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PSL’s Brian Becker promotes the flawed argument that reinforcing key liberal ideas is a worthwhile compromise
(rainershea.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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Communism
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"The first major indication that this is what the PSL’s practice has become appeared in 2020, when Becker announced a policy of critical support for Bernie Sanders in the primary and a refusal to run the party’s candidate in swing states if Sanders won the nomination. Becker’s reasoning was that even though he recognized Sanders held reactionary stances in certain important areas, supporting him represented a net gain for the socialist movement due to Sanders supposedly being an overall progressive force. As in a force that was hurting the DNC more than he was helping it. Becker concluded: “Tactics can never be absolute, designed for all situations or last forever. On the contrary, revolutionaries must combine a rock-hard adherence to core principles with tactical suppleness to advance the movement for socialism under varying conditions and on shifting terrain. For now, the Sanders campaign represents a dynamic insurgency promoting radical social changes in the face of increasingly stiff headwinds from a criminal ruling class that fears the loosening of its absolute grip over U.S. politics and the economy. We support the insurgency against the reactionaries.”The problem with this calculus was that for years by that point, it had been evident Sanders was more of a help than a hindrance to the DNC. He had made a non-aggression pact with Clinton prior to running in 2016, he had tried to bring his base into the Democratic Party by endorsing Clinton, then he had furthered this project to leverage his platform in favor of reformism by promoting the new cold war with Russia. Becker either directly or implicitly recognized that Sanders had committed these offenses, yet he felt in spite of this that Sanders was worth supporting. Not because Sanders himself was a friend to revolutionary politics, but because his project supposedly represented something which brought revolution closer.
The flaw in Becker’s argument about Sanders weakening the DNC is clear when you see what Becker didn’t want to admit: that the effect the Sanders campaigns had is one where their leader brought many ideologically developing individuals into a reformist project, then reinforced the anti-Russian biases the media had previously begun instilling these individuals. The Sanders campaigns were a net negative for the revolutionary cause, because they overall reinforced the DNC’s grip. The only ways they weakened the DNC were when many Sanders supporters broke away from his cult of personality, and came to view him as a dishonorable enabler of corruption and imperialism. By calling for PSL members to come into pro-Sanders circles and recruit them into the party, Becker was rationalizing supporting Sanders by asserting that Marxists can bring Sanders supporters to Marxism via this strategy."
"The problems with this plan, and with the parallel reformist actions the PSL has taken since then, were 1) that backing Sanders meant backing a project which had a net negative impact for the revolutionary cause, and 2) that the PSL’s reformist tendencies made it unable to bring whatever Sanders supporters it recruited into a genuinely revolutionary organization."
There is a third actually that I see: He places his party in a weakened position first by telling them to support Bernie, then by telling them to infiltrate Bernie groups and explain to them why Bernie is inferior to the PSL. But he just ordered PSL to support Bernie, this is a contradictory set of orders and it places his followers in a weakened position when discussing the subject of Bernie and social democracy vs revolutionary socialism in general. A leader who seeks the revolutionary success of his party would not do this. he would seek to insulate his party members from revisionism, not make them more susceptible to it.