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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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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
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.