The Party for Socialism and Liberation is expected to announce a presidential and vice-presidential nominee sometime on January 17. This party has never had any nominees for public office in the past, and is only a few years old. Some of its members were formerly members of the Workers World Party. UPDATE: the announcement will come on January 18.
My guess is that Gloria LaRiva is going to be on the ticket in some fashion, since she’s already on the PFP primary ballot and is probably one of the most well known figures in PSL. However, PSL is even smaller than Workers World, so I’m curious to see if they’ll focus on states outside of California (and maybe Florida.)
Why is the far left so obsessed with identity politics? All they end up doing is dividing what few numbers they already have.
“Why is the far left so obsessed with identity politics?”
there’s probably a family tree for these parties
PSL split from the WWP, the WWP split from the SWP, the SWP was made up of members expelled from the Socialist Party
The Socialist Equality Party was made up of expellees from the SWP.
Wikipedia notes that the DC, Seattle, SD, and SF branches of the WWP split into the PSL. So maybe the PSL will try for access in Washington too.
This article from the PSL website seems to indicate that they won’t officially announce their campaign until the 18th: http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7947&news_iv_ctrl=1501
Kelly: Agreed. I’ve brought this up before in left wing political venues. It looks ridiculous, frankly, to have four or five parties on the ballot all with the word “Socialist” in their name, and sometimes one or two more that are essentially the same but avoid using that word. Totally confusing to the very people (ordinary working class folks) they claim to be trying to attract. But in my experience most Marxist or pseudo-Marxist parties are more interested in their internal power trips and being debating societies rather than anything remotely approaching practical political action.
Is it a California thing? Where [like Michigan’s Independence] the 1967 Peace and Freedom Party just does not ‘play well with others’?
And hey, the PFP convicted federal felon for P2008, the President or VP slot? I was a PFP member for over a decade, ran for [California] Assembly on the ticket, and never [Perot, Perot, Nader, Nader] never ever voted for any PFP national candidate.
The appropriate logo for pretty much any north American Socialist, Feminist political organization: the Circular Firing Squad!
Mr. Anon says “There’s probably a family tree for these parties.”
There are two family trees I have found:
For Maoist groups there is a family tree here
http://www.freedomroad.org/staticfiles/familytree/basictree.html
For Trotskyist groups in the USA go here
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/trees/ustree.htm
The name of our party is the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).
We will be announcing the presidential election campaign tomorrow (January 18). Our candidates will be Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear for president and vice president. Mike Prysner, an Iraq war veteran, will be running for Congress representing PSL in Florida. There will be announcements of other candidates for congressional and statewide offices in the coming weeks and months.
As a factual matter, most of the members of the PSL are not former members of Workers World Party. There is a minority of members that were once members of WWP.
As another factual matter, the PSL is larger, not smaller, than WWP.
Many of us have played a prominent role in the anti-war and immigrant rights movement in the past few years. The goal of the PSL election campaign is to provide a genuine alternative to the corporate-funded candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties. We believe it is in the interest of expanding democracy that more, rather than fewer, parties participate in the elections.
Despite the fact that the election laws are constructed to inhibit, obstruct and prevent third party candidates from achieving ballot status, especially those who lack corporate funding, PSL is determined to launch an aggressive campaign for ballot access in states around the country.
Unfortunately, leftist parties tend to emphasize “doctrinal purity”, which leaves little room for divergent opinions. They simply cannot agree to disagree, so these sorts of splits are inevitable. Add this to the fact that many leftists have awfully poor social skills to begin with, and you end up with a comically vast array of sectarian denominations all claiming to represent the vanguard of an ideology that nobody really cares about anymore.
Heck, I was once a member of a leftist party that ran a recall campaign against its’ own presidential candidate. You can’t make this stuff up, y’know?
There are actually quite big differences between many of the above mentioned parties. However, that is not the case with PSL & WWP.
I assume that both SWP & WWP will also have presidential candidates. SPUSA already has one, and of course the Green Party will as well.
I also forgot to mention that PFP in California might also have its own separate presidential candidate again, if it does not endorse a Green, SPUSA or PSL candidate.
The SWP announced its presidential ticket, along with candidates for many other races, a couple weeks ago. The SP-USA has two announced candidates for congress as well, and will most likely have more as the year continues.
Also, it looks like PSL has announced their ticket. A large new banner on their website is proclaiming Gloria LaRiva for President, and Eugene Puryear for Vice President. They’ve also announced a candidate for Florida’s 22nd District congressional seat: Michael Presser (at least I think that’s the name, the graphic makes the name a bit hard to read.)
The PSL “announce” was not a true announcement but rather a “campaign event.” Gloria E. La Riva and Eugene Puryear have been the nominees for some time. As a matter of fact, La Riva mentioned the ticket in the candidate statement she filed with the California Secretary of State for the February 5 Peace and Freedom Party primary.
La Riva’s statement, filed LAST YEAR, starts by saying ” I am a union president, anti-war organizer and national presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. My vice-presidential candidate is Eugene Puryear.”
To Sarah Sloan:
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Based on what…..number of members? Number of candidates? Bigger headquarters? If it’s the number of members, I’m not sure how you could determine that, since I’d be willing to bet that communist political organizations don’t exactly hand out their memberships stats to anyone who asks.
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How does that goal distinguish PSL from the Green Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Equality Party, the Workers World Party, the Freedom Socialist Party, the Communist Party…..or the Prohibition Party, for that matter? Any vaguely left-of-center third party could state that as its goal. What is it about Gloria La Riva that distinguishes her from the Workers World, Socialist Equality, and Socialist Workers candidates, and why should someone vote for her instead of the candidates of those parties?
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On the surface, yes, I’m sure anyone who reads _Ballot Access News_ would obviously agree with that, except there has to be an end logic to that argument. I don’t think democracy is well served by the existence of a half-dozen or so indistinguishable far left parties who keep splitting off from each other. All put together, these parties appeal only to the tiniest fraction of a fraction of the electorate; as separate organizations, they only serve to provide ammunition to people who keep hammering us over the head with the “blanket ballot” argument. What is the absolute necessity for a candidate field that includes Gloria La Riva, Roger Calero, and whomever the Socialist Equality Party nominee will be? What are the important differences between them on the issues?
Sorry, I keep forgetting that the reply function here doesn’t like double brackets……anyway, these are the quotes to which I was responding:
1. “As another factual matter, the PSL is larger, not smaller, than WWP.”
2. “The goal of the PSL election campaign is to provide a genuine alternative to the corporate-funded candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties.”
3. “We believe it is in the interest of expanding democracy that more, rather than fewer, parties participate in the elections.”
One could make the same arguments about all of the capitalist political parties, David.