PSL's Presidential Campaign Video: What is Socialism?

Loz wrote:

TBH this sounds like old-school social-democracy.

Loz wrote:

Yes and socialism isn't "the public ownership over the wealth-producing institutions (?)" nor is the point of socialism that the "workers keep the profits to themselves".

Loz wrote:

Also lol @ "the 99 percent".

Loz wrote:

Besides even the CPUSA, IIRC, is still bigger than PSL membership-wise.

Loz wrote:

No, what i'm trying to say is that there's no point in flaunting membership numbers around (especially considering that PSL candidates got like 7k votes in the last presidental elections, that in a country of 300+ million). All that is more-less irrelevant in this context.

RATM8 wrote:

I thought it was a good video, and a pretty good description. Too bad they have no chance of winning

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Not enough pictures of Marx & co. in a 2 minute election video for you?

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And yet in the other PSL thread you confessed to not having a definition of what socialism is.

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You seem only capable of attacking people fighting for socialism and insulting them by stating that they don't know what they are fighting for.

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OWS has made it catchy. Perhaps we should use latin terms such as proletariat and hoi polloi. Not sure how many people will know what we are talking about but at least we'll be using correct Marxist grammar.

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And the Democratic Party has more members than the CPUSA!

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In the other thread on the PSL you claimed that the PSL was no Marxist enough. Now your arguing that the then four year old PSL didn't get enough votes in a corrupt undemocratic bourgeois election? How pathetically social democratic of you.

Loz wrote:

No, i'm saying that your "plans of action" are in line with old-school SD parties.
Although you added the "lowering taxes" part.

Loz wrote:

No, i'm saying that your "plans of action" are in line with old-school SD parties.
Although you added the "lowering taxes" part.

Loz wrote:

I think i can tell what it isn't though.

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I'm not insulting anyone. I'm pretty sure that you people know what you're fighting for, however i'm reluctant to call that socialism.

Loz wrote:

Lol you could have just said "workers", it'd certainly make more sense and be more accurate.

Loz wrote:

Yes, that was sort of my point.

Loz wrote:

What's your point here?
I was just pointing out the fact that your party candidates got only 7k votes on the last presidential elections. About as much as that Trotskist party.

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S-D's in the USA work within the Democratic Party.

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..k.. so who is fighting for socialism in the USA? (not sure why I'm expecting a MTWist answer)

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Unemployed, students, ect. wouldn't be considered workers.

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In view of this common characteristic of the members of such an organisation, all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and profession, in both categories, must be effaced.

Loz wrote:

TBH this sounds like old-school social-democracy.
Yes and socialism isn't "the public ownership over the wealth-producing institutions (?)" nor is the point of socialism that the "workers keep the profits to themselves".
Also lol @ "the 99 percent".

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One of the most complete and best-formulated expressions of this deviation are the theses and other printed works of the group known as the so-called 'Workers' Opposition.' The following thesis, for example, is rather indicative: 'Organization of the management of the economy belongs to an all-Russian congress of producers, who are organized in production trade unions that elect the central agency that directs the republic's entire economy.'

The ideas behind this and other, similar statements are fundamentally incorrect in theory and represent a complete break with marxism and communism, as well as with the results of the practical experience of all semi-proletarian revolutions and of the present proletarian revolution.

In the first place, the concept of 'producer' ("working people" in your terminology) lumps together the proletarian with the semi-proletarian and with the small commodity producer, thus deviating in a fundamental fashion from the basic concept of class struggle and from the basic requirement that a clear distinction be made between the classes.

In the second place, the incorrect formulation of the question of relations between the party and the broad non-party masses - a formulation that results in subordination of the party to non-party elements - as contained in the thesis in question, is not any less a fundamental divergence from marxism.

Marxism teaches - and these teachings are not only formally confirmed by the entire Comintern in a decision of the II Comintern Congress on the role of the political party of the proletariat, but also proven in practice by the entire experience of our revolution - that only the political party of the working class, i.e., the Communist Party, is capable of unifying, teaching, and organizing a vanguard of the proletariat and of the entire mass of working people, a vanguard capable of countering the inevitable petty bourgeois waverings of this mass, of countering the traditions of, and inevitable backsliding to, a narrow trade-unionism or trade union prejudices among the proletariat, and of guiding all aspects of the proletarian movement or, in other words, all the labouring masses. Without this, the dictatorship of the proletariat is unthinkable. The incorrect understanding of the role of the Communist Party in its relations to the non-party working masses, on the one hand, and the equally incorrect understanding of the role of the working class in its relationship to the entire mass of working people, on the other hand, are a fundamental theoretical divergence from communism and a deviation in the direction of syndicalism and anarchism, a deviation that pervades all the views of the 'Workers' Opposition.'

4. The X Congress of the RKP declares that it also considers fundamentally incorrect all attempts by the group in question and by individuals to defend their mistaken views by citing paragraph 5. of the economic section of the RKP Programme, which is devoted to the role of the trade unions. This paragraph states that the trade unions 'must actually concentrate in their hands the entire administration of the whole economy as a single economic unit,' and that in this way they provide an unbroken link between central state management, the economy, and the broad masses of the working people, 'attract' these masses 'to the direct management of the economy.'.

In the very same paragraph the RKP Programme considers a preliminary condition for the situation at which the trade unions 'are to arrive,' to be the process of 'freeing themselves from a narrow guild outlook' and the enlistment in their ranks of the majority of workers, 'and gradually all workers.'

Finally, in the very same paragraph the RKP Programme stresses the fact that the trade unions are already, 'according to the laws of the Soviet republic and established practice, participants in all local and central organs for the administration of industry.'

Instead of taking account of precisely this practical experience of participation in administration, instead of developing this experience further, in strict accord with achieved successes and corrected mistakes, the syndicalists and anarchists declare outright the slogan of 'congresses or a congress of producers,' who 'are to elect' the bodies which manage the economy. The leading educational and organizing role of the party with respect to the trade unions of the proletariat, and of the latter with respect to the semi-Philistine and outright petty bourgeois masses of the working people, is, consequently, completely by-passed and eliminated, and instead of a continuation and correction of the practical work of building new economic forms -work which was already begun by the Soviet system we find a petty bourgeois and anarchist destruction of this work, a destruction that can only lead to a triumph of the bourgeois counter-revolution.

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Okay, now explain how any of what you just put in bold and quoted is an actual response to what I said.

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you can have capitalism where "the workers take control and ownership over factories".

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Look at all the companies owned by workers-small shareholders.