and as if from rote stumping for PSL. He awkwardly repeats the same exact wording, as if memorized from a cut-out. It makes me concerned about the organizational dynamics of the sect. I say this seriously creeped out by his stumping (which reminds me of a door-to-door evangelist, peddling his wares). I say this as someone friends with guys who carry Mao's Little Red Book, and tried to talk up Gaddafi's Libya due to its "council system". Take that for what you will, but I don't discriminate amongst comrades based purely on sectarian politics.

Insults don't equal a refutation of points. Come back when you have some substance to present.

Jose Gracchus

25th March 2011, 18:12

manic expression

25th March 2011, 18:27

I was speaking purely for myself. I didn't realize I needed to justify that to you. Besides, it was a tail to a substantive post based on my personal experiences. Maybe you're just not good at PR, and its not at all PSL's fault. I just think you think your reflexive "Glenn Beck and Bircher...MOST ACTIVE COMMUNIST PARTY EVAR" show, which I must have seen you hock, I dunno, verbatim like half a dozen times, comes off creepy. Not to mention you did leak it that you guys only have 65-100 members in the U.S. total. I suspect that's why you lean on some impossible-to-disprove vague qualitative BS like "most active", whatever that means.
Last I heard there were around 65-100 PSL members in the LA branch alone.

As for Sam Marcy, well, what can one say. This tendency was founded in reverence to the Soviet tanks that rolled into Budapest under cover of deceit of the Soviet Politburo, while the Prime Minister of Hungary was kidnapped after being lured on false pretenses to negotiation of the crisis - and a lifetime communist, I might add - to Romania for a couple-hour show-trial and summary execution in another nation. All in complete contempt for facts, history, and reality. I've never gotten a straight answer on why these actions vis-a-vis Hungary are justifiable, to say nothing of Marcy's orgasms in reverence to Soviet tanks. So excuse me for having a low opinion of a veritable school of historical falsification.There have been straight answers on that issue from the pro-socialist side on multiple threads...and half of those threads weren't actually about Hungary (just like this one). Do a search and you will find plenty of reasoned and evidenced arguments supporting the re-liberation of Hungary. To outline the basics briefly, capitalist forces were ascendant (several prominent capitalist parties were legalized and promoted), socialists were being attacked and murdered in the streets, the rebels were collaborating with NATO and the CIA (the Voice of America's imperialist propaganda in Hungary was later cited by rebels as influential, and CIA files have proven cooperation with imperialist agents among the rebellion), Nagy was trying to leave the Warsaw Pact and IIRC appealed to imperialist powers for aid. Due to all that and more, the Hungarian workers were on the edge of being re-enslaved by capitalism, and the timely and necessary intervention of pro-socialist forces stopped that from happening.

Blackscare

25th March 2011, 18:47

Not to mention you did leak it that you guys only have 65-100 members in the U.S. total. I suspect that's why you lean on some impossible-to-disprove vague qualitative BS like "most active", whatever that means.

I've grown more critical of the PSL lately, but to be fair this is total BS. Where did you get this from? Hell, that means that the local NYC branch, which everyone there admits is tiny, makes up 1/5 of the entire party! The two national branches AFAIK are SF and DC, which are much larger, and as Manic said one branch alone in LA has as many people as you claim the entire party consists of. Nothing I've encountered, at all, suggests what you are saying.

Kassad

25th March 2011, 18:51

Our national conference in Los Angeles pulled nearly 600 people, with a significant amount of our membership being unable to make it. I never suggested that our membership was "65-100 people" because that's a purely baseless assertion. As manic expression said, I wouldn't surprised if our branch in LA alone had that many members.

eric922

25th March 2011, 18:55

I just wanted to say thanks for all the responses. I'm currently looking at Socialist Organizer, Socialist Action, and Party for Socialism and Liberation. I love how active PSL is, but I do consider myself a Trotskist or at the very least an admirer of his, as I'm still learning his views. I just started My Life.

Lacrimi de Chiciură

25th March 2011, 19:35

We're a lot larger, a lot more active and a lot faster growing than Socialist Alternative in the U.S. could ever dream of. It's safe to say that we're not exactly concerned about "losing support."

Statements like this have no value without considering the regional differences at play in the U.S. In certain areas SA has a presence where the PSL is completely absent, and vice versa.

Self-aggrandizing is all well and good, but let's be real. There is no group in the US that can claim to be prepared to lead the revolution or even to be simply content with itself where it's at right now. There is a lot of work to be done.

And if you consider that we (Socialist Alternative) are part of an international organization (the CWI), I think you will find that it is us who are more globally-connected (in some 40+ countries) than the PSL could ever hope to be. Just last December we were able to send some members to the CWI world conference, bringing together working class activists from every continent. What international movement is the PSL involved in? Socialists have to recognize that capitalism is a world-wide phenomenon that necessitates a world-wide response. If we are all stuck in our respective national boundaries, we will never see the kind of change that we are all fighting for.

Also, I would just like to highlight that SA played an important role in the Wisconsin protests. We have a new branch forming in Madison with a number of new dues-paying members, and it was us who first started the "general strike" chant inside the capitol.

Kassad

25th March 2011, 19:40

Statements like this have no value without considering the regional differences at play in the U.S. In certain areas SA has a presence where the PSL is completely absent, and vice versa.

Self-aggrandizing is all well and good, but let's be real. There is no group in the US that can claim to be prepared to lead the revolution or even to be simply content with itself where it's at right now. There is a lot of work to be done.

And if you consider that we (Socialist Alternative) are part of an international organization (the CWI), I think you will find that it is us who are more globally-connected (in some 40+ countries) than the PSL could ever hope to be. Just last December we were able to send some members to the CWI world conference, bringing together working class activists from every continent. What international movement is the PSL involved in? Socialists have to recognize that capitalism is a world-wide phenomenon that necessitates a world-wide response. If we are all stuck in our respective national boundaries, we will never see the kind of change that we are all fighting for.

We send members to the International Communist Seminar in Brussels, which is attended by representatives from the remaining socialist countries and dozens of other countries. The conference is attended by the largest communist parties in the world. Try again.

Lacrimi de Chiciură

25th March 2011, 20:17

We send members to the International Communist Seminar in Brussels, which is attended by representatives from the remaining socialist countries and dozens of other countries. The conference is attended by the largest communist parties in the world. Try again.

A seminar is not exactly an organization, but okay. Still, the PSL does not seem to emphasize this too much, with only 2 articles related to it showing up on pslweb.org; one from 2005 and another from 2009.

The International Communist Seminar website only lists the PSL as a contributor in 2009.

Iraultzaile Ezkerreko

25th March 2011, 20:58

Also, I would just like to highlight that SA played an important role in the Wisconsin protests. We have a new branch forming in Madison with a number of new dues-paying members, and it was us who first started the "general strike" chant inside the capitol.

What? From my experience during the Wisconsin protests I never once ran into an SA person, though there were 100-200k people in the streets so it's possible I just missed them. Though I did hear rumors of an SA member in one of the Unions in Madison. Anyway, coming out of Madison I think the ISO is going to be the largest organization in the whole mid-west with a possibility to have something like five or six branches in Wisconsin. Two in Madison itself. Good to hear other Trotskyist groups are growing as well. Anyway, I'm staying out of the rest of this "PSL vs. The World" shit-fest, but I'd just like to state that I've never met an actual PSL member in real life. Ever.

Chimurenga.

25th March 2011, 21:49

What? From my experience during the Wisconsin protests.....but I'd just like to state that I've never met an actual PSL member in real life. Ever.

We were all over the place there. We had a bunch of comrades there from Chicago, DC, Indiana, and Madison. I'm not sure how you missed us but we were definitely present when you were there.

Iraultzaile Ezkerreko

25th March 2011, 23:37

We were all over the place there. We had a bunch of comrades there from Chicago, DC, Indiana, and Madison. I'm not sure how you missed us but we were definitely present when you were there.

PSL wasn't anywhere to be seen. I saw Sparts, IWW, and heard about SA. I went around the whole capitol and walked basically all over the area around the capitol and never saw any PSL people, so if they were there, they weren't open about it or in any real numbers. But, like I said, with 100-200k people on the ground, who's to say.

Crux

26th March 2011, 00:53

Crux

26th March 2011, 01:03

Not only are you insipid enough to think that opposing US imperialism is wrong, but you're also thick enough to think Stalin was Russian. :lol: Try cracking open a history book before you open your mouth.[/quoted]
Given his actions in Georgia Lenin rightly accused Stalin of acting like a big-russian nationalists, even though he wasn't russian himself. It's amazing to think a tendency such as yours actually once came out of the trotskyist movement. I mean speaking of ignorance of history.

[QUOTE]
No, I don't, and I support progressive forces putting an end to such atrocities. You, on the other hand, blindly cheer CIA and NATO collaborators who lynch socialists on the street.

Hahah "No u!". Yes, yes you have me thoroughly convinced. Your statements and positions speaks for themselfes.

And it's nice that you think the US state is friendly to communists such as ourselves. Too bad you have no idea what you're talking about. Och jag har bott i sverige, så jag kan säga om du är mer "säker"...men du kan inte, därför du vet inte. :laugh:

Inverterad amerikansk exceptonalism är fortfarande amerkansk exceptionalism. Lika vulgär och anti-marxistisk som förlagan. Och nej sverige är inget lätt ställe att arbeta i, men och andra sidan är det inte jag som konstant skryter om min egen organisations storhet.

Now, I'm not one to dismiss acts of charity, but we are discussing political struggle, political activity. Hiding families from deportation is all well and good, but how do you reach the masses with a revolutionary platform? How do you organize workers into a revolutionary organization capable of confronting and opposing the crimes of capitalism on a society-wide basis?

I took it as an example you might be able to relate to. After all your very politics are a betrayal of those chinese and iranaian comrades.
We are building on a wider level, our campaigns give us a respect and support in the immigrant community, which in turn helps our work against racism and particualrly in the suburbs, as well as our international work.
Through these campaigns we have built actual bases of support in the suburbs. It is on this basis we have elected councillors, for example. This is where our votes and our sympathisers are coming from. this is how we build bridges between ethinc swedes and immigrants in our anti-cuts campaigns. So yes I would say it is quite a political work.

So you think Walker should be recalled as well. What daring leadership. :rolleyes: Got any other newspaper statements you'd like to show us? It's evidently the only thing you have.
You are as dishonest as ever. read the article next time or don't bother responding.

Gorilla

26th March 2011, 02:23

I've been doing some reading on the various socialist/communist parties in the U.S. and I've got a question. I've read over the platform of both the Communist Party U.S.A. and the Socialist Party U.S.A. and honestly they both same very similar and I was just wondering if anyone here was familiar with either of them could maybe tell the difference?

There are actually a couple Communists in Socialist Party USA. Other than that, not much.

black magick hustla

26th March 2011, 08:26

manic expression

26th March 2011, 14:36

Given his actions in Georgia Lenin rightly accused Stalin of acting like a big-russian nationalists, even though he wasn't russian himself. It's amazing to think a tendency such as yours actually once came out of the trotskyist movement. I mean speaking of ignorance of history.
Disagree with Stalin's actions all you like (I know I do), but calling him a Russian is plainly incorrect. If you're going to criticize a communist leader, we should at least establish his nationality.

Hahah "No u!". Yes, yes you have me thoroughly convinced. Your statements and positions speaks for themselfes.You obviously are well-practiced at conceding points.

Inverterad amerikansk exceptonalism är fortfarande amerkansk exceptionalism. Lika vulgär och anti-marxistisk som förlagan. Och nej sverige är inget lätt ställe att arbeta i, men och andra sidan är det inte jag som konstant skryter om min egen organisations storhet.:lol: Vem är amerikansk exceptionalisk? Inte min organisation. Nu jag vet du vet inte var är "amerikansk exceptionalism"...känske du kan läsa wikipedia. Jag kan vänta.

Och därfor jag har arbetat i sverige, jag vet det är inte lätt där...men fortfarande vad gor din organisation? Aktion, inte ord, är viktigt. Och när du säger vi har ingen problem i Amerika du vet inte.

I took it as an example you might be able to relate to. After all your very politics are a betrayal of those chinese and iranaian comrades.
We are building on a wider level, our campaigns give us a respect and support in the immigrant community, which in turn helps our work against racism and particualrly in the suburbs, as well as our international work.
Through these campaigns we have built actual bases of support in the suburbs. It is on this basis we have elected councillors, for example. This is where our votes and our sympathisers are coming from. this is how we build bridges between ethinc swedes and immigrants in our anti-cuts campaigns. So yes I would say it is quite a political work. What campaigns? Which councilors did you get elected?

You are as dishonest as ever. read the article next time or don't bother responding.That should be appropriate...I saw little to respond to in the last one.

26th March 2011, 22:01

Disagree with Stalin's actions all you like (I know I do), but calling him a Russian is plainly incorrect. If you're going to criticize a communist leader, we should at least establish his nationality.
You're missing (or willfully diverting from?) the point. Stalin, despite being Georgian, waged a Russification policy towards national minorities.

What campaigns? Which councilors did you get elected?

Wikipedia (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A4ttvisepartiet_Socialisterna) mentions 5 councillors in Haninge and Lulea.

Jose Gracchus

27th March 2011, 01:43

Last I heard there were around 65-100 PSL members in the LA branch alone.

I'm speaking from memory, so if I'm cranked, so be it. That said, I don't particularly trust any democratic centralist party from actually honestly reporting its membership figures or anything else, for that matter.

There have been straight answers on that issue from the pro-socialist side on multiple threads...and half of those threads weren't actually about Hungary (just like this one). Do a search and you will find plenty of reasoned and evidenced arguments supporting the re-liberation of Hungary.

Bullshit. I personally participated in those threads. Usually it was WAH THE AMERICANS SAID GOOD STUFF ABOUT IT!

To outline the basics briefly, capitalist forces were ascendant (several prominent capitalist parties were legalized and promoted),

Got to love M-Ls. No population in human history has ever spontaneously mobilized to support a police state, and the only way to keep people from even discussing capitalism is via outright repression. See, the soviets in Russia didn't have a problem with needing to repress the Kadets merely to exist and to attempt to implement workers' power.

socialists were being attacked and murdered in the streets,

You mean the Stalinist secret police. Fuck 'em.

the rebels were collaborating with NATO and the CIA (the Voice of America's imperialist propaganda in Hungary was later cited by rebels as influential, and CIA files have proven cooperation with imperialist agents among the rebellion),

Proof? The only evidence you have is the VOA supported the rebellion. In fact, the rebellion broke out because of repression of celebration of basic national liberation struggle in 1848 and the repression of the popular Communist Nagy in lieu of a despised Stalinist. Of course, as usual, whether your glorious communist leader actually enjoys any support from the empirical working class (much less the poor peasantry) is irrelevant.

Nagy was trying to leave the Warsaw
Pact

So what? Hungarian workers did not want to slave for Moscow's benefit in the mines. Fuck Moscow. Something like 25% of GDP was being transferred to the USSR. Of course war guilt is something you Stalinists fall back upon "idealist" notions upon particular nations, because you are hypocrites. If you really believe the Hungarian fascist state was a fundamentally different class organism from the "people's democracy", why must the latter slave for the former's war guilt? Because you pick and choose principled based on which is convenient.

and IIRC appealed to imperialist powers for aid.

At no point did the Hungarian rebels want to join NATO. They wanted non-alignment. Of course there is no imperialist power, for you, when tanks invade and depose leaderships and hang prime ministers to an absurd fuck off proportion of GDP can continued to be sucked dry for the benefit of the tank-wielding state. No no...that's not imperialism.

Due to all that and more, the Hungarian workers were on the edge of being re-enslaved by capitalism, and the timely and necessary intervention of pro-socialist forces stopped that from happening.

Yeah, except the empirical working class formed workers' councils, and all testimony from such organs reveals that the single line which prevailed was no return to private property. But of course this is reflexive for those who understand workers' councils are class organisms and by definition cannot and would not agitate for their own exploitation.

You're a dupe. Its so obvious talking to you types that you never learn anything out of history if it isn't fed to you on a spoon by your all-knowing masters with the infallible lines in the Central Committee and from some historical corpse.

All of this is beside the point, though. The real problem with PSL and their ilk is their politics, which are based completely around forming cross-class "anti-imperialist" alliances, because there's this delusion that somehow if they prop up just enough Achmadinejads and Gaddafis that will somehow undercut American capitalism someday in the distant future and allow prospects for revolutionary politics. Other than the red drapes, they are not a workers' party, even according to the criteria delivered by Marx.

Kassad

27th March 2011, 01:50

Note The Inform Candidate's statement that his assertion that I "leaked" membership numbers for the PSL is utterly baseless. So why would we listen to anything else you say when you're just an outright liar?

Jose Gracchus

27th March 2011, 05:06

I don't know, because that defines the ad hominem? I do not expect people to believe me because of who I am, but rather the quality of the logic I employ, and the robustness of the facts I provide relative to historical data.

I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, that you are in the habit of believing or not believing things based on some appeal to personal qualities.

Was the USSR not appropriating massive reparations on the backs of the "liberated workers" of the "people's democracy" it had to prop up, against the working people, time and time again, with tanks? What working class rules, when the empirical working class is an obstacle to be crushed? Am I wrong? I can provide citations and specific scholarly works, if you would like. I'm pretty sure people have appreciated my posts in the past because I do back up what I say with evidence, not open logical fallacies and appeals to authority.

I tried to search your posts for the claim, and I must have been mistaken. I therefore retracted my claim. That is the honest thing to do. I'm sorry you were so butthurt I said that my view of PSL had been informed by the embarrassing quality of your PR skills, that you sound like you're reading off an official CC script or some shit, and whatever PSL's other virtues, that alone would alienate me. That's my opinion, if you don't like it, that's your problem. Apparently you're the one who is so huffy that I'd dismiss your PR skills and subsequently reply with some puerile "Well that's just like...your opinion....man". Only you're not funny like Jeff Bridges. I'm not going to apologize, so you can decide whether you'll derail this thread in a futile attempt to get me to assuage your communist organizer ego, or let it go because we'll never meet probably and if you have any confidence in your own abilities, it shouldn't matter. Either way, I'm not going to bother quarreling with you because you're butthurt and you think it'll help you save face. Waste. Of. My. Time.

However, I'll gladly engage anyone who actually wants to debate the argument and its factual support above in a substantive way. Again, if anyone wants the citations, I can provide them, though it will require some notice.

Gorilla

27th March 2011, 05:16

I'm not sure why Marxist-Leninists would be committed to support an invasion by that revisionist pig-fucker, Kruschev.

Jose Gracchus

27th March 2011, 08:01

What does it say that the pig-fucker had to re-shuffle the content of the Soviet Army units deployed in Hungary (a la Kronstadt and its half party "Red Army" attack units led by members of the fucking Central Committee), bringing in Central Asian conscripts because the Russian troops could talk to the masses in Budapest, and had their own working families back home. :rolleyes:

But hey, Sam Marcy is a GREAT MAN unlike me, so we'll just listen in rapture to his scriptures. Facts need not be invited.

Rusty Shackleford

27th March 2011, 10:42

NHcum9_0w2A

manic expression

27th March 2011, 12:40

I'm speaking from memory, so if I'm cranked, so be it. That said, I don't particularly trust any democratic centralist party from actually honestly reporting its membership figures or anything else, for that matter.
:rolleyes: So, in other words, you have no idea about any of this and you're not going to listen to what people involved with the PSL say about the topic. Cool. At least you admit you don't care about facts.

Bullshit. I personally participated in those threads. Usually it was WAH THE AMERICANS SAID GOOD STUFF ABOUT IT!
Yes, and there are plenty of reasoned explanations in support of the re-liberation of Hungary. I suggest you go over them with more care and attention.

Got to love M-Ls. No population in human history has ever spontaneously mobilized to support a police state, and the only way to keep people from even discussing capitalism is via outright repression. See, the soviets in Russia didn't have a problem with needing to repress the Kadets merely to exist and to attempt to implement workers' power.
First, you won't quantify what a "police state" is because it's a made-up term liberals like to use to bash socialism. Second, in order to establish and defend socialism it is oftentimes necessary to limit the political capacity of bourgeois forces. The re-liberation of Hungary did that by reversing the promotion of capitalist parties done by your man Nagy.

You mean the Stalinist secret police. Fuck 'em.
Ah, so you think socialists who defend their fellow workers from imperialism should be lynched? Some "revolutionary" you are.

Proof? The only evidence you have is the VOA supported the rebellion. In fact, the rebellion broke out because of repression of celebration of basic national liberation struggle in 1848 and the repression of the popular Communist Nagy in lieu of a despised Stalinist. Of course, as usual, whether your glorious communist leader actually enjoys any support from the empirical working class (much less the poor peasantry) is irrelevant.
Yeah, obviously you haven't read the in-depth explanations of this issue that are posted all over this forum. Read up:

…the mentality of the revolutionaries shows that almost anyone from the West, of whatever nationality, color or purpose would have been received with open arms by any of the revolutionary councils in the cities of Hungary during the period in question.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf)
(pages 83, 84, 85 and 86 are of interest, the quote comes from page 86...page 91 details rebel requests to the CIA for arms and ammunition)

So what? Hungarian workers did not want to slave for Moscow's benefit in the mines. Fuck Moscow. Something like 25% of GDP was being transferred to the USSR. Of course war guilt is something you Stalinists fall back upon "idealist" notions upon particular nations, because you are hypocrites. If you really believe the Hungarian fascist state was a fundamentally different class organism from the "people's democracy", why must the latter slave for the former's war guilt? Because you pick and choose principled based on which is convenient.
IF that is true (which you haven't proven), it's a natural part of the fact that large swathes of the USSR were demolished in the struggle to free Europe from fascism. In fact, the Soviet liberation of Hungary couldn't have come at a more pressing time, as the massacres of Jews were increasing exponentially in Budapest. Leningrad, Stalingrad, Minsk and other cities had been decimated (or worse)...working-class solidarity demanded that the workers of Hungary support the efforts of Soviet workers to rebuild.

At no point did the Hungarian rebels want to join NATO. They wanted non-alignment. Of course there is no imperialist power, for you, when tanks invade and depose leaderships and hang prime ministers to an absurd fuck off proportion of GDP can continued to be sucked dry for the benefit of the tank-wielding state. No no...that's not imperialism.
So you're going to argue that Austria, which was non-aligned, wasn't in the sphere of "the West"? Don't be silly, leaving Hungary wanted to get close and comfy with NATO, even if they weren't at that point in favor of joining. But many of the same leaders involved or else inspired by the anti-socialist revolt of 1956 did get Hungary to join NATO recently, so it just goes to show that those steps away from socialism and the Warsaw Pact would later lead to joining the imperialist camp.

But most importantly, Hungary leaving the Warsaw Pact would have been a great blow to the workers of Europe, a weakness for the imperialists to exploit and a violation of the solidarity that got Europe through the menace of Nazism.

Yeah, except the empirical working class formed workers' councils, and all testimony from such organs reveals that the single line which prevailed was no return to private property. But of course this is reflexive for those who understand workers' councils are class organisms and by definition cannot and would not agitate for their own exploitation.
:lol: We heard similar rhetoric coming out of the mouths of Yeltsin and Walesa. All those promises of no private property were washed away in a tsunami of privatization, exploitation and deprivation. We know that story. It's just too bad you're too blinded by your hatred for socialism to heed history's lessons.

You're listening to what people said and ignoring what they did. The Independent Smallholders Party (one of the most important bourgeois parties after WWII) was legalized and promoted. What else could this signify except an ascendancy of capitalist forces? What else could this mean except a return to bourgeois oppression and exploitation. This made the internationalist intervention necessary for the benefit of the workers of Hungary as well as Europe and the world.

You're a dupe. Its so obvious talking to you types that you never learn anything out of history if it isn't fed to you on a spoon by your all-knowing masters with the infallible lines in the Central Committee and from some historical corpse.[/QUOTE
You're the one who's convinced yourself NATO forces had nothing to do with the rebellion, that the rebels were all good socialists (:laugh:) and that anything an anti-Soviet hack says can be trusted (Yeltsin and Walesa thank you for your faith in them). Maybe when you bring yourself to analyze what actually happened instead of what you read in TIME magazine, you'll be ready to address the event seriously and like a revolutionary.

By the way, I came to support the internationalist re-liberation of Hungary before I joined the PSL.

[QUOTE]All of this is beside the point, though. The real problem with PSL and their ilk is their politics, which are based completely around forming cross-class "anti-imperialist" alliances, because there's this delusion that somehow if they prop up just enough Achmadinejads and Gaddafis that will somehow undercut American capitalism someday in the distant future and allow prospects for revolutionary politics. Other than the red drapes, they are not a workers' party, even according to the criteria delivered by Marx.
The only drapes that matter here are the ones drawn firmly over you eyes. Anti-imperialism is a principle that all progressives apply, not just the PSL. Opposition to imperialist attacks on Iran and Libya does not equal support for their governments. Obviously you have little interest in hearing what the PSL has to say or what the PSL does. In short, your only interest is to slander socialists in order to make yourself feel better about not acting like one.

27th March 2011, 13:22

It's always fascinating to see how these threads degenerate to Chit-Chat fodder in no time. It is rich in lessons though and, as such, relevant to the OP: All "revolutionary groups" have their own lawn, step on them and you get the defensive responses we see all around. Also, for potential new recruits (like the OP), all groups want such people to be on their lawn, witnessthe many posts pointing to their lawn group. The Idler's post listing all far left parties (post 23) should be enough you might say.

This thread is a sad reflection of the far left as it actually is.

robbo203

27th March 2011, 13:25

All we do is organize anti-war rallies? You're cute.

Maybe you should research the recent protests in solidarity with the Egyptian people. ANSWER organized those across the country. Or the largest anti-war rallies in recent history? ANSWER organized those. Protests against police brutality? ANSWER organizes those across the country. In Ohio, there certainly was no ISO presence at all. That might be why your coverage of the protests are non-existent. We consistently organize protests against budget cuts and tuition hikes at universities. We are leading the movement against war in Libya. .

Interesting. So to what extent would you say this PSL group of yours is supportive of the regime in Libya and to what extent is this a factor in your involvement in the "movement against war in Libya"? Because according to this article (below) you seem to be quite sympathetic to the Gaddafi regime and your "leader" , someone called Mr Brian Becker, urged in 2008 that the group must "offer militant political defence of the Chinese government" in the face of mass movements which are hostile to the Communist Party

http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3127:taking-sides-on-libya&catid=210:international&Itemid=213

Fascinating to learn also that the PSL "extend their support of what might be called "regime socialism" to various less powerful governments, such as North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Syria, and even to states they deem to be "anti-imperialist," such as Iran."

Care to mention any other repugnant anti-working class, state capitalist regime that the PSL supports and that the author of the article in question has been remiss in overlooking?

Gorilla

27th March 2011, 14:24

Interesting. So to what extent would you say this PSL group of yours is supportive of the regime in Libya and to what extent is this a factor in your involvement in the "movement against war in Libya"? Because according to this article (below) you seem to be quite sympathetic to the Gaddafi regime and your "leader" , someone called Mr Brian Becker, urged in 2008 that the group must "offer militant political defence of the Chinese government" in the face of mass movements which are hostile to the Communist Party

http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3127:taking-sides-on-libya&catid=210:international&Itemid=213

I actually clicked on the link to the China article (http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12205), and it's much more balanced than the third-campist renegade from ISO implies:

It is our assertion that if the overthrow of the Communist Party of China were carried out by forces of domestic counterrevolution—forces that would be vigorously supported by U.S. imperialism—it would represent a historic setback for China.

The negative consequences of such an overthrow by any force other than a revolutionary communist party would fall into two broad categories...

This is just orthodox Trotskyism, plain and simple.

manic expression

27th March 2011, 15:46

This thread is a sad reflection of the far left as it actually is.
Setting the record straight regarding one's party isn't "sad". What's really sad is that some feel the need to gratuitously insult and lie about certain groups because they want to diminish the important work those groups carry out. But that's how it goes I guess. Speaking of which...

Care to mention any other repugnant anti-working class, state capitalist regime that the PSL supports and that the author of the article in question has been remiss in overlooking?
The quote from the PSL in the article you posted:

"At present, the revolt has not produced any organizational form or leader that would make it possible to characterize it politically."

Care to mention how this is at all an incorrect line? Didn't think so. Baseless slander is fitting coming from your baseless ideology.

robbo203

27th March 2011, 17:24

The quote from the PSL in the article you posted:

"At present, the revolt has not produced any organizational form or leader that would make it possible to characterize it politically."

Care to mention how this is at all an incorrect line? Didn't think so. Baseless slander is fitting coming from your baseless ideology.

Er. So let me get this straight then - are you saying that this PSL group thingymajob does not

"extend their support of what might be called "regime socialism" to various less powerful governments, such as North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Syria, and even to states they deem to be "anti-imperialist," such as Iran."

And that Mr Brian Becker of the PSL did not urge in 2008 that the group

must "offer militant political defence of the Chinese government" in the face of mass movements which are hostile to the Communist Party

A simple yes or no would suffice without getting into a flap about "baseless ideologies" etc etc whatever the hell that means....

Kassad

27th March 2011, 19:06

Gorilla

27th March 2011, 19:16

Rusty Shackleford

27th March 2011, 19:18

must "offer militant political defence of the Chinese government" in the face of mass movements which are hostile to the Communist Party

yellow peril is on the rise in the US. it must be countered. the west wants to dismember china, return it to its position of subject to imperialism.

in the US, the bourgeoisie sings chorus-like in condemning china on every move while failing to condemn the american bourgeoisie for its imperialist actions.

should we simply just join them in attacking china?

now, ill admit, i wasnt around the party until early 2010. since then i have become a member. no regrets.

also, enough with these organizations and their articles using Stalinism as an attack. jesus christ it gets old.

US imperialism can deal with losing a dictator or two in the Middle East and North Africa. What it can't handle is a region-wide social revolution that threatens its economic, political and military interests.

yeah, thats why its intervening in Libya right now on the side of the rebels. they offer support to the US's economic political and military interests!

also, hell yes i would have supported a victorious coup d'etat attempt led by the KGB in defense of the USSR. hindsight shows it would have been better than what came after the "victory for socialism(AKA counterrevolution)" as cheered by some "socialists" in the US.

i like your trotsky, i dont like your trotskyism

robbo203

27th March 2011, 20:40

Asking for a simple "yes or no" response just shows how absolutely unscientific you are. it suggests that the entire international communist, anti-imperialist and proletarian movements of the world can be analyzed in a black-and-white manner, which is absolutely laughable. .

Oh come on - its a straightforward question I asked. Stop wriggling. I am not asking for an extended thesis on imperialism, peer reviewed and complete with footnotes and references. All I want to know is whether it is true as the article claims that your group extends support to such regimes as North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Syria and that your Mr Becker sided with the Chinese authorities in the face of mass movements hostile to the regime. Do you or do you not as a group support Gaddafi in the current conflict?

As i say, its a simple enough question. Why the evasion? Got something to feel embarrased about?

Jose Gracchus

27th March 2011, 20:51

:rolleyes: So, in other words, you have no idea about any of this and you're not going to listen to what people involved with the PSL say about the topic. Cool. At least you admit you don't care about facts.

I said I could not find evidence, so I retract my claim. You're not going to get any more prostration than that, sorry.

Yes, and there are plenty of reasoned explanations in support of the re-liberation of Hungary. I suggest you go over them with more care and attention.

I've read entire books on the topic, but okay.

First, you won't quantify what a "police state" is because it's a made-up term liberals like to use to bash socialism.

No, it is a simple acknowledgment of fact. The police will prevent the workers or anyone else from public (and even private) political activity or discussion that is not a reflexive acting out of decrees from the party leadership.

Again, funny enough the workers in Russia and Spain who actually began to place their hands upon production and the political rule of society, did not need to manifest this by top-down suppression of all political activity except by the franchise of the CPSU.

Second, in order to establish and defend socialism it is oftentimes necessary to limit the political capacity of bourgeois forces. The re-liberation of Hungary did that by reversing the promotion of capitalist parties done by your man Nagy.

Bullshit. Find me any evidence to substantiate the claim that legalizing political parties was precipitating actual moves toward a reintroduction of foreign capital, a re-imposition of private property in industrial production, and the like.

Rather, according to Peter Fryer, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and a journalist, is in Budapest to report for the London Daily Worker

“upsurge of a whole people, in which rank-and-file communists took part, against a police dictatorship dressed up as a Socialist society – a police dictatorship backed up by Soviet armed might.”[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftn1)
[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#_ftnref1) Matthews, Explosion, pp. 216-217

Or, furthermore: (http://mek.niif.hu/01200/01274/01274.pdf, p. 154)

485. No aspect of the Hungarian uprising expressed its democratic tendencies or its reaction to previous conditions more clearly than the creation of Revolutionary Councils in villages, towns and on the county level, and of Workers’ Councils in factories. Within a few days, these bodies came into existence all over Hungary and assumed important responsibilities. Their chief purpose was to ensure for the Hungarian people real, and not merely nominal, control of local government and of factories, mines, and other industrial enterprises. There was even a suggestion that a National Revolutionary Committee might replace the National Assembly,(1) while another proposal was that a Supreme National Council could exercise the prerogative of Head of the State.(2) While nothing of the kind took place, the fact that such proposals could be put forward at all suggests the degree to which they were felt to reflect the desires of the
people.

Those reactionaries! How dare they call for "All Power to the Soviets!"

Furthermore:

On 28 October the Hungarian Workers’ (Communist) Party commended the establishment of these Councils in an article in Szabad Nép, its official organ:
“News comes all the time from all parts of the country about the setting up of municipal and county Councils, Workers’ Councils, National Councils or Revolutionary Socialist Committees - many different names. All are alike, however, in being spontaneous, popular organs which came into existence through the upsurge of a new democracy in this country. We do not know who the members of the Councils are; we do know, however, that they are representatives of the workers and that they are being elected in a democratic way. There is none among them who would abuse the confidence of the people, who would misuse his power or think only of his personal position. Among them are those Communists who are respected and loved by the people. The good judgment and intelligence of the working masses are seen in the first measures taken by these popular organs.”
492. Official recognition was given to the Revolutionary Councils by Mr. Nagy “in the name of the National Government” on 30 October. He referred to them as “autonomous, democratic local organs formed during the Revolution,” and asked for “full support” from them. The setting up of factory Workers’ Councils in all plants was recommended by the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ (Communist) Party in a statement issued on 26 October, and on the same day the Praesidium of the National Council of Trade Unions published a similar appeal to all workers.

As usual, we find that Stalinists support the working class which exists only on the paper of the crap they write, and in some dream-cosmos in their head, not the "actually existing" working class:

The Councils included representatives of all segments of the population. In Debrecen, the Council had one hundred members of whom 60 per cent were workers, 20 per cent University students and 20 per cent representatives of the armed forces. The Councils of Győr and Eger consisted of workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals, while half of the twenty eight members of the Council of Jászberény were peasants. Revolutionary Councils were fully supported from the beginning by the armed forces (e.g., Debrecen, Eger, Győr, Szeged, Szolnok, Veszprém), and by the local police (e.g., Debrecen, Győr, Mosonmagyaróvár, Szolnok, Tatabánya, Veszprém).
501. Some of the Revolutionary Councils were set up with the consent of the local Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ (Communist) Party (e.g., Debrecen) many of them had from the beginning to the end Communist members (e.g., Debrecen) ; others dropped their Communist members after 1 November (e.g., Pécs). Most of them enjoyed almost at once the editorial support of the local organ of the Hungarian Workers’ (Communist) Party. Regarding the attitude taken by the Councils towards the Party, the following comments of Hétfői Hírlap of 29 October are significant:
“The demands [of the Revolutionary Councils] are, on the whole, identical and essentially socialist and democratic(5) in their character, and do not intend to destroy the people’s power. This is proved by the fact that wherever Party organizations endorsed the aims of the democratic revolution, no action was taken against them.”

So even the CP and trade unions came out for the workers' councils. But for you the only real workers and revolutionaries are in the Soviet Politburo.

But here's the money quote, pg. 156-7:

Further demands included changes within the structure of the Government, the abolition of the ÁVH and the creation of new police, the establishment of the National Guard, liberation of political prisoners, in particular, of Cardinal Mindszenty, freedom of speech, press, religion and association, the setting up of Workers’ Councils in factories; new agrarian policies and, in particular, abolition of compulsory delivery of produce by the peasants.(7) It was often emphasized that a return of the landed estates to their former owners would not be tolerated.
“The people have already decided as far as the question of land, factories and mineral wealth is concerned”, one Council delegate told the Government on 3 November. “The people will never alter that decision.”

The workers' councils:

“Constitution of Workers’ Councils in every factory with the participation of factory intellectuals there. Installation of a worker-directorate parallel with the radical transformation of the centralized planning system and of economic direction by the State; workers and factory-intellectuals to take over the direction of factories. Immediate formation of workers’ councils, which should contact their trade union centres without delay to decide on tasks”. The announcement continued that the Hungarian trade unions had to become active again as before 1948, and they would have to change their name to “Hungarian Free Trade Unions”. Later on the Praesidium made the following appeal: “Workers! The desire of the working class has been realized. Undertakings will be managed by Workers’ Councils. This will complete the processby which the factories are taken over as the property of the people. Workers and technicians!
You can now regard the enterprises as being entirely your own. From now on, you will manage these yourselves. The excessive central management of the factories, which has prevailed hitherto, will now cease, together with the faults arising from it. A heavy responsibility is laid upon the Workers’ Councils; therefore you must elect the members of such Councils with great circumspection and from the most experienced and best workers. The new Government will increase the pay of those earning low wages. The sooner you start production in the factories and the better our Councils work, the more speedily can wages be raised, and the higher will they rise. Therefore, support the new Hungarian Government in its efforts for socialist construction and a free and democratic Hungary.”

Funny how apparently "capitalism" can look so much like socialism (all power to the soviets, workers' self-management on the factory floor), and "socialism" look so much like capitalism (your shameless stumping for police).

Ah, so you think socialists who defend their fellow workers from imperialism should be lynched? Some "revolutionary" you are.

No, I think armed thugs who executed people routinely for thoughtcrimes in order to more properly lubricate the massive wealth transfers from the "freed workers and peasants" of Hungary to the Soviet Union deserved to be lynched by workers and youth. Butchers who shoot into crowds of actually existing workers and youth, rather than the never-existing phantasm in your mind? Fuck 'em.

To wit: (UN report, p. 20)

56. On the evening of 22 October, some of the students had sought to have their demands broadcast by Budapest Radio, in order to bring them to the attention of the people as a whole.
The censor had been unwilling to broadcast the demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and for free elections, and the students had refused to allow incomplete publication.(15) The following day, some of the students went from the Bem statue to the Radio Building, with the intention of making another attempt to have their demands broadcast. A large crowd gathered at the Radio Building, which was guarded by the ÁVH or State security police. The students sent a delegation into the Building to negotiate with the Director. The crowd waited in vain forthe return of this delegation, and eventually a rumour spread that one delegate had been shot.
Shortly after 9 p.m., tear gas bombs were thrown from the upper windows and, one or two minutes later, ÁVH men opened fire on the crowd, killing a number of people and wounding others. In so far as any one moment can be selected as the turning point which changed a peaceable demonstration into a violent uprising, it would be this moment when the ÁVH, already intensely unpopular and universally feared by their compatriots, attacked defenceless people. The anger of the crowd was intensified when white ambulances, with Red Cross license plates, drove up. Instead of first aid teams, ÁVH police emerged, wearing doctors’ white coats. A part of the infuriated crowd attacked them and, in this way, the demonstrators acquired their first weapons. Hungarian forces were rushed to the scene to reinforce the ÁVH but, after hesitating a moment, they sided with the crowd.(16)

Yeah, obviously you haven't read the in-depth explanations of this issue that are posted all over this forum. Read up:

…the mentality of the revolutionaries shows that almost anyone from the West, of whatever nationality, color or purpose would have been received with open arms by any of the revolutionary councils in the cities of Hungary during the period in question.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf)
(pages 83, 84, 85 and 86 are of interest, the quote comes from page 86...page 91 details rebel requests to the CIA for arms and ammunition)

Maybe this is because the other imperialists were about to crush them and summarily execute Communist politicians who actually had the public support of the workers and peasants.

IF that is true (which you haven't proven), it's a natural part of the fact that large swathes of the USSR were demolished in the struggle to free Europe from fascism. In fact, the Soviet liberation of Hungary couldn't have come at a more pressing time, as the massacres of Jews were increasing exponentially in Budapest. Leningrad, Stalingrad, Minsk and other cities had been decimated (or worse)...working-class solidarity demanded that the workers of Hungary support the efforts of Soviet workers to rebuild.

I think its quite telling you think that "working class solidarity" is something compulsively beaten into workers by men with guns. If this was authentic, all of the newly "freed" socialist workers throughout the Eastern Bloc would all collaborate equally in contributing to their joint reconstruction. Instead, the Soviets imposed a classic victor's piece in classic imperial fashion.

http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/tanulm_gazd/gazd_e.htm

Only the 1956 Hungarian Revolution brought a temporary respite in the Stalinist policy towards agriculture and the peasantry. Heading the list of rural demands in October were the abolition of compulsory produce deliveries (http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/szerviz/kislex/kislexis_uk.htm#compulsory), tax reductions, redress for the injustices done on the pretext of consolidation of land holdings (http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/szerviz/kislex/kislexis_uk.htm#consolidation), restoration of a free market in land, freedom to withdraw from and disband agricultural cooperatives (http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/szerviz/kislex/kislexis_uk.htm#agricultural_coop). The only one to be granted in full was abolition of the compulsory produce deliveries, which happened twice within a few weeks, under an order by the Nagy (http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/szerviz/kislex/biograf_uk/nagy.htm) government at the end of October, and a similar by the Kádár (http://www.rev.hu/history_of_45/szerviz/kislex/biograf_uk/kadar_uk.htm) regime after the revolution had been crushed.

Ah, so the evil market reforms of that dastardly Western puppet Nagy were duplicated by Moscow's man immediately thereafter! This shows the bankruptcy in your position: repressing the revolt was not about restoration of capitalism, but rather making sure that Hungary remained politically and diplomatically vassalized to the USSR. Why did Kadar grant most of their demands (aside from actual control by the working class), if they were so reactionary?

On the exploitation of the economic regime:

http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/dipl/dipl16.htm#16

The Hungarian bank estimates the rate of reparations at 16-24% of GNP for Hungary during the post-war period. You were saying?

So you're going to argue that Austria, which was non-aligned, wasn't in the sphere of "the West"? Don't be silly, leaving Hungary wanted to get close and comfy with NATO, even if they weren't at that point in favor of joining. But many of the same leaders involved or else inspired by the anti-socialist revolt of 1956 did get Hungary to join NATO recently, so it just goes to show that those steps away from socialism and the Warsaw Pact would later lead to joining the imperialist camp.

I said they wanted neutrality on the basis of Austria's treaty, not that they wanted to BE Austria. But don't allow details to get in the way of your agenda. In any case, who cares about opportunist 'leaders'? The Hungarian masses in the workers' and soldiers' councils were the driving force of the Revolution. Nagy dragged his feet and tried to play the good Moscow's man in Budapest and was dragged forward by the Hungarian soviets. By this kind of reasoning, Trotsky really wasn't fighting for the Soviet state in the Civil War, while leading the Red Army, because you think he scabbed for the West later. Is that what MLs actually think?

But most importantly, Hungary leaving the Warsaw Pact would have been a great blow to the workers of Europe, a weakness for the imperialists to exploit and a violation of the solidarity that got Europe through the menace of Nazism.

What solidarity? And what workers? The ones put down by force in 1953 in East Germany, in Poland in 1956, in Hungary? The actually existing working class, which had to be cowed by political terror?

How would it have allowed a magic infiltration of the Eastern Bloc? As is, the West did not lift a finger to do anything in the Soviet sphere of influence during the Hungarian Revolution.

:lol: We heard similar rhetoric coming out of the mouths of Yeltsin and Walesa. All those promises of no private property were washed away in a tsunami of privatization, exploitation and deprivation. We know that story. It's just too bad you're too blinded by your hatred for socialism to heed history's lessons.

Except where were the "Armed people", the "workers' councils" behind Walesa and Yeltsin? The former was openly a Catholic nationalist and the latter an opportunistic Russian nationalist. Both were surrounded by open neoliberal politicians. And both had the great and wondrous party-state apparatus negotiate the end of "socialism" with them.

I'm sorry your addled brain cannot comprehend anything that does not fit into a childish Manichean struggle where you just pick a GOOD GUYS and everyone who they say they don't like is bad.

You're listening to what people said and ignoring what they did. The Independent Smallholders Party (one of the most important bourgeois parties after WWII) was legalized and promoted.

How was it 'promoted'? I'm sorry that you can't beat into peasants adoration for the CP, but is that their fault, or Rakosi's?

What else could this signify except an ascendancy of capitalist forces? What else could this mean except a return to bourgeois oppression and exploitation.

Where is your evidence they would have won power? Many peasants simply seized control of their cooperative farms, rather than breaking them up. They didn't want this farce of "socialist property" used as a means of extracting surplus value from them for Moscow's benefit. How dare they. :rolleyes:

This made the internationalist intervention necessary for the benefit of the workers of Hungary as well as Europe and the world.

What workers of Hungary? The ones who organized in workers' councils and were crushed by the intervention?

You're the one who's convinced yourself NATO forces had nothing to do with the rebellion, that the rebels were all good socialists (:laugh:) and that anything an anti-Soviet hack says can be trusted (Yeltsin and Walesa thank you for your faith in them). Maybe when you bring yourself to analyze what actually happened instead of what you read in TIME magazine, you'll be ready to address the event seriously and like a revolutionary.

You're an imbecile. I'm quite certain you have never examined a history book by the way you talk.

By the way, I came to support the internationalist re-liberation of Hungary before I joined the PSL.

Then you're a committed moron. I guess I was being unfair in trying to give you some credit.

The only drapes that matter here are the ones drawn firmly over you eyes. Anti-imperialism is a principle that all progressives apply, not just the PSL. Opposition to imperialist attacks on Iran and Libya does not equal support for their governments. Obviously you have little interest in hearing what the PSL has to say or what the PSL does. In short, your only interest is to slander socialists in order to make yourself feel better about not acting like one.

Why do you form cross-class fronts which hide your working-class politics?

Kassad

27th March 2011, 20:52

Oh come on - its a straightforward question I asked. Stop wriggling. I am not asking for an extended thesis on imperialism, peer reviewed and complete with footnotes and references. All I want to know is whether it is true as the article claims that your group extends support to such regimes as North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Syria and that your Mr Becker sided with the Chinese authorities in the face of mass movements hostile to the regime. Do you or do you not as a group support Gaddafi in the current conflict?

As i say, its a simple enough question. Why the evasion? Got something to feel embarrased about?

Not a thing. We have a difference though: I can provide sources and you can't. Try again.

robbo203

27th March 2011, 21:07

Not a thing. We have a difference though: I can provide sources and you can't. Try again.

Ah I see . So youve got the information but you are not about to spill the beans, eh?. Us mere mortals are evidently judged to be of too low a stock to be told the strategic thoughts of inner sanctum of the PSL Vanguard on such matters as whether or not your sect supports the Gaddafi regime against the uprising and so on and so forth.

"Try again" you say. OK, I'll try again. Do you support Gaddafi aganist the uprising? Do you support regimes such as North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Libya, Syria?

Now this time can we try and get an answer from you, O Enlightened One, or is that too much to ask?

Iraultzaile Ezkerreko

27th March 2011, 21:12

eric922, the lesson you should draw from this is to run as far as you can away from this website. People on the internet only become MORE sectarian, MORE insulting, MORE egotistical, MORE zealous. Research the groups by reading their websites and wiki pages and send e-mails, letters or call their national offices to speak with them about their politics and what they can offer you. No one on RevLeft wants to help you, they just want to masturbate about their "correct line" on this or that sixty-or-more year old argument and bandy about every leftist slur in the book.