Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear are the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Socialism’s nominees for president and vice president, respectively. The ticket’s take on neoliberal “free trade” agreements is something most members of the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian parties can agree with: They’re against them. However, the La Riva/Puryear position paper on free trade is uniquely socialist.
Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear say that so-called “free trade” agreements negotiated through the World Trade Organization are intended to benefit “the big capitalists” and not working people in industry and agriculture. They also say that Mexico’s experiment with “free trade” has caused millions of Mexicans to flee to the United States in the name of survival.
La Riva and Puryear characterize the Minutemen and Lou Dobbs as “racists” who use immigrants as scapegoats in order to hide what La Riva and Puryear say is the true cause of economic problems — capitalism itself.
However, the PSL candidates are not against all trade agreements. They point to the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas — the Chavez/Castro alternative to the U.S.-led NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA — as an example of a trade agreement that should be supported. They say the Bolivarian agreement “offers trade and investment on equal terms based on solidarity with the millions of poor and super-exploited Latin American masses, and the use of each country’s resources for real development.”
Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear call for the abolition of NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Ironically, libertarian Republican Ron Paul ran on a similar platform, although for very different reasons.
