We’ve gotten to a point in the class struggle where the communists who’ve developed beyond the PSL’s analysis, and who seek to free the movement from its liberal-compromised practice, ironically need to make efforts at winning over present PSL members. This doesn’t mean ceasing our struggle against the org’s leadership; quite the opposite. It means putting forth an urgent appeal to the org’s members for them to seek alternative organizing outlets, as the one they’ve so far found is putting them in growing danger of state repression. Repression that, because of the org they’re in, is something they’re being made especially unequipped to fight back against.
It’s this reality that shows why polemics against the org’s leadership are strategically correct. I used to not think they’re productive, but then I realized that pro-Russian communists have nothing to gain from maintaining a relationship with PSL’s leadership. As this leadership isn’t willing or capable of providing our movement with the security that it needs to survive the next phase of the class conflict, meaning it ultimately has nothing real to offer us.
Even though the org’s refusal to support Russia in the Ukraine conflict, disregard for the Hands off Uhuru cause, and sectarian attacks on the Rage Against the War Machine coalition have all been good reasons for a principled actor to oppose PSL, the org is able to keep its supporters on its side by selling them a narrative. The narrative that for whatever flaws this org has, it’s the only org that’s capable of leading the socialist movement to victory. The source of the org’s perceived credibility is its sheer size and resources, which can make it appear to be an indispensable asset for the class struggle. An asset which, within this story, is so important that making those Ukraine compromises was justified by the need to preserve the org’s interests. If the org’s leadership were to be honest about the humanitarian need for Russia’s intervention, and support Operation Z, the org would lose its NGO funding sources. Therefore this and all other capitulations to the liberals can be excused when PSL does it.
Implied within this narrative is a promise: the promise that however many concessions we see the org’s leadership make to the system today, in the end it will prove these concessions necessary by seizing power for the workers. This is the essence of every defense that we see from the actors who are solidly invested in Brian Becker’s project. Every liberalism-compatible action the org takes can be rationalized, because supposedly these actions are protecting its members from being targeted like Uhuru’s members have been. Or at least they’re able to protect PSL’s members long enough for them to outmaneuver the capitalists, and advance their work towards a point where their victory is possible. Neither of these scenarios are realistic. And I say this not to insult the abilities of the people involved in organizing for the org, but to tell them that these abilities are being directed towards a fundamentally unsustainable project.
At this moment, the PSL is drawing in many people who have genuine passion for the class struggle, because it’s been the default organizing outlet amid the rise in pro-Palestine sentiment. That Palestine is the motivating factor behind why great deals of their recent recruits have decided to join PSL shows how many earnest and driven individuals are within the org’s lower ranks. And because the state knows Palestine is such a crucial part of how these individuals have gotten radicalized, it views them as among its prime targets within the counterinsurgency. Should Uhuru be convicted over the DOJ’s “Russian interference” charges, setting the precedent for anyone to get targeted over international anti-imperialist solidarity work, these PSL activists will be among the ones the state tries to purge.
The leadership’s ideological compromises with the Democrats won’t prevent this, because the state is getting ready to crack down on all pro-Palestine activists, regardless of what their leaders may do or say. These compromises won’t even gain PSL enough mass support to be able to better resist the repression, because there are far fewer liberals than the leadership wants the members to believe. The majority of the country’s people have come to oppose funding Ukraine; if the minority of obstinately Russia-hating liberals who PSL’s leaders seek to cater to were representative of the people, the Ukraine psyop would be more effective.
Not only has the org been needlessly limiting its own mass appeal, it’s been holding back its cadres from doing what’s practically necessary to overcome the coming assaults from the state. We need to understand that as soon as the class conflict in this country escalates enough, our government is going to import the methods that it’s used to crush potential revolutions around the globe. These methods have gone so much further than incarcerating political targets. The anti-communist dictatorships the CIA installed during the 20th century murdered their people by the thousands, sometimes the hundreds of thousands. In the long term, our capitalist dictatorship doesn’t even intend to keep up the pretenses of laws and courts during its war against the people. This means that all communists who are serious about winning the class war must train their cadres to the degree of building them into de facto armies. Not because we want violent revolution, but because our class enemies intend to limit our options for resistance.
As long as our movement is operating according to the practice that PSL’s ideology advances, we’re going to remain insufficiently equipped to prevail amid these obstacles. This is a practice that’s focused around maintaining an organizing monopoly, and on the movementist model of organizing for its own sake. It’s capable of neither building up the highly trained cadres we need, nor getting these cadres the ideological training and mass backing they’ll require to be able to do something productive with that training. That’s why PSL has been directing pro-Palestine sentiments towards activities that are adventurist under our conditions, like blocking roads. When you view the bulk of the masses as fundamentally reactionary, and therefore cripple your own ability to appeal to the masses, you naturally conclude that acting ahead of the masses is justified.
I understand why so many people have joined the PSL recently. It’s the most readily available way to get resources and connections needed for engaging in activism. The problem is that the ones behind this coordination network have invested themselves in the organizational model which has been the default in the United States for decades, and which has kept the communist movement stagnant. That’s the model of trying to dominate a protest cage, rather than extending the struggle out of the movement and into the masses (like the Panthers and the early CPUSA did).
And there’s another detrimental effect of embracing this model beyond keeping the movement insular, or giving its members a false sense of security about state repression. The reason why the PSL is leading its members into a particular level of peril—even compared to the pro-Russian orgs which have done the most to upset the establishment—is that PSL has made a dangerous deal with the state. A deal that’s left its members highly vulnerable to counterinsurgency attacks of the worst kinds.
The way that PSL has gotten so many resources is by appealing to the liberal NGOs. Becker has become successful enough within the NGO networking world that PSL and its adjacent orgs have gotten financial support from U.S. millionaire Roy Singham, who’s used a Goldman Sachs philanthropy fund to funnel money to the orgs he’s been backing. This hasn’t just been detrimental in that it’s compelled the leadership to ideologically compromise on anti-imperialism. It’s also opened the org up to the State Department, meaning it’s been compromised in its security as well. These NGOs it’s built a relationship with ultimately have more influence over the org than its official leaders do; they’re only the ones who granted these much more powerful entities access, and gave them that leverage.
And if the NGOs are so intrinsically connected to PSL, then the imperialist diplomatic and intelligence forces which utilize these NGOs have gained this access by extension. Because there’s nothing the NGOs do that the State Department, and the ruling elite’s other warfare tools, haven’t given their approval for.
These forces have created a trap for developing radicals, one they’re going to use to go after the many people within PSL who have genuine revolutionary potential. The org’s leadership is likely going to be alright because of these deals it’s made, but the regular people this leadership has brought in are at great risk. And even though there are plenty of PSL members who uncritically defend the leadership, there’s no real reason they won’t be targeted to the same extent as the members who are receptive to the types of PSL critiques I’ve just made. If somebody is doing pro-Palestine work in the U.S. right now, even the counterproductive kinds PSL advances, the government sees them as a person to make an example out of. So if someone is doing pro-Palestine work for PSL, and doesn’t want to stop helping Palestine, they have everything to gain from leaving the org.
The pro-Russian orgs may be on a harder path than PSL in the short term, but in the long term they’re our true hope for victory. They’re not incentivized to adopt adventurism, they’re not confined to the liberal bubble, they’re not compromised by the State Department, and they’re consistently working to advance the Hands off Uhuru cause. Plus, as the repression gets worse, the tendency is for them to internalize the lessons from the history of counterrevolutionary violence.
They’ve already made the state determined to destroy them, both because they support Palestine and because they support Russia. And because they’re not held back by a desire to appease the liberal influence network, they have every reason to respond to this in a strategic fashion. PSL’s guiding authorities are never going to reckon with the reality of the intensifying war against the USA’s own people, even as this reality becomes impossible for their members to avoid. If you’re part of or adjacent to PSL, I implore you to break away from PSL’s sphere of influence like I did, and join with the principled anti-imperialist element.
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