As universities across the country are colonized (or decolonized, depending who you ask) by tent-cities of anti-Israel protesters, Stanford has rekindled its “sit-in to stop genocide.”
The sit-in 2.0, a tent city in Stanford’s White Plaza, is about 500 feet closer to Stanford’s Main Quad and has
Very cool!
Though if I may put on my theory nerd hat, PSL aren't exactly Marxist-Leninists. They're Marcyites, who are trots that accidentally reinvented ML, through Trot talking points.
So, for example, Sam Marcy split from the Socialist Workers Party to form the Workers World Party, and argued that Actually Existing Socialism's were "removedd workers states, like Trotsky asserted, but that this was a necessary stage they all had to pass through, by virtue of having to survive on a planet dominated by Capitalism.
Therefore, the Marcyites support AES, instead of opposing it, like other Trots do.
nobody in the PSL identifies as Marcyite, its not really a thing. I don’t think he really deserves that kind of recognition. Most people in the PSL identify as ML, and the party is more open about describing itself t way than it might have been
I don't necessarily disagree with you, Marcyite isn't a ruptural tendency in the way that ML or Maoism are. And the people in PSL and even WWP, are basically ML. I did say that the Marcyite trend reinvented ML in my initial post.
But just to say an ideological trend only exists if people identify as such, is idealist. Various forms of revisionism, right or left deviations, or even just banal differences of opinion all exist within ML.
ML isn't a monolith, and we need to be able to trace where these trends within ML as a tendency come from, to hopefully avoid making tactical mistakes.
Dialectically, there are two general kinds of formulations, "Two Into One," which is the standard "Thesis, antithesis, synthesis" model that serves as most people's introduction to the concept.
And "One Into Two", wherein internal contradictions lead to a fracturing. For instance, a singular species which had divergent evolutionary branches. I.e.Humans and other apes sharing a common ancestor.
While these two formations themselves dialectically interact, the one we give primacy in our analysis shapes how we come to view all kinds of things.
Social Democrats like Eduard Bernstein took a "Two into One" approach top class struggle, which led him to erroneously conclude that the interests of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat could be reconciled through reforms.
Why is this important with the Marcyite tendency? The primary way that the Marcyite tendency arrived at reinventing the wheel of ML is through the theory of "Global Class Struggle" that Sam Marcy, and others in his wing of the SWP arrived at, which I described in my initial comment.
That Global Class Struggle Theory also asserts that, since AES aren't technically socialist, and in a post cold war period, are allying with anti imperialist States, like Iran, they view this formulation of Global Class Struggle as a Two into One formulation, where various anti imperialist States are forming a unified bloc against the west.
In many ways, this is correct, but by viewing this solely as a Two into One formulation, the Marcyite trend sometimes ends up papering over the internal contradictions within this loose bloc. So you get weird offshoots like Caleb Maupin and his ilk trying to claim that Iran is Communist simply because it's anti-imperialist.
Or that achieving Multi-polarity is the same thing as achieving global socialism. Rather than as what it actually is, which is an opening and opportunity for more socialist States (but also other competing projects) to be founded without starting down US hegemony.
This isn't inherent to all people or orgs that come from this Marcyite trend, and plenty of them are very dedicated and principled MLs, but it's worth keeping an eye on, because it does crop up.
So while I brought up the Marcyite trend history as a historical footnote that I happen to find personally interesting, it is genuinely important that we be able to sit down and think through these things fully, rather than just throwing up our hands and papering over the line struggles and trends within our movement, because "well we're all just MLs, so its fine".
Yeah, this just seems divorced from reality and idealist in itself. A communist party is shaped by its membership, for sure, some of its original members had been a part of a party led by Sam Marcy, and had found their way to Marxism-Leninism that way, but the party has grown dramatically and that historical footnote has become more and more of just that, a footnote. People are joining the party identifying as Marxist Leninist… Sam Marcy’s contribution is sort of a footnote outside of those who left SWP, as the Global Class War Thesis was basically a class analysis of the Cold War during the Korean War identifying Imperialism as the primary contradiction(not exactly mind blowing these days). What is more, the PSL deviates significantly from your definition of Marcyism because they look to AES as socialist in character, and support them, with their own contradictions that leftists in the imperial core aren’t in a position to judge.
It is sort of idealist to always constantly view struggle through the lens of abstract tendencies and thoughts without giving consideration to the actual concrete reality at work and the people doing social practice. You are labeling a party because 70 years ago some guy led a different party? It is sort of meaningless. They identify themselves as an independent communist party, Marxist-Leninist and antifactionalist. Nobody is joining because of Sam Marcy. Education materials don’t typically mention him all that frequently, if they do at all. If anything all of this minutia about what constitutes a tendency is super alienating to working class people and often irrelevant today, because what other communists were struggling over internally in a different historical context, although important to study and learn from, isn’t really going to provide perfect answers to the material reality of organizing today, here, in a different context. We are so far from achieving what we need to do to build a revolutionary party, constantly splitting hairs without grounding it in practice isn’t really productive
I'll be transparent and say that, working w PSL, people have only ever described themselves as ML and we've extensively read ML texts. Maybe this is true, but more of a historical footnote.
Workers world identify as ML. "Marcyite" is just a descriptor for a type of ML w a specific historical root like u mentioned but marcyites identify as ml
That's through historical legacy and not necessarily through material practice. I know that they do retain close and cordial ties to WWP and also retain some streaks of their heritage here and there but in actual practice are closer to adhering to the fundamentals of marxism-leninism than CPUSA
FFS why not just be ML and skip the pointless gymnastics? It shouldn't be controversial to anyone that no state is or will ever be perfect and that socialism is a transitional stage. I guess it still provides some cover (that apparently they still need having not grown out of their idealism) to be able to call AES states bad guy totalitarians that the good guy trots are better and purer than?
Edit: I'm referring here to Marcyites, not PSL as an org.
For all intents and purposes, they basically are MLs, as others responding to my comment have pointed out.
They just ended up reinventing the wheel, through a really weird, round-about way, that I find interesting.
Dialectics and understanding material reality goes a long way even if you don't know what dialectics means and haven't read any theory
Bingo. Darwin wouldn't have had much, if any idea about dialectics or its minutia. But his theory of natural selection is an incredible work of dialectical materialism, that outlines all the same laws of motion, just in different terms.