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Recommend them The Red Pen or Dessalines instead. Western Marxism is better not receiving any traction at all. Fucking dogmatist Piece of shit!
this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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What's your opinion on the push from them and their network of orgs pushing for general strikes?
What are their demands? Do you need an ML organisation for a general strike? How does this self-purported ML organisation differentiate itself from a socdem call for a general strike? The likes of DSA/Bernie/Justice Democrats are all pro general strikes.
no investigation, no right to speak. all your "criticisms" are vagueposting and rhetorical questions.
Those questions could be answered. The fact you opted not to is telling.
Never at any point do you make an argument, you simply suggest that there must be a compelling argument, thereby proving your point.
So you've got nothing.
The PSL is a socdem party with sickle and hammer aesthetics. I am being relatively mild in my criticisms. You're going to have an uphill battle if you are tripping up even here.
The west is so fucking hopeless. Like this ain't that hard, this is an ML space and the apologism is pathetic.
I am not even USAmerican but I have to know your fucking politics too because your country has made the rest of the world such a shithole that I have to process your people's fucking bile while you tell me it's good for me.
Let's see in a year's time (maybe not even that) where we are and then you can lecture the rest of the world on your (collective you) mistakes.
It's funny to say that I've got nothing. You aren't being "relatively mild" in your criticisms, you aren't presenting any criticisms at all! You are slinging around some slogans without ever bothering to explain your position, and then demanding others prove you wrong, somehow. You have demonstrated no understanding of either PSL's tactics and strategy or of the actual conditions of working class political struggle in the US. If, at any point, you presented anything resembling a coherent argument, then we would be having a different conversation, but you are just handwaving it away while refusing to elaborate at all, and acting superior because of it.
Ah good, so its not just me who is being hit with a smoke screen of vague accusations here.
Cool we'll see over the course of the next 12 months or so how it all progresses if not sooner.
Fucking western hubris.
OK.. So you don't have an opinion or what? If you did some investigation you would know that the strike movement would have fizzled out in Michigan because local liberal leaders didn't want to do it and the PSL pushed for it anyway. The liberals you're talking about are tailing behind them.
How closely do you really follow these developments?
So they have progress to the level New Deal era socdem labour movements at best? Managed to spread the loot of imperialism a bit more equitably? Your lynchpin is reactionary trade unions? I'm not USAmerican, what you're saying is really not that promising. Hopefully I am proven wrong over time but if this is the best you folks have to offer then we're fucked. I suspect you will have truly revolutionary movements but I suspect the PSL ain't it.
I'm not sure what your expectations are or your level of understanding of the material conditions in the mouth of imperialism and how they impact organizing.You might be better off asking questions of full PSL members if you want to know what the PSL is about, and their current goals.
Historically, revolution has been most successful where the chains of imperialism are weakest. I wouldn't be waiting for a revolution in the west. Advancing and guiding the development of class consciousness is a huge necessity in the west. Almost a century of assault on revolutionary ideology has its population wildly propagandized. I mean, the state invented a whole perversion of Marxism to keep the population misguided and to discredit Marxist-Leninist movements and actually existing socialist states.
Almost a century of counter revolutionary action within it's own borders, likely developing an effective playbook for stifling movements. Now with tools the McCarthyists of the past could only dream of.
So I hear your frustrations, but I do wonder how much you have investigated these ideas yourself.
I'm still learning ML but the PSL for me (not a USAmerican here) is not impressive. If this is the best on offer then I hope I am really wrong.
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Firstly, I've read this essay a few times. Secondly, being propagandized is not simply "brainwashing" and that’s exactly the distinction the essay makes. It doesn’t counter my statement at all. The author explicitly acknowledges the massive scale of the propaganda apparatus and its real effects. What he rejects is the lazy "zombie masses" model that makes despair feel intellectually respectable. Instead he argues that Western populations are licensed, they’re not mindless dupes, they’re rationally going along with imperialist narratives because their material position as a global bourgeois proletariat makes that the smart short-term survival strategy. That’s a far more damning and materially grounded explanation for why class consciousness is so hard to build here, and it fits completely with my point about a century of counter-revolutionary assault. If the essay actually argued that propaganda doesn't work or doesn't exist, there’d be no need for capitalists to pour billions into it. The fact that they do, and that it operates by licensing people to cling to reactionary ideas,is precisely why "advancing and guiding the development of class consciousness" is such an enormous, patient task in the imperial core.
I get the sense that your frustration, and maybe your disappointment with PSL, comes partly from still being early in learning Marxism-Leninism and expecting a more dramatic or pure expression of revolutionary potential. But that's a trap. The essay itself is a brutal critique of the "enlightened rebel vs. brainwashed masses" mindset that leads to exactly that kind of despair. So if you’re going to cite Roderic Day against me, it’s worth absorbing his central point: the masses aren’t cattle waiting for a heroic vanguard to wake them up, they’re people whose complicity is rational under current conditions. That doesn’t make organizing futile, it makes it harder, and demands a strategy rooted in material reality, not moral indignation. If you think that reality makes organizations like PSL unimpressive, I’d encourage you to dig deeper into why building any revolutionary pole in the belly of the beast is such a long-haul project, rather than using the difficulty as proof that nothing worthwhile exists.
Yup - I believe propaganda as such are a social license for acceptable politics that aligns along with their material conditons - USAmericans are generally correct that historically aligining with imperialism benefits them materially and their politics reflect that. It is partly that labour aristocratic bribe that challenges the notion of workerism as an effective anti-imperialist strategy.
So when one is asking who has revolutionary potential (similar to the beginning of the 20th century where it was discovered peasants in addition to the proleteriat had potential in Russia and China), in the 21st century we are asking which groups material conditions within the US will benefit from the fall of US imperialism. That is what requires a deep statistical study and the PSL does not appear to give the impression that they have done so.
The article is essentially a materialist challenege to the idealist notion of brainwashing. I'm glad you have read it and you can see the challenges ahead
I'm not sure why you have this impression. You seem to not want to explain your position at all. You just make these broad claims about the party. I'm not a party member, but you can read their 2005 assessment of the US working class here: https://liberationnews.org/05-04-01-the-us-working-class-today-html/ obviously this is dated, but I have no reason to believe that they haven't continued to build on this analysis over the last two decades.
Their party program is here: https://www2.liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/#part1 updated last in 2022. Its unclear to me If you've read either of these.
Lastly, they produced a book entitled "Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States." Which you can find here: https://1804books.com/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future. I haven't read this yet but its on my list.
So, the answer to your question of "which groups benefit?" isn't a mystery. They argue the vast, multinational working class, particularly its most oppressed sections (African Americans, other oppressed nationalities, immigrants), has the greatest objective interest in dismantling U.S. imperialism, as it would end both the super-exploitation of the Global South and the domestic austerity and racism used to divide the working class at home.
I'm not sure if "statistical analysis" is what you meant here. I'll assume not. Since both revolutions you mentioned were built on the backs of rigorous political analysis from a Dialectical Materialist world view.
You accuse them of having not performed similar work, and almost seem to imply that you know the answer that the PSL doesn't. You again are not saying anything, you are simply making claims that you are not backing up with any sort of personal analysis from what I can tell.
And its not that the PSL isn't beyond criticism, but I'm not even sure what your criticism even is to begin with.
That analysis does not consider the chllenges of the labour aristocracy which is the western bourgoise proleteriat at large? Like how they are going to succeed where people before them have failed? (ProbablyKaffe on twitter touches on the kind of analysis at minimum that needs to be considered). Simply spouting poverty statistics isn't sufficent material analysis; for example how you going to counter Christian reaction in USAmericans? Analysis isn't these people are poor and therefore they are ripe - Cesair dismantled that last century. None of that analysis even begins to really consider why any of those groups would benefit from the fall of USImperialism. In fact it is an argument that the loot of imperialism should be shared more equitably.
https://redsails.org/amiga-o-enemiga/
Is Che wrong?
Since protest don't work and reactionary unions aren't worthwhile what do they have to offer? Electoralism? I am not USAmerican, why is it on me to offer solutions your country's problems that have a ripple effect on everyone outside? How come they don't pick up the phone and call organisations of the global south on how they managed?
(Forgot to add that book just deserves the biggest fucking eye roll for socdem politics masquerading in ML aesthetics. Socialism isnt "better welfare state")
Alright, this is a much more substantive conversation. Appreciated. Let me address your points in order.
On the labour aristocracy: You're right that this is a real theoretical challenge. But the idea that the PSL's analysis doesn't consider it is false. Their program literally opens by grounding everything in an international assessment, and it treats the U.S. working class as "but one section" of a global one. That's the exact framework needed to understand the labour aristocracy, not a dodge of it. The real disagreement here isn't whether the bribe exists (it does) but what to do about it. Your position seems to be that the entire Western working class is bought off permanently; the PSL's is that the bribe is real but eroding, and the most oppressed sections (Black people, other oppressed nations, immigrant workers) are the ones whose material conditions align with dismantling imperialism. That's not ignoring the labour aristocracy; it's a strategic differentiation within the working class.
On Che: You asked "Is Che wrong?" No, but his 1954 essay doesn't back you up the way you think. He identified exactly the mechanism you describe: imperial super-profits create a temporary quiescence. But he also wrote: "I insist that we cannot demand that the working class of the North look past its own nose. It would be useless to try to explain, from afar... that the process of internal decomposition of capitalism can only be deferred for a while longer, but never stopped." And, crucially, he singled out Black people as "the germ of the first serious rebellion." That's not an argument to abandon the whole U.S. working class. It's an analysis that the contradictions will eventually crack, and the break will come from the most oppressed. That's exactly the orientation PSL takes. You're citing Che as though he argues the Western proletariat is an eternal reactionary bloc. He doesn't.
On Césaire: He dismantled the idea that poverty alone makes people revolutionary. Agreed. But PSL isn't arguing "these people are poor, therefore they're ripe." Their 2005 assessment defines class by relationship to production, not income brackets. Césaire was a communist who saw the proletariat and the colonial question as linked problems, not one canceling out the other. Using him to argue that any attempt to organize in the imperial core is reformist doesn't track with his actual politics.
On the book: I haven't read Socialist Reconstruction yet, so I'm not going to defend it chapter and verse. From what I understand, it's an attempt to sketch what a socialist government would actually do in its first decade: concrete plans around housing, health, employment. You're calling that "socdem politics." But the Bolsheviks' program had bread, peace, land: immediate, concrete demands. Having a transitional vision that speaks to material needs isn't social democracy; it's strategy. The alternative is just gesturing at global revolution while refusing to say anything about what society here might look like after a seizure of power. That's a rhetorical stance, not a political one. Also, you haven't read the book either, so dismissing it with an eye roll is cheap.
On electoralism, unions, and "what do they have to offer": The PSL runs candidates as a way to inject revolutionary ideas into mass consciousness, not because they think elections are the path to power. They do labor work in difficult conditions. You dismiss this as "reactionary unions aren't worthwhile" and "protest doesn't work." Okay. What's your concrete alternative, concretely, for building revolutionary capacity in the imperial core? "Pick up the phone and call Global South organizations" is a fine suggestion, but it's not a strategy for building a pole of organization here. If your entire position is that nothing can be done and the only real agency lies outside the imperialist countries, just say that openly. At least then the implications are clear: no organizing here will meet your standard because you've already decided it's impossible.
I don't know who probablyKaffe is, however, I'm aware there's a specific political tendency that argues most Western workers are labour aristocrats and therefore no revolutionary movement can arise from within the imperialist core. That's a coherent position, but it's not the only Marxist position, and you're presenting it as if it's settled truth and anyone who disagrees is a social democrat in Marxist drag. The PSL's line is that imperialism's contradictions are sharpening in a way that objectively erodes the material basis of the bribe. Whether they're right or wrong is a debate worth having. But you haven't actually argued that point with evidence. You've just asserted they're wrong and slung terms like "socdem" at a book you haven't read.
So here's the bottom line: I'm not a PSL member, and I'm not asking you to be uncritical. But if your criticism is that they haven't done the analysis, the analysis exists and I've linked you to it. If your criticism is that their program doesn't solve the labour aristocracy problem to your satisfaction, the answer is that nobody has "solved" it; they're organizing through it, with a clear-eyed view that the U.S. working class is divided and its most oppressed sections are key. If your alternative is to argue that the entire Western proletariat is hopelessly bought off and the only revolutionaries are outside, then you've chosen a form of revolutionary pessimism masquerading as rigor. That's fine, but don't pretend it's the only possible Marxist conclusion. Che certainly didn't.
I think we should end this here. This is the problem with vibes based marxism. There's no substantive critique, just feel-good sports-based groupism.
The rest of the post is not a reply to you because you give the impression of being completely fucking disingenious - you're accusing me of not reading a book which you posted as proof as a retort against my critcisms against PSL, which you now say you haven't read youself and then have the gall to call my comment as cheap for - get this - not reading the book
For anyone else lurking: the book is an excellent insight into the problems of the PSL. I thoroughly recommend everyone who is interested in understanding why US domestic politics is so lacking is to read how a self purported ML party considers itself. You can easily search it on annas-archive if the pdf copy difficult to download elsewhere.
Broadly speaking the book describes some of the ills of capitalism, mainly illusions to corporatism, and then says socialism will help provide a better welfare state. It prefaces it by attempting to establish its Marxist credentials for example by naming some of Marx and Engels works. This is not an ML book: it offers nothing that a social democrat who has read marx could not offer. Kautsky was better than this a century ago. This is at best a Kautskian party. Even its advertisment quotes Cornel West's praise of it as some sort of badge of honour.
An ML analysis would at least consider, actual class analysis (afterall the book is called socialist reconstruction):
Actual ML analysis will tackle difficult questions, not just say there are difficulties and hope for the best by reaching popularity first somehow. And you know have at least give an impression of a political campaign of an actual understanding of capital beyond corporatism
So have you read the book or just skimmed it? You haven't exactly said one way or the other. It's interesting that saying you haven't read it would get this kind of response. I said I didn't read it, twice. I said it when I linked it. I inked it because you said they did no analysis. I provided you a list of analysis. The book is easy to get, I've had it on my digital book shelf for a while now. I think we are done here since it seems like you're not interested in having a conversation, just a platform for you brand of pessimism. That's fine, you should start a blog if that's what you're looking to do.
So now the accusation is skimming rather than not reading to the standard you have not set from someone who has not even read it. And you still have not read it but feel confident that what they did counts as ML analysis. If there's any consolation is that your brand, as you put it, of Western hubris is really common.
Did you read the book?
Yes. It's a few years old, to the point when you first said it I thought it may have been a different book ie did they have more to say since that book was written, I looked it up realised it was same book and edited my comment to reflect what I felt about it in brackets. When looking up what a party is about I try to look up what's closest to their equivalent of a manifesto and this came up as reading material. From what I gather whatthey have been doing since really has not really been promising but if this project is the best US has to offer then for the sake of the rest of the world I hope I am really really wrong.
Thank you for a direct answer. See its good to know this type of information before engaging. I always try to be up front with what I have read and what I haven't. You presented your position without even mentioning what you've read. That would have saved both of us a lot of time, don't you think?
Yeah, fair enough. Thank you
This is something others in this thread are accusing you of too by the way. Posting vaguely. Don't be vague here. This isn't twitter. Were all capable of reading and understanding your POV if you lay it out directly. We can't do that if you're just gesturing and making vague claims. This also goes with linking other peoples analysis. Linking to redsails is fine if your going to then explain how that link supports your position. Otherwise people have no idea what your take is from that piece.
Your communication style feels hostile and defensive and vague from my perspective. I felt like I was engaging with the shadow of your perspective, and not your actual perspective and where it comes from.
I don't know what your critique is if you're just going to make rhetorical statements. Those only work if the other person understands your perspective already. "What is the PSL doing ... ?" Only reads as a question you don't have the answer to. It's not a critique. But it also implies you know what they should be doing. Those ideas would have been something someone could engage with. And if you don't have those ideas, that's OK too, but you have to say so.
You can be critical of the PSL, like anything else, but you have to state your critiques directly or no one will be able to engage with them. Instead they'll try to figure out your position through inquiry and assumption, which is also what was happening here.
The accusations of vague posting are effectively deflection - the PSL does not have a meaty position on anything I have said in their literature or videos though I am happy for them to be answered
They are vague about this hence my questions. I am saying they have a lack of stances and that is worrying for a party that claims to be ML. Not once does anyone actually says: well the PSL says this about XYZ, it is all variations of "well it is challenging, what more can you expect" without ever addressing anything and then have the gall of blaming me for being vague.
The longer this thread is going on the more obvious the PSL has nothing to offer and the reasons for the empty defences is because it fits into westerners petite-bourgoisie sensibilities of empty protesting and trade unionism as a subsitute of doing the hard work of actually figuring what went before and what should be done instead going forward. It requires susbtantive investigations and class analyses.
You cannot answer these questions simply because the PSL has no answer for them otherwise you would have pointed them out. Instead you linked to things you have not read and called it a day, and then double down when called out on it.
You seem to misunderstand the point of the book. PSL's analysis is that people in the US are so thoroughly propagandized against socialism that they have no idea that the mounting crises facing our class do have solutions, but that those solutions only exist outside of the neoliberal framework that totally dominated all political discourse. It never purports to be a theoretical work on how to achieve revolutionary change, because that is not its goal. Rather, its goal is to convince people that socialism is worth fighting for because it is actually equipped to address their needs. But the PSL's position is that a revolutionary reorganization of society is a necessary precondition to achieve this, and agrees that ML organizing principles are the means to achieve that.
The problem with social democrats is not that they, too, advocate for a society that offers more favorable conditions to the workers. The problem is that they reject the necessity of a worker's state and are content to build welfare off the ill-gotten gains of imperialist extraction. The PSL absolutely rejects this.
No work can address every aspect of every debate. That's a ridiculous standard, and if you attempt to meet it you will fall short every time. It's entirely disingenuous to dismiss PSL as revisionist or socdem based on one piece of literature just because it is not attempting to present a framework for achieving revolution.
Right, so what does the PSL propose to do where revolutionary parties before them have failed to do? They purport they are an ML party, not another socdem, so is there an actual answer to this, ie what's the susbtantive scientific approach on offer? And if that's too hard to answer (it shouldn't be, it's the lowest bar for every ML party but let's make it even easier), have they at least said was wrong with these previous revolutionary parties ie what was wrong with their political theories given they have failed?
The PSL recognizes that the workers movement was so thoroughly defeated and dismantled in the US that the masses lost any sense of connection to the actual history and lessons of worker struggle. The PSL sees its task as reinjecting revolutionary Marxism into mass struggle, but also that ultimately the masses will need to learn these lessons by experiencing essentially the same failures of previous movements which have been erased from mass consciousness. The PSL cannot directly teach these lessons or directly manufacture the conditions to activate revolutionary potential, but it has an opportunity to reach more and more people as they experience the failure of other methods.
https://liberationschool.org/theory-and-revolution-addressing-the-break-of-ideological-continuity/
Ultra-leftists are quick to complain that PSL's tactics are clearly not "producing revolution", as evidenced by the continuation of imperialist rule in the US. But despite all of their supposed superior analysis, they fail to put forward a specific agenda that can accomplish that task, let alone actually carry it out themselves. In other words, why should anybody listen to a bunch of belligerent assholes on Twitter (as you have literally suggested), if they haven't even done the bare minimum of organizing a more effective alternative? Is the PSL building an organization that is up to the task of carrying out a revolution? Who knows? But at least they are building an organization, and one which is explicitly ML.
No we are not anywhere near about "producing a revolution". We are at the level where the PSL cannot even offer a substantive analysis of failed revolutionaries before them and the lessons they have learned in an attempt to become successful this time.
I mean why call themselves ML if you can't even do this.
Which "belligerent asshole" are you even talking about? I pointed to one twitter channel about class analysis and then you have twisted into whatever the fuck you wanted it to be in a non-defense about the PSL.
"At least they're trying" is the most pathetic call of the privileged westerner. Where's the science in that.