Harvard Vote Socialist, a political organization founded on campus this September, has quickly mobilized a portion of Harvard undergraduate students to campaign for Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, the 2024 presidential and vice-presidential candidates running on the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) ticket. The PSL, a left-wing anti-capitalist political party founded in 2004, has nominated presidential candidates in every election since 2008, with 2020 candidate Gloria La Riva garnering 0.1% of the national popular vote. Although the De la Cruz campaign is unlikely to emerge victorious in any states come Nov. 5, let alone the Electoral College, some Harvard undergraduates have thrown their support behind the PSL. In response to such encouragement, De la Cruz is planning to speak at Harvard on Oct. 26, just 10 days before the general election.
The PSL identifies capitalism as the cause of many of the woes Americans face today. “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,” their website reads. The ultimate goal of the PSL is to establish a worker-led socialist government to oversee the transition from capitalism to communism in the United States through the overhaul of state institutions.
The PSL also pledges to implement guaranteed living income for the unemployed, government-sponsored health care for all, and fully funded education through college. The party also aims to overcome historic injustices and exploitation of racial minority groups by, for instance, issuing economic reparations to Black individuals.
A few Harvard undergraduates specified their support for the PSL’s domestic policy platform. Laura Cleves ’28 chose to join Harvard Vote Socialist after attending a campaign launch event for De la Cruz and speaking with upperclassmen associated with the movement.
“From where I stand, the Democratic Party is too busy acquiescing to the policies and stances of a radical Republican Party to actually be considered a viable choice for left-leaning voters,” she said. “When I was growing up, I was taught that Democrats believed in the same values that I did: equity, inclusion, and community. Having come of age in an incredibly volatile political climate, however, I can see that Democrats don’t really care about delivering results to their constituents unless it means lining their pockets.”
Cleves referenced the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the landmark 1973 abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, as a failure of Democratic leadership to effect meaningful change and to preserve institutions valued by their constituents. Although three of the six justices who ruled with the majority on Dobbs were appointed by former President Donald Trump, some have criticized current President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats for failing to codify Roe in advance. Cleves also expressed frustration with the Democratic Party’s stance on environmental issues, gun control, and the Israel-Hamas war. “All I’ve been hearing for the past decade is empty promise after empty promise,” she said.
Critics of the PSL and other parties left of the Democratic Party often cite the spoiler effect, a term used to describe third-party candidates’ tendency to sap votes that would otherwise go to one of the two major parties, as a cause for concern. Cleves, however, doubts the legitimacy of such anxieties.
“I think the claim that third-party voters are wasting their votes is spurious and indicative of a herd mentality that currently dominates American politics,” she explained. “Under the Constitution, American citizens have the right to vote for whatever candidate pleases them; their options are not confined to the Republican and Democratic parties.”
Cleves also criticized the “lesser of two evils” argument often floated by individuals to the left of the Democratic Party in favor of voting for centrist Democratic candidates. “I think that, as long as people engage with the democratic process, that is a triumph in its own right,” she opined. “If third-party candidates like Claudia and Karina manage to draw out voters who wouldn’t have voted for either a Republican or a Democrat in other circumstances, I still consider that a win.”
In a campus as politicized as Harvard’s, with the Institute of Politics boasting over 1500 members as of September, one might think that public support for De la Cruz over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election would attract negative feedback. In the spaces where she has discussed her involvement with Harvard Vote Socialist, however, Cleves has not met disapproval. “I’ve shared news about events with fellow members of my Socialism First-Year Seminar, and my roommates are respectful and supportive of my involvement in the group,” she clarified.
Amari Butler ’25 became involved with the PSL following her participation in a protest following the Jan. 2023 killing of Arif Sayed Faisal by the Cambridge Police Department (CPD). CPD officer Liam McMahon fatally shot Faisal, who was experiencing a mental health crisis, after Faisal reportedly threatened McMahon with a knife. “After hearing of such a horrific event that occurred so close to our own campus, I felt compelled to join the movement, and I began organizing with the Justice for Faisal campaign,” Butler said. “It was through this struggle that I first witnessed the discipline, organizational strength, and political clarity of the PSL. Not only were PSL members speaking out against police brutality, but they were connecting racist police terror to other problems in our society such as inaccessible health care, unaffordable housing, and inadequate education.”
Butler has worked extensively with the De la Cruz campaign. “Several months ago, I petitioned with other dedicated volunteers to gather thousands of signatures to get Claudia and Karina on the ballot in Massachusetts,” she stated. “Because I’ve been volunteering with the campaign basically since the beginning, I’ve also been able to work directly with the campaign manager to help Claudia’s visit to Harvard next week. It may sound unusual for a college student to be doing that much with a national presidential campaign, but that’s how it works when you’re a people-powered movement.”
Like Cleves, Butler explained why she chooses to support the PSL over the Democratic Party and plans to vote for De la Cruz over Democratic nominee Harris on Nov. 5. “To be honest, the Democratic Party is right-wing,” she said. “Kamala Harris is endorsed by top Republicans and has promised to put Republicans in her cabinet. The Democrats and Kamala Harris claim to support Black Americans, but what are their actual policies? Kamala Harris has locked up Black and brown people. She is a self-identified ‘top cop.’” Butler also criticized Harris’s position on conflict in the Middle East. “Kamala Harris even claims to support a ceasefire and self-determination of the Palestinian people, but then in the next breath, she says she supports Israel’s right to ‘defend’ itself, which means Israel’s supposed right to massacre Palestinians,” she said.
Butler voiced concerns regarding growing complacency among Democratic voters. “I know a lot of people are concerned about the consequences of voting for anyone but Kamala, but what’s the consequence of sending Democrats the message that they can literally be aligned with what used to be considered the far-right of the Republican Party, and they still get the votes?” she said.
“She says, ‘We won’t go back,’ but the reality is, you can’t fight fascism with centrism,” Butler continued. “You fight fascism with socialism, with a people’s movement in the ballot box and on the streets and in our communities.”
“Hear from our Vote Socialist presidential candidate on why socialism is necessary to address the issues of working-class people,” reads an Oct. 17 Instagram post advertising De la Cruz’s Harvard visit. De la Cruz is on the ballot in 19 states and has official write-in status in 23 more. In Georgia and Pennsylvania, two of the most hotly contested battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential election, judges have disqualified De la Cruz from the states’ presidential ballots, and in six other states, she is neither on the ballot nor in possession of official write-in status.
Members of other American socialist groups have criticized the PSL’s foreign policy. According to a 2013 article by Megan Cornish published by the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP), the PSL, despite being founded in 2004, expressed retroactive opposition to the 1989 student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square against Chinese Communist Party rule and “endorses the punishing reparations the U.S.S.R. exacted from Hungary after World War II and the Soviet-backed police state that sparked the Hungarian uprising.” Luma Nichol of the FSP argued in a 2023 article that “the influence of Stalinism on PSL leads it to accept or excuse authoritarian rule in these supposedly anti-imperialist states. It sides with the brutal leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who turned weapons on his own people protesting for democratic rights.”
“Voting socialist sends the message that we will no longer accept breadcrumbs because we deserve so much better,” Butler said. “We’re building the people’s movement and organizations to fight for exactly that.”
Jules Sanders ’28 (julessanders@college.harvard.edu) is comping the Independent.