Claudia de la Cruz, the 2024 presidential candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, just became director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
IFCO is the only org bringing US medical students to study at Cuba’s ELAM (Latin American School of Medicine), the largest medical school in the world. ELAM provides full scholarships for students. IFCO has worked to support Cuban solidarity since 1967, sending aid and acting as liaison between Cuba and the Congressional Black Caucus.
A principled socialist now runs the main connection between the US and Cuba’s medical system. This also deeply embeds PSL in older US orgs for leftist internationalism, and continues PSL’s work as a vanguard party leading the struggle.
I don’t like PSL, but I like Claudia
Can I ask what you don’t like about PSL?
I don’t like the constant allegations.
Among other things.
There needs to be less infighting between leftist orgs (actual ones, not Democrat fronts like the DSA) in the US. Even if different orgs don’t agree with each other on certain issues, even if they have serious criticisms of each other, there is more to be gained from working together on points where there is agreement, or at least focusing attacks on the D&R corporate uniparty and refraining from “friendly fire”.
I understand if comrades disagree with me on this but this is just my opinion.
A big part of the infighting problem is the idea that you’re not infighting if you simply label your target “not a True Leftist” first. No one knows the answers here, so we shouldn’t be quick to dismiss people who are at least trying to work in the same direction.
Yes, the whole “not a True Leftist” thing is something that really frustrates and annoys me…again it boils down to that leftist tendency toward purity fetishism, which is something that is not exactly helpful for the success of our struggle.
This is one of the most unfortunate things about being a socialist. We are almost too principled. A single chapter having a spat between some people who cheated on one another gets blown up into a full party sexual scandal while a Republican candidate can fuck 50 women in public at the same time in front of his wife with no repercussions.
I get why, but it sure makes it easy for the feds to fuck up all of our operations.
Sometimes you just have to have the maturity to see where your priorities lie and not allow yourself to be distracted by things which are not important in the larger picture. Or in Marxist language: understand which contradictions are primary and which are secondary.
Of course party discipline within a vanguard party should and must be maintained. An undisciplined party apparatus is an inefficient one. If anything, i think most western leftist groups suffer from a lack of discipline.
As much as we try to fight it, for many of us liberalism and individualism are still deeply rooted in our psyche due to how western societies have conditioned us, and this leads to a lot of selfish behavior and inability to properly implement democratic centralism.
But when it comes to things that don’t immediately impact the political activities and the organization of the party, we have to recognize that humans are humans and we all have flaws and we cannot get hung up on every imperfection or mistake of other people.
I did not like how PSL members seemed to attack the org I was previously in.
I agree with unity, but a false unity with no criticism and silencing dissent is no true unity at all. There needs to be more discussion and passing of info and criticisms while not dissolving into bad-faith attacks. Crying “unity” every time your favorite org is attacked (and I’m not saying you’re doing this) is just wrong. That unity needs to be worked toward.
As for DSA, they’re fine, depending on the branch or club that you’re talking about. Much of it isn’t, but on the local level, at least, they can be fine. But again, I don’t judge them too much unless the local club has sex pest issues. Otherwise, I just work with them “on the issues.”
Again, unity is not “agreeing with everything the next person to you says or does.” Not that you’re saying that.
I’m actually not talking about unity at all. I don’t think there can be unity between groups with opposing views on certain fundamental issues. Eventually there will have to take place an ideological struggle in which one will win out over the other.
What i’m saying is to forget the idea of unity for now and just recognize where the priorities lie. What is the primary contradiction and how can different groups that cannot and should not merge still work with each other on issues where they hold common ground? Or at the very least if they don’t want to work together then refrain from wasting so much energy attacking each other and have a sort of “unspoken agreement” that for the time being it is more important to attack the corporate-imperialist duopoly and its lackeys.
There is nothing that plays more into the hands of the cointelpro than leftists attacking other leftists. This doesn’t mean you can’t formulate critiques of bad behavior or political lines you consider erroneous, but always remember who the bigger enemy is.
I agree with “working on the issues.”
I disagree that unity doesn’t exist, at least as it pertains to leftist or Marxist-Leninist spaces. I think it’s possible, but then again, it will eventually have to give way to “who was right” in the end, as you seem to say.
Of course, I think we agree on this.
Let’s form a new ML party!
No.
what are we going to do? PSL is the only ML party i know of D:
Uhhhh, what about FRSO, for example? I was with CPUSA not too long ago as well and they’re ML. There are a also a few other ML groups out there.
I’m sure comrade Makan would rather you join CPUSA. But that’s just my assumption based on their history here, mind you. I don’t know if they’re still affiliated with them anymore.
I already said that I’m not. I left. And what about FRSO?
Pretty sure I’ve never heard of it. Although it’s hard to keep track of all the yankee socialist parties.
They’re Marxist-Leninist.