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?
I don't have much direct knowledge about PSL, but in the spirit of this more general discussion: I think of "leninism" as a series of relativity simple theories that originate directly from Marxism, and that synthesize some historical lessons of that era. It's all very basic, very sound, no real credible counter- arguments in my opinion. And yet, the "Leninist" model of party-building we've been using in the west for a century has been an indisputable failure.
I was hoping, based on their relative success, that PSL had at least partially overcome some of the problems of this model of organizing. I'll be following this topic carefully to find out. But based on how familiar this sounds, I'm concerned it's the same pattern.
So, back to the more general discussion, what have we (as western "Leninists") been getting wrong all this time? Basically, what is to be done?
I think it’s crucial to understand that Leninism is not a complete theory or a playbook. It’s an analytical model. A lot of unsuccessful parties take Leninism as a playbook rather than doing the hard work and analyzing local condition. The parties that do analyze can be more successful (see workers party Belgium for one, but also AES like Cuba).
Leninism didn’t itself generate the whole revolution. They were just ready to act when the conditions were there. In an alternate history, say if WW1 was delayed by 20 years, we wouldn’t have seen a revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks would have been just a small party desperately propagandizing just like the rest of us. It’s not an indictment of the theory, just a recognition of how history turns and that individual effort does not act upon the world in isolation from the broader historical conditions.
Also not to forget that the majority of wars America wages have literally no negative material impact upon the people of America, meaning that losing it is really no big deal. In fact, this war with Iran really is an exception considering their trump card of closing the strait. Every other war they have waged has only really seen performative opposition, mostly concerned with the lives of their imperial stormtroopers, rather than great sympathy for the invaded nation. You could also argue that in fact, considering they ended the Bretton-Woods system after their loss in the Vietnam war, losing that war actually helped their ambitions and goals rather than hampering them.
Also, no western nation up to this point has been as weak and incompetent as Imperial Russia. And no western nation was actually faced with losing territory and therefore their people being directly affected.
Lenin himself stressed that three things are necessary for a communist movement to seize authority. Mass disillusionment with established authority, a situation where established authority can no longer exert itself, and a pre-existing communist organization with the structural capacity to commit revolutionary actions. My read on that, plus the historical circumstances, is that it's assumed that communism is a pseudo-criminal movement. Lenin and similar theorists were writing in circumstances like exile, prison cells, threats of police stalking them, etc. And I truly believe the history of every successful communist party (bolsheviks, 26th of July, etc) is also the history of organizations openly willing to commit violence, theft, or whatever else is necessary.
This isn't me judging them from a moral angle. Absolutely not. They did what was necessary at the time and eventually seized victory, so they should be lauded for their efforts. They managed to walk the tightrope of surviving against state suppression through criminal organizing, yet also managed to keep their intellectual foundations.
What I mean to say is that organizations in the capitalist west like PSL are in a really rough spot. There really isn't a successful playbook on what to do if you're not a semi-criminal organization that openly commits violence. I'm also not advocating that PSL needs to start throwing molotov cocktails. I don't know what to advocate for honestly. I don't know what is to be done because I don't know of any precedent that could give any clues.
I wouldn't say "openly commits violence" is a necessary component at relatively early stages of the process. There needs to be a legal and an illegal side, and a weak organization openly committing violence cannot have a legal side.
All revolutionary action will inevitably be criminalized. That is the reality of endeavoring to overthrow the status quo.
Yeah but I don't know if PSL or any other party in America is prepared for that. I do really admire how PSL does have countermeasures against cop and fed infiltration though. I don't know how effective they are, but the time I've spent organizing with PSL at least told me they are aware of it
They 100% are not. I had some experience with them recently and its really not very effective. Atleast in my area. I think we should be network building at this stage. Getting local socialists to actually know eachother personally. At this point it's mainly people who show up to a protest then go home. That's no different than what liberals do. They just carry different signs.
I think the usual failures are more about having no clear understanding or commitment to the idea rather than it being inappropriate. If I had to estimate I'd say 90% of Westerners I've met appealing to Lenin, the vanguard, etc etc can barely describe it as anything other than "we make a good party". I hear the term "building dual power" maybe 10X as often as anyone referencing dual power itself accurately and historically. Also most people calling themselves Leninists are actually Trotskyists thinking they're being very clever by saying that instead of Trotskyist.
What is to be done is organizing, of course, and into parties. Understand, embed, agitate, recruit, educate, repeat. Do real things relevant to your communities, be actively present and of them, and bring them back to your org more and more often for education. Unfortunately the vast majority of Western orgs just plain don't do half of these things. A white org (and somehow getting whiter) in a POC town alienates itself from community. A small sect decides to only be a reading group, forever. An org just tails protest months to recruit but doesn't really organize the protests. An org binds itself closely to electoralism and fails to educate, have any standards at all. An org tries to do labor work despite having no understanding or background in it, just alienates others. An org has an understanding of labor and tries to do work in it but it's clearly inauthentic and transactional. An org implodes because leadership protected an abuser - more about internal democracy, structure, and discipline that is usually missing.
Frankly I think it boils down to one basic thing. You have to start with anti-imperialism. Before anyone can start working toward socialism we have to dismantle the empire. There is absolutely no point trying to organize for a socialist revolution if the empire still exists.
On Contradiction should be required reading, or in this case, the section on the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction. At every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.
In the empire itself, dismantling it with a pure anti-imperialist focus tends to be anemic. Many dedicated and correct anti-imperialist orgs (with not many people in them) struggle to gain membership and take meaningful action. Anti-warism is easily a dead end if left on its own, which is one of the appeals of a party - you can enjoin an anti-imperialist struggle to other work, building membership via labor, local community action, really anything relevant to them, and your task becomes turning them into anti-imperialist along the way.
Nothing at all against anti-war orgs but they do have to work in coalition (or be a front group) to be relevant because of these challenges.