In NYC PSL regularly held what effectively functioned counterprotests to WOL and other heavily state-opposed grassroots, Levantine Muslim-led Palestinian advocacy protests, for example having email collection dance parties on NYU campus while WOL was trying to organize narrowly-focused action directed toward embassies, the UN assembly, Columbia, Netanyahu’s hotel, City Hall, etc., ostensibly because the Muslims whose literal families were being murdered were offended by PSL’s refusal to show quiet solidarity and instead attempting to center themselves and their entirely irrelevant radical liberal slogans.
But then PSL enthusiastically participated in the Walton-funded “we love Thomas Jefferson” parades and marched alongside imperialist liberals in full solidarity, when “No Kings” was only deserving of counterprotest by any real Marxist organization.
When a revolutionary organization shows up to a broad protest and offers a sharper critique than the organizers intended, the organizers and their liberal allies will often cry "sectarian." They want participation on their terms—bodies in the crowd, but no challenge to the politics. They want the numbers without the analysis. When they call you sectarian for offering that analysis, what they are really saying is: "We want your presence but not your politics. We want your numbers but not your challenge."
This is a trap. If you accept the charge and stay home, you become the irrelevant sect they already accused you of being. If you show up and mute your politics to avoid the charge, you dissolve into the liberal crowd and cease to be a revolutionary organization at all. The only way out is to reject the framing entirely. Being present and vocal is not sectarianism. It is revolutionary participation. The sectarian is the one who refuses to engage at all.
Allowing membership to people with some Christian sympathies or beliefs is understandable, but what kind of militant Marxist-Leninist vanguard party not only runs a presidential candidate in a rigged bourgeois election but specifically selects a candidate who talks about being “blessed by Jesus?”
If they support an issue, then they should only offer solidarity to focused single-issue movements that are effectively progressing that issue, but instead they sabotage movements that don’t let them take full control, functionally working against the issues they claim to work for. They uphold party unity on niche concerns and time commitments, but they allow idealists and trotskyite-anticommunists into their movement while spreading liberal reformist talking points and refusing to fully boycott the US’s fundamentally undemocratic elections. Their positions just do not seem coherent enough to be considered anything more than containment and diffusion of genuinely revolutionary individuals.
Hey, fair enough- the stuff you described does sound pretty annoying, and like i said, i have no connection with the psl or any real interactions with outside of some protests - but of the "we have to take down the psl" crowd most of the critiques have seemed pretty vague and sus a little desperate for me to really tKe seriously- breakthrough news for example is doing a good service - i dont think theyre about to do the revolution , sure - but i already said what i think abt that
Anyway, thanks for the clarification and if theyre wrecking than i do say, fuck that!
Yeah man i agree about that but its un-dialectical in my opinion to act as if that is not going to be something that emerges in current conditions and that when it did it was going to be the final version of struggle, rather than just one step on a ladder- the fact that theyre trying to do entryism to no kings makes perfect sense, actually... "they were part of this thing and this thing supports that" thing symbolically so fuck them is just liberal mindset- what do you think they should be doing, robbing banks and organizing a political general strike? Yeah sure but in what world does that not come out of masses going from bernism to revolutionary by steadily becoming less utopian and more materialist? If the psl were competing with some other mass movement that ws the thing you wish was here, i would agree- but their main competition is the dsa at the moment, which has its strengths and weakness too.
Where this all leads is neither the psl or the dsa or whatever , but you have to get from a to z via some intermediary steps- if you were go full on people's war, what happens the next week? Total obliteration. A radical slogan without a mass mvmnt behind it is just adventurism.
And while I give them credence for being generally critical of Harris/Biden, their material generally engages in liberal identity pearl-clutching about Trump being some unique spiritual evil when Marxists recognize that he is the exact same “evil” as the entire DNC/RNC monopoly only with a less eloquent facade, going so far as calling the democrat-supported aggression on Iran “Trump’s war.” That combined with their regularly talking about reforming the tax rate, instead of consistently denying the legitimacy of our current system of government, makes them hard to take as serious Marxist-Leninists.
I get what you’re saying and you’re definitely not wrong. But I think it is valid to question why they would just quietly show solidarity to no kings liberals instead of organizing a simultaneous “no more capitalists march” or something, considering how their central NYC chapter felt inspired to organize literal counter-protests when Muslim groups won’t let them take complete control of their orgs. I think PSL does a lot of good work, but I am also, (possibly sane as you), mostly trying to keep people from thinking w the absolute end all be all pinnacle of Marxism. Because much of their messaging and their policy of refusing to collaborate with other ML groups and even encouraging their members to cut ties with all nonPSL groups seems to suggest their leadership wants to present themselves as a textbook ML vanguard party, when they objectively are not by endless metrics. Obviously the Smith act and other laws prevent them from taking an openly insurrectionist stance, but that doesn’t make it correct for them to project any pretense that the current system can be reformed internally just to try to temporarily ensnare some NYU bernie bros. I think they could be ultimately helpful to the Marxist movement, but, at the same time, calling out blatant contradictions is still necessary. I tried to join to see what it’s about, but they rejected me, ostensibly because I am a worker who didn’t go to college and am too ‘intolerant’ of idealism and reformist delusions, so I guess they want me criticizing from the sidelines. Other ML parties in the US, like the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, give critical support to one another and try to form ties with labor, but PSL takes a mostly wrecking stance toward other ML parties, despite themselves being the most electoralist and most vague when it comes to broad principles, and remains mostly focused on forming ties with college students over labor.
I gotta say, what is wrong with the PSL besides that they are well-organized exactly ?
Supposedly they are just "containing something that would otherwise be revolutionary" but where is that thing and wouldnt it look like the psl but just be different people doing that?
Every critique ive read of the psl seems like kind of a nothingburger- like gate keeping? Really?
It sounds like the thing you are upset about is that they do lots of stuff, but i dont see why thats bad, or opposing some other thing? What, exactly? The dsa?
Random anarchists or tankies or rival socialists? Honest question, the stuff you list, like breakthrough news and cuba solidarity is cool, and prashad writes good well researched books.
Until i see some actual psl did something sus besides "gatekeeping" im filing this under some sort of weird infighting or worse (attempts to undermine an effective organization with vague threats)
Btw, i am not in the PSL and im sure many of them are annoying but i hate to say many of everyone are annoying...
I don’t think they’re certainly a containment operation and agree with many of their members. But aside from the wrecking I mentioned, the fact that they claim to be “revolutionary” but still run candidates while pushing incremental bernie bro talking points about socialized healthcare and taxing the rich makes them seem fundamentally ineffective. Maybe something good could come of them, but I believe a Marxist Leninist party needs to be clear that completely dissembling the current system, ending imperialism, and abolishing the rich as a class are the only talking points to push. Saying that our government needs to share its stolen wealth more fairly among the labor aristocracy is not a Marxist position. And the US’s wealth is dependent on military spending and imperial exploitation and dollar hegemony, so Marxist revolutionaries would need to be realistic about how are quality of life is essentially stolen and would likely be lost to a degree in the aftermath of ending imperialism. They need to explain how that is still the most just outcome, instead of promising impossible bernie bro peanuts.
Like really a careful read of this is like: they drew a diagram, scary, they take democratic centralism seriously, an extremely rich person (fergie who is a memeber of one of the wealthiest families in the us, not just a wealthy individual, who also funds left stuff ) thinks its sus that the psl also funds stuff with rich people, (like marx and engels, or trotsky or stalin and lenin) and a bunch of hearsay from people... generally of the i was at a protest and they didnt protest how i thought they should or i thought their slogans were dumb, and if they hadnt been there it would have gone the way i wanted it to..
again, not in the psl but all of these criticisms could be made regarding the bolsheviks too-
If theyre countering anti cuba propaganda and are anti war instead of this pro us regime change left who think every us Invasion is the spanish civil war,
In NYC PSL regularly held what effectively functioned counterprotests to WOL and other heavily state-opposed grassroots, Levantine Muslim-led Palestinian advocacy protests, for example having email collection dance parties on NYU campus while WOL was trying to organize narrowly-focused action directed toward embassies, the UN assembly, Columbia, Netanyahu’s hotel, City Hall, etc., ostensibly because the Muslims whose literal families were being murdered were offended by PSL’s refusal to show quiet solidarity and instead attempting to center themselves and their entirely irrelevant radical liberal slogans.
But then PSL enthusiastically participated in the Walton-funded “we love Thomas Jefferson” parades and marched alongside imperialist liberals in full solidarity, when “No Kings” was only deserving of counterprotest by any real Marxist organization.
When a revolutionary organization shows up to a broad protest and offers a sharper critique than the organizers intended, the organizers and their liberal allies will often cry "sectarian." They want participation on their terms—bodies in the crowd, but no challenge to the politics. They want the numbers without the analysis. When they call you sectarian for offering that analysis, what they are really saying is: "We want your presence but not your politics. We want your numbers but not your challenge."
This is a trap. If you accept the charge and stay home, you become the irrelevant sect they already accused you of being. If you show up and mute your politics to avoid the charge, you dissolve into the liberal crowd and cease to be a revolutionary organization at all. The only way out is to reject the framing entirely. Being present and vocal is not sectarianism. It is revolutionary participation. The sectarian is the one who refuses to engage at all.
Exactly. So why did they participate in the Walton-funded “we love thomas jefferson” parades.
because theyre a counterinsurgency operation designed to neutralize revolution through channellibg discontent into harmless forms
Allowing membership to people with some Christian sympathies or beliefs is understandable, but what kind of militant Marxist-Leninist vanguard party not only runs a presidential candidate in a rigged bourgeois election but specifically selects a candidate who talks about being “blessed by Jesus?”
If they support an issue, then they should only offer solidarity to focused single-issue movements that are effectively progressing that issue, but instead they sabotage movements that don’t let them take full control, functionally working against the issues they claim to work for. They uphold party unity on niche concerns and time commitments, but they allow idealists and trotskyite-anticommunists into their movement while spreading liberal reformist talking points and refusing to fully boycott the US’s fundamentally undemocratic elections. Their positions just do not seem coherent enough to be considered anything more than containment and diffusion of genuinely revolutionary individuals.
Hey, fair enough- the stuff you described does sound pretty annoying, and like i said, i have no connection with the psl or any real interactions with outside of some protests - but of the "we have to take down the psl" crowd most of the critiques have seemed pretty vague and sus a little desperate for me to really tKe seriously- breakthrough news for example is doing a good service - i dont think theyre about to do the revolution , sure - but i already said what i think abt that
Anyway, thanks for the clarification and if theyre wrecking than i do say, fuck that!
Ok anyway have a good one
Yeah man i agree about that but its un-dialectical in my opinion to act as if that is not going to be something that emerges in current conditions and that when it did it was going to be the final version of struggle, rather than just one step on a ladder- the fact that theyre trying to do entryism to no kings makes perfect sense, actually... "they were part of this thing and this thing supports that" thing symbolically so fuck them is just liberal mindset- what do you think they should be doing, robbing banks and organizing a political general strike? Yeah sure but in what world does that not come out of masses going from bernism to revolutionary by steadily becoming less utopian and more materialist? If the psl were competing with some other mass movement that ws the thing you wish was here, i would agree- but their main competition is the dsa at the moment, which has its strengths and weakness too.
Where this all leads is neither the psl or the dsa or whatever , but you have to get from a to z via some intermediary steps- if you were go full on people's war, what happens the next week? Total obliteration. A radical slogan without a mass mvmnt behind it is just adventurism.
And while I give them credence for being generally critical of Harris/Biden, their material generally engages in liberal identity pearl-clutching about Trump being some unique spiritual evil when Marxists recognize that he is the exact same “evil” as the entire DNC/RNC monopoly only with a less eloquent facade, going so far as calling the democrat-supported aggression on Iran “Trump’s war.” That combined with their regularly talking about reforming the tax rate, instead of consistently denying the legitimacy of our current system of government, makes them hard to take as serious Marxist-Leninists.
I get what you’re saying and you’re definitely not wrong. But I think it is valid to question why they would just quietly show solidarity to no kings liberals instead of organizing a simultaneous “no more capitalists march” or something, considering how their central NYC chapter felt inspired to organize literal counter-protests when Muslim groups won’t let them take complete control of their orgs. I think PSL does a lot of good work, but I am also, (possibly sane as you), mostly trying to keep people from thinking w the absolute end all be all pinnacle of Marxism. Because much of their messaging and their policy of refusing to collaborate with other ML groups and even encouraging their members to cut ties with all nonPSL groups seems to suggest their leadership wants to present themselves as a textbook ML vanguard party, when they objectively are not by endless metrics. Obviously the Smith act and other laws prevent them from taking an openly insurrectionist stance, but that doesn’t make it correct for them to project any pretense that the current system can be reformed internally just to try to temporarily ensnare some NYU bernie bros. I think they could be ultimately helpful to the Marxist movement, but, at the same time, calling out blatant contradictions is still necessary. I tried to join to see what it’s about, but they rejected me, ostensibly because I am a worker who didn’t go to college and am too ‘intolerant’ of idealism and reformist delusions, so I guess they want me criticizing from the sidelines. Other ML parties in the US, like the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, give critical support to one another and try to form ties with labor, but PSL takes a mostly wrecking stance toward other ML parties, despite themselves being the most electoralist and most vague when it comes to broad principles, and remains mostly focused on forming ties with college students over labor.
I gotta say, what is wrong with the PSL besides that they are well-organized exactly ?
Supposedly they are just "containing something that would otherwise be revolutionary" but where is that thing and wouldnt it look like the psl but just be different people doing that?
Every critique ive read of the psl seems like kind of a nothingburger- like gate keeping? Really?
It sounds like the thing you are upset about is that they do lots of stuff, but i dont see why thats bad, or opposing some other thing? What, exactly? The dsa?
Random anarchists or tankies or rival socialists? Honest question, the stuff you list, like breakthrough news and cuba solidarity is cool, and prashad writes good well researched books.
Until i see some actual psl did something sus besides "gatekeeping" im filing this under some sort of weird infighting or worse (attempts to undermine an effective organization with vague threats)
Btw, i am not in the PSL and im sure many of them are annoying but i hate to say many of everyone are annoying...
I don’t think they’re certainly a containment operation and agree with many of their members. But aside from the wrecking I mentioned, the fact that they claim to be “revolutionary” but still run candidates while pushing incremental bernie bro talking points about socialized healthcare and taxing the rich makes them seem fundamentally ineffective. Maybe something good could come of them, but I believe a Marxist Leninist party needs to be clear that completely dissembling the current system, ending imperialism, and abolishing the rich as a class are the only talking points to push. Saying that our government needs to share its stolen wealth more fairly among the labor aristocracy is not a Marxist position. And the US’s wealth is dependent on military spending and imperial exploitation and dollar hegemony, so Marxist revolutionaries would need to be realistic about how are quality of life is essentially stolen and would likely be lost to a degree in the aftermath of ending imperialism. They need to explain how that is still the most just outcome, instead of promising impossible bernie bro peanuts.
excellent article! great research 💯
Like really a careful read of this is like: they drew a diagram, scary, they take democratic centralism seriously, an extremely rich person (fergie who is a memeber of one of the wealthiest families in the us, not just a wealthy individual, who also funds left stuff ) thinks its sus that the psl also funds stuff with rich people, (like marx and engels, or trotsky or stalin and lenin) and a bunch of hearsay from people... generally of the i was at a protest and they didnt protest how i thought they should or i thought their slogans were dumb, and if they hadnt been there it would have gone the way i wanted it to..
again, not in the psl but all of these criticisms could be made regarding the bolsheviks too-
If theyre countering anti cuba propaganda and are anti war instead of this pro us regime change left who think every us Invasion is the spanish civil war,
i think thats great