Estimated reading time: 126 minutes

“Our analysis has found that this Americanism manifests in the U.S. Communist movement as two opposite and complementary, major organizational problems: aversion to criticism and obsession with criticism. Both are manifestations of extreme liberal individualism and both trend towards the movement’s greater fracturing, atomization, and dissolution…. The former, aversion to criticism, is…the liberal-individualist’s defense mechanism, an avoidance tactic that serves to protect one’s fragile ego from shattering under pressure….

“We must become as the storm that sets the trees and the grain to trembling, that causes the ripest of the fruit to fall; from all formations and half-built organizations and from the petrified corpses of formations that still bear green shoots, we aim to sort and sift, to winnow and combine, the most advanced, the most prepared, the most militant into a single ferment of revolutionary dialogue.”

—USU Editorial Board, The Prospectus, August 2022

We have frequently remarked on the prevalence of an anti-democratic tendency among the supposedly Marxist-Leninist organizations that claim all-empire status in the US – the CPUSA, PSL, and FRSO.¹ We have published pieces about the cult-form taken by the opportunist organizations.² In particular, we warned that the Party for Socialism and Liberation has no long-term revolutionary strategy and is, instead, merely a brand-building exercise.³

Over the past week or so, two letters have emerged from internal PSL channels. The first purports to be written by one Walter Smolarek, a Central Committee member. It is addressed internally, to other PSL members, and lays out the justifications for his resignation. Although there are several questionable points contained in it, the main critiques of the letter are sound and align with criticisms that we have repeatedly made.⁴ The PSL Central Committee is alleged to have responded with a now-leaked internal letter that might as well be titled “My ‘Not Involved in Human Trafficking’ T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.”

First, the areas in which we disagree with the Smolarek letter: 1) Walter Smolarek was implicated in the Central Committee’s suppression of a sexual abuse investigation. This represents the most extreme example of the very anti-democratic chauvinism the author highlights, and should have been appropriately addressed.⁵ 2) The Smolarek letter also makes the mistake of separating the “movement” from the masses, and improperly positions the class conscious (whether newly or not) as being somehow part of a separate “stream.” The letter mistakenly divides attempts to win hegemony over the movement and attempts to win leadership of the masses. These are dialectically related and, in any period, before the masses can manifest their organized will in the form of a vanguard party, the incorrect theories and false-starts within the movement must be soundly and thoroughly discredited and defeated.⁶ To that end, it is impermissible for us to separate out the class conscious as a special group; they are the leading elements of the masses. While we are building up bases, we must be fighting the war of ideology against the distorters and liquidators of Marxism – like the PSL.

The Central Committee’s response is laughable, and should need no commentary from USU to expose it for the fraud that it is. It openly embraces the petty bourgeois notion of “branding” as the battle to win. For the PSL, socialism is a brand and its chief efforts are to act as the marketing manager of socialism among the labor aristocracy. The Central Committee does not even bother to refute some of the most damning accusations (for instance, that Brian and Ben Becker wrote most of the speeches or dominate the entire theory-production process in an undemocratic fashion). Indeed, it merely confirms that they are chasers-of-spontaneity, worshipers at the altar of the popular movement, and devoted first and foremost to expanding the PSL “brand,” above, beyond, and to the exclusion of actually building the required organizations among the people, and above, beyond, and to the exclusion of combating the settler labor aristocracy and the petty bourgeois socialism that dominates the field.

Indeed, how could they combat it? After all, PSL embodies one of the main tendencies of petty bourgeois socialism today. Despite their high-flung rhetoric accusing Smolarek of dismissing the possibility of revolution in the US, it is the PSL Central Committee that, through their theory of organizing, dismisses this possibility except as a branding exercise. Read carefully and compare the claims, and it will be apparent that the PSL is thoroughly bankrupt as an organization and serves only to mislead the masses and trap their newly-conscious strata.

This is why the League reiterates the position of our updated Outlook: down with the Four Opportunist Organizations of the PSL, CPUSA, FRSO, and DSA, and let us move forward toward the construction of a real militant vanguard with a proletarian internationalist outlook and an anti-settler standpoint!⁷

1. See, for instance, “The Social Reproduction of the Revisionist Party” (April 16, 2026) and “CPUSA Resignation” (October 30, 2025).
2. Although the piece was about the IMT (International Marxist Tendency), it could equally have been about CPUSA, FRSO, or PSL. “The Cult-Building Tendency” (April 2, 2024).
3. “Revolution in our Lifetime” (March 6, 2024).
4. See particularly, “Against Settler Socialism: Lessons from Minneapolis” (March 24, 2026).
5. Fashbusters, “PSL Whistleblowers Refute Central Committee’s Defense of Steven Powers”.
6. See, e.g., V.I. Lenin, What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats (1894).
7. See, “The 2026 Outlook of the Central Press of the All-Empire Worker’s League” (2026).

Editor’s Note: The letters have been reproduced exactly as they were received save for the fact that the Smolarek letter was followed by 19 blank pages in the document that was sent to us, and that numerous formatting issues (paragraphs breaking mid sentence) in the CC letter have been fixed.

Resignation from the PSL – The Smolarek Letter

Comrades, I am writing to submit to you my resignation from the Central Committee of the PSL and my resignation from membership.

I have been a member of this organization for 17 years, more than half of my life. When I first joined, I used to sneak out of my parents’ house to attend Party meetings and had to open a P.O. box to receive Party literature. I spent years building Party branches in various cities — Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Asheville, Baltimore, Louisville, Lexington and elsewhere. I was elected to the Central Committee three times, and before that was an observer present at every CC meeting for seven years. I worked for over four years on the Loud & Clear podcast alongside Brian Becker, then later on The Socialist Program. When the National Communications Department was established in 2022, I was made its director, and I have written the bulk of both external and internal Party materials for several years now, including ghost-writing materials for individual Party leaders. This is all to say that I have truly dedicated myself to the Party — this has been the singular purpose of my life. I do not make this decision lightly.

In recent years, I have been working in the “Center” of the Party, the New York office, which was established about three years ago, and I have become deeply disturbed by the crystallization of trends which I previously hoped were marks of the organization’s newness. These trends are the deep political dishonesty of the organization’s top leadership circle; the lack of serious strategic assessment; sectarianism and hostility towards mass organizing; the recklessness of the organization’s top leadership; and the marginalization of leaders who raise disagreements on a sincere political basis. I hoped and believed that the maturation of the Party would create the conditions for these problems to be overcome, namely that the emergence of more leaders from the branches could bring a greater health and honesty to the organization. But the reverse has become true. As the top leadership has gained access to more resources and more dutiful personnel, these tendencies have only hardened.

Rather than producing a more thoughtful, more rooted national leadership, I have seen person after person I respected come into the Center only to assimilate into total deference to Brian and Ben Becker, or otherwise quietly leave.

Seeing this, I have many times wanted to leave the organization. These last two years have been the most difficult in my Party tenure. I have wrestled over the responsibility to fight for “the party” and my recognition that it is not and will not become a true revolutionary party, a vehicle for the working class to win power. These last two years, I have made the calculation to conceal my full political views in order not to be displaced from central leadership, not out of a desire to retain any title but out of serious concern for the irresponsibility of the impulses of the Party’s top leaders and a commitment to mitigating them. This is a pitiful position. But I firmly believe that if I had done anything other than this, I would have been rapidly marginalized from meaningful positions of leadership and would not have been able to prevent top Party leadership from making decisions that would endanger the entire membership in gravely serious ways. I have decided now that this is no longer a meaningful contribution to the struggle for socialism.

Why now

The breaking point for me has been witnessing the profound dishonesty of the Branch Organizing Conference and the hardening of the leadership’s antagonism towards organizing the working class.

Comrades do not generally know that the Branch Organizing Conference only came to life because Ben Becker was concerned about bringing the Bylaws changes that he sought to make to the floor of the Party Congress. He worried that the changes, most notably significantly lowering the requirements of membership, would be controversial. His solution was to propose bringing together a body of hand-picked branch leaders to act as an acceptable enough substitution for the Congress to sign off on the changes. But in the process of putting together this group, he got carried away and the idea grew and grew into a de facto second round of the Congress — but without the constitutionally mandated processes, elections, and rights. In the end, the same hesitations over bringing the Bylaws to a vote led to them once again being put off, this time to the Central Committee.

In the end, the Conference became more of a defensive pep rally meant to reinforce, or “unify”, the Party around a celebration of its supposed “vanguard” status in defense against growing internal problems. After the Party Congress, there was a series of quiet resignations from Congress delegates based on concerns with the Party’s core political analysis and the suffocation of internal debate. There has also been a growing panic amongst the top Party leadership that several areas are succeeding in developing base building projects and conducting their own internal education.

The Conference became a key venue to check this trend, but with great efforts made to disguise the Party leadership’s true aims. Members were not told that their leaders are against base building and mass organizing work, that they view it as being in direct competition with growing the PSL. Members were not told that the leadership is suspicious of branches exploring education beyond that provided nationally from the PSL or TPF.

Instead of making direct interventions that could be debated on their political merits, members were presented with a wildly inflated picture of the PSL’s strength and an orientation on the current political landscape that anticipates nearing ruptures of a revolutionary proportion. The practical implication of such an outlook is that members must make their singular focus “building the Party” in preparation for these impending critical openings. They were given cherrypicked history lessons on the Bolsheviks and the U.S. Communist Party suggesting the PSL is on the brink of a massive expansion in scale and influence. Members were also presented with promises of a new, expansive and immersive, long-term educational period, a “National Cadre Development Program” that the national leadership will be driving — thus, no need to be driving education at the local level. In reality, this was a last-minute appropriation of an existing multi-part educational series that runs through the PSL’s line on the full history of the core debates of the Communist Movement from the 1860s through the fall of the Soviet Union. It was developed by founding members many years ago, and a couple of branches continue to utilize it as introductory education.

Another instructive example of what has been going on behind the scenes is the semi-controversy that arose around a seemingly new labor orientation given at the conference. In the panel on organization entitled “Building the Organization to Scale,” there was a speech given by a young union member who is not part of the national leadership. It may have seemed curious to attendees that this speech was not given by a member of the Labor Department leadership or Central Committee. That was because Ben and Husayn recognized that the content of this speech was a departure from the previous orientation that had not been run through other Labor Department leaders, and thus sought to distance themselves from direct responsibility for it. The comrade’s speech made the argument that we should reconsider the value and viability of organizing and moving unions. They’re too few, too weak, and too slow. Instead, our orientation to workplace organizing should focus on promoting Party literature, forming discussion groups, and recruiting coworkers to the Party and to the Action Network.

This orientation was shocking to many people in the audience, and, immediately, there were texts being exchanged asking about this apparent reorientation. By the time audience comment was through and the speakers were returned to for final comments, the speaker gave a comment that walked back much of what he had said.

In the Central Committee meeting following the conference, Husayn, Ben and Brian Becker made it a point to remark on the speech, distancing themselves. They characterized the speaker as “flippant” and spoke of the problems with “speaking in shorthand.” The reality is that Husayn wrote the talk that the speaker gave. He also wrote the comment the speaker delivered walking it back. Further, this is the orientation that all of them have quietly been giving for some time. This is at least the third time that I have heard this orientation presented. Yet if other leaders were to try to contest the position, they would deny any disagreement.

This maneuvering by the top party leadership is not in and of itself new. I have seen a hundred times over how the top leadership will go to great lengths to defeat a political trend they disagree with not through direct and open political struggle, but through some sort of disorienting maneuver that never makes an admission of conflict. What is new is the potential that has emerged within the organization for real, impactful work that I am watching be stifled. Witnessing this is revealing to me the stakes of allowing this farce to continue. It is capturing and suffocating the possibilities of the embryonic socialist movement. I believe that this is a greater threat than anything.

I have been extremely disturbed by the secret machinations within the New York office to extinguish or wrest control of the base building projects gaining ground in Denver and Brooklyn. Both areas, through separate processes of development, have found their way to building community center projects that operate as genuine mass organizations. There was an initial attempt to dissuade each area from this direction, but when the dissuasion didn’t work, the approach was taken to give leaders of both areas the impression that the top leadership was nonetheless supportive of their projects and interested in further debate and discussion. Behind closed doors, the national leadership has been working with insiders in both areas to inform on and undermine the projects. I know this both from being in proximity to these conversations and because I have been asked to play a role in this subterfuge.

In recent months, I have been aware of growing outrage in the office about the Brooklyn leadership’s focus on cultivating community partnerships and relationships, and most vehemently the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Freedom Center. I have been approached multiple times, in secret conspiratorial huddles and one-on-one meetings, trying to ensure that I don’t sympathize with the efforts. It is well known that I believe in the centrality of base building for the communist movement today — I helped lead base building projects in the
Philadelphia branch and have written extensively on the subject. I have tried to generally avoid involvement in these discussions because I know the only goal is to pin me to a position against the members in Brooklyn. I have, however, heard other members receiving orientation on counter-organizing within the district.

Avoiding involvement became impossible when I was asked repeatedly to put my name to a document opposing base building in Brooklyn, a position I clearly do not support. I was asked first by Layan and Wyatt at the Branch Organizing Conference, then again in the New York office in a one-on-one with Ben Becker. I declined directly, saying that I agreed with the Brooklyn strategy of base building and explained why. This triggered yet another meeting with Ben Becker, David, Gabi, and Wyatt, where I was told that Brooklyn’s approach, which included raising comradely but critical analysis of the efficacy of previous work, would make the branch ”feel bad” and “feel confused”. I explained why I thought having honest assessment and differences of views expressed internally was healthy. I tried to steer the conversation in the direction of the political and strategic principles in dispute and explained why I agreed with the base building strategy. This was met with tears and anger, then it was made explicitly clear by the four of them that they viewed base building as incompatible with the approach of the PSL. I informed them that the previous night I had been reached out to by the Brooklyn leadership to speak at their district retreat based on my experience and writings on base building, and I had planned to go. They said they did not object to me speaking at the retreat, but reiterated how “confusing” they thought it would be.

Shortly later, the same night, Ben called me four times to urge me not to speak. The final time he called me, around 11:00pm that night, he told me that the Standing Committee of the Central Committee had just held an emergency meeting and voted that I could not speak at the retreat. While explaining why I disagreed with that decision, that I am a Central Committee member — one of the longest tenured members of the organization and the national leadership — expressing sincere political views that are not outside of stated Party line, I accepted and informed the Brooklyn leadership I would not be attending.

I later learned that at this retreat, a group of five members intervened forcefully, disruptively, and in a clearly orchestrated manner. Each of these members is current or former staff. The entire retreat, these five members read from a document on their phones, in a way that was completely unsubtle and visible to all attendees. One of the members emotionally stormed out. Having the experience of 17 years in the organization, and a decade in national leadership, I am certain that this was coordinated by Ben.

Later in the week, I was sat down by Brian Becker for more than three hours, questioned about my loyalty, and plied with what was clearly meant to be intimidating information. I was informed directly of the national leadership’s plans to kill the political trends coming out of Denver and Brooklyn. I was informed that he and others have been working secretly with select members of the Denver Steering Committee to incapacitate the other Denver leaders who have developed strong critiques around the issue of mass organizing and the PSL’s political orientation. He characterized the section of the leadership driving the Colorado People’s Center disrespectfully, and claimed that Lillian House specifically is driving a a strategy for mass organizing based on personal grievances. This is astonishing, as Lillian has been an open advocate for local mass organizing and base building for the entire time that she was in New York. In fact, this was a major source of frustration for the leadership, particularly for Ben, who found Lillian’s participation in leadership discussions annoying and would often say so to others. It is absolutely well known that the Colorado People’s Center is a project with the explicit aim of base building and mass
organizing. She reported multiple times within top leadership meetings on the project, and just two weeks ago, Brian applauded the center in front of the Central Committee. The national leadership has repeatedly given the impression that they embrace the project and Lillian as a dynamic leader, while behind closed doors they have denigrated both her and Denver and followed them with suspicion. Now, without an acknowledgement of the political difference, they are planning to empower their chosen representatives in Denver to temper the current direction of the People’s Center and bring the Denver to temper the current direction of the People’s Center and bring the branch back in line. After spelling out what they intend for Denver, I was asked pointedly if I wanted to remain a national leader, and if so if I had to exercise the expected discipline.

Finally, last night, trying one last time to address this issue in what should be the democratic bodies of the Party, the Brooklyn leadership asked that their strategy be discussed at the meeting of the New York Branch Committee. This is the body above the Steering Committee in New York that six of them are part of. When the point came up in the agenda, the junior members of the branch leadership came right out with it and expressed that base building was in contradiction to the strategy of the branch and the Party. But the members of the national leadership present, with the exception of myself — Ben, Karla, Layan, Manolo — shifted to the tactic of denying that there was a fundamental difference being expressed. Once again, with gross feigned magnanimity, they opted to conceal their views on a controversial issue so as not to risk a debate that could weaken their grip on the organization, just like with the Branch Organizing Conference and so many other instances. I expect that in the coming days, they will adopt the same posture internally, arguing that mass organizing is something they support.

I know this is false and I am not just inferring this. I have heard them talk behind closed doors for months about their opposition to the base building and mass organizing work that comrades are doing across the country, and have read draft documents they’ve written to combat the trend. This position was alluded to in a document written by Brian Becker that characterized mass organizing work as “too pedestrian,” but Ben Becker wrote more explicitly against base building and mass organizing in a document titled “Turning to the working class: What it should mean and what it shouldn’t.” This document was circulated amongst the inner circle in the New York office, but was ultimately not shared
out of concern that it would cause debate. In preparatory documents for the conference, key objectives included establishing that “pivoting is the essence of revolution,” and “deep organizing..isn’t part of [our] theory of revolution.”

It would be naive and irresponsible to take part in any further “processes” within the organization to deal with these questions. How can I continue to play dumb, knowing how such commissions and working groups are formed solely to drag out and delay resolution on an issue until a disfavored view loses its momentum. Congress attendees, consider where the promised “AI commission” and “Trans liberation commission” went? Even if any type of process actually were to come into being, it would be characterized by the same concealment of views and false “unity” to secure agreement while the actual decision making and implementation would remain completely under the control of Brian, Ben and the circle they keep around them.

Comrades, remaining in this organization has become the inverse of my political principles and I find no room within it to fight. I can no longer ignore the conclusion that I have been in the process of reaching over the years, and have now arrived at. Despite the presence of many people whom I respect and admire in the organization, the PSL is a fundamentally dead-end project driven by shallow and opportunistic leaders. These leaders squander the vibrancy of their most dynamic organizers and under-develop those who place their trust in them. I do not believe that the PSL’s narrow agitational focus and exaggerated political analysis is adequate for the tasks of our time. I do not believe there is the possibility of meaningfully moving the organization. I do not believe it is permissible for a communist to continue onwards in this organization in light of these conclusions.

I firmly believe that membership in the PSL must be based on a voluntary commitment to the organization’s clearly and openly stated political line and structure. I believe most members have essentially no idea what the PSL’s top leaders really think, how this impacts the directives members are tasked with carrying out, and how the organization really operates. I feel a responsibility in choosing to make my own exit to share insight into the dynamics beyond this final experience that have led me to a certainty this organization is a dead end-dynamics that are only plainly visible to the small handful of people that are allowed into the inner circle. I am not going to give an exhaustive account of my experiences, but I hope to shed enough light that others can believe their own eyes about the organization and its limitations and make an informed decision about how to exercise their political commitment to the movement for socialism, as I have made mine.

There are so many sincere, dedicated people in the PSL, and the intention of this letter is not to harm them, though I recognize it will be disruptive. I am departing not to abandon the fight for socialism, but because I am determined to commit my life to a real path towards winning it.

The fantasy of the Socialist Consciousness thesis

The core political line of the PSL is an opportunistic distortion of Leninism that conveniently aligns with the PSL’s marginal position in relation to the working class. Most members are likely not totally clear on what their organization imagines is the path to a successful socialist transformation of society in the U.S. While they are instructed intensively in the minutiae of the Party’s line on historical and geopolitical issues, members are largely left to themselves to deduce what the PSL’s theory of revolution might be.

Most members develop a sense that it is something like this: As capitalism inevitably produces injustices, the revolutionary party calls or joins protests. It recruits participants in these protest movements by expressing views that participants come to see as correct. When there are not protests, the party does agitational outreach to show itself and change the minds of more people. Capitalism’s own dynamics ensure that this cycle can be relied on to continue. Eventually, the capitalist system produces a crisis acute enough to throw the system into question, and if the Party is big enough, the protests can become a revolution.

This is essentially it. The PSL dresses up this simplistic concept with the socialist consciousness thesis — the idea that unique historical conditions preclude any path to revolution but to widely popularize our particular definition of socialism, positioning the party for the abrupt seizure of power at the time of a revolutionary crisis.

It is my firm belief that the PSL deliberately uses imprecise language, delivered with supreme confidence, to obscure the superficiality of its strategic and tactical approach. If the PSL can be said to have any strategy, it is to announce its ideas as often, loudly, and on as many issues as possible.

The socialist consciousness line is textbook idealism — that there is a magic set of words that can prepare the working class for revolution. This flies in the face of what communists historically have held: that the working class comes to class and revolutionary consciousness through the process of profound experiences gained through struggle, and, yes, repeated agitational exposures from the trusted organizers they fight with side-by-side.

The socialist consciousness theory relies on such a simplistic and flattened view of politics that it ignores almost every major question facing the working class and socialist movement — the atomization of the working class, the strength of right wing influence amongst the working class, the unprecedented powers of the capitalist state.

It is reasonable that members will be defensive of the PSL’s documents. It is unfortunately necessary to disabuse the membership of the idea that the core political documents of the PSL are carefully considered products of collective study, debate, and discussion. There is no meaningful collective leadership shaping the core political perspectives of the PSL beyond Brian Becker, Ben Becker, and formerly Eugene Puryear. In fact, core political documents often stem from a sudden thought that occurs to an individual. They are typically hastily assembled and often have basic historical and logical errors. It is not at
all uncommon in recent years for the Central Committee to receive documents without notice, cobbled together just in time for meetings, that are full of typos and are essentially recycled content from previous documents. (This has improved now with the prolific use of AI chatbots.) This gets by because of the strong cultural norm within the national leadership, shaped since the founding of the organization, to unanimously and enthusiastically praise whatever documents or directives are received from top Party leaders.

The basic historical analysis that forms the premise of the PSL’s Socialist Consciousness thesis is wrong. Is it really true that socialist transformation could not come to the United States through the struggle for democracy or the struggle for national liberation? What about the period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the country came perhaps the closest it has ever been to socialist revolution? This was based on the internal national liberation struggles of the oppressed nationalities of the United States, principally the Black nation, waged in concert with the anti-colonial struggle of the people of Southeast Asia that delivered the U.S. empire its most humiliating military defeat. Brian himself directly contradicted the Socialist Consciousness thesis at the 5th Party Congress with a shift in its central theme. Shortly ahead of this Congress, Brian learned about an obscure Supreme Court case, Moore v Harper, and a related fringe legal concept called the “independent state legislature theory”. Brian extrapolated from this that a faction of the bourgeoisie was intent on using this case to end the democratic form of government in the United States and install a right-wing dictatorship. Thus, the central task of revolutionaries, as articulated in the 5th Party Congress, must be to urgently turn towards the struggle to defend democracy, a struggle which could only be defeated by a
people’s movement led by the PSL, which then could lead to a socialist revolution.

The fundamental contradiction between the central proclamation of the 5th Party Congress and the PSL’s official Socialist Consciousness line was never acknowledged or explained. They existed simultaneously in direct contradiction. That no one even on the Central Committee ever challenged this speaks to the culture of blind deference expected of all PSL members, even elected national leaders, to Brian Becker.

Not a party but a tendency

It is only possible to understand how the organization could have such a one-dimensional
approach by appreciating its lineage. PSL calls itself a party but, by concrete measures, it is an ideological tendency: an organization defined by its comprehensive political line, or as the PSL calls it, its “highly refined worldview”. A party is an organization that can credibly claim to represent a class or a section of a class. A party is solidified through a historical process in which the relationship between organization and base is formed; prior to that it is a preparty formation. A tendency is an organization that gains ground not by organizing the working class but by gaining influence amongst radicals. This is
not a criticism over semantics — the PSL calling itself a party as a reflection of its aspirations is reasonable enough — but a matter of clarifying the nature of the PSL as an organization.

The PSL’s basic approach was imported from the organization PSL emerged from — Workers World Party — and remains fundamentally unchanged. The PSL did not split from WWP over politics, but over the degradation of WWP as a functional organization.

The main difference between PSL and WWP is that today there is a much smaller “movement” within which to compete than in the 1960s and 70s, when WWP was at its prime. Ironically, the empty left landscape has benefited the PSL, which has become at least one of the biggest fish in a small pond. The leaders of PSL feel validated in the correctness of their approach — by doggedly raising its own flag in protests and on social media, the PSL has grown in reputation and numbers. Since breaking out on their own in 2004, they have surpassed WWP and anything WWP ever was, becoming one of the dominant forces in the small U.S. left. The PSL is hypnotized by this relative success. The
way PSL speaks of itself, many people internally and externally are shocked when they learn the PSL only has about 4000 members, and after more than twenty years of existence, its activity still does not go far beyond the protests and street outreach you can see from social media.

There is at least a logic to building a tendency in a period where a powerful working class movement exists, for revolutionaries to make their primary task working to influence the course of this movement. But today, in the aftermath of decades of global revolutionary defeat, the systematic destruction of left and working class organization in the U.S., and the advance of the organized far right — to organize an ideological tendency is to embrace historical irrelevancy. We are often told that “the biggest campaign is to build the Party.” Actually, the biggest campaign must be to address the diminished position and power of the working class. Through this process, a real communist party can be born. The PSL could achieve unquestionable hegemony within the existing left and still have no prospect of affecting real social change. We cannot lose sight of the most elementary of our political convictions, proven time and time and time again, that the masses make history. The prospect of a victorious socialist revolutionary struggle is contingent upon the participation of the working class, organized as a class.

The PSL’s internal culture and structures guard this extremely insular political perspective. If PSL members are trained, it is to learn and regurgitate the Party’s line — “to speak as leaders of the nation” — not to internalize the Marxist method and how it can be applied in deep and rigorous political study, discussion, strategizing, and experimentation considering the problems of our day. PSL members are in fact guided away from asking tough questions. Why do our events and protests seem to mainly mobilize activists from a middle class background and rarely people from the more oppressed strata of the working class directly affected by the issues in question? Is this a problem a protest-oriented organization can solve? One can see why such questions are
guarded against.

It is extremely abnormal for a communist organization to have such a low level of internal political engagement as the PSL. Critical debriefs are not a practice of the top Party leadership, not a part of the Party Congress process, not conducted by the Central Committee, and they are even banned within the New York City branch at the direction of top Party leaders. Where there are exceptions in the branches, it is to the credit of branch leadership and membership.

The paranoia that prevents self-reflection is rooted in political insecurity. There is an unspoken ban on members engaging with other contemporary left currents. Many members are likely unaware that there are sophisticated socialist debates within the U.S. left right now over strategy and tactics. There are significant socialist-led base building efforts making headway in New York City, in Chicago, in Minneapolis, in Los Angeles, in many parts of the country. Any form of rigorous engagement with the questions, proposals, experiments, and debates of our day that are occurring outside of the PSL are treated as a danger.

In fact, in the New York office there has been panic in recent months after learning that some members have read interviews from non-PSL leaders of the Minneapolis general strike published in Jacobin, and another group of members have been taking the Jane McAlevey Organizing for Power class.

The organization’s structural deficiencies after more than twenty years of existence demonstrate plainly the PSL’s defective internal character. There is no functioning national education department and there never has been for more than a few months. The National Organization Department was only recently made into a real department, but since the organizer who led this work was pushed out of the Center, the department has rapidly degraded into little more than a surveillance and mobilization structure wielded by the top national leadership. Currently the NOD is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars employing highly skilled software developers to create an AI-powered app to compile comprehensive reports from all areas of the Party for the top leadership circle without having to deal with time-consuming personal engagement with branch leaders. This app will be used to ensure compliance with national directives and surface openings like Minneapolis for the national leadership to opportunistically claim credit for. The National Liaisons system — initially developed to be a network of support that surfaced the needs of the branches and facilitated the development of schools, trainings, resources, and consultation, is today overseen by the leaders of the National Organization Department with an almost singular purpose of ensuring compliance with national directives. There have been no schools, trainings, educational materials, or organizer-to-organizer exchanges developed by the NOD in now over a year. Forums for the engagement of leaders beyond the top leadership circle like the Party Organizer and the National Council have rapidly degraded into just more echo chambers for Brian and Ben Becker and sites to enforce the into just more echo chambers for Brian and Ben Becker and sites to enforce the latest agitational initiative.

Concealed hostility towards mass organizations

Many members think that their organization is invested in building mass organizations. The PSL’s top leaders, behind closed doors, believe members must be kept from this work. Mass organizations, they say, don’t yield recruits, tie members up in responsibilities that keep them from “pivoting” to protest calls, and make the membership “conservative”. For a tendency that is concerned exclusively with advancing its own position, the logic holds. Mass organizing, as compared to purely agitational activities, brings the organization into contact primarily with people who don’t already share it’s ideological perspective. It does embed organizers in a position of responsibility to specific groups of workers. It does result in organizers who are deeply in touch with the gulf between the PSL’s political line and where the masses of working people currently are. All of these things are extremely necessary.

Brian and Ben in particular recognize that their members believe in mass organizing work, and they thus carefully obscure their full political views with vague language and opt to kill mass organizing the long way. Rather than argue politically for the correctness of their position, they simply deny this work oxygen.

Branches are every day making attempts to develop local organizing campaigns, partnerships and coalitions, and mass organizations that build deep relationships with working class communities. Many branches have started to write branch strategy documents specifically to make progress on these objectives. This is a practice that came out of the Philadelphia and Denver branches and is viewed with suspicion by the top Party leadership, especially as it has inspired other cities to think critically about expanding the type of work a branch does.

With some exceptions, without training or guidance from the national organization, with constant orientations to force clumsy agitational campaigns into this work, and with repeated disruptions from competing national directives, long-term organizing efforts generally don’t make it past an elementary level.

When branches do get far in prioritizing such efforts, the national organization treats it as a major threat.

This was something I experienced even before the current manchinations within the Party Center in New York, as a branch leader in Philadelphia when we were building the PSL’s first Liberation Center. Originally, the concept of a Liberation Center was to build a lasting institution in a working class neighborhood that becomes known for addressing the issues directly relevant to the day-to-day lives of the people living there and build struggles around them. Liberation Center volunteers would go out into the community, get to know people, develop a deep understanding of the neighborhood, get involved in the lives and efforts already existing there, and offer labor and their center as resources to strengthen these efforts and propose new initiatives of our own. Through this, the relationships would be built that would tie the Party deeply to these communities and open up the space to build deep political consciousness over time in the neighborhood.

Brian, Ben, and Eugene sought to halt this proposal. It was ultimately settled with an unofficial deal that Philly would be allowed to continue but would have to represent the project within the Party using language obfuscating the real political proposal. I regret complying. I have seen over the years the consequence of blurring important political debates. Many cities have tried to emulate the Liberation Center concept, but without understanding it. In most places, it has more or less become diluted into just another name for a PSL office — a space primarily for PSL promotion.

The PSL uses the language of mass organizations, but it does not actually build them. A mass organization is a durable organizational form that involves a base of people outside of the party who are brought together to fight not just on the basis of agreement with a given position (like housing is a human right) but on the circumstances of their lives (like living in the same building or neighborhood). The PSL creates not mass organizations, but brands to put out protest calls, front organizations that consist of the same membership, and a supporter network. They all narrowly revolve around the PSL.

It makes sense that the PSL, as a tendency, finds mass organizations slow and frustrating. Again, a tendency is defined by its political line. That is what distinguishes it and attracts other radicals and greater influence within the left movement. If the PSL is engaged in low visibility, long-term work with people who are not going to immediately join and generate greater visibility, then newly radicalized people may end up in other left groups, losing potential numbers for PSL. If the PSL premises its success on growth and recruitment amongst radicals, then it is logical to favor activity that puts it at the front of every protest, in every flashy battleground, speaking on every hot issue, because that’s where the radicals will be able to see our position and find us.

This dependence on flash and visibility creates a particular tension with labor organizing, which cannot appeal only to the already ideologically sympathetic workers, but must do the long and hard organizing of moving all workers in the union regardless of pre-existing political views.

While the PSL espouses a desire to build the union movement, and there are PSL members who play important roles in trade unions and have led significant labor struggles, the PSL’s top leadership views this at just another site for the PSL to raise its flag high. Behind closed doors, the comrades engaged in the labor movement are routinely treated with exasperation, as “always the most conservative element of a communist party.” Comrades are directly instructed by the Party’s labor department to minimize their involvement in union organizing drives so that they can more fully focus on “talking politics” to their co-workers and recruiting them to the PSL or PAN. Comrades who are labor leaders are expected to readily deliver endorsements for protest initiatives and provide legitimacy to hastily decided calls like the general strike orientation. But the responsibilities of true mass leaders are in direct tension with quick-return agitational interventions.

Concealed sectarianism

For an organization that has been around for more than 20 years, the PSL is remarkably isolated. PSL members are told over and over that they are not in a sectarian organization, but their organization has a very limited view of who is worth cultivating relationships and collaboration with.

It is true that the PSL will work with most anyone, no matter how silly or discrediting, as long as they advance a PSL initiative (take General Strike US, for instance). But short-term utility is the primary basis of assessing external organizations and partners: will they or won’t they advance a PSL initiative. Given that the PSL’s work is oriented towards its own advancement and not that of working class organization, many serious working class formations are not very relevant to the PSL.

In the partnerships it does pursue, the narrowness of the PSL’s goals lead to an extreme expectation of control. Members are trained in the importance of the Party being the “anchor” of any coalition it is part of. The “anchor” is a euphemism for the force that makes all core political decisions and has executive authority to handle on-the-spot decision making without challenge. Members learn that having other groups around the PSL that follow our lead is worth the trouble because it provides a shield against red-baiting from the right wing and identity-based attacks from the left. These expectations put a short expiration date on the partnerships the PSL pursues, especially those that have any responsibility to a social base, and indeed members are repeatedly instructed that “breakups are inevitable” and cadre should avoid forming too close a bond with anyone outside the PSL.

In reality, no organization that represents real social forces will forever be content to accept direction from an external “anchor” that expects the level of subservience that the PSL does.

This sectarianism is not just petty; it results in the squandering of historically important opportunities. In the 2024 election, for example, the Stein campaign came to the PSL leadership to propose that the Green Party and PSL unite their presidential campaigns. Because of paperwork deadlines and restrictive ballot access laws, it would only be possible for Stein to be the formal presidential candidate and Claudia De La Cruz would have to be vice-president. But Stein was willing to organize the campaign in a way that she and Claudia would be presented as co-equal candidates running in an alliance, both equally empowered to speak on behalf of the campaign. This proposal was met with emotional meltdowns by multiple top Party leaders. The offer was rejected. This was the basis on which the PSL killed the possibility of a powerful third-party unity ticket, in an election in which the two major parties put up a repeat of the most quintessentially detestable capitalist candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — for the second time to the American people.

Why reforming the organization is impossible

As a communist, I would not issue this resignation had it not become unmistakably clear that there are no democratic structures in the PSL that could effectuate a change in orientation. While the Party’s Constitution outlines a genuine democratic centralist structure, this is not what the Party’s national leadership practices. I have already described to some degree the real internal functionings of the party, but comrades need a fuller picture to really understand.

The top Party leadership carefully constructs a cosmetic democratic structure The top Party leadership carefully constructs a cosmetic democratic structure that brings only innocuous details up for discussion and conceals its real decision-making process. While the Party Congress is under the impression that it elects the Party’s national leadership, the real leadership is simply Brian and Ben Becker, formerly and to a limited degree Eugene, now to a limited degree Manolo, and whoever is permitted into their informal leadership clique. I speak having spent the last decade or so within this clique.

Unless you are brought into this clique, becoming a Central Committee member is essentially inconsequential. It does not on its own involve greater practical or political responsibility. The Central Committee gathers a few times a year, brought together at the convenience of the leadership clique. Central Committee meeting agendas are given less attention than most branches give to organizing SC retreats. Similar to the National Council, the bulk of the meeting is consumed by long lectures from Brian, Ben, and formerly Eugene.

In the 14 years that I have been attending CC meetings, I have come to understand that even when a decision is made by the Central Committee, that decision is only implemented if the leadership clique chooses to make it a priority. Countless hours have been spent at CC meetings discussing “big ideas” from the core leadership that never materialize. At the same time, ideas that Brian, Ben, or Eugene change their mind on or disapprove of personally will be quietly abandoned without consequence.

Attendees of the December 2024 Central Committee meeting will remember a proposal to build on the momentum of the 2024 presidential campaign by pursuing a united front in the electoral arena during the 2026 midterm with other left-wing forces opposed to the two-party system. This would then form the basis for initiatives to form a new third party that could present a unified, credible left-wing slate in the 2028 election. Every CC member who participated in the discussion spoke in favor of the proposal and it was adopted. But at a secret gathering two months later of the informal leadership body operating out of the Center, the initiative was discarded after five minutes of discussion.

The Party Congress is a carefully controlled performance allowing only superficial discussions. At the last Party Congress, both Ben and Brian Becker asserted openly that the purpose of the Congress is not to make major political decisions but to “build Party unity”. This was honest. The entire Congress process is tightly orchestrated to strengthen devotion to the Party, not to take up political questions. Great care is taken to avoid the surfacing of debates. At the last Party Congress, a participant openly disagreed with the PSL’s proposed line on AI and was met with a coordinated string of comments lined up by top PSL leaders to decisively shut down the disagreement. Many attendees were confused and concerned by the display. Another delegate openly criticized it from the floor. Both of those members have quietly resigned since.

In reality, the functional leadership of the Party lies with Brian and Ben, to be executed without debate by their immediate staff of devotees, organized in both small private meetings and a “Political Coordinating Committee” — the current unelected leadership clique that acts as a substitute for the elected Executive Committee. This team was assembled outside of any sanctioned process from hand-picked staff. Many times ideas that impact the focus of the entire organization are swiftly decided based on minutes of deliberation in this group.

Take the “general strike” line. Considering this has become the main intervention of the PSL in the anti-Trump movement, comrades may reasonably assume it was the product of extensive and measured discussion by the Central Committee or another elected leadership body. That is not the case. On October 14, the Political Coordination Committee met to discuss the No Kings Day protests that were coming that weekend. Democratic Party-aligned forces were showing greater interest in the big street protests. So was the PSL. Brian Becker asked the group if people expected the protests to be large. Most people said yes. This surprised Brian, who became worked up with jealousy over the large protests. He decided that the PSL needed to intervene in the No Kings protests to wrest influence from the liberals. Suddenly this became a moment of historic importance. The way to force the Democrats out was to put forward a demand that would give the initiative to the Party. The PSL would take up tactics to trick the No Kings Day leaders into adopting the language of “General Strike” by making the demand look like a groundswell, like enlisting several branches to make giant hand-painted banners at the last minute with the hopes that it would be captured on aerial footage and go viral.

That is the true story of how this line was adopted — a line that has cost the PSL relationships and legitimacy, infected the PSL with grandiosity, demanded from its members execution of the most absurd underhanded tactics, and has forced PSL members to embrace and defend a farcical political proposition.

This kind of leadership is only possible because a great deal of thought and energy has been put into assembling around Brian and Ben a team of people who will not only accept decisions made in such a ridiculous way, but work who will not only accept decisions made in such a ridiculous way, but work tirelessly to bring them to fruition. This dynamic has become more pronounced than ever with the tightening of the relationship between the PSL and the People’s Forum and the availability of more funds to hire staff from the NFD and now PAN. The leadership clique has now assembled a team of some dozen staffers who are highly administratively efficient and have round-the clock availability, but are mostly politically inexperienced and highly competitive with one another. The resulting dynamic is an organizational culture where every gathering is a race to see who can raise their hand first to express their enthusiastic agreement with the latest big idea and drop everything to execute the “new initiative”.

Predictable from a sociological standpoint, the in-group is maintained by enforcing a strict delineation of the out-group. Brian, Ben, Eugene, and Manolo all cultivate an intense culture of gossip, surveillance, and competition amongst their staff. Many times this has resulted in outsiders being removed from roles on the basis of some spun-up criticism resulting from rounds of speculation, never to be told directly the real reason for their removal. Disagreement is treated as disloyalty and is attributed to personal defect, especially when expressed by women. Behind leading women’s backs, they are described as negative, insecure, abrasive, and jealous. Explanation of their political engagement is tied to their physical appearances and imagined associated insecurities.

If someone who has been brought into the leadership clique starts to fall into disfavor, they are put out to pasture in some way or another. This is typically accompanied by a quiet but far-reaching campaign of meetings and phone calls to characterize the ex-clique member as described above.

The brittleness this internal culture creates represents one more serious obstacle to the internal correction of the defects of the PSL.

Why this can’t wait

For years I was convinced that the only principled thing to do was to stay and build “the Party”. But realizing that the PSL is not and will not become a true revolutionary party of the working class, I believe it is irresponsible to continue investing time in this organization.

Inevitably, this decision to leave and to share my resignation will be portrayed as treason at a moment of heightened political intensity. This is the excuse of every self-serving bureaucracy in history that is unable to defend its actions every self-serving bureaucracy in history that is unable to defend its actions based on their merits. The extreme nature of the political moment we are in is in fact what makes accepting the PSL’s leadership failure intolerable.

Examine the PSL’s record in the second Trump administration, with the foreseeable attacks on immigrants, the expansion of the repressive state apparatus, the slashing of essential public services, the dismantling of key restraints on executive power. The PSL, supposedly the revolutionary party of the U.S. working class, made no meaningful preparation. The PSL’s top leadership merely churned out fruitless big idea after big idea.

In the immediate weeks following Trump’s second victory, the PSL declared the need to focus on agitating around the “bread and butter” economic issues that swung the election for Trump. A series of pamphlets were designed on everything from the postal service to Social Security — 11 in total — and sent out to the branches.

A few weeks later, the leadership was convinced of the false idea that Trump would quickly lose interest in deportations, but still convened an “immigrant rights working group” that did not produce any coherent campaigns. The “don’t open for ICE” outreach campaign was put together by the Communications Department as a face-saving measure.

In February, the PSL decided there was not enough resistance and it must launch a new round of days of action to protest Trump’s domestic policies, under a new brand with viral potential. The name of this brand was the subject of several long meetings where nothing was decided. It was ultimately determined that an “off-site” meeting was needed. A room was rented for two days in a building a few blocks from the PSL office and meals were catered so that these top leaders could be “free from distractions”. The total price tag for this brainstorming session was about $4,000. It produced a name, “World Without Billionaires” and big plans for a new website and social media pages. World Without Billionaires ended up being dropped before it was ever launched.

In April, Trump issued an executive order as part of his “tough on crime” crackdown, giving the Department of Defense 90 days to come up with a plan to make Pentagon assets available for use by domestic law enforcement bodies. This gave rise to a renewed “martial law” fantasy akin to the Moore v. Harper fixation. While Brian, Ben and Eugene became convinced that a fullscale fascist coup was coming in just 90 days, the response was not to build a united front to defend democracy, but instead to recirculate the Moore v Harper united front to defend democracy, but instead to recirculate the Moore v Harper pamphlet. They also became consumed with ridiculous and extremely costly contingency planning. When the 90 days came and went, the leadership clique quietly moved on without acknowledging the false premonition.

In May, the intense protests against ICE in Los Angeles brought the Center’s attention back to immigration and the Party was again “turned on a dime” — not to serious organizing projects among immigrant workers, but to the “Sick of ICE” initiative. This campaign banked on branches that had built their own immigration work to make it take off. But it was completely out of touch with the conditions and limitations of these projects. Branches were blamed for the initiative’s flop, and throughout June, the Party was forced to keep trying to make it go viral.

Come July, the national organization had to race to catch up on preparations for the Party Congress that had been completely neglected. A little under two weeks before delegates were scheduled to arrive in New York, the “Interim” Coordinating Committee (the unofficial substitute for the Executive Committee and Standing Committee that preceded the Political Coordinating Committee) began taking up the agenda of the Congress on an emergency basis. The entire event was sloppily thrown together at the last minute. Because there was hardly any time to prepare, the sessions of the Congress were heavily filled by extensive talks from Brian, Ben, Eugene, and the immediate circle of men around them. Despite dominating the agenda, they repeatedly spoke over time. Discussion periods were so rushed that comments were cut at times to 90 seconds, making some delegates talk too fast to be understood, and most sessions did not get to the full line of delegates on stack. Besides the heavily choreographed “discussion” around AI, the Congress mostly ran like an extended National Council call, where members of the leadership clique elaborated on general political observations and projects that were already in progress.

After the Party Congress, the big initiative became the general strike. After Brian pushed the PSL to call for a general strike at No Kings Day, the PSL became the subject of ridicule online and amongst other organizers. This made Brian become obsessive, and any external mention of a coordinated work stoppage, whether in Chicago or Minneapolis, became the site of an intense campaign to get the PSL’s chosen language taken up. The work of the Communications Department became almost exclusively content creation promoting the idea of a general strike.

Ultimately, in the exceptional conditions of ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis and the murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, a coalition in Minneapolis called for a statewide work stoppage. The PSL viewed this as their shot to bring their proclamations to life and sent in dozens of organizers to do outreach, particularly focused on getting the language of “general strike” adopted wherever possible.

The historic success of the January 23 general strike was underpinned by years of deep organizing led by a united front of mass organizations that the PSL had zero involvement in, widely referred to on the left as the “Minnesota Model.” Surely the PSL’s outreach efforts helped to make the day a success. But the PSL had the arrogance to claim primary credit for the success in Minneapolis, when it had done no long-term organizing there, was not part of the coalition that initiated the call, and merely sent in outsiders to popularize what was already in motion.

The organizers who embraced these PSL outsiders without sectarianism were denigrated to the PSL’s National Council repeatedly after they failed to adopt the PSL’s demands to extend and expand the general strike. Refusing to take no for an answer, the PSL used a Somali student organization as a front to push forward with the call, suggesting it was coming organically from the Minneapolis forces behind the 23rd. Members were frantically directed to seek endorsements from other organizations, and the Communications Department was deployed to create graphics that would trick influencers and celebrities, outraged by the murders, to recirculate what they thought was the Minnesota demand. This ultimately succeeded in popularizing a mass action on January 30. Husayn, who led the PSL deployment to Minneapolis, later bragged to me that “the students had no idea what they were getting into.”

Whether you agree or disagree with the historical correctness of forcing the January 30 call through by any means necessary, the PSL’s swaggering arrogance in the aftermath should be alarming. Instead of having any interest in examining the long term organizing that allowed Minnesota to achieve such a show of force, or a desire to clarify and repair relationships, the PSL has contented itself to publish externally on its own role, and internally extoll its own leadership, even declaring itself now the proven vanguard.

The responsibility of socialists today

Socialists today have the responsibility to rebuild a left that can contend for leadership of the working class. We must rebuild from a period of distortion and defeat. We must forge a left that can survive a repressive state that has demonstrated that it respects no legal nor moral constraint.

To take up these challenges, we must engage honestly and soberly with the challenges of our day and reject false shortcuts. We must build organization that cultivates cadre with both discipline and a deep responsibility for study, debate, experimentation, and assessment. We must task up the long-term work of raising the level of organization of the entire working class, not just already-politicized activists. We must build the organizational forms, campaigns, and united fronts necessary to concretize the power of the working class. We must engage in robust and sincere dialogue with other socialists pursuing various projects, rather than proclaim ourselves the vanguard and wait for everyone else to get in line behind us.

I am leaving not because I don’t believe this is possible, but because I do.

I have made peace with the years I have spent in the PSL because I have realized that in order for a viable communist left to be rebuilt, one with genuine cadre who grapple with the lessons of the last century and the novel challenges we face today, there needed to be an intermediate generation of communists who experienced the inadequate remnants of the last wave of left organizing and developed the critiques necessary to go beyond what we inherited. If even a handful of individuals emerge from this generation with clear vision, having accepted their agency in charting the next stage of communist organizing in the U.S., then I believe that we have made a step forward, not backward.

I know that this handful has been formed, and maybe more. I am leaving alongside the leadership of the Brooklyn District to take the next step in the formation of a viable socialist movement in this country. While we will leave smaller in number than if we remained in the PSL, we are confident that in the long run, cultivating a healthy seed is a better choice than continuing to tend to a dying tree. We will engage respectfully with the members of the PSL who remain, understanding that it is hard to grasp the true nature of this organization without the proximity we have had.

With determination for what comes next,

Walter Smolarek

Response from the Central Committee

Response to Walter Smolarek’s Resignation 

PSL Central Committee internal statement 

[Not to be re-shared, distributed or posted anywhere] 

Summary 

Two members of the PSL Central Committee (Walter and Lillian), working with a small group in Brooklyn, formed a secret faction and have broken off to launch a new organization that is premised on conclusions that are far different from the PSL’s political line. The faction is attacking the PSL and its elected leadership with a personalized and sensationalized narrative, hoping to persuade members to resign, but the political essence of the faction is the fundamental issue. They reject the need to build a communist, Marxist-Leninist party in the near future. They reject the optimistic assessment put forward by the PSL that a mass socialist revival is underway, and the objective basis exists to develop a large-scale communist party by actively intervening in all the emerging struggles and movements with a clear and popular presentation of the socialist horizon. Rather than revolutionary optimism, their factionalism is rooted in a deep pessimism, that the right-wing of the capitalist class is ascendant in every way, that the far-right will gain from the explosive contradictions of capitalism, and that the left is worthless. According to their presentation, all the mass movements in recent years in the United States, including the mass movement against racism in 2020 and for Palestine since 2023, have been worthless because they have not led to lasting reforms to improve the lives of the working class. The only thing that would give such movements value is if they translated into “enduring” “intermediate” mass organizations of the working class — the model for which they have never explained. It does not matter that these movements have shaped the consciousness of tens of millions of people, exposed the imperialist state, spurred the formation of hundreds of new radical organizations and collectives, affected the political correlation of forces, and drawn tens of thousands towards parties like the PSL. Walter Smolarek, one of the two leaders of this tendency, recently told us that even if the PSL grows to 50,000 members, it will be meaningless. 

Leaders of the factional attempt to divide the party have stated that the top priority should not be to build a revolutionary Party, but to build “mass organizations and institutions of the working class,” to rebuild the “social fabric” and “subjective forces” destroyed by neoliberalism, after which a genuine Party can eventually be built. At a recent CC meeting, one of the leaders explicitly rejected the concept of the “actuality of revolution” — dismissing the idea that revolutionary possibilities will open up in our lifetime and working towards this should be the Party’s chief objective. Walter Smolarek insisted in the last week that the Party’s notion about the prospects of revolution in the United States are ‘ridiculous.’ From this non-revolutionary outlook several conclusions follow: the Vote Socialist 2024 campaign was a mistake because it could have folded into the Jill Stein campaign; agitating for a general strike as the tactical horizon of the anti-Trump movement was wrong; and the January 30th National Shutdown was a mistake because it damaged our relations with social-democratic leaders of certain unions and non-profits. No matter that the Vote Socialist 2024 campaign helped popularize socialism in a way that no independent socialist campaign has in decades. No matter that a general strike did actually take place. No matter that the Jan 30 shutdown actually advanced the living struggle of the masses and pushed back the Trump administration’s invasion. These conclusions are rooted in significant political differences from the PSL, and constitute a political basis to leave it. The underlying theory represents a form of reformism and “economism,” which Lenin fought against his entire political life, and if adopted, creates a road straight towards social-democracy and NGO-ism. A huge section of today’s progressive labor unions and NGOs are led or mentored by ex-revolutionaries who made the same calculations in the 1970s and 1980s: to wind down their Party formations, to focus on non-revolutionary mass organizations, to supposedly prioritize blocking the right-wing, to gradually drop explicit anti-imperialism and socialism so as to not alienate the liberal bourgeoisie, all while telling themselves they remained loyal to Marxism and reading Marxist books together in private. They are still dedicated to a better world — but they lost faith in revolution, adopted a different read of the objective situation and logically adopted a different strategic framework. The political dispute is not about the merits of mass organizing, or whether or not to go among the working class, especially the lower and deeper strata to fight alongside them for their immediate grievances. The Party engages across the country in this kind of work in neighborhoods, workplaces, disaster zones, and elsewhere, and we seek to do even more of it, deepen it and systematize it. Walter’s document conveniently denies this work is happening. The orientation of the Party is to jump at every opportunity to join or stimulate a site of struggle, to advance struggles wherever they are in motion, and to try and bring existing mass organizations of the working class into motion. With the Party participating and fighting alongside them in the struggle, carrying with it agitation and education, we know that any struggle, no matter how big or small, can lead people to the socialist conclusion — that the working class must seize political power. All this activity is why thousands of young workers have been won over, recruited and trained by the Party, as well as an increasing number of existing leaders of the class — all of whom are erased in this portrayal of “already politicized activists” from the middle class. The vanguard party is forged through all manner of economic and political struggles, and serves as the true durable institution of the working class because it carries with it all the lessons of previous political and economic struggles, and weaves them back into the living struggle. These are the basic elements of Leninism, which the faction is attempting to liquidate by borrowing a mishmash of social-democratic theories (most heavily from Jane McAlevey’s writings and trainings). 

Unfortunately, this faction never made their views known for debate. Instead, they plotted in secret, possibly for over a year, and launched an unprincipled campaign behind the back of the leadership and most members to create a secret faction within the Party. This is all now confirmed from the notes of the Brooklyn District leadership, going back months, which reveal a sophisticated and coordinated operation to intentionally build a faction. Members of the District were individually tracked and assessed based on their “level of awareness” of the faction and their “level of consolidation” to its line. The long-term goal was to take over the branch step by step by getting their adherents in positions of influence, while masking their different political line. To succeed, faction members were oriented to have evasive communication with the New York Steering Committee about Brooklyn organizing, so as to not draw out larger political conversations. New Brooklyn members who volunteered for other citywide activities (such as petitioning for the “Andre for the Bronx” campaign) were carefully approached and “inoculated” with phone calls that appeared to just be check-ins, but were intended to ensure people weren’t lost to “the center.” They prepared their questions in branchwide internal settings not to stimulate genuine discussion, but to draw out potential new recruits for their faction. The goal was to identify real or perceived contradictions in the branch, which always exist, and raise them just enough to recruit without being discovered as a hostile force. 

At the same time, their notes reveal a strategy to conceal their differences from the Branch Committee — the highest body of the branch which they were a part of — because it might have triggered a larger political discussion and resolution (when they wouldn’t have the forces yet to win power). They collectively decided not to run for the Steering Committee so the political issues would not be drawn out there. Once they successfully captured the District Committee, their plans escalated to carve out space inside the organization, to remove unit leads deemed unreliable to the faction and to bureaucratically isolate comrades who were “with the center.” But it appears they moved too fast, making the Steering Committee aware that something deeper was going on. We have receipts for all of this. 

A huge amount of energy they could have actually spent on base-building in the working class they instead spent on secretly base-building inside the Party. 

Without ever raising their differences within the existing structures of the Party, they suddenly resigned, circulating documents filled with falsehoods and distortions, yet still revealing their defeatist, pessimistic view of the prospects for socialism in the United States. They never raised their arguments internally or used the existing Party structures, which are fully available for resolving differences, or for having votes on fundamental issues of strategy, tactics and program. That is because their goal was never to resolve differences. They worked to conceal their views over a long period of time so they could build up their forces secretly, and quietly reorient people to their liquidationist approach by pretending there were no political differences. Their faction had nothing to do with the absence of debate, despite their presentation. Their departure was triggered because there was about to be a debate. They would have to submit to the majority position under the norms of democratic centralism and then would lose their momentum. Resigning in this fashion gave them a kind of fake moral high ground, a way to gain sympathy with comrades who legitimately want to improve the Party. 

What finally provoked the faction’s departure was that the debate was now going to come out into the open, to be discussed and debated in the Central Committee and other leadership bodies, including in New York. Resigning after losing a debate would have left them too weak to launch an organization. They clearly decided it would be better to allege, falsely, that no space for debate was available inside the Party, and then cobble together a wide range of distortions and grievances, unrelated to the core political issues, which could shock people into resigning and joining their new group. 

Most jarring was Walter’s vague and false allegations about the treatment of women leaders and staffers in the party center. Half of the staff in the center are women, as are over half of the Central Committee. He does not speak for them, and has no right to. Knowing they would reject his characterization, he conveniently dismisses this as a feature of “blind deference” among a “staff of devotees,” while dismissing the Central Committee as “inconsequential.” The central role of women leaders, achieved in the PSL through their track record in the struggle (not quotas), does not mean our work in this area is complete. This has been and will continue to be an area of focus for our Party. Because patriarchy is so integral to capitalism, bourgeois society ascribes a gendered division to labor, with men playing more political roles and women confined to logistics and administration. This tendency plays out in all organizations, including within left organizations, and therefore has to be constantly and consciously combated. Nathalie, a long-time CC member in San Francisco and a mass worker-leader, wrote an individual response to Walter’s letter, which will soon be circulated to the National Council. In it she says: 

“I serve now on the Central Committee with Gloria, Sheila, Karla, Satya, Claudia, Rachel, Karina, Sarah, Claire, Layan and Hannah who I feel I must name because we as women leaders were wholly erased in the preposterous descriptions of the internal culture of our leadership. I am proud to sit with other leading comrades on the CC all of whom, if you are to believe this letter, are relegated to a position of ‘total deference to Brian and Ben Becker.’ I speak for myself when I say that Brian and Ben have earned my respect and I have learned a great deal from both of them. However, the idea that we women comrades and leaders only move politically and organizationally in deference to Brian and Ben should not be entertained.” Walter doesn’t even consider the possibility that the high level of unity among the Party’s leadership and staff in the center might be forged through years of working together, struggling through issues, developing a common perspective and high trust. When he says “people I once respected come into the Center only to assimilate into total deference,” this is a way of saying: a series of independent leaders, capable of forming their own opinions, came in to the center and ended up working well with the Party’s top leadership. It is preposterous to turn this into a bad thing. 

Walter and the leaders of this faction are not whistleblowers. They are not trying to improve the organization or resolve any deficiencies. They are weaponizing the fact they were inside the leadership and privy to certain information and internal contradictions to selectively present a distorted narrative that, they hope, will lead comrades to sign up for a new organization that they will now lead. This grouping is actively reaching out to PSL members around the country, trying, and failing, to break them away from organization. 

Rather than present the political differences honestly, they are preying on comrades’ physical distance from the national leadership and the difficulty of separating fact from fiction. They are also preying on deeply ingrained anti-communist and anti-Party tropes — of power-hungry and unelected leaders, living large, with secret agendas different from what they espouse publicly. Never did we think that by including Walter into leadership discussions of real issues in the organization, he would then exaggerate and distort them to launch a new group. 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. After this statement, we have no intention to spend any more time dealing with this faction, either in writing or otherwise. We will of course defend our Party and our membership. But we already have an enormous set of tasks in front of us: to advance the class struggle, to build the socialist movement, and to continue improving our Party. We are resolute in our path. We are confident that the liquidationist character of their new organization will soon be made evident in practice. 

Below are some of Walter’s arguments, responded to point by point, as well as a series of lessons and takeaways. 

— Central Committee of the PSL. 

This statement was reviewed, amended, and adopted unanimously, 23-0. 

Point-by-point rebuttal 

On his strategy of concealment 

Quote: 

I have made the calculation to conceal my full political views in order not to be displaced from central leadership, not out of a desire to retain any title but out of serious concern for the irresponsibility of the impulses of the Party’s top leaders and a commitment to mitigating them. This is a pitiful position. But I firmly believe that if I had done anything other than this, I would have been rapidly marginalized from meaningful positions of leadership and would not have been able to prevent top Party leadership from making decisions that would endanger the entire membership in gravely serious ways. 

This explicit admission of political concealment so as “not to be displaced from central leadership” is indeed “pitiful.” But he does not provide one example of ever doing anything to restrain the so-called irresponsible “impulses” of the top leadership which were “endangering the entire membership in gravely serious ways.” By power of suggestion, it insinuates illegal adventurism — where there has been none — and merely stokes panic and alarm. It is pure recklessness to write in such a manner. The Party leadership has been open with cadres across the country about the new McCarthyite operations targeting the Party, and we have made it a top responsibility to defend our members arrested falsely in the struggle. We have a demonstrated track record of navigating a range of security threats, while still growing the Party and maintaining our militancy. This excuse for staying silent rings hollow. The real reason Walter stayed silent is that he wanted to stay in leadership. To have his true ideas put up for debate in the Congress or Central Committee — the ones he expressed in his resignation — he would have been defeated. Maybe the majority of the Congress would not have elected him to the Central Committee if he presented such non-revolutionary conceptions. Maybe the Central Committee would not have re-elected him as Communications Director if it knew he had a totally different view of agitation, communications and the explicit promotion of socialism. That wouldn’t be undemocratic suppression; it would be totally democratic. That Walter tries to give his concealment a heroic purpose is absurd; it’s a violation of the elementary principles of democracy and a betrayal to everyone who voted for him.

On the Conference on Organization and revision of By-Laws Quote 

Comrades do not generally know that the Branch Organizing Conference only came to life because Ben Becker was concerned about bringing the Bylaws changes that he sought to make to the floor of the Party Congress. He worried that the changes, most notably significantly lowering the requirements of membership, would be controversial. His solution was to propose bringing together a body of hand-picked branch leaders to act as an acceptable enough substitution for the Congress to sign off on the changes. But in the process of putting together this group, he got carried away and the idea grew and grew into a de facto second round of the Congress — but without the constitutionally mandated processes, elections, and rights. In the end, the same hesitations over bringing the Bylaws to a vote led to them once again being put off, this time to the Central Committee. 

The distortion here is indisputable. The Fifth and Sixth Party Congress both voted to authorize the incoming Central Committee to revise the By-Laws. No new idea about membership was being smuggled into our By-Laws by a small group. The Congress passed the following resolution, the last section of which speaks directly to the membership issue: WHEREAS, the Bylaws of the Party for Socialism and Liberation were last amended in 2023; and 

WHEREAS, the Central Committee has the authority to amend the Bylaws following an appeal to the membership for amendments provided the amendments are taken up at an in-person meeting (see Appendix Resolution to Amend Bylaws in the Bylaws); 

WHEREAS, the membership has submitted amendments following an appeal for such submissions; and 

WHEREAS, the Party has more than doubled in size since the time of that amendment; and WHEREAS, the Party’s increased visibility has and will continue to create more opportunities to recruit from broader sectors of the working class; and 

WHEREAS, the Party must adapt its structures and membership norms in order to effectively utilize the opportunities created by this quantitative and qualitative growth; THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED the Sixth Party Congress tasks the incoming Central Committee with considering the amendments provided by the membership AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED the Sixth Party Congress tasks the incoming Central Committee with amending Sections 3 (“Local Organization”) and 4 (“Party Membership”) of the Bylaws. The amendments shall account for new branch structures necessitated by growth (i.e. units, districts, branch committees, branch congresses), evaluate which provisions have already become outmoded based on existing practice or are practically unfeasible, and establish a simplified presentation of membership requirements that facilitate the Party to recruit and retain members from broad sections of the working class while still retaining the fundamental distinction of the Leninist Party form (based on consistent activity, not mere agreement on paper.) [emphasis added] 

Walter is being dishonest in the extreme. No small “hand-picked branch leaders” would be deciding on the By-Laws after the Congress, but the newly elected Central Committee itself. It’s worth reminding comrades why we did this. As Walter knows well, we spent huge parts of the Second, Third, and Fourth Party Congresses on the Constitution revision process. In each of these, nearly whole days were taken up with long debates and votes on particular phrases on non-political procedural issues, which could not be revisited again for years. As the Congress grew in the number of delegates, these textual revisions became more challenging, and so the 2019 Fourth Party Congress adopted a resolution to separate the By-Laws and Constitution into separate documents explicitly so that future Congresses could focus more on political and organizational issues. Unlike the Constitution, which represents the foundational organizational principles, By-Laws procedures would need to be adjusted more frequently than every three years since we were growing out of our existing organizational norms. So the CC has been reauthorized at each of the subsequent Congresses to revise By-Laws, and it has done so. Walter knows that the current by-laws revision process is the same as it has been for years, but conceals it. 

If one looks deeper, he has actually turned the reality of this conference upside down. Even though the CC had the full mandate to make such By-Laws changes on its own, we wanted more debate and feedback about such important issues. Rather than trying to secretly “lower the membership requirement,” Ben and Husayn openly motivated for a simplified presentation of membership requirements at the Sixth Party Congress, which then adopted this task explicitly in the above resolution, in pre-Conference documents, and at the Conference itself. This was not done in secret. 

What he describes conspiratorially as “lowering the requirements of membership” ultimately was proposed as changing meeting attendance from “required” to “expected,” putting meeting attendance under “Party work” rather than a standalone condition of membership, and an expanded definition of Party work to facilitate members doing organizing at their jobs and in their neighborhoods, while still reporting and coordinating with their local units. At the October 2025 CC meeting, rather than vote on the revisions, the CC decided to convene the first ever Conference on Organization to hear from branches at all levels on how changes to the branch and membership terms would impact their local organizing — to not rush into things. Rather than passing the changes at the CC, we continued to work on them and then sent them to all Steering Committee members in the whole country, along with a lengthy explanatory document. All SC members were given an opportunity to submit changes, and 170 of whom were then invited to the conference to provide feedback in person. Dozens of comrades submitted questions, thoughts or amendments to the range of by-law revisions under discussion. Then there were 90 minutes of open discussion in front of the Conference in which the membership definition change was discussed. 

The Conference in May 2026 could not vote on the revisions because it is not a duly elected body to do so. The Congress had authorized the CC only to make changes, not the Conference. Who explained this to the Conference attendees? Walter. He wrote the pre-Conference memo explaining the By-Laws revision process — and he did so correctly and precisely. So he hasn’t forgotten anything; he is deliberately sowing confusion. 

This discussion of membership requirements and By-Laws in fact speaks to the democracy of the organization. 

Local internal education

There has also been a growing panic amongst the top Party leadership that several areas are succeeding in … conducting their own internal education. The Conference became a key venue to check this trend, but with great efforts made to disguise the Party leadership’s true aims. … Members were not told that the leadership is suspicious of branches exploring education beyond that provided nationally from the PSL or TPF. 

Response 

There has never been a national effort to stop branches from developing their own educational materials. The main criticism from the branches has been the opposite: the inadequacy and irregularity of the production of national educational materials — not that they’ve been shoved down their throats. Improving this has been identified as a priority at the last two Congresses and repeated Central Committee meetings. Comrades have demanded more standardized internal education materials to be used locally, and updated candidacy classes. It led to the formation of the Education Department in 2022 — which was then disrupted by the fact that the two co-Coordinators became our presidential ticket — and which is now being rebuilt. That is why the National Cadre Education program and materials, another project Walter was brought into a couple months ago and never criticized, was greeted with wide enthusiasm by branch leaders across the country. 

Has any branch ever been reprimanded or treated badly for developing materials “beyond that provided nationally from the PSL or TPF?” There was indeed one recent example of “suspicion” of a branch’s internal education priorities, and that was with Denver in May of this year. What was the basis of this “suspicion”? A Steering Committee member circulated a document to her branch alleging that a new substitute candidacy program had been developed independently by another SC member and the National Liaison (Lillian). In these classes, all five of which were taught by these same two people who have since resigned, there was not a single mention of the Party at all, no reference to its strategic framework, and no Party branding. A third SC member then wrote to the national organization that he believed the whole branch was being made to take these classes to reorient them away from the Party. These two Denver SC members worried that, given other comments they had overheard, it was part of a political consolidation process to lead towards a factional break. When the charge of factionalism was made, members of the Central Committee flew out to Denver and met everyone in question and asked directly about the accusation of factionalism, which they vehemently denied as a lie, and which we then took at face value. As for their local class series, we came to the following group agreement with all members of the SC that we then presented to the branch: “The 5-part class series is not a replacement for the existing PSL candidacy material, which will still be used by sponsors for new candidates. Once new PSL candidacy classes are instituted nationwide, these will be adopted in Denver, with local sessions added if so desired by the SC.” A month later, those who denied they were organizing as a faction have indeed left as a faction. The 5-part series is apparently being prepared as the educational program for those who have also left in Brooklyn. So the one time in 22 years we’ve been “suspicious” of a branch’s internal education, it was because of the vigilance of two out of three of the branch’s SC members, and it was weeks later confirmed as indeed part of a factional operation.

Ability to debate the Party’s strategic framework 

Instead of making direct interventions that could be debated on their political merits, members were presented with a wildly inflated picture of the PSL’s strength and an orientation on the current political landscape that anticipates nearing ruptures of a revolutionary proportion. The practical implication of such an outlook is that members must make their singular focus “building the Party” in preparation for these impending critical openings. They were given cherry-picked history lessons on the Bolsheviks and the U.S. Communist Party suggesting the PSL is on the brink of a massive expansion in scale and influence. 

Response 

To be precise, the formulation we are using is that building the Party is the “top priority,” not the “singular focus.” This has been the Party’s top priority since its founding in 2004, even when we have been involved in all kinds of movement-building and mass organizing. What we are identifying now in the objective political situation, especially compared to our founding years, is the opportunity for the Party to grow into a much stronger force. It is the largest revolutionary Marxist organization in the country; it has a solid foundation of cadres and branches around the country; it is entering a period of increasing social, economic and political ruptures and crises of legitimacy that will intensify mass interest in socialism and create new mass struggles that will intensify interest in getting organized. 

As for a “strategy of revolution,” elements of this have been sketched out many times in classes and documents over many years, keeping in mind that a certain level of abstraction is necessary since the future cannot be scripted. The following language was sent to Walter just last week, and was up to be discussed and debated again at the upcoming Central Committee, containing the following Draft Theses 

The Party’s overall strategic priorities are stimulating mass struggles, developing depth of cadres, growing its influence within the working class, and building mass socialist consciousness. 

These priorities flow from our theory of revolution, which requires 1) the objective existence of a revolutionary crisis — the most dynamic and complex political situation conceivable, when there is not only an intolerable situation for the working class but paralysis among the ruling class; 2) the existence of a vanguard Party with sufficient strength, influence, and capacity for centralism to act as needed; and 3) the majority of the working class being won over to socialism. Winning political hegemony over the radicalizing layer of the class requires a sustained, creative, multi-front campaign of agitation and propaganda: mass communication on every burning issue, cultural interventions, electoral campaigns, and a consistent public presence that presents the PSL not as one organization among many but as the communist party of the United States. That will happen because the organization proves itself to be correct in its analysis, capable of building effective movements and united fronts in the living struggle of the working class, and can show the credibility of its program by recruiting workers from all sectors. The strategic framework of the PSL, codified across the last three Party Congresses, begins with a political assessment of the objective situation: we are living in a period of rupture, produced by new contradictions that are not resolvable under capitalist property relations and US imperial control of the global order. … Diagnosing this conjuncture is not the same as saying revolution is imminent, or that the left is automatically the main beneficiary of these shifts. It means that the political terrain is very unstable, more so than in decades, that the potential for widespread struggles and the conditions for dramatic shifts in mass consciousness exist, and that our strategy must be calibrated accordingly. Our revolutionary optimism is based on the analytical recognition that capitalism will not be able to solve these existential structural contradictions, and they are thus prone to explode in unmanageable ways. The timing of these ruptures can not be predicted but their arrival is inevitable. Before revolution, societies tend to proceed through stages of mounting disequilibrium, political crises of legitimacy, events that serve as shocks to the system, and then finally unforeseeable triggers. Common features include unwinnable wars, ecological disasters, intra-ruling class struggles, and financial crises. We cannot know where in the historical process we are. The question is whether we are agile enough, strong enough, and politically prepared enough to act as the world shifts. The idea that all this, and the overall thesis of building mass socialist consciousness, has not been directly put forward before the membership and the leadership for real discussion on its merits is absurd. It goes back years and years. Even in the last month related to the Conference, Walter has had every imaginable opportunity to debate the question of scaling up the Party and the political assessment on which it is based. Here is the exact timeline: 

● April 20: The core political framework of the Conference is circulated by Brian to a group of 12 Central Committee members and other leaders in New York City, where it is discussed at great length in a two-day retreat. Each comrade speaks about their views on the document and its central theses. Walter participates in the discussion but offers no disagreement. The document is open for additional edits before going to the Central Committee. Walter proposes none.

● April 27: the document is circulated to the whole Central Committee and a virtual meeting is scheduled for May 2 for discussion. Walter is present, it is discussed for over 90 minutes. Walter expresses no disagreement.

● April and May: The Conference planning committee, which Walter was a part of, meets weekly, works out the agenda, core points and organizational documents of the conference — the conference he now trashes. Walter speaks up on a range of issues, like everyone else in the committee. He expresses no disagreement on any of the core political analysis or themes in the meetings or in the office.

● May 8: The political document is circulated to the National Council and an open discussion was held there in front of all steering committees nationwide. No disagreement from Walter there, or outside the meeting, or after. A submission form is sent to all attendees to submit documents in response to the political framework document. Around 10 comrades and multiple branches write in with their reflections. Walter sends in nothing.

● May 22: The Central Committee has an in-person all-day meeting prior to the Conference to discuss its political themes and objectives. At the meeting, Brian makes the point that we should not go through an immediate period of rapid growth, and should focus on internal consolidation for a period. This is debated, but Walter sits silent.

● May 23-24: Walter gives a presentation at the conference about anti-billionaires sentiment, and how this has been built through repeated mass movements and political turning points over the last 20 years. He literally had the stage and the mic and the opportunity to speak to the whole leadership but expressed no alternate view. The Conference proceeds for two days. Walter expresses no disagreement, either in front of the body or in the presiding committee.

● May 25: The CC has a debrief the day after — in which many areas of improvement and critiques were raised by many members of that body. Walter stays silent. 

● May 26: A feedback form is circulated to all conference attendees about the By-Laws, or any other reflections from the Conference. Several important submissions come in. Walter submits nothing.

● May 28: The conference planning committee organizes its own debrief, in which Walter finally spoke and only for the first time said the conference lacked a clear “action plan for the branches,” but again expressed no political disagreement. He agrees (clearly disingenuously) to a series of post-Conference tasks, including volunteering to help with planning new training schools for unit leads and Steering Committee members, write new organizational manuals, and help convene working groups on different fronts of struggle precisely to develop more action plans.

● June 2: Ben circulates to the Conference Presiding Committee a Draft Report, with each paragraph presented as a separate political thesis so that each can be debated by the Central Committee. The preface to the document reads: “The [theses below] are intended for discussion, amendment and ratification at the Central Committee, to ensure we have formally adopted a strategic framework for the Party before we move forward. Each thesis can stand on its own for discussion, but together they constitute the political and organizational framework for the period ahead. We can of course add to it as well, if there are elements of our perspective that are not captured here but need to be worked out.” Walter offers no thoughts.

● June 5: The Central Committee receives the draft report, with a virtual meeting scheduled for June 14 to discuss, amend, and adopt it.

● June 5: Walter resigns eight hours later in the name of “democracy,” trashing the conference.

How could such a deliberately evasive person now present himself as the champion of open political debate and transparency? 

Communist organizing at the workplace 

Another instructive example of what has been going on behind the scenes is the semi-controversy that arose around a seemingly new labor orientation given at the conference. In the panel on organization entitled “Building the Organization to Scale,” there was a speech given by a young union member who is not part of the national leadership. It may have seemed curious to attendees that this speech was not given by a member of the Labor Department leadership or Central Committee. That was because Ben and Husayn recognized that the content of this speech was a departure from the previous orientation that had not been run through other Labor Department leaders, and thus sought to distance themselves from direct responsibility for it. The comrade’s speech made the argument that we should reconsider the value and viability of organizing and moving unions. They’re too few, too weak, and too slow.

Instead, our orientation to workplace organizing should focus on promoting Party literature, forming discussion groups, and recruiting coworkers to the Party and to the Action Network. 

Response 

The comrade in question did not say “we should reconsider the value and viability of organizing and moving unions” — this is utter distortion. He is a worker-leader of one of the key union drives in the country! That is a campaign the Party has sent several key cadres into. What he presented in this case was what we can do in workplaces where traditional union activity is impossible or practically dead. To correct Walter’s distortion, we need only quote from the Draft Report on the Conference, which he received days before his resignation, and, like all the other Draft Theses, was going to be up for discussion and amendment among the CC. The thesis on workplace organizing reads: 

“We are deploying more members into audacious labor union work than ever before. This involves strategic implantations and concentrations in certain industries and developing new agitational tools to build an expanded base in the working class. Our approach to all union fights is to make them fights for the whole class, as well as schools of socialism, with the [recent teachers] strike as a great example of how long-term work in strategic areas can lead to outsized impact. Our goal in new organizing is — in the best tradition of Communism — to make them social crusades and battles, especially seeking out opportunities where the intervention of devoted comrades can move larger numbers and lead to breakthroughs that ideally sparks a new contagious wave of labor revival. 

“Still we must recognize that ninety percent of workers in this country are not in a union, and that number is increasing. Based on the current organization of work, especially the large number of workers now working contractualized, remotely or in small teams, there are significant obstacles to winning unions and contracts in big parts of the working class — especially via the current NLRB process. If the only way we know how to bring socialism into the workplace is by first building a union, we start from a position of having no access to the vast majority of the working class. Union organizing is important where conditions for it exist, and the party should pursue it there but it cannot be the only instrument to reach the working class on the job (where people spend a majority of their waking hours). The examples of the PSL Shipbuilders in Virginia — ten workers, one candidate member, a shop paper, built entirely without institutional resources — demonstrate that it is possible to build socialist organization, raise class consciousness, and recruit to the party in workplaces without active union life. We should seek out any and all creative ways to bring socialism to the masses in the workplace and draw the most advanced workers into the party.” 

One may agree or not with this perspective, but it was not hidden. We were about to discuss it in the Central Committee and among the Labor Department leadership before it would be circulated as an orientation to the membership. 

Party support for community centers 

I have been extremely disturbed by the secret machinations within the New York office to extinguish or wrest control of the base building projects gaining ground in Denver and Brooklyn. Both areas, through separate processes of development, have found their way to building community center projects that operate as genuine mass organizations. There was an initial attempt to dissuade each area from this direction, but when the dissuasion didn’t work, the approach was taken to give leaders of both areas the impression that the top leadership was nonetheless supportive of their projects and interested in further debate and discussion. 

Response 

There was neither extinguishing or wresting control of anything. The desire to support creative projects and interest in further debate was genuine. Denver was not dissuaded from the work of building a community center. There was in fact an immediate and enthusiastic offer to fund it and support it, with comrades’ dues. In addition to continuing to pay one national staff person who had moved to Denver and became its Co-Director, the other Co-Director was also funded nationally! We did this because we assumed we were all aligned politically. In fact, when the funding was agreed to, it was said that we hoped we could reproduce such centers in all regions of the country. Many of the Party’s top leaders — those described falsely as enemies of base-building — have personally co-founded similar community centers in other cities, and have many positive lessons to share from these experiences. There was no articulation of any ideological disunity at this time from Denver or any notion that their conception of “base-building” would require the liquidation of Party-building, or a rejection of the Party’s strategic framework. These two comrades on staff had the least amount of national oversight of any staff people, based on assumed trust that they were working hard on local projects and had little time for anything else. One of them was asked repeatedly to help organize the Conference on Organization, but she declined. What other branch has two full-time local staffers paid by the national organization? 

There was no “subterfuge” against Denver either. When one SC member in Denver on her own accord circulated a document criticizing those two Denver staff members for preparing the Colorado People’s Center in a manner that wasn’t transparent with the branch and the SC, and erased the Party, this was brought to our attention. The Party center had zero role in that document being written or distributed, and up to this point had no idea there was any division in the Denver SC. Then, a third Denver SC member wrote a document to the center alleging a faction was being secretly organized. Only at that point did we become aware that underneath Denver’s limited communication with the center was a significant dispute, and we informed the rest of the Party’s leadership that something was up (including Walter). Walter was then in the center and persuasively told us “there’s no way” these Denver leaders intended to leave the organization, concealing that he was already setting the stage for a new organization himself. Ben and Claudia traveled to Denver and came back optimistic, reporting that the charges of factionalism had been denied, the SC had been apparently stabilized. While the comrades had shared some long-held disagreements with the national perspective, we hoped a new stage of political candor would open with Denver. Lillian declined to present her views to the Conference, when offered. Instead we planned to return to Denver after the Conference to have a more rigorous discussion about the relationship between base-building, movement organizing, and Party-building. We affirmed that different strategies can be used in different local contexts, and affirmed that we have never adopted a one-size-fits-all approach to branch-building. That discussion never happened due to the faction’s departure. In fact, the faction left to preclude the discussion. 

Immediately upon returning to Denver from the Conference, Lillian — who had said nothing inside the CC meeting debrief — launched into an open attack on the conference at their branch internal before all the membership, violating the prior agreement of the Steering Committee and violating the group agreements from a few weeks prior, which was to first bring disputes to higher bodies. There was never any real intention to debate. 

Brooklyn District leaders organized a faction and debate was not suppressed 

In recent months, I have been aware of growing outrage in the office about the Brooklyn leadership’s focus on cultivating community partnerships and relationships, and most vehemently the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Freedom Center. I have been approached multiple times, in secret conspiratorial huddles and one-on-one meetings, trying to ensure that I don’t sympathize with the efforts. … I have tried to generally avoid involvement in these discussions because I know the only goal is to pin me to a position against the members in Brooklyn. ,,, Avoiding involvement became impossible when I was asked repeatedly to put my name to a document opposing base building in Brooklyn, a position I clearly do not support. I was asked first by Layan and Wyatt at the Branch Organizing Conference, then again in the New York office in a one-on-one with Ben Becker. 

I informed [the SC] that the previous night I had been reached out to by the Brooklyn leadership to speak at their district retreat based on my experience and writings on base building, and I had planned to go. … The Standing Committee of the Central Committee had just held an emergency meeting and voted that I could not speak at the retreat. … I later learned that at this retreat, a group of five members intervened forcefully, disruptively, and in a clearly orchestrated manner. Each of these members is current or former staff. The entire retreat, these five members read from a document on their phones, in a way that was completely unsubtle and visible to all attendees. One of the members emotionally stormed out. Having the experience of 17 years in the organization, and a decade in national leadership, I am certain that this was coordinated by Ben. 

This is quite an astonishing narrative. After admitting to concealing his views for years, and pretending to be in agreement with the Party’s strategic framework, Walter feigns surprise that people fell for his trick and approached him to intervene politically to help build a higher level of organizational and ideological unity between a local steering committee and its district leadership (which was then claiming, disingenuously, that they had no political differences with the Party). Yes, comrades went to him because they considered him as someone with a balanced and nuanced view, who was well regarded by the Brooklyn District leaders and the NYC Steering Committee, had written about base-building before, believed in popularizing socialism (they thought), and could now write an updated synthesis that shows how the building of mass organizations at the neighborhood level would fit into the Party’s overall strategic framework based on its years of experience. Members affirmed to Walter “this will be good because it can bring the issues out,” and Walter seemed to initially agree. Walter was asked to “huddle” by the NYC Steering Committee so he could help strategize how to have an organized discussion and productive synthesis after the District retreat, a retreat the Steering Committee expected would be volatile based on the disagreements already expressed by members in their unit meetings. Those members were not coached or organized by Ben, a totally false allegation. The Steering Committee had decided not to try and fight it out with the District leadership in front of their own members. The city’s elected leadership hadn’t been invited to speak, hadn’t been consulted about the strategic document before it was circulated, and had no chance to have a meeting beforehand to discuss it. The process was backwards for a Leninist party, but they decided not to intervene anyway. Further, in the context of an emerging political dispute between a Branch and District leadership, it wasn’t appropriate for a member of a Central Committee to go into a meeting of the membership and take a side against the city leadership. That is why we have higher bodies. 

How is it that Walter was so ready to violate the basics of democratic centralism that he has taught to so many others? Was it just a noble commitment to debate? No, the truth is that the Brooklyn District leadership had already decided to use this retreat as the next big step in consolidating a faction. 

The groundwork for Brooklyn’s faction had been laid for months. The retreat and discussion over base-building merely provided the trigger for them to move. Their campaign involved removing unit leads who they considered disloyal, discouraging members in the District from attending other events in the city, and deliberately limiting communication with the Steering Committee to the least possible so they couldn’t be accused of totally breaking Party norms. This went on for months. Walter, sitting in the same office as the Steering Committee, apparently reported back to the District leadership their growing frustration about all this. Meanwhile, the faction oriented their core leaders to say as little as possible if asked anything about what organizing was happening in Brooklyn, to be evasive, to minimize, to not agree to individual phone calls and meetings, and not provide answers that could lead to follow-up questions or discussions. Their notes show the scale of the operation. The goal was to buy time and consolidate forces. Meanwhile, the faction pursued selective outreach to individual members in other Districts who they thought might have organizational frustrations and grievances. 

In his final week in the office, Walter agreed to write a manual on branch building that would be used as a training document for the whole membership, which would go over base-building and Party-building at the neighborhood level. He agreed to spend the summer planning major Party events and schools, alongside other CC members who would plan this out together. The whole thing has been proven to be a deception. Or, rather, he was going to continue to do this work on false pretenses for a while longer until the Brooklyn faction revealed itself. Some of Brooklyn’s faction canceled their dues prior to the Branch Committee meeting. Their notes show months of factional planning. Yet now they claim that it was at this meeting, where the debate finally started to come out, that their democracy was suppressed. That debate was meant to continue two days later, but instead they considered it the most opportune time to leave. If they had stayed, and if a consensus position was adopted, or a majority vote taken, they would have been defeated and not been able to claim “no space for debate” in their resignation letters. 

False presentation of base-building 

Quote 

I have heard them talk behind closed doors for months about their opposition to the base building and mass organizing work that comrades are doing across the country, and have read

draft documents they’ve written to combat the trend. This position was alluded to in a document written by Brian Becker that characterized mass organizing work as “too pedestrian,” but Ben Becker wrote more explicitly against base building and mass organizing in a document titled “Turning to the working class: What it should mean and what it shouldn’t.” This document was circulated amongst the inner circle in the New York office, but was ultimately not shared out of concern that it would cause debate. In preparatory documents for the conference, key objectives included establishing that “pivoting is the essence of revolution,” and “deep organizing..isn’t part of [our] theory of revolution.” 

Response 

Beware the strategy of selective omission. Here is the full quote of what Brian Becker called “too pedestrian” — and it is not a rejection of “mass organizing” at all: 

“There is a mistaken notion that our goal is to simply assimilate into working class communities, become familiar with the issues in those communities, be accepted by those communities, and then, over time, we will develop individualized relationships with a select number of people who will then join the unit and join the Party. This is way too pedestrian. Our focus should be reaching those parts of the population that are already becoming political, becoming radicalized, or are in motion in response to a form of injustice or exploitation. (Emphasis added). It is when people are engaged in struggle that their ideas change, and it is when they are in those struggles that they realize that they want to join an organization to become effective.” What Brian is clearly describing is a passive, slow and uninspired (“pedestrian”) approach to Party-building, which sequences it behind individual relationship-building and leaves out the struggle of the masses. Instead of this pedestrian approach, the document emphasizes getting engaged in any site of struggle, against any form of injustice, and that is where we will build our movement, our Party, and where people will be open to new ideas. This is the basics of Leninism — building socialist consciousness through engagement in the struggle, and drawing those with socialist consciousness actively into the Party — but the fact that Walter so strenuously objects to it, going so far as to misquote it, shows he has gone far down the road of economism that Brian’s document warns against. 

In Ben’s unpublished and unfinished document “Turning to the Class: What It Should Mean and What It Shouldn’t,” we can find none of the quotes mentioned here. These quotes seem to just be invented to pin a position on Ben that he doesn’t hold. Ben sent his draft document to Walter for comradely feedback — and because he never got any from him or the rest of the presiding committee, he therefore didn’t circulate it right before the Conference. But the questions of mass organizing, the meaning of base-building, best practices and methods in neighborhood and workplace organizing, all of these are constantly being discussed by the Party at all levels, and the stated goal of the Party in recent national meetings is to develop a more comprehensive theory of branch-building. The Party has no history whatsoever of concealing our views on any of these issues. Each issue of The Party Organizer always seeks case studies for such ground-level mass organizing work, as examples that all members can learn from. 

Preliminary Lessons for the Party

Is every element of the document an invention? No. There are, of course, always real deficiencies in the organization, which we readily accept and many of which we have already been working to resolve. 

Decisions without execution: For instance, Walter throws a jab about the absence of the “AI commission” and “Trans liberation commission” decided upon at the Congress. True. But he was a Central Committee member just like the rest, and on staff, and showed no initiative himself to bring either of these into existence. Perhaps he was too busy, but to lay this shortcoming at the feet of one or two leaders is dishonest. There are many projects we have decided upon that are not yet brought to fruition. We are sure every branch leadership in the country could review its notes and find projects and tasks it agreed to do, and did not yet carry out. We aren’t proud of this phenomenon, but it’s the reality. This isn’t about anything but capacity, time, and the many shifting pressures and new things the organization is responding to, which need to always be prioritized. In this particular case, we have never built a commission on ideological questions — although we know they are part of the communist tradition — but we want to. So now have to figure out the methods to bring it into existence as a new organizational process. 

Expanding and formalizing leadership: Walter repeatedly complains about “actual decision making and implementation would remain completely under the control of Brian, Ben and the circle they keep around them.” This is a mischaracterization. What we do have is the elected executive leadership of the Party (the Standing Committee of the Central Committee), in which Walter for a few years participated as an observer. Elected executive leaders do in fact decide on what to prioritize amid a huge variety of contending pressures and opportunities. That staff are then used to implement such decisions of the elected executive is also not nefarious. What is a real problem, which we have sought to resolve, is the smallness of the group, and the informal method with which some decisions get made. Even elected leaders to the Standing Committee, if they’re not present at all times, can be out of the loop, creating new problems. Unlike a corporation, we have to assume any of our top leaders could be taken off the playing field by the state at any moment. This makes it a prime priority to train more leaders and to share information among leaders, and between branches and the center, so that information does not become centralized just in individuals, but institutionalized. We have begun to introduce new reporting routines for this purpose, and are discussing how the CC can be reorganized for more in-person and virtual meetings. 

In this spirit, we created the Political Coordination Committee, which Walter derides as an “unelected leadership clique.” This was done to expand the circle of leaders beyond the elected Standing Committee, and to expand high-level political discussions to a larger number of cadres and leaders. It was created first as an interim body at the height of the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing in all elected CC members in New York, as well as the full-time staff leading major national departments and areas of work. Far from anything covert, a presentation on how this body functions, and how the organization of the center needs to be improved even further, was given to the whole CC in the October 2025 meeting. This development has widened leadership discussions and debates, not narrowed them, and drawn in many rising women leaders, including elected Central Committee members — who Walter dismisses as undeveloped “blind” followers and functionaries. One recent resolution of this body is to carry out more intensive political education to further develop this next generation of ideological and political leaders. 

While the Political Coordination Committee has been an advance, we still need to resolve the overstretched nature of certain leaders, which creates frustrating bottlenecks, as well as the unevenness of reporting, note-taking and accountability for prior decisions. We’ve discussed the challenges we’ve run into in sharing information across the leadership, working across teams, and methods for keeping the whole Central Committee informed and engaged, while they are themselves dealing with demanding work schedules across many time zones. This is complicated work, and we have no blueprint to work with. We are constantly seeking new methods to improve. 

Party culture and functioning of the center: In multiple leadership bodies, and in the CC itself, we’ve also discussed in recent meetings the need for deliberate training in communist values and “Party culture” to foster more collaboration, avoid cliquishness, deal with conflicts head on, and more. This has to be prioritized. CC members openly presented at the Congress how a center was both a necessary development and could give rise to bureaucratic inter-office politics and cliquishness — as well as the danger of factionalism! At multiple Central Committee meetings, and in our most recent days-long leadership retreat, we identified how problems of informality and adhoc-ness of certain decision-making and leadership structures can exacerbate such tendencies, as well as the informality around scheduling, on-boarding, and work expectations. 

By-Laws for the national organization: None of the above problems are secrets. In fact, we restated at the Conference on Organization how the next stage of By-Laws and procedural revision would be to improve and systematize our national functioning, where we still are quite underdeveloped given the size of the Party. As the Party grows, each stage creates an enormity of new tasks, projects, problems and threats, which strain the existing organizational norms. This dialectic will never end — we expect the pressure on the center will only increase as the Party scales up further. 

Scaling responsibly: At our recent leadership retreat, we resolved to study the best practices of other types organizations that have scaled up, the literature on leadership, cross-team collaboration, and to carefully consider the formation of new national departments with their own kind of executive leadership. This requires study of both communist and non-communist organizations. 

Leadership identification: Finally, these resignation documents also present us with an opportunity for reflection about how people get into positions of central leadership to begin with and long-standing staff. The criteria for that has always been based on personal trust, hard work, initiative, but the party must more deliberately train all of its staff and leaders and cadres in non-stop ideological formation and in communist values — including to practice radical honesty with one’s political views and concerns. Once on staff, revolutionary optimism and belief in the Party can never be taken for granted, but must be consistently reinforced through study, discussion and a living connection to the class struggle. 

In summary, we will keep pushing forward with all these areas of improvement, and many others, not because of the resignation documents or the claims of the faction. These were all issues that were being openly discussed already, which is why Walter knew how to twist them.

In our view, no organizational changes would have prevented this factionalism because at the root it is not fundamentally about people or processes — it’s a totally different political outlook. For them, now is not the time for a revolutionary perspective, a cadre-based vanguard party, or a time to anticipate and prepare for ruptures. Where we see opportunity, they see a wasteland. 

Where we see ruling class instability, they see stability. Where we see a generation of young working people coming towards socialism, and towards the Party, they wave this off as meaningless. Those theoretical differences, and totally different readings of the political conjuncture, will become more and more apparent in the field of practice, and it is where their theory will be tested and the debate will be settled. We are confident in our path.