Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) - Program
The PSL advocates for socialism, anti-imperialism, and the rights of the working class. They are involved in various social movements and have run candidates in local and national elections. Their platform includes calls for workers' rights, universal healthcare, free education, and an end to U.S. military interventions abroad. They also support the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society. As an anti-capitalist party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is involved in a variety of struggles ranging from affordable housing, racist police brutality, minimum wage, union rights to imperialist war and environmental destruction.
The PSL Founding Statement of 2004 states "There is only one solution to the crisis posed by state monopoly capitalism: socialism. To secure lasting peace requires abolishing the dictatorship wielded by the plutocracy and its warfare state. Pacifist appeals to the ruling class for a “peaceful” or “kinder, gentler” foreign policy is the worst kind of deceit offered up by social democrats and opportunists. Working to elect a new leader to preside over the affairs of the warfare state will have zero impact in reducing the threat of war. As Lenin wrote in 1916, under the system of imperialism peace is merely a prelude to the next war.... a revolutionary party is unique in its perspective that the transformation of the social order can take place only through the revolutionary reconstitution of society. While we will energetically participate in all the mass movements and progressive organizations, our top priority is building the revolutionary socialist party."
"The Party for Socialism and Liberation believes that the only solution to the deepening crisis of capitalism is the socialist transformation of society. Driven by an insatiable appetite for ever greater profits regardless of social cost, capitalism is on a collision course with the people of the world and the planet itself. Imperialist war; deepening unemployment and poverty; deteriorating health care, housing and education; racism; discrimination and violence based on gender and sexual orientation; environmental destruction—all are inevitable products of the capitalist system itself. For the great majority of people in the world, including tens of millions of workers in the United States, conditions of life and work are worsening. There is no prospect that this situation can or will be turned around under the existing system.
"The idea that the capitalists’ grip on society and their increasingly repressive state can be abolished through any means other than a revolutionary overturn is an illusion. Equally unrealistic are reformist hopes for a “kinder, gentler” capitalism, or solutions based on economic decentralization or small group autonomy. Meeting the needs of the more than 6.5 billion people who inhabit the planet today is impossible without large-scale agriculture and industry and economic planning.
"The fundamental problems confronting humanity today flow from the reality that most of the world’s productive wealth—the product of socialized labor and nature—is privately owned and controlled by a tiny minority. This minority decides what will be produced and what will not. Its decisions are based on making profits rather than meeting human needs. There are really only two choices for humanity today—an increasingly destructive capitalism, or socialism."
The Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation was adopted by the First Party Congress of the PSL in February 2010, and amended in subsequent congresses in 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2022. "The standing army and police must be disbanded and replaced by the armed people, organized in workers’ defense councils. A critical task of the new socialist order will be defending itself from the displaced capitalist class that would like to return to the days of exploitation....
"Socialism is the necessary stage between capitalism and communism. The full achievement of socialism will require the development of the economy to meet the fundamental needs of the working class and the population as a whole. It will also be marked by the fading away of classes and class antagonisms. This cannot happen overnight.... There will be no distinction between the legislative and executive functions of government. Those who enact measures will be responsible for carrying them out.... The rights of freedom of speech and political involvement will be extended to all. These rights will only be abridged in the efforts to eliminate racism, xenophobia and all forms of bigotry, or to prevent the re-establishment of the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression....
"The socialist government will recognize the inviolable right of all oppressed nations to self-determination with regard to their means of gaining and maintaining their liberation. In the United States, this includes the right of self-determination for African American, Native, Puerto Rican and other Latino national minorities, the Hawai’ian nation, Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab and other oppressed peoples that have experienced oppression as a whole people under capitalism. The socialist government will institute a program of reparations for the African American community to address the centuries of unpaid slave labor and super-exploitation."
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 brought waves of civil rights movements worldwide. Among many other organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organized protests across the United States, calling for ending police brutality. The party had been maintaining its position on prison abolition, a movement aiming at dismantling the entire imprisonment system and seeking better alternatives for the rehabilitation of humans. Different from many organizations that address police brutality or racism specifically, the Party for Socialism and Liberation stands against the root of the prison-industrial complex - capitalism. To reach its revolutionary goal of socialist transformation, the party adopts both long-term strategies through engagement in mutual aid projects as well as short-term approaches like supporting prison reform under the current capitalist society.
A protest, organized 14 March 2024 by the Socialism and Liberation Party and the Palestinian Youth Movement and joined by members of the group CODEPINK, outside the headquarters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) came one day after the pro-Israel lobby group concluded its annual political conference. The demonstrators, some of whom wore Palestinian keffiyehs, or hijabs, carried Palestinian flags as well as banners bearing messages such as “Free Palestine,” “Stop all American aid to Israel” and “Stand with Palestine, end the occupation now.”
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