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?
There were many nations that made up the Soviet Union and the Czarist Empire certainly had a settler colonial character in large parts of its territory; the Bolsheviks absolutely had to contend with that reality and forge a pan-national union that could incorporate one of the most diverse collections of peoples in human history
How is this supposed to work when the fascist rump states control all the military bases and their armories? Are you assuming these localized socialist blocs will have all the guns? What happens when the fascist rump states form an alliance under a national organization and utilize foreign aid to overwhelm your regionalized, decentralized, disconnected socialist microstate? You really want to replay the Catalonia experiment?
Point taken about the character of the Russian Empire.
I don't foresee a fascist "national" alliance lasting that long since fascists are prone to infighting over stupid fascist reasons. Frankly, they're more prone to infighting than socialists. In general, I don't think any "national" org at that point would be strong enough to manage their branches. This goes for fascist, socialist, and liberal orgs.
I don't foresee PSL being able to order their entire cadre to flee to a Socialist Republic of Michigan when every individual branch would rather fight for socialism within their localized region because that's where their family and friends live. Apply this reasoning for every single leftist org and you get the LA branch of DSA, PSL, FRSO, CPUSA sticking around in LA, the NYC branch of DSA, PSL, FRSO, CPUSA sticking around in NYC, and so on. With an irrelevant national office and more common cause with branches within the same region from other leftist orgs, the next step would be those regional branches disassociating themselves from their parent orgs and merging together to form a new regional org. So instead of the LA branches of DSA, PSL, FRSO, and CPUSA and the NYC branches of DSA, PSL, FRSO, and CPUSA, you have DSLA and CPNYC. You might have a lot of "united fronts" where each branch org hasn't phoned home to the national office in years.
IMO this is exactly why we need to dismantle empire first. Any attempt at revolution prior to the US exhausting itself militarily will fail. But if it has its empire collapse and loses most of its military power then we would be able to stand a chance using asymmetric tactics. We have to be at a point where while we are fighting the revolution in the US Cubans can take guantanamo bay back at the same time, and China can take guam, and so on. The US is a global entity so if we try something without that global empire collapsing then it would be easy for it to just destroy us from military bases we can't touch.
You're ignoring the issue of domestic fascists in the controlled territories like the fascist movement in Ukraine, which repeatedly tried to carve out its own fiefdom.
Handing off gitmo to Cuba is totally irrelevant. Obviously that should happen, but it's trivial to this issue.
You misunderstood me. I meant Cuba taking Gitmo by force. Not handing it off to them. They do not need our permission to take their land back. Domestic fascists have nothing to do with the point I'm making here. That's a seperate issue. What I am pointing out is that the US is a global empire. If a domestic revolution were to ever succeed it would have to coincide with a collapse of US overseas holdings. otherwise the US will use its global forces to suppress the uprising at home. So we would have to rise up while other anti-imperialist powers are already actively keeping the global forces busy. Then it would be OUR job to handle the domestic fascists while they handle the global forces. Does that make it more clear what I mean?
This is moralistic grandstanding. If Cuba wants gitmo back, it's very unlikely to accomplish that goal without the destruction of the US either by revolution or it simply becoming an impotent failed state, neither of which Cuba can do on its own. The US would sooner burn the entire island down. You're surely going to reply "that's what I went on to say in the same comment" but then what is this?
When I said domestic fascists, I didn't mean domestic to us, I meant domestic to the liberated territories (which is why I mentioned Ukrainian fascists and not Russian fascists).
If you know I had already said that then why did you reply to me saying it lol
I answer that question in the text immediately following what you quoted.
I'm lost. Genuinely don't even know what point your trying to make. Could you explain specifically what your position is? I don't even understand what our disagreement is at this point.
I think that I misread CyborbMarx's comment, so my bad. My position is that national sovereignty is fine for the purpose of anti-colonialism but that ultimately what is required, and what there should be preparation for from an early stage, is a global socialist democracy rather than a bunch of independent nation ~~states~~ communes, and some people lean to heavily on the nationalism thing in a manner that, if taken seriously, would inevitably lead to reactionaries taking power in several of those not nation states.
But again, I was talking about this due to a misreading, so I'm not attributing that position to you here, just explaining what I was talking about.
No problem. I got confused cuz I was reading what you said and was like "what did I say?" lol. When I was talking about like Cuba taking back gitmo on their own I wasn't coming at it from a like "morally the right thing to do is for them to not need permission" I was just coming at it from a like "They literally don't need us. The US empire is crumbling and they'll be able to take gitmo back on their own long before we can create a domestic socialist government." positon.
It was a practicality argument basically. As for your point about the global government I'd agree eventually. It's just so far off it's like what form does that even take? It's hard to know what we'll be doing after capitalism period. I'm more focused on just ending imperialism and opening the way to whatever future comes next.
I see American imperialism as this arresting force on global societal development. Anytime someone tries something experimental America sabotages it. So to even figure out where we need to go we need to get rid of empire first. Then we'll have to do a lot of experimenting and figuring out and eventually I'd hope we reach a point of having a global government.
I do think there will always be a need for localism. Like how the USSR had local soviets. Local communities have their own unique problems and should have the freedom to solve them on their own to a degree. I'd envision a global government as not being much more than like something that handles the big stuff. Prevents wars, protects the environment, ensures no regions are suffering in poverty, everyone has basic needs met, etc. And then the more detailed stuff is handled at a local level and really heavily tailored to the material conditions of that locality. But when it comes to actually organizing now and what we need to do today I really just think we need to be accelerating imperial collapse. That is step 1 of any future plan. And yeah there will probably be a lot of chaos and fascism and reactionary stuff too. But we'll get through it.
Thank you for being understanding about my error.
Yeah, I think it can be okay to idly speculate, but my point in mentioning it isn't that we need to be drafting utopian blueprints and fitting things to those designs, but that while we should focus on what's before us we should be conscious of the continuous process in a broader sense and not cause ourselves trouble by arguing along excessively or too fundamentally nationalist lines (the USSR's struggle with the national question also demonstrates somewhat more immediate significance to this question) when the fundamental goal is the liberation of humanity and giving national sovereignty primacy over human welfare can and has had negative consequences.
There will always be a need for governance at several different levels of governance going down, functionally, to the level of individual apartment complexes and workshops, but the only people who think centralism or a world government means that one politburo in the communist global capitol of Kerala will feed a bunch of data to some servers and have arguments among themselves and then hand down orders that include informing you, personally, "how many nails you need to make each hour of shifts this long on these days" are the Stalinists that exist in the fantasies of Austrian school fanatics. Each level of government has its own level of specificity, with the highest organ being responsible for only very broad issues and what it is uniquely able to administer in terms of coordinating entities that are otherwise their own subdivisions (in consultation with those entities, the equivalents of federations or whatever).
This is dangerously in error. Accelerating the defeat of imperial projects like the war in Iran makes sense, and that incidentally will hasten the collapse of the empire (and already has hastened it), but hastening that collapse for its own sake is only helping fascists who will then cause an inconceivable volume of death and destruction both domestically and abroad. We should be imperial defeatists, but beyond that our goal should be to construct socialist movements to be more effective opposition once that collapse takes place to put down whatever neo-neo-Nazis take over the semi-dead empire and presumably try to literally destroy the world in nuclear hellfire or whatever. Accelerationism is a bad ideology, and if anything the empire collapsing more slowly (insofar as that can happen while still being undermined in its aggressions) is more beneficial to us, because it collapsing very soon is basically the best case scenario from the point of view of the avowed Nazis who are much more equipped to fight than all the socialists are.
I guess the point where we diverge is that I just don't see the west as the force that will bring socialism to fruitition. Like I see the west as the obstacle to socialism.
This is the point where I think maybe we're just looking at things differently. I don't think we need to do this. Why? Because those socialist movements already exist. They are China, The DPRK, Vietnam, Cuba, and Laos. If we can pull off a functional vanguard in the west before it collapses then great, but we're always going to be the junior partner to a global south led anti-fascist coalition.
In the west sure. But globally? My money is on the PLA.
One final note I want to add. I think the fascists are ALREADY in power. So the idea that we need to be worried about the empire collapsing because then fascists will take over? It doesn't compute for me. The US is already fascist. It kills millions already.