On January 29, the Socialist Workers Party announced that its presidential candidate in 2020 is Alyson Kennedy, and the vice-presidential nominee is Malcolm Jarrett. Kennedy was also the party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Here is an article about the 2020 ticket.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Sweet. Now we have Socialist Action, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Party USA, Socialist Equality Party, and now Socialist Workers Party running candidates in 2020, three of which I have to point out are the same nominees as they had in 2016. As always, I love that they’re at least interested in getting their party’s message out. Thanks for the update here.
For the life of me, I don’t understand why there are a half dozen socialist third parties. If they all combined, they would be a really small party. I get that there are minor differences, but do they understand that is how political parties work? All Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on every issue.
I think for them it’s about the journey not the destination.
Michigan: Among other things, Trots generally won’t play in the same sandbox as anybody else.
Second, the SPUSA, one of the fragmented remnants of the old Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, etc., was an activist group first, political party second, for many years.
To add detail, the SWP are Trots. Socialist Action is also, IIRC, Trots. What divisions there are between the two, I have no idea, but Wiki says SA was expelled from the SWP, basically for being too radical.
The SEP is ALSO Trots, but originated independently of the two above. All of this, per jokes about other splinterites? Where there’s four Trots, there’s likely five parties.
The PSL split off the World Workers Party, which itself split from the SWP long ago, and is non-Trot.
The SPUSA is more “mainstream,” relatively speaking, than any of the above.
OTOH, “Communist” Angela Davis endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, so go figure.
Socialist Action came out of a split in the Socialist Workers Party, and continues to uphold Trotskyism. Socialist Workers Party quit the Fourth International in 1990, and has claimed they are no longer Trotskyist. SWP has substituted Castro & Che Guevara for Trotsky, but they own the copyright’s to Trotsky’s books, so they publish them and sell them to the little Trot groups that denounce SWP for abandoning Trotskyism.
Years ago the Marxist Internat Database (marxists.org) posted some writings by Trotsky, and Pathfinder Press (owned by SWP) threatened to sue if they did not take Trotsky’s writings off their website.
If the little socialist groups merged, it would just lead to new splits by people who opposed the merge. And new purges of people who opposed the merger. Marxist Leninists want the power to order everyone around, so people will quit a marxist party when they get tired of following orders.
Reminds me of the Judean People’s Front – wankers. We’re the People’s Front of Judea. Whatever happened to the Judean Popular People’s Front? He’s over there. Splitter!!
Yeah, Socialist Action are Trotskyists as well. Also, it’s always important to note that even for Trotskyists, the SEP is controversial, as they tend to focus on class issues and downplay a lot of issues of sexism and racism. Also, unsurprising, they hate the SWP, as they contend that one of the SWP’s founders assassinated Trotsky, or something of the sort. Their views on downplaying sexism also gets them a lot of heat from the Freedom Socialist Party, a feminist Trotskyist party.
As for the PSL and WWP (I’m expecting a candidate announcement any time now), from what I’ve read the PSL split from them more due to distrust of party leaders over any actual ideological differences, so a case could be made that they should get back together.
The SPUSA, being multi-tendency, should in theory be the biggest socialist party in the U.S., but honestly, they’ve always left me unimpressed. Their candidate in 2016 just wasn’t the best, really.
Which statist gang has the 99.99999 plus percent purist RED communists ??? —
quite ready, willing and able to KILL/enslave all opponents.
See Russia bolsheviks [aka Lenin cult gangsters] in Russian Civil WAR 1917-1922.
— with later Stalin 1936-1939 murders/purges of the olde 1917 bolsheviks.
ALL the *socialist* parties in the USA became obsolete on Nov 1932 election day —
rise of the RED communist Donkey party.
See now olde Biden Donkey gang vs new Sanders/Warren Donkey gangs — almost in PURGE mode.
Always super-easy to be a *socialist/communist* LOOTER of the income and assets of OTHER folks – since olde report of Cain and Abel.
USA regime now super-bankrupt due to about $$$ 24 TRILLION in deficits since 1929 – esp since 1982 senile Reagan.
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PR
AppV
TOTSOP
Kinda makes you long for the Daniel DeLeon version of American socialism as embodied in the Socialist Labor Party. *sigh*
It always amazes me that parties based on collectivist ideas splinter so much while the party based on individualist ideas (Libertarian Party) has remained united for 40+ years
Brandon, it is surprising to me too.
Per Wiki, Brandon, technically not quite true, re the Arizona Libertarian Party and the 2000 election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Libertarian_Party_(United_States)#Election_cycles_in_the_2000s
I don’t know what was behind this, but .. it did happen. So, close, but not quite.
Oh, while I’m here, libertarianism and Marxism, both in all their various stripes, are pseudoscientific as far as both governing theories in political science and economic theories. First, the world is not as rational/organized as either, and especially, libertarianism, claims; quantum theory shows that to be the case. Quantum theory also blows to smithereens Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” which is based on the “wind up the universe like a clock” god of Enlightenment Deism. (It is based on that, too; the evidence is there in Smith’s own writings.) Marxism is also pseudoscientific on the economic side in that a crappy philosophical theory, Hegelian dialetic, is made the basis of a theory of economics.
Finally, modern psychology, especially as welded to experimental economics by Kahnemann, Tversky, Ariely et al in behavioral economics, shows that the idea of a rational homo economicus is also pseudoscience.
You may not like that. It’s still true.
The point is they worked out their problems and came back together. Also your claim that “quantum theory” (I’m assuming you mean QFT) disproves anything is “pseudoscientific”. I suggest you read more on emergence theory as it applies to all levels (quantum, economic, societal, etc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
SG —
Energy + Matter [free and cost] = Goods + Services [free and cost]
— NOT taught in MORON econ classes 101 to 666.
slave producers vs govt LOOTERS / CONSUMERS – for 6,000 plus years — with or without any pseudo whatever.
USA NOW – about 30-45 percent of adults get ALL of their NET incomes AFTER taxes via govt FORCE.
New Age RED Donkey party communists — wanting 100 percent of incomes via govt FORCE — ZERO private sector income/production.
See death of USSR in 1980-1991 — lots of olde looters – not enough young slaves
— due in major part to the millions of USSR DEAD in the statism of WW I, Russian Civil War, Stalin purges, WW II —
NO kids via dead folks.
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PR
AppV
TOTSOP
What separates Trotskyites from non-Trotsky socialists?
“He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists also criticize the bureaucracy that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.”
From wikipedia. I need to get in to work in 5 minutes, so that’s just a basic overview.
@ Brandon:
When Libertarians get disillusioned with the party, they just leave. The very idea of a libertarian political party was a unique event in the history of libertarianism, which many libertarians even today find absurd.
*** just enough*** delusional / utopian NOOO govt anarchists in the LP to cause the LP to be on life support for decades.
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PR and AppV in the LP regime also.
I still don’t understand the philosophies. I get get that Trotskyites support the ideas of Trotsky, but in a nutshell what are those ideas and how are they different in practice from what these other socialists believe? Also, are some of these groups actually saying their model for the ideal government is Stalin?
LOTS of LAWLESS KILLER monarchs in ***modern*** aka STONE AGE *socialist* regimes —
Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, etc etc etc.
— go together like death and destruction.
Michigan Voter – I’m far from an expert on socialist factions, but as I understand it, in the late 1800s a prominent socialist named Eduard Bernstein came along, looked at the data, and found that workers lives were improving over previous decades. Standards of living were going up and more people owned land. That was counter to Marx’s prediction and it caused some alarm among socialists that the workers would become happy with capitalism and not want a socialist revolution.
So Lenin, a few years later, decides that if the workers are too comfortable in capitalism and aren’t ever going to make a socialist revolution on their own, then what is needed is a professional revolutionary organization to work full time on overthrowing the capitalist system and then lead the new government once they took over. Socialists call that professional revolutionary class the “vanguard of the proletariat”. Lenin, of course, could never say that the lack of a worker led revolution was because they liked capitalism. It’s just not good PR. Instead he claimed that they were overworked and too exhausted to do anything else.
The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is state socialism. The government runs the economy on behalf of the workers. Supposedly this is only intended to be a transition phase on the way to communism (which is stateless, classless, moneyless.) But it never quite works out that way. In opposition to the socialists who favor the state socialism phase are the Anarcho-communists want to jump straight to the stateless, classless, moneyless communist phase without going through the state socialism phase.
Socialists up until Stalin believed that socialism could only work if it went global. This was basically an acknowledgment that socialism could not succeed in a world where capitalism still existed anywhere. Stalin advocated for socialism in one country.
So when wikipedia says Trotsky supported vanguardism, that means he supported a professional revolutionary class to overthrow the government on behalf of the workers and then become the new government. When it says Trotsky favored the dictatorship of the proletariat, that means he favored state socialism. When it says he opposed Stalin’s socialism in one country idea, that means he wanted to push a global socialist revolution. And when it says he was critical of the bureaucracy that developed under Stalin, that means he was shocked that the permanent revolutionary class didn’t want to give up power. He called socialist states that had ceased moving towards stateless communism “deformed worker states”.
What the differences are between all of these little parties, I have no idea.
1800s — much more use of coal/oil for ENERGY sources — much less human labor/work.
see above —
E+M = G+S
@Jim
In the beginning, Stalin believed in world revolution, too. He took part in the Red Army invasion of Poland in 1919 that was supposed to link up with the Reds in Germany, and start the world revolution. But, the newly restored Polish state didn’t take well to the Reds marching thru Poland without an invite. They stopped the Red Army at the Vistula, and forced them to turn back. Stalin decided that the world was not ready for a general revolution.
Jim,
Thanks for the lengthy and quite helpful explanation. I learned something today.