Introduction

There's that saying that you've probably heard a million times: doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign of psychosis. Whether or not that's something you might find in the DSM-5 manual, it certainly has a strong ring of truth to it. And it's also something that rings profoundly true when we think about much of the broader left and liberal left strategy when it comes to presidential elections in the United States: just keep voting for the lesser of two evils and eventually things will sort themselves out. But all it takes is one brief look at our current conditions to understand that that attitude is, well, not exactly aligned with reality.

When we survey either our current political, economic, ecological—really, any landscape, it's beyond doubt that conditions have deteriorated—drastically. The far right, the hegemony of capitalism and imperialism, and the forces of reaction have all continued to grow in strength as we continue to acquiesce to the Democratic Party's insistence that they are the bulwark against these forces and that by voting for the Democrats, we're assuring that our democracy stays in tact. So we keep voting for them, and they keep breaking their promises—in fact, they don't even really bother to promise much anymore because they know they've got us cornered—there's nowhere else to go.

But what if we could break this cycle? What if there was somewhere else to go? In this Patreon episode, we're exploring an alternative to the two-party duopoly, an alternative to the two factions of capital that call themselves the Democrats and the Republicans.

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are running for President and Vice President with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or PSL. In this conversion, we explore why Claudia and Karina are running, what platform they're running on and what policies they're proposing, and why it's more important than ever for the working class to start building power and building its own party as an instrument for not just participating in electoral politics, but for building class consciousness, getting folks involved in organizing, and in providing a platform for political education that presents a clear alternative to the dismal and defeatist messages coming from the two corporate parties that rule over us on behalf of capital.

Further Resources:

• Claudia and Karina 2024
• Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)
• Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz

Thank you to Karla Reyes of the Claudia and Karina 2024 campaign and Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert Raymond.

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