The PSL is not a vote for class independence

Across the United States, young people are protesting the genocide in Gaza, and many know that both Democrats and Republicans fundamentally agree on Zionism. Genocide Joe has provided the weapons the IDF needs to commit mass murder, and in the debate stage, Trump and Harris tried to outdo each other with their support for Israel.

Many of these protesters refuse to vote for genocide – so how about some sort of third party? At first glance, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) looks like a socialist alternative. PSL candidates Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia, who are running in over a dozen states, are calling on people to “end capitalism before it kills us.” In contrast to Trump and Harris, both friends of Billionaires, de la Cruz and Garcia are working-class women who want to “conquer big pharma, big tech and big banks.”

Who is the PSL and will the party's election help give working people a voice? Before formulating our criticism of the PSL, we must emphasize our support for their democratic right to participate in US elections. We reject any attempts to keep them out of the election. We demand that they be allowed to participate in presidential debates so that millions of viewers can see politicians who are not members of the ruling class.

Anti-imperialism of fools

The Party of Socialism and Liberation was founded in 2004 and, as the main force behind the ANSWER coalition, has organized numerous anti-war protests, particularly against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The PSL presents itself as a radical alternative to the Democratic Socialists of America: instead of phone banking for Democratic Party candidates, the PSL seeks to build a “revolutionary workers' party” based on Marxism.

Nevertheless, the PSL's politics are best described as “campist”: it offers support to almost any government that is in conflict with US imperialism. They join the “camp” that opposes US hegemony.

We believe that socialists must be anti-imperialist and resist every maneuver by the US government, intelligence agencies and corporations. The “main enemy is at home,” as German communist leader Karl Liebknecht put it. But that doesn't make the enemy of our enemy our friend.

Our anti-imperialism is based on class struggle. We do not believe that the bourgeoisie of an oppressed nation can lead the fight against imperialist domination. Only the working class, armed with an anti-capitalist program, can end international exploitation. Nevertheless, the PSL believes that the primary task of workers in the United States is to support other capitalist governments in their struggles with US imperialism.

The PSL supports a variety of governments. These primarily include the so-called Stalinist states, in which a bureaucratic caste controls the planned economy and at the same time destroys all forms of workers' democracy. As socialists, we defend the non-capitalist economic structures in Cuba and North Korea while opposing the government's oppression of the working class.

In addition, the PSL supports former Stalinist countries that have long since restored capitalism, such as China and Vietnam. China is now a country with an authoritarian government that oppresses the working class and rules in the interests of billionaires. Nevertheless, the PSL claims that it is “building a socialist society.” When the PSL press writes about Chinese investments in Africa and Latin America that have all the hallmarks of imperialist exploitation, it reads like a PR agency for the Chinese government: instead of excessive exploitation of workers in other countries, the PSL assures readers that the Chinese Bourgeoisie strives for “modernization” and progress.”

The PSL's support is not limited to states that were once planned economies or ruled by supposedly communist parties, but also to supposedly progressive capitalist governments. While Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro cracked down on the labor movement and used heavy-handed tactics to win the recent presidential election, the PSL acted as a cheerleader for this authoritarian government and defended “Venezuelan democracy.”

The PSL press gives no indication that Maduro's government has implemented massive austerity measures in the interests of imperialism. Working class and socialist candidates were excluded from the election. The truth is that Venezuela was never socialist and the socialists in Venezuela fought for the political independence of the working class from the state.

Finally, the PSL even offers political support to bourgeois regimes that do not claim to be socialist, left-wing or progressive. The PSL, for example, considers the Houthi movement in Yemen to be a political ally. It also argued that Syria's “secular and independent state continues to be far more democratic and progressive than any of its opposition forces.” (The implication that Bashar Al-Assad deserves support as a “lesser evil” is notable from a group that opposes the lesser evil in the United States!) The PSL similarly claimed with regard to Iran's clerical regime that “its interests coincide with the interests of organic anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist movements throughout the region.” This regime, which emerged from the suppression of a working-class revolution, not only oppresses the workers of Iran, but is also no friend of Palestine.

Again, it is absolutely true that socialists in the United States reject any military intervention by our government. But calling on workers in the United States to support reactionary, bourgeois, anti-worker governments in other countries is the anti-imperialism of fools.

The PSL does not believe that workers should organize independently of capitalists – it advocates class collaboration with capitalists who are in conflict with US imperialism. But within the imperialist world order, no capitalist state is truly anti-imperialist. The Iranian government, which has been at odds with the United States for over four decades, continues to seek to do business on behalf of multinational corporations and exploit workers in Iran.

This openness to class collaboration is not limited to foreign policy. Realizing how unpopular their support for the Gaza genocide was, parts of the Democratic Party launched a campaign to vote “non-binding” in the primaries. The goal of this campaign was to discourage voters from turning away from Biden and Harris by sowing the illusion that these imperialist politicians could be persuaded to change their policies through voting.

Although this campaign was surprisingly successful, it had absolutely no effect on Harris, who has doubled down on her support for Israel. The only result was to turn some voters back to an imperialist party. Although the PSL claims to be anti-Democratic, it supported this campaign and specifically called on voters to “vote without obligation” in the Democratic Party primaries. This was no exception: when they organized a march in Washington last November, they offered a lot of space to NGOs very closely linked to the Democratic Party. This type of class collaboration is consistent with the entire history of the PSL.

Where does the PSL come from?

The PSL emerged from a split from the Workers World Party (WWP) in 2004. The WWP had been founded 45 years earlier by Sam Marcy after he split from the Trotskyist movement. As the local leader of the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), Marcy had supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 to put down a workers' uprising. Marcy's theory of “global class struggle” called for uncritical solidarity with every action of the repressive Soviet bureaucracy. In other words, “campingism” is in the PSL’s DNA.

Marcy had previously clashed with SWP leaders over Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential campaign. Wallace had served as vice president under Roosevelt and then founded the Progressive Party in 1956. He was a non-socialist politician who called for some progressive reforms within the capitalist state. The SWP rightly refused to support any bourgeois candidates, but Marcy believed that it would be useful for revolutionary militants to work with a progressive section of the ruling class. Here too, the PSL has a long tradition of class collaboration.

While Marcy's WWP originally considered itself the true Trotskyists, both the WWP and the PSL can be better described as Stalinist parties. However, rather than representing the interests of a particular Stalinist bureaucracy, the PSL is one sui generis American form of Stalinism that seeks to support all Stalinist regimes and many bourgeois regimes as well.

As we have written elsewhere, the PSL has played an important role in the Palestine solidarity movement, but its Stalinist politics impose important limits. Crucially, the PSL has not encouraged the movement's self-organization with open meetings and elected delegates making decisions. Instead, the party works with liberal figureheads to organize behind the scenes. Internally, the PSL also uses a Stalinist framework in which members are officially granted democratic rights, but critical debates and decision-making are limited to the top. Thus, the PSL's Stalinism is not just a matter of historical balance of previous revolutionary experiences – its Stalinism has a negative impact on today's protest movements.

For all of these reasons, the PSL is not a voice for the political independence of the working class, in the United States or elsewhere. Building a genuine socialist alternative requires the political independence of the working class and not the campism of the PSL.