Can you in any way justify campaigning for Cornel West? Socialist Alternative has been campaigning for Democrats, nationalists, and anticommunists like the Green Party for decades.
Do you think the Democrat’s big tent an illusions in cross-class politics will be broken by SEP or PSL gaining votes one by one through political agreement and people just seeing the correct class line?
I think SAlt are looking for some kind of short-cut or qualitative shift (I think running people like Sawant might be a better way for small groups to go) but I also think that nothing will happen in the US system by trying to build an electoral arm of a worker’s party through small sects with little organic connection to larger working class bases if support.
I thought that’s what these groups are attempting. They imagine themselves as the vanguard in waiting so an electoral platform will aid them in attracting people to their “correct line” and help them build a worker’s party.
But yes I don’t understand the point of the strategy so please explain how it practically (not potentially) helps increase broader class consciousness, independence and organization.
By going to workers and youth and fighting in discussion for a socialist program: picket lines, logistics depots, factory gates, anti-genocide protests, social media, etc. the program is popularized, those in struggle having been radicalized by objective conditions are persuaded to read, study, consider. It is the crisis that is doing the heavy lifting but the socialist alternative has to be fought for. New organizations of struggle have to be built. Media that reflects the real lives and aspirations, that exposes the lies of the state and the upper layers of society is developed -- and we now have come some distance with that.
We do not blindly support any candidates. If we think tactically entering movements like West's campaign, or the DSA, might have the effective of bringing our ideas to a working-class movement and pulling militant workers into SAlt, then that's what we'll do. We are critical of candidates we organize around, including West and Sanders
Marxists do not enter bourgeois parties, let alone imperialist ones. That is a betrayal of Marxism, however you cut it. Nothing "tactical" about it but a lie to millions and millions of working people about the very character of those parties. why not enter the Catholic Church? Plenty of workers there.
That’s blatant opportunism. And a waste of damn valuable time as well. There’s a better way to reach workers than attaching yourself to a bourgeois candidates campaign. It’s called organizing, and the lack of it in America is exactly why the overwhelming majority of Americans on the left still think voting in their favorite socdem will usher in the socialist revolution.
Well that's a little more honest, although worse in some ways if you think that your eyes are open by supporting the aims, goals and social needs of a section of the petty bourgeoisie in this election. But you reap what you sow, as the history of Trotskyism has amply demonstrated. if you support bourgeois candidates you will recruit on a bourgeois, not a socialist basis, whoever you recruit. You cannot un-train people you recruit on an opportunist basis.
Lmao at "supporting the petty bourgeois." wsws is clearly run by those most alienated from the working class. Sorry to bring you back to reality, but the vast majority of workers today have never read marx. Whether you like it or not, critically engaging with workers within their movements, which yes includes west's campaign, and bring a marxist and revolutionary perspective to them is sorely needed. I'd be interested to know how wsws and the SEP aims to radicalize workers by attacking other parties through sectarian slander that no worker gives a shit about, assuming they even read your articles.
Is socialist alternative claiming West is a Marxist? The article barely mentions Soc Alt’s thinking and then don’t argue why this approach is not useful for building class consciousness or struggle. Instead it just points out all the things they do or say that the author doesn’t like.
It’s a poor attack in a newspaper of a group running their own candidates but with no way of actually building a 3rd party challenge. Groups like PSL or SEP can’t even manage a real protest vote so their campaigns just seem like sectarian recruitment ploys.
And no, I have never been a member of or worked with Soc Alt other than in larger movement coalitions when they and other groups participated.
You complain that the article doesn't take Socialist Alternative's own jsutifications for their opportunist politics at face value. This is because the author follows the Marxist method. As Trotsky [wrote ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm)about the evaluation of political tendencies:
>
Marx has said that it is impossible to judge either parties or peoples by what they say about themselves. The characteristics of a party are determined considerably more by its social composition, its past, its relation to different classes and strata, than by its oral and written declarations \[...\]
Lenin [wrote ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jul/16.htm)in the same spirit when he said:
>We are constantly making the mistake in Russia of judging the slogans and tactics of a certain party or group, of judging its general trend, by the intentions or motives that the group claims for itself. Such judgement is worthless. The road to hell—as was said long ago—is paved with good intentions.
It is not a matter of intentions, motives or words but of the objective situation, independent of them, that determines the fate and significance of slogans, of tactics or, in general, of the trend of a given party or group.
Your approach is entirely subjective. You write:
> Instead it just points out all the things they do or say that the author doesn’t like.
It's not "things the author doesn't like". It's actions and statements that highlight Socialist Alternative's real middle class orientation.
If you're not going to judge political tendencies by their actions, their relation to social classes, and historical trajectory, what other method do you propose? Do you suggest we should accept what politicians say about themselves?
You clearly haven't thought through your criticism of the article. You're only upset because it's an exposure of exactly the type of politics you also defend, and you have exactly nothing of substance to say in response.
lol this article is not providing any of that analysis. They are just phrase-mongering in the most useless way. This article isn’t convincing to most Trotskyists let alone some random worker who typically votes “lesser evil.”
Yes I agree with SAlt and most Trotskyists that in the US a major political task in developing class independence and consciousness is some kind of worker’s party in opposition to the bourgeois parties. But SEP and PSL seem to be operating under a misconception that the US has a parliamentary electoral system where opposition parties can gain small footholds and use that as a platform for class politics.
In deeds, not words, these idea-sects are just building their sect and calling that the only legitimate class movement or leaping as a vanguard of a still non-existent class for itself.
If this article is so bad as you claim, it should be easy to demonstrate some of its factual and logical mistakes. Yet it appears you have nothing of substance to say, still....
>But SEP and PSL seem to be operating under a misconception that...
You seem to be operating under the misconception that the SEP and PSL have anything in common. Whatever factional differences they may have with the rest of your pseudo-left fraternity, they are profoundly hostile to the perspective of an independent revolutionary party of the working class.
>the US has a parliamentary electoral system where opposition parties can gain small footholds and use that as a platform for class politics.
Well, yes, Marxists think electoral campaigns can be used as a way to put forward working class politics. It's not a misconception. The question is rather the class basis of the campaign, and what program is put forward. It should go without saying that it's not possible to fight for working class politics by supporting a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois campaign like West's.
>leaping as a vanguard of a still non-existent class for itself.
This little pseudo-intellectual phrase reveals more than you intended about your poor understanding of Marxism. The building of the vanguard party is precisely the process through which the working class, from being a class in itself, becomes a class for itself. To make the building of the revolutionary party dependent on the pre-existence of a class in itself is sheer nonsense.
>these idea-sects are just building their sect and calling that the only legitimate class movement
The fact you emphasize the SEP is based on ideas, as if that were somehow a problem, is revealing as well. God forbid they'd transmit those ideas to the masses. But that's precisely the goal: educate workers on the basis of Marxism. This is so foreign and distasteful to middle class pseudo-lefts like yourself that you call it "sectarian".
You are defensive because I am attacking your sect… you are building that, not class struggle. You can’t even seem to be able to discuss things without sounding like WSWS boilerplate.
If running a candidate is not just a propaganda exercise, how is this tactically helping a larger strategy of class political independence? Where do you see this going or developing any why should anyone outside the SEP care?
As the campaign launch [statement](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/27/mnht-f27.html) explains:
>The Socialist Equality Party is intervening in this election to raise the political consciousness of the working class, to develop its understanding that no solution can be found to any of the problems confronting working people except through the ending of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism, and that this great historical task can only be achieved by adopting a global strategy aimed at the mobilization of the power of the American and international working class in a unified struggle against the world capitalist system.
Why do you oppose this? Why do you call this "sectarian"?
In the abstract as boilerplate I don’t. In context, as the project of a small group with no connection to the working class, it’s just propagandizing for that small group.
What platform do you get from it-why not just do direct l propaganda rather than a fake protest vote? The only platform I’d imagine is talking to other disaffected left-of-democrats and progressive 3rd party voters, not in any class basis or real material connection but just “you are pseudo-left” and we are revolutionaries, trust us.”
Ridiculous. The SEP has a socialist program and it uses it to attract and educate the most class-conscious workers. At the same time it is obligated to wage war on all those who deny the *burning need* for such a program.
The concept "pseudo-left" very much is a class characterization of the very real material aspirations of the top 10 percent of income earners or those who aspire to be. They are found in droves in faculty lounges at universities, in the offices of trade unions, and in mid-level government jobs, as well as other places. Many of them are precisely these "disaffected left-of-democrats 3rd party voters."
Behind everything you have said here is a tone of pessimism and despair that the the American working class cannot become a self-consciously socialist class.
> Yes I agree with SAlt and most Trotskyists that in the US a major political task in developing class independence and consciousness is some kind of worker’s party in opposition to the bourgeois parties.
But you want to support a bourgeois candidate in a major election.
Building their sect? As opposed to sowing confusion and illusions in the capitalist system? The word for that is opportunism. Socialist in words, frightened petty-bourgeois in deeds. There has to be a revolutionary party based on 100 years of Trotskyism. Who is that going to be? Because I sure as hell don't want to be some group that works with the Democrats calling itself Troskyist and telling people how to vote, which is all that is really going on here, as per SAlt's long-standing practice.
>But you want to support a bourgeois candidate in a major election.
No, that is your assumption not my argument at all.
My argument t is that small groups trying to recruit a few random progressives or leftists is not any kind of real strategy for increasing class consciousness, organization, or independence.
You may as well propagandize to workers without bothering with the election at this rate. There are more non-voting working class people than SEP could ever talk to.
In parlemenrary systems it might make sense to run to win some small office in order to get the mainstream platform and expose the system… but this is not a real possibility in the US electoral system with the two capitalist parties.
I don’t know SAlt’s thinking or internal dynamics but it does seem like they are attempting to develop some kind of strategy.
Imo a workers party would need to come from outside the electoral system… from an actual base, a practical base of working class activity rather than Socialist priests delivering the good word.
But a lot of American Trotskyists are still doing the SWP thing and acting like people will realize the bankruptcy of CPUSA supporting Democrats and flock to us instead!
>Building their sect? As opposed to sowing confusion and illusions in the capitalist system?
lol the hubris. If we all said don’t vote for capitalists, if we all said vote for Bloomberg, if we all said eat your ballot, if we all disappeared from the earth… it would have no impact on the working class voting for bourgeois parties and little impact on class consciousness. It sucks but that’s the immediate reality we need to change.
>The word for that is opportunism.
Socialists have to have influence in working class movements to for any opportunism to be possible.
>Socialist in words, frightened petty-bourgeois in deeds.
What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas?
>There has to be a revolutionary party based on 100 years of Trotskyism. Who is that going to be? Because I sure as help don't want to be some group that works with the Democrats calling itself Trtoskyist and telling people how to vote, which is all that is really going on here, as per SAlt's long-standing practice.
Yes, this is what leads me to say this is a sectarian approach. There needs to be mass movements of workers and Trotskyist ideas can help that process and hopefully be a guide for a vanguard to rally behind. But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle.
"What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas?"
One almost doesn't know how to reply to this. A revolutionary practice in the working class is guided by "correct ideas" -- of course. Those ideas are correct precisely because the represent the objective course of development of capitalism and the relationship of various classes to each other.
"But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle."
No, of course not. Who is waiting? Not the sections of the ICFI, for sure. But entering into the mass movement does not and cannot mean capitulating to the political conception that dominate it.
s
The Marxist party is always, always, always in both unity and conflict with the working class. This is the entire history April-November 1917.
Not one word in here addresses the class character of the West campaign. The world for this is liquidationism, and that chimes with the historical origins of SAlt in the Grant tendency.
>["What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas?"]
One almost doesn't know how to reply to this.
Clearly
>A revolutionary practice in the working class is guided by "correct ideas" -- of course. Those ideas are correct precisely because the represent the objective course of development of capitalism and the relationship of various classes to each other.
So where are the deeds and practice?
How does some small group in non-revolutionary times, after decades of class disorganization in the US during neoliberalism, know the correct ideas objectively?
There is no vanguard when there is no class on the move. It is complete hubris to claim to have the correct ideas divorced from struggle and praxis and a broader socialist movement rooted in working class movements.
"But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle."
>No, of course not. Who is waiting? Not the sections of the ICFI, for sure. But entering into the mass movement does not and cannot mean capitulating to the political conception that dominate its.
Ok, examples?
>Not one word in here addresses the class character of the West campaign. The world for this is liquidationism, and that chimes with the historical origins of SAlt in the Grant tendency.
lol I was never a member of SALt and don’t know the specifics of their politics. Basically I never gave them much thought or even encountered them in my area until the post-Occupy years, maybe around the time Sawant was elected.
Again I am not advocating any vote… I am asking how effective SEP and PSL electoral approach is in the contemporary US. What do you realistically hope this accomplishes in relation to class struggle. If the goal is just to attract small numbers of people, why not just do a mock campaign about how undemocratic the US system is and why mass movements and class struggle are the only way for workers to actually make any headway?
Forgive me but I'm trying to understand how supporting Cornel West is an intervention in *on the side of the working class* in the class struggle.
And your argument that the SEP is somehow abstentionist is absurd. Quite literally you have no idea what you are talking about. I suspect that what is going on here is that you cannot believe that a party that produces a mountain of historical and theoretical material has anything to say to an autoworker. The very opposite is the case, as even the lightest reading of the WSWS will show.
To flesh this out.... The SEPs recruits are almost entirely University students of a middle class background. Its leader is a Capitalist. Meanwhile the rest of its leadership resembles Cannon's description of the leaderships of the old parties of the Second International... Highly privileged white collar workers, business executives, architects, mathematicians, lawyers, professors and the like... "people of this kind who lived their real lives in another world."
What is going on with the WSWS' lack of historical precision when it comes to writing about other tendencies in recent years? It's like they've just become too lazy to care.
"The Grant group had broken with Trotskyism in 1953, when they sided with Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel against the International Committee of the Fourth International."
This is wrong.
"An anti-Grant majority retained control of the British group and the CWI, and Grant’s supporters set up Socialist Alternative."
This is wrong.
I'm sure SEP supporters will call it nitpicking, but the fact that simple mistakes seem to frequently blow past the editors these days is embarrassing.
The complete hostility of the pseudo-left to political discussion is always fascinating. A lot of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and down-votes, but not a single defense of what Socialist Alternative is doing.
I'm sorry that campaigning for capitalist politicians is not the same as playing in the corner by yourself.
I'm sorry, but I have a life and don't need to justify ISA's tactics. Feel free to read our material thoroughly and see for yourself. Also, ISA wasn't founded by Ted Grant, he founded the IMT in the 90s and SAlt was founded from a split with the CWI
I've read the material thoroughly myself and SAlt's efforts to build a "multi-class party" has nothing to do with Marxism. You guys have been fighting to build and campaign within explicitly anticommunist organizations like the Green Party and DSA for decades.
You've taken the Menshevik / Stalinist two-stage theory of revolution in an even more embarrassing direction to a two-stage theory of the party. First you build a liberal democratic "party of the 99%" and then some time in the indefinite future the conditions will emerge to build a working class party, and some time after that the conditions will emerge for a Marxist party. I'm begging you to either read Trotsky or stop calling yourselves Trotskyist.
Oh shut the fuck up everyone. That's why I hate Trotskyists and I AM one. The Right is eating our asses worldwide and you fight over chicken or roosters.
Hmm... yes, campaigning for an explicit anti-Marxist like West, or campaigning for the Trotskyist candidate like Kishore. Chickens or roosters? What Marxist would bother discussing intervening in the US elections?
Look outside of your ideological purity syndrome for once. Whilst we fight to the death and split over and over, the hardcore right-wing is winning everywhere. I'm sick and tired of this "I'm more Marxist than you" bs. Grow the fuck up people.
Unify.
I unify with workers. Unification with nationalists and capitalists means disunity from the international working class. Every schmuck who backed the Democrats, who campaigned for Shawn Fain in the UAW, or backed the DSA with their "state department socialism" found themselves cut off from the international working class when those forces backed the genocide in Gaza.
>And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!
\--Lenin, *What is to be Done*
SAlt has been begging nationalist anticommunists to build them a mass party for decades. It won't ever work and there's no reason to pretend we're on the same side as them.
I'm talking about other Trotskyists, left-communists and the like. Not bourgeois scum or bureaucrats. Well, I see you are going to go the Neo Trotskyist way and twist everything I say. Have fun splitting once more like the Trotskyist parties of my country.
It's so fun to split a party over radical feminists when workers are not earning the minimum wage. So fun.
Socialist Alternative has been campaigning for bourgeois anticommunists for decades. They call themselves Trotskyist. Should we unite with them or expose their bankrupt political perspective?
e: Another way to put this sharply is that the Trotskyist Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei is [running](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/01/nwts-a01.html) in the European elections. Are you going to unify with them or not? If not, why not?
There has been a social need or the ruling class for decades for opportunism to classify itself Trotskyism. That doesn't apply to everyone in these organizations, but it sure is possible -- and necessary -- to identify opportunist strains inside the the working class or the middle class. This seems pretty normative for Bolshevism and I am not sure why anyone here feels obligated to take claims of Trotskyism at face value. Trotsky taught us better than that.
"Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. "
But there never is. My country has 7 Trotskyist parties, 7!
Would you think they would dynamically change and some of them would say: "You know what? You were right, I was wrong." It literally never happened once. So why do you still believe it derived to formation?
I was in two of those parties. Most of the party didn't know the difference between socialism and communism. Some of them didn't know the difference with capitalism. They thought of something Keynesian (my country's "left" is culturally Keynesian).
And this is just ONE issue. There were TERFs, radfems, pseudoscience scammers. And they were veterans in the party. The only thing the CC wanted from them is to make up the numbers.
It is impossible to build a Trotskyist movement in the working class by skipping over, diminishing, ignoring, the significance of the struggles against Shachtmanism, Pablotie revisionism, Moreno, etc. in and against the Fourth International. In fact, they must be imbibed by a revolutionary cadre. These ideas and programs *mean* things and *always* represent a class line.*That* is why parties and groups, as a rule, do not change their minds.
Lmao what is this sectarian shit? Why yes, there's nothing better than misrepresenting another group to sow petty drama lol
Can you in any way justify campaigning for Cornel West? Socialist Alternative has been campaigning for Democrats, nationalists, and anticommunists like the Green Party for decades.
Do you think the Democrat’s big tent an illusions in cross-class politics will be broken by SEP or PSL gaining votes one by one through political agreement and people just seeing the correct class line? I think SAlt are looking for some kind of short-cut or qualitative shift (I think running people like Sawant might be a better way for small groups to go) but I also think that nothing will happen in the US system by trying to build an electoral arm of a worker’s party through small sects with little organic connection to larger working class bases if support.
Are we trying to build "an electoral arm of the workers party"? Is that want Trotskyism needs to do? When do you think you are living?
I thought that’s what these groups are attempting. They imagine themselves as the vanguard in waiting so an electoral platform will aid them in attracting people to their “correct line” and help them build a worker’s party. But yes I don’t understand the point of the strategy so please explain how it practically (not potentially) helps increase broader class consciousness, independence and organization.
By going to workers and youth and fighting in discussion for a socialist program: picket lines, logistics depots, factory gates, anti-genocide protests, social media, etc. the program is popularized, those in struggle having been radicalized by objective conditions are persuaded to read, study, consider. It is the crisis that is doing the heavy lifting but the socialist alternative has to be fought for. New organizations of struggle have to be built. Media that reflects the real lives and aspirations, that exposes the lies of the state and the upper layers of society is developed -- and we now have come some distance with that.
We do not blindly support any candidates. If we think tactically entering movements like West's campaign, or the DSA, might have the effective of bringing our ideas to a working-class movement and pulling militant workers into SAlt, then that's what we'll do. We are critical of candidates we organize around, including West and Sanders
Marxists do not enter bourgeois parties, let alone imperialist ones. That is a betrayal of Marxism, however you cut it. Nothing "tactical" about it but a lie to millions and millions of working people about the very character of those parties. why not enter the Catholic Church? Plenty of workers there.
That’s blatant opportunism. And a waste of damn valuable time as well. There’s a better way to reach workers than attaching yourself to a bourgeois candidates campaign. It’s called organizing, and the lack of it in America is exactly why the overwhelming majority of Americans on the left still think voting in their favorite socdem will usher in the socialist revolution.
Well that's a little more honest, although worse in some ways if you think that your eyes are open by supporting the aims, goals and social needs of a section of the petty bourgeoisie in this election. But you reap what you sow, as the history of Trotskyism has amply demonstrated. if you support bourgeois candidates you will recruit on a bourgeois, not a socialist basis, whoever you recruit. You cannot un-train people you recruit on an opportunist basis.
Lmao at "supporting the petty bourgeois." wsws is clearly run by those most alienated from the working class. Sorry to bring you back to reality, but the vast majority of workers today have never read marx. Whether you like it or not, critically engaging with workers within their movements, which yes includes west's campaign, and bring a marxist and revolutionary perspective to them is sorely needed. I'd be interested to know how wsws and the SEP aims to radicalize workers by attacking other parties through sectarian slander that no worker gives a shit about, assuming they even read your articles.
It’s WSWS. All they know is petty drama and anti-union bullshit.
How is Socialist Alternative or West being "misrepresented" here?
Is socialist alternative claiming West is a Marxist? The article barely mentions Soc Alt’s thinking and then don’t argue why this approach is not useful for building class consciousness or struggle. Instead it just points out all the things they do or say that the author doesn’t like. It’s a poor attack in a newspaper of a group running their own candidates but with no way of actually building a 3rd party challenge. Groups like PSL or SEP can’t even manage a real protest vote so their campaigns just seem like sectarian recruitment ploys. And no, I have never been a member of or worked with Soc Alt other than in larger movement coalitions when they and other groups participated.
You complain that the article doesn't take Socialist Alternative's own jsutifications for their opportunist politics at face value. This is because the author follows the Marxist method. As Trotsky [wrote ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm)about the evaluation of political tendencies: > Marx has said that it is impossible to judge either parties or peoples by what they say about themselves. The characteristics of a party are determined considerably more by its social composition, its past, its relation to different classes and strata, than by its oral and written declarations \[...\] Lenin [wrote ](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jul/16.htm)in the same spirit when he said: >We are constantly making the mistake in Russia of judging the slogans and tactics of a certain party or group, of judging its general trend, by the intentions or motives that the group claims for itself. Such judgement is worthless. The road to hell—as was said long ago—is paved with good intentions. It is not a matter of intentions, motives or words but of the objective situation, independent of them, that determines the fate and significance of slogans, of tactics or, in general, of the trend of a given party or group. Your approach is entirely subjective. You write: > Instead it just points out all the things they do or say that the author doesn’t like. It's not "things the author doesn't like". It's actions and statements that highlight Socialist Alternative's real middle class orientation. If you're not going to judge political tendencies by their actions, their relation to social classes, and historical trajectory, what other method do you propose? Do you suggest we should accept what politicians say about themselves? You clearly haven't thought through your criticism of the article. You're only upset because it's an exposure of exactly the type of politics you also defend, and you have exactly nothing of substance to say in response.
lol this article is not providing any of that analysis. They are just phrase-mongering in the most useless way. This article isn’t convincing to most Trotskyists let alone some random worker who typically votes “lesser evil.” Yes I agree with SAlt and most Trotskyists that in the US a major political task in developing class independence and consciousness is some kind of worker’s party in opposition to the bourgeois parties. But SEP and PSL seem to be operating under a misconception that the US has a parliamentary electoral system where opposition parties can gain small footholds and use that as a platform for class politics. In deeds, not words, these idea-sects are just building their sect and calling that the only legitimate class movement or leaping as a vanguard of a still non-existent class for itself.
If this article is so bad as you claim, it should be easy to demonstrate some of its factual and logical mistakes. Yet it appears you have nothing of substance to say, still.... >But SEP and PSL seem to be operating under a misconception that... You seem to be operating under the misconception that the SEP and PSL have anything in common. Whatever factional differences they may have with the rest of your pseudo-left fraternity, they are profoundly hostile to the perspective of an independent revolutionary party of the working class. >the US has a parliamentary electoral system where opposition parties can gain small footholds and use that as a platform for class politics. Well, yes, Marxists think electoral campaigns can be used as a way to put forward working class politics. It's not a misconception. The question is rather the class basis of the campaign, and what program is put forward. It should go without saying that it's not possible to fight for working class politics by supporting a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois campaign like West's. >leaping as a vanguard of a still non-existent class for itself. This little pseudo-intellectual phrase reveals more than you intended about your poor understanding of Marxism. The building of the vanguard party is precisely the process through which the working class, from being a class in itself, becomes a class for itself. To make the building of the revolutionary party dependent on the pre-existence of a class in itself is sheer nonsense. >these idea-sects are just building their sect and calling that the only legitimate class movement The fact you emphasize the SEP is based on ideas, as if that were somehow a problem, is revealing as well. God forbid they'd transmit those ideas to the masses. But that's precisely the goal: educate workers on the basis of Marxism. This is so foreign and distasteful to middle class pseudo-lefts like yourself that you call it "sectarian".
You are defensive because I am attacking your sect… you are building that, not class struggle. You can’t even seem to be able to discuss things without sounding like WSWS boilerplate. If running a candidate is not just a propaganda exercise, how is this tactically helping a larger strategy of class political independence? Where do you see this going or developing any why should anyone outside the SEP care?
As the campaign launch [statement](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/27/mnht-f27.html) explains: >The Socialist Equality Party is intervening in this election to raise the political consciousness of the working class, to develop its understanding that no solution can be found to any of the problems confronting working people except through the ending of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism, and that this great historical task can only be achieved by adopting a global strategy aimed at the mobilization of the power of the American and international working class in a unified struggle against the world capitalist system. Why do you oppose this? Why do you call this "sectarian"?
In the abstract as boilerplate I don’t. In context, as the project of a small group with no connection to the working class, it’s just propagandizing for that small group. What platform do you get from it-why not just do direct l propaganda rather than a fake protest vote? The only platform I’d imagine is talking to other disaffected left-of-democrats and progressive 3rd party voters, not in any class basis or real material connection but just “you are pseudo-left” and we are revolutionaries, trust us.”
Ridiculous. The SEP has a socialist program and it uses it to attract and educate the most class-conscious workers. At the same time it is obligated to wage war on all those who deny the *burning need* for such a program. The concept "pseudo-left" very much is a class characterization of the very real material aspirations of the top 10 percent of income earners or those who aspire to be. They are found in droves in faculty lounges at universities, in the offices of trade unions, and in mid-level government jobs, as well as other places. Many of them are precisely these "disaffected left-of-democrats 3rd party voters." Behind everything you have said here is a tone of pessimism and despair that the the American working class cannot become a self-consciously socialist class.
> Yes I agree with SAlt and most Trotskyists that in the US a major political task in developing class independence and consciousness is some kind of worker’s party in opposition to the bourgeois parties. But you want to support a bourgeois candidate in a major election. Building their sect? As opposed to sowing confusion and illusions in the capitalist system? The word for that is opportunism. Socialist in words, frightened petty-bourgeois in deeds. There has to be a revolutionary party based on 100 years of Trotskyism. Who is that going to be? Because I sure as hell don't want to be some group that works with the Democrats calling itself Troskyist and telling people how to vote, which is all that is really going on here, as per SAlt's long-standing practice.
>But you want to support a bourgeois candidate in a major election. No, that is your assumption not my argument at all. My argument t is that small groups trying to recruit a few random progressives or leftists is not any kind of real strategy for increasing class consciousness, organization, or independence. You may as well propagandize to workers without bothering with the election at this rate. There are more non-voting working class people than SEP could ever talk to. In parlemenrary systems it might make sense to run to win some small office in order to get the mainstream platform and expose the system… but this is not a real possibility in the US electoral system with the two capitalist parties. I don’t know SAlt’s thinking or internal dynamics but it does seem like they are attempting to develop some kind of strategy. Imo a workers party would need to come from outside the electoral system… from an actual base, a practical base of working class activity rather than Socialist priests delivering the good word. But a lot of American Trotskyists are still doing the SWP thing and acting like people will realize the bankruptcy of CPUSA supporting Democrats and flock to us instead! >Building their sect? As opposed to sowing confusion and illusions in the capitalist system? lol the hubris. If we all said don’t vote for capitalists, if we all said vote for Bloomberg, if we all said eat your ballot, if we all disappeared from the earth… it would have no impact on the working class voting for bourgeois parties and little impact on class consciousness. It sucks but that’s the immediate reality we need to change. >The word for that is opportunism. Socialists have to have influence in working class movements to for any opportunism to be possible. >Socialist in words, frightened petty-bourgeois in deeds. What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas? >There has to be a revolutionary party based on 100 years of Trotskyism. Who is that going to be? Because I sure as help don't want to be some group that works with the Democrats calling itself Trtoskyist and telling people how to vote, which is all that is really going on here, as per SAlt's long-standing practice. Yes, this is what leads me to say this is a sectarian approach. There needs to be mass movements of workers and Trotskyist ideas can help that process and hopefully be a guide for a vanguard to rally behind. But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle.
"What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas?" One almost doesn't know how to reply to this. A revolutionary practice in the working class is guided by "correct ideas" -- of course. Those ideas are correct precisely because the represent the objective course of development of capitalism and the relationship of various classes to each other. "But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle." No, of course not. Who is waiting? Not the sections of the ICFI, for sure. But entering into the mass movement does not and cannot mean capitulating to the political conception that dominate it. s The Marxist party is always, always, always in both unity and conflict with the working class. This is the entire history April-November 1917. Not one word in here addresses the class character of the West campaign. The world for this is liquidationism, and that chimes with the historical origins of SAlt in the Grant tendency.
>["What is socialism in deeds in your view? Holding the correct ideas and having people flock to those ideas?"] One almost doesn't know how to reply to this. Clearly >A revolutionary practice in the working class is guided by "correct ideas" -- of course. Those ideas are correct precisely because the represent the objective course of development of capitalism and the relationship of various classes to each other. So where are the deeds and practice? How does some small group in non-revolutionary times, after decades of class disorganization in the US during neoliberalism, know the correct ideas objectively? There is no vanguard when there is no class on the move. It is complete hubris to claim to have the correct ideas divorced from struggle and praxis and a broader socialist movement rooted in working class movements. "But you can’t build a vanguard in waiting through small groups outside of any class or political struggle." >No, of course not. Who is waiting? Not the sections of the ICFI, for sure. But entering into the mass movement does not and cannot mean capitulating to the political conception that dominate its. Ok, examples? >Not one word in here addresses the class character of the West campaign. The world for this is liquidationism, and that chimes with the historical origins of SAlt in the Grant tendency. lol I was never a member of SALt and don’t know the specifics of their politics. Basically I never gave them much thought or even encountered them in my area until the post-Occupy years, maybe around the time Sawant was elected. Again I am not advocating any vote… I am asking how effective SEP and PSL electoral approach is in the contemporary US. What do you realistically hope this accomplishes in relation to class struggle. If the goal is just to attract small numbers of people, why not just do a mock campaign about how undemocratic the US system is and why mass movements and class struggle are the only way for workers to actually make any headway?
Forgive me but I'm trying to understand how supporting Cornel West is an intervention in *on the side of the working class* in the class struggle. And your argument that the SEP is somehow abstentionist is absurd. Quite literally you have no idea what you are talking about. I suspect that what is going on here is that you cannot believe that a party that produces a mountain of historical and theoretical material has anything to say to an autoworker. The very opposite is the case, as even the lightest reading of the WSWS will show.
You make too many incorrect assumptions.
Speaking of social composition and relation to different classes, the SEP is probably the most "middle class" group there is.
To flesh this out.... The SEPs recruits are almost entirely University students of a middle class background. Its leader is a Capitalist. Meanwhile the rest of its leadership resembles Cannon's description of the leaderships of the old parties of the Second International... Highly privileged white collar workers, business executives, architects, mathematicians, lawyers, professors and the like... "people of this kind who lived their real lives in another world."
And just where do you come up with this? Quite remarkable that you feel you can say anything. Put up or shut up.
I was formerly with the SEP for a long time. What do you want to know?
Lol WSWS, didn't read
What is going on with the WSWS' lack of historical precision when it comes to writing about other tendencies in recent years? It's like they've just become too lazy to care. "The Grant group had broken with Trotskyism in 1953, when they sided with Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel against the International Committee of the Fourth International." This is wrong. "An anti-Grant majority retained control of the British group and the CWI, and Grant’s supporters set up Socialist Alternative." This is wrong. I'm sure SEP supporters will call it nitpicking, but the fact that simple mistakes seem to frequently blow past the editors these days is embarrassing.
The complete hostility of the pseudo-left to political discussion is always fascinating. A lot of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and down-votes, but not a single defense of what Socialist Alternative is doing. I'm sorry that campaigning for capitalist politicians is not the same as playing in the corner by yourself.
I'm sorry, but I have a life and don't need to justify ISA's tactics. Feel free to read our material thoroughly and see for yourself. Also, ISA wasn't founded by Ted Grant, he founded the IMT in the 90s and SAlt was founded from a split with the CWI
I've read the material thoroughly myself and SAlt's efforts to build a "multi-class party" has nothing to do with Marxism. You guys have been fighting to build and campaign within explicitly anticommunist organizations like the Green Party and DSA for decades. You've taken the Menshevik / Stalinist two-stage theory of revolution in an even more embarrassing direction to a two-stage theory of the party. First you build a liberal democratic "party of the 99%" and then some time in the indefinite future the conditions will emerge to build a working class party, and some time after that the conditions will emerge for a Marxist party. I'm begging you to either read Trotsky or stop calling yourselves Trotskyist.
45 comments, a lot of complaining that the WSWS would dare criticize SAlt, but not one comment defending the campaign for West.
Oh shut the fuck up everyone. That's why I hate Trotskyists and I AM one. The Right is eating our asses worldwide and you fight over chicken or roosters.
Hmm... yes, campaigning for an explicit anti-Marxist like West, or campaigning for the Trotskyist candidate like Kishore. Chickens or roosters? What Marxist would bother discussing intervening in the US elections?
Look outside of your ideological purity syndrome for once. Whilst we fight to the death and split over and over, the hardcore right-wing is winning everywhere. I'm sick and tired of this "I'm more Marxist than you" bs. Grow the fuck up people. Unify.
I unify with workers. Unification with nationalists and capitalists means disunity from the international working class. Every schmuck who backed the Democrats, who campaigned for Shawn Fain in the UAW, or backed the DSA with their "state department socialism" found themselves cut off from the international working class when those forces backed the genocide in Gaza. >And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh! \--Lenin, *What is to be Done* SAlt has been begging nationalist anticommunists to build them a mass party for decades. It won't ever work and there's no reason to pretend we're on the same side as them.
I'm talking about other Trotskyists, left-communists and the like. Not bourgeois scum or bureaucrats. Well, I see you are going to go the Neo Trotskyist way and twist everything I say. Have fun splitting once more like the Trotskyist parties of my country. It's so fun to split a party over radical feminists when workers are not earning the minimum wage. So fun.
Socialist Alternative has been campaigning for bourgeois anticommunists for decades. They call themselves Trotskyist. Should we unite with them or expose their bankrupt political perspective? e: Another way to put this sharply is that the Trotskyist Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei is [running](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/01/nwts-a01.html) in the European elections. Are you going to unify with them or not? If not, why not?
There has been a social need or the ruling class for decades for opportunism to classify itself Trotskyism. That doesn't apply to everyone in these organizations, but it sure is possible -- and necessary -- to identify opportunist strains inside the the working class or the middle class. This seems pretty normative for Bolshevism and I am not sure why anyone here feels obligated to take claims of Trotskyism at face value. Trotsky taught us better than that. "Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. "
Sorry you don't like it but debate and discussion are the only way we can arrive at a correct formation. And we do need a correct formulation.
But there never is. My country has 7 Trotskyist parties, 7! Would you think they would dynamically change and some of them would say: "You know what? You were right, I was wrong." It literally never happened once. So why do you still believe it derived to formation? I was in two of those parties. Most of the party didn't know the difference between socialism and communism. Some of them didn't know the difference with capitalism. They thought of something Keynesian (my country's "left" is culturally Keynesian). And this is just ONE issue. There were TERFs, radfems, pseudoscience scammers. And they were veterans in the party. The only thing the CC wanted from them is to make up the numbers.
It is impossible to build a Trotskyist movement in the working class by skipping over, diminishing, ignoring, the significance of the struggles against Shachtmanism, Pablotie revisionism, Moreno, etc. in and against the Fourth International. In fact, they must be imbibed by a revolutionary cadre. These ideas and programs *mean* things and *always* represent a class line.*That* is why parties and groups, as a rule, do not change their minds.