What I find interesting about this article is that it critiques heavily about the first 200 pages, says almost nothing about the next 600, and then says the conclusion is unsatisfactory because it didn’t quote the book the author wrote in 1991. It’s transparently personal.

Academics write books. Get over it.

Yeah it’s a summary work that draws on decades of research. Both of these authors are extremely well-published in their respective fields. I’m like a third of the way through Dawn of Everything and it’s just as academic as “Debt” was, and neither are mass-market pulp. But work like this always draws hit pieces because it’s a way for critics to get their name out there.

Check out “The Dawn of Everything” by Wengrow and Graeber

Everyone in the US is complicit. Everyone in NATO member countries is complicit. Everyone not fighting to overthrow their imperialist government is complicit. Again, not the point.

Ok so how does not voting help with this?

You are complicit by living in the US and paying taxes which fund military aid to Israel. Not voting does not absolve you. And in the case of this election, it makes you slightly more complicit because one of the war criminals who is running is slightly worse than the other.

The idea that not voting is some form of protest that has material consequences for the ruling class is ahistorical. It took centuries of struggle to attain universal suffrage. The people in power are perfectly happy to have only a small fraction of the demos exerting any political power at all; in fact this is how most civilizations have functioned for the past few thousand years.

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The issue is with what they are actually able to accomplish, not what they say they’ll do. And that goes for every Democrat since Carter.

Removing these biases is the whole point of public funding for things. Everyone shares the same resources and people who have more wealth give more. The fact that major institutions that perform public functions rely on private donations is the problem.

My local is great but I don’t have any others to compare to so it’s a pretty vapid description. There’s a PSL here too and they come to a lot of our events. It’s always interesting to hear from the more radical formation.

The thing with DSA “party discipline” is that it’s not a political party. It’s basically a nonprofit with local chapters that all have their own agendas, some of which run candidates. So I’m interested to see what happens with a more centralized (as far as I understand it anyway) structure like PSL.

In terms of labor organizing I do think the political climate matters. The rail strike is an example of national scale union busting, but on more local levels (Starbucks, Amazon, Cemex…) that the NLRB actually matters. Here’s an article about it.

https://www.laborpolitics.com/p/how-bidens-nlrb-has-boosted-bottom

Right. If democrats want those votes then Biden needs to make significant progress on ending the genocide now. The threat from third parties exerts an outsize pressure on the Democrats to actually do something. But of course they likely won’t, and instead Trump will take advantage of this.

Yeah, I’m just wondering why they’re launching a national presidential campaign rather than trying to win locally first. See for example DSA’s (the veil falls lol) cadre candidates like Zohran Mamdani.

It seems to me like PSL is skipping this step and going straight to national, with the net result of devoting a lot of energy that could be spent on worker organizing on a campaign that everyone knows is not going to win.

This also bears the risk of helping Trump win by siphoning off votes from Harris, and a Trump victory will have damaging effects on the NLRB, an organization which in its current state is making it a lot easier for workers to unionize.

So I’m just not seeing how any third party presidential run ties into building worker power, but maybe I am missing something.

To illistrate this, I just typed “restaurants” in Google Maps in downtown Prague and the first result was an ad for KFC (it looked like a real result but it said “sponsored” on top). But I do have a US phone.

Again, not understanding where the anger is coming from. I’m not even supporting a specific candidate. I’m pointing out that 3d parties that take a stand against US imperialism will always have support, because neither major party can be trusted in this regard. And again, for some people, this is a line they won’t cross. I’ll stop now because clearly this is unproductive.

My mistake, thanks

The other thing I don’t understand is all the anger and vitriol from you guys. Everyone who lives in the US and contributes tax dollars to the federal government supports genocide. The US has been supporting Israel unconditionally for decades. Do you really think Kamala Harris is sincere about stopping this, given how Biden’s administration has handled the situation? Or any other Democrat or Republican since Carter?

I think you’re suggesting Trump would be worse than Harris for the cause. But my point is that a lot of people feel that voting for either is sanctioning genocide, and Stein fills that niche by condemning it. It’s pretty low-hanging fruit for a politician.

I’m legitimately curious as to how college protestors could be hurting the cause.

I have a question about PSL. My organizational background is in labor mostly, though I have done some door knocking for critical elections.

How is your candidate getting however many votes (feel free to estimate) going to help the working class? Or alternatively, how does your electoral campaign help PSL? Is this ultimately a recruitment drive?

I don’t understand how a genocide can be taken so lightly. Some people have trouble casting a vote for any political party that sponsors one.