EDIT: The original article I posted kinda sucked. I’ll keep it here for posterity if people want to read it, but I’ll replace it with a link @RedWizard posted with original resignation letter and the PSL internal response. If you want to read just the resignation letter with the PSL criticisms without any preamble, it is here.
EDIT 2: Here is the leaked PSL internal response.
Comment by @chana in the general thread: (Sorry to copy your comment here but it’s the only comment I’ve seen so far on this and it’s a good way to start off the discussion, along with summer discussion questions I’ll add below)
Comment text
Notable resignation and letter from PSL Central Committee member and related fomenting split in Brooklyn over PSL being run as a bureaucratic clique (which many will already be aware of from speaking with various PSL members trying to do more than participate in protests). PSL is good at specific local levels despite the national level dysfunction, and the vast majority of its membership good comrades. But the criticisms certainly ring true to me and are reasonable to cite as existential flaws. There is a bit of clown nonsense from the top on a regular basis (like the call for a general strike, cited in the resignation letter, lmao that is baby liberal idealism stuff).
If you’re currently unorganized don’t let this stop you from joining, it is more important to be active and learn locally from any non-abusive left space than to do nothing organized.
Discussion Questions:
- There’s a lot of PSL fans or members here so what do you think? Like overall on this news?
- Do the complaints have merit, or not? Do some do, and some don’t? Which ones? – If so, what does this mean for the left in the US? What are the solutions and what is the path from here? – If not, why don’t you think so? And what does it mean for the left in terms of factionalism and splitting?
- Do you still recommend the PSL as an organization to join? What about the DSA? Join the Democratic Party? FRSO?
Pretty dogwater smear piece, should’ve just posted the actual letter and the response.
You’re so right and sorry about that. I’ve updated my post link with a new one that should contain both the letter and the response.
Honestly with things like this I think it is important to distinguish between what you read on the Internet and what you see IRL. In my experience and the experience of many others I know across the country, none of these things ring true. PSL and the various local or topic-focused mass orgs that are downstream punch way beyond their weight and frankly beyond most mass orgs, with less members, all while imbuing real class consciousness among a variety of social strata. You’ll find everybody from well-paid doctors to deeply exploited immigrants, to students and retired grandparents.
Also his vague arguments seem to amount to economism or trade unionism, the kind of stuff that’s easily disputed in “what is to be done”. He also complains about his reformist attitudes needing to be hidden because they would be snuffed by zombies who are subservient to a few individuals. No, our leaders are leaders, they have agency, the puppet master trope is the silliest of them all. His reformist thought would be snuffed because he is coming up against a unified party of leninists who have gone through shared lessons in struggle and study together and arrive at similar conclusions because of that. If you have the correct idea then it should be able to prove itself in the battle of ideas and win, which he didn’t, and they have not.
Sad to see it come from someone close to the center but there is plenty examples of this kind of thing in history and among successful parties / revolutions, and PSL is conscious of that and structured to mitigate the harm of wreckers like this. It’s fresh news now for chronically-online leftists but will probably fade into the dustbin of history and have little effect on the ground.
Unfortunately these are the things you have to argue against when people new to organizing are asking what org they should join. But you are 100% correct. I’ve organized with many PSL members, and haven’t found many of his complaints to be true on an organizational front.
For example, I forget if it was in this letter or the reddit thread or both, but I’ve seen people complain that they find other orgs that make protests and then hijack them. But they tend to be the first to organize these protests and when they do join protests organized by others, they bring actual organization and professional, including signs, bull horns, safety officers to protect the people, microphones for speakers, etc. This is experience on the ground vs online.
Also his vague arguments seem to amount to economism or trade unionism, the kind of stuff that’s easily disputed in “what is to be done”.
This part is weird to me, too. How is someone part of an ML org for so many years and not have the same line on Leninist thought on this kinda stuff? Did they skip their organization’s own education or not internalize it, or what?
What to do if you want to organize in the US now? Join the DSA? Join the Democratic Party? FRSO?
This begs the question of PSL being discredited. They have not been.
the answer is really, log the fuck out and organize. even DSA is better than sitting online arguing. I promise, the real world is very much not the same as the internet. to be clear, i still recommend PSL however.
First impressions are that this is a magnification of PSL’s issues for careerist ends, rather than a genuine need to split. This doesn’t change PSL’s current position as the best Statesian org of its size, and if they are active in your area and you do not have local circumstances pointing you towards another org, you should probably join either as a full member or action network member.
PSL CC Leaked Response, copied from the Google drive link so y’all don’t have to click on that
And my take on the situation after reading this: He has some legitimate grievances that could have been handled internally, but primarily he’s sensationalizing and lying to give more legitimacy to his wrecker behavior. He’s refusing to engage in the democratic processes which exist then decrying the party as undemocratic, specifically because his position is counterrevolutionary and he knew he’d be voted down if him and his faction presented it. Opportunist tailist shit. The PSL remains the strongest force of revolutionary change in the US and the most viable vanguard party; Walter has burnt his credibility and only weakened the movement with this charade.
Biggest complaint here is that PSL let this goober in in the first place
they didn’t even let me in :(
What about his complaints that they would change bylaws and stuff to prevent him from bringing it up for debate? His letter was so godamn long it’s hard for me to remember it all with perfect clarity, but wasn’t his complaint essentially that the proper channels weren’t working because the leadership was secretly working to shut him down by making up rules or having secret meetings without him, that kind of stuff?
He is omitting that the congress elected to create the bylaw committee, that he was a part of it, and that he participated but refused to put forward his real position and refused to offer open criticism. (ostensibly because he would be marginalized, which seems moot now that he marginalized himself)
edit: it also wasn’t to preclude discussion, or his opinions. it was because the bylaw process was getting unwieldy as the party grew, as any member can put forward a change in language
Ah. Sounds like a lot of it came down to him having separate opinions on political strategy of the party and not saying it out loud because he knew he was being out voted anyway. At least, he did that long enough to build up a separate faction that did believe in this other political strategy, one I’m still not completely sure what the difference is (since PSL does do base building and community organizing as well - I guess it’s just a matter of priorities?).
It’s kind of annoying, but I guess if you can’t handle Democratic Centralism, that’s what you need to do. Splitting is a time honored tradition in leftist orgs, after all. I just wish it wouldn’t be so messy.
After reading both it seems the leadership feel base building should funnel to socialist education and PSL more directly (i.e. support party building) and the faction felt base building should be the heavy focus with little or no direct tying to party building. If true i side with the PSL leadership, Base building should support party building otherwise it’s not really revolutionizing.
The bit i know about the Colorado people’s center seems to support that but that could also be due to the split and I don’t know enough to confidently say how it runs.
Rest seems to be a lot of word twisting and omitting for what seems like org issues they’ve already acknowledged and seem to be understandable for a communist org in the imperial core having growth but also facing pressure from the state.
Think overall if people are in any doubts it’s best to still try to join PSL or any org in your area and feel it out yourself. Reading responses online can only inform you so much about the actual workings of orgs.
He should’ve just focused on building his new org comprised of former leadership of the PSL Brooklyn branch along with other PSL Brooklyn cadre that tagged along and let that org’s praxis do the talking. Honestly, the letter comes off as an ad for his own org. “This org sucks. Anyways go join my new org that I promise won’t suck like this org that sucks.”
The leadership working to exclude the annoying guy is not a flaw in my eyes
Whatever you think of the PSL, you have to admit this is true:
As this factional campaign erupted, the PSL is under the highest level of state scrutiny in its 22-year history, with leading Trump administration officials vowing to “dismantle” the organization, and the right-wing media sniffing around us at every turn. To conduct a political struggle in this way — first through concealment and factionalism, then through the mass circulation of angry, vindictive letters — is a gift to our real enemies, the capitalist state, which seeks to infiltrate all leading progressive organizations, identify contradictions and exploit them
This I wholesale agree with, with my own personal sentiment that traitors should be [redacted] exactly as the kind and merciful Lenin showed us in history.
American Railway Union (1893) > Social Democracy of America (1897) > Social Democratic Party of America (1898) > Socialist Party of America (1901) > Socialist Workers Party (1938) > Workers World Party (1959) > Party for Socialism and Liberation (2004)
another split to the pileTwo communists walk into a bar. Soon after, three parties are born.
EmoPhillips.mp4
I’m not a PSL member myself. However, I do not see any good reason to trust this individual. And most of their ‘criticisms’ are coming from a liberal (and not a Marxist) perspective. Also, from my experience, most people from the US that “rage quit” Marxist organizations like this generally just end up becoming Democrats…
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
lmao this is straight ass my dude
If anyone has the PSL’s response, which is supposedly floating around, I’d love to see it.
EDIT: I’ve updated my original post link with a new one that should contain both the original letter and the response. Sorry for the dogshit article analyzing the letter I posted originally.
It says it’s not to be shared but of course was immediately.
gotta say “please post this everywhere” to get people not to
Reminds me of tiny left groups that write up all their crimes and then say, “please don’t tell anyone”.
Thanks!
But godamn, why do all these documents have to be so long?
It kind of speaks to the seriousness on some level that they are both so disorganized lol. I don’t mind length at all if it is organized thoughts with clear presentation but hoo boy look at these…
what’s with the slop “summary”?
Of the new post link? Or in my post itself?
EDIT: I finally read the post link itself. I assumed it was just the two letters itself, but nope there is a pretty “slop” summary at the top. Godamnit, can’t I just find one simple link with both letters and no commentary?
this collapsed quote is slop
PSL’s Top Propagandist Resigns, Publishes Tell-All Letter — geese magazine.
Oh ya, that’s copied from the reddit post on this topic I think, so it of course sucks. But I like to hear people’s replies to the slop as a discussion starter too, because that’s the kind of shit I’ll have to form arguments against in my daily life when people bring this drama up.
I don’t think people should bother reading something nobody wrote personally.
Breaking demcent like this is wrecker shit. Even if the PSL were strategically bankrupt, I would have a very hard time ever trusting someone who did this to lead or even participate in party politics ever again.
As always in the US, you join whatever org is local to you and start organizing. Be that PSL, DSA, FRSO, or whatever. Very few people have the social connections and resources and theoretical basis to build party infrastructure from scratch.
More proof that Brooklynites should not be taken seriously
deleted by creator
THERE’S NO REAL LEFT IN THE US. The true left in the world doesn’t need a leftist US (nobody with brains would believe them). Just a few collaborationists to report during the invasion.
and you are basing this on what exactly?
ViBeS. its always the same with this third worldist shit
I have no genocide supporters as neighbors. Can’t have mode materiality than that, first worldist “feel good” “”“communist”"’
Ah yes I forgot the best way to over throw capitalism is just to give up cause Americans aren’t pure leftists and can never change. Holy shit you third worldists are embarrassing.
Americans aren’t pure leftists
USians are 0% leftists.
go back to ACP twitter
Im way more suspicious of people who love to point the finger at others for not being “left enough”. America has 350 million fucking people in it, you can find every single type of person there. Including the most radical communists.
This is cringe and I’m rather sick of it after living in Europe for a while. I hear many European “leftists” complain about the US in the same way that liberals in the US complain about
, it’s just a very annoying and lazy analysis. Communists are supposed to be concrete, not fall into dogmaAre you basing that view on what you’ve seen about euro “”“”“communism”“”“”?
It’s a fact, not a view, that America has 350 million people with incredibly diverse social circumstances and class position.
You are making an argument of the same structure as any other essentialist argument, which is flawed thinking in all contexts including this one. Read what Marx had to say about notions of a “human essence” and think about why he disliked that reasoning so much. It gets right to the heart of his materialist dialectic and that’s why you are incorrect to make such a lazy statement about a society, as though each individual is reducible to an essence
My assessment is based on what that Society is able to produce, that is death and misery. I couldn’t care less about “individuals”, but of course the sick individualism is a core of USian arguments.
The opposite of essentialism isn’t individualism.
Marx wasn’t American, so what’s your explanation of his insight into the brainworm of essentialism?
Read for example his 6th thesis on Feuerbach, part of which says, “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.”
You can’t get a theory of class society if your conception of society is one that reduces things into ideal categories or essence that says, in the final analysis, that the explanation of difference is essence, not the historical-material conditions in which an individual (or a class) is situated. Like that’s the whole triumph of Marx’s materialism over the Feuerbachian materialism. Both Lenin and Mao also had similar writings on this same problem so this isn’t some esoteric debate.
My views are based on the present and that no really sizable foot work is been done to change the current material conditions in the US.
So what are you doing to fix it? What specifically can US left do better?
There are dedicated anti-war groups in the US that, among other things, do direct action to decrease US military capacity. Surely that is helpful to the global left.
You have my attention.
