Just saw the new Bad Mouse vid about voting. He had this kind of aside about not voting PSL (along with another one against MLs which just seemed needlessly sectarian).

I was really surprised, so I tried looking further, and he linked some aggregate in the comments which leads to a podcast and a huge google doc with a bunch of links to different criticisms and summaries of problems from late 2020 or so. Covering up sexual abuse scandals and apparently even La Riva going on a transphobic rant in some meeting. And generally a very intransigent leadership culture.

Anyways, I was just wondering what the Hexbear take is here. Deep pandemic madness? Just a problem with the Philadelphia branch? I was considering trying to join when I'm back in the states, but maybe it would be too much of a headache.

https://descentrealizer.medium.com/abuse-counterrevolution-in-the-party-for-socialism-liberation-psl-cult-a-compilation-e5e7d54b7c78

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/edit?usp=sharing

  • Mardoniush [she/her]
    ·
    9 months ago

    The PSL sucks. The important thing to remember is that you could literally have been in the RSDLP in 1902 and it would have felt even more cringe and useless.

    The PSL leadership is deeply flawed, their chapters have the national internal organisation of a particularly incompetent slime mold, their local activists can't organise a Chook Raffle, let alone a large protest.

    But until something happens and an org reaches critical mass, leftists just have to decide what shit sandwich they have to eat. Do you want to go PSL and it's general hot mess? DSA's (insert Marxists here) and its uncanny resemblance to the history-farce version of the Russian left-SRs? Or the FRSO and the fact it's nearest org is 600km away? Or you can bite the bullet and seek another tendency if you enjoy suffering.

    For a lot of us older people, that meant a lot of putting up with the words "State Capitalism" all the damn time in whatever trot org was largest, so count yourself lucky.