Editor’s Note: Aside from a few minor copy-edits for consistency across the piece, the letter has been republished in its original state.

The following is a letter I wrote to my comrades on June 4th, 2026, in which I formally withdrew my membership from the PSL. I debated whether or not to post it here publicly, and initially decided to post it with the PSL’s name redacted. However, in light of the recent wave in resignations, particularly that of Walter Smolarek, a member of the Central Committee and a 17 year veteran of the PSL, I have decided to post my own letter in full in solidarity with the numerous other comrades who have arrived at the same conclusions and quietly or vocally resigned.

Before I continue, I want to clearly state that the problem is not the individual comrades in individual units, these units are often filled with the most genuine, kindhearted, and passionate people whose energy and time are currently being exploited by a corrupt party. These comrades believe the work they are doing is toward the stated goal of a proletarian revolution, which is why they are defensive of the party and their work. It should be noted that the PSL’s central leadership does not represent these comrades as a whole, and as Walter’s letter points out, there is absolutely no transparency regarding the PSL’s decisions, and this has intentionally cultivated a membership that cannot see the corruption and has no real system in place to challenge it.

The PSL’s internal response to Walter’s letter contains the same deflection I encountered anytime I lent constructive criticism or voiced concerns to leadership. There is only a superficial acknowledgement of “organizational issues,” while the purpose and intent of the criticisms are shifted to personal grievances and a “misunderstanding” of the party line. This shift away from the central thesis of Walter’s arguments, which are overwhelmingly and demonstrably not about a petty personal grievance or a misunderstanding of PSL’s “political line,” is manipulative and dishonest.

Rather, his thesis is a confirmation of a current of dissatisfaction running across Party chapters nationwide, the same conclusions that I, and evidently many others, arrived at independently. It is now apparent that the inferences I drew are, in fact, an accurate description of the PSL’s actual internal workings. And while I affirm the patterns he documents, I do not endorse or validate Walter’s past or present conduct and have found many inaccuracies in his letter that I will detail at a later date. He offers no real criticism of the PSL’s participation in bourgeois elections, and he does not reckon honestly with his own role, as a long-tenured member of the leadership, in many of the errors he describes.

The PSL is already mobilizing its members on social media to discredit the validity of these criticisms, dismissing them as the work of wreckers, that to circulate these criticisms while the organization is “under state scrutiny” is doing the work of COINTELPRO. This is deflection, a pattern of PSL’s central leadership to avoid accountability. A party genuinely worried about infiltration and wreckage would tighten its analysis and its accountability, not move to crush valid criticism. And importantly, naming a pattern of structural rot is not sabotage, the rot is the sabotage, and will ultimately be the party’s own downfall if it does not address it.

I actively pursued membership with the PSL around April of 2025 and became a candidate in June of the same year. To be clear, I did not finish the candidacy classes necessary to become a “full” member, and this was deliberate because the classes, as I note in my letter, were filled with numerous historical/theoretical errors that sought to guide the conclusions of comrades away from their historical intent. In my repeated attempts to address my concerns about the PSL’s political education, strategies, and structure with various levels of local leadership, those concerns were often repeated back at me as though I had simply “misunderstood” the PSL’s political orientation, as though, because I did not understand it, I had not engaged with it, had not finished the classes, and was therefore incapable of grasping its purpose.

Effectively, regardless of how analytical, precise, and specific my concerns were, I was told by local leadership, in so many words, that it was my own deficiency for not “getting” the purpose of our feckless strategies, rather than that I fundamentally disagreed with them. The PSL is deliberately obscuring the fact that these are not trivial differences or simple “disagreements,” their behavior is a named ideological-political tendency within the history of revolutionary movements and parties, and that this tendency is inherently antagonistic to the working class.

The focus of my letter is on the tendency of opportunism (namely, right-opportunism) and revisionism within the party which I ground in the theoretical works of Lenin, Mao, and other revolutionaries. Importantly, my critique of this tendency is not purely theoretical, but is also based on the astounding amount of negative feedback from members of my community that have made me realize how dangerous this tendency is to the proletarian movement. The party’s leadership is deeply disconnected from the needs of individual units and the units themselves are disconnected from the masses.

The overarching thesis of my arguments is that the PSL has wrongfully titled itself the vanguard of the working class while distorting the meaning and function of the vanguard in revolutionary history. “Vanguard” is a relational term, there is no such thing as a vanguard party without the overwhelming support of the working class behind it. That support is not won by presenting the masses with “correct” ideas, it is built by fighting alongside them, by embedding ourselves in the real conditions and struggles of their lives.

The PSL’s work is not organized at the center of the our class’s struggle, it happens at the margins of it, orbiting leaderships own political line, brands, calls to protest or “boycott”, rather than the lived struggles of those exploited by the capitalist system. Because the PSL’s leadership is itself severed from the masses, it can only relate to its own units through top-down command, issuing directives that do not arise from any real struggle of the working class. Nor is there any channel running the other way to surface the needs and conditions of different regions back up to leadership. This is why so many of these commands make no sense on the ground, why, for instance, the PSL can insist on agitating for a nation-wide “general strike” without any of the infrastructure necessary to support one.

As I diagnose in my letter, this is a form of opportunism, called commandism. However, this opportunism cuts in the opposite direction as well, in which the PSL constantly tails after the spontaneous consciousness of the masses, echoing their own sentiments, rather than raising them up. Both of these signal a party that, regardless of how many people show up to our actions or vote for our candidates, is deeply disconnected from the actual daily lives of the people.

That is, turnout measures how many people we can mobilize for an afternoon or election, not whether our work has sufficiently elevated their consciousness by being connected to their struggles. A party with no meaningful connection to the masses is an irreconcilable contradiction. Stalin makes this most explicit in Foundations of Leninism, where he states that the party is “the vanguard of the working class,” but only insofar as it merges with the class, absorbs its best elements, and is connected to it by “a thousand threads.”

Walter offers numerous examples of commandism in his letter that we can draw from, and I touch briefly on my own, but it’s important to understand (as I’ve already stated) that this is a historical ideological-political pattern. In the 1970s, thousands of leftists turned toward Marxism-Leninism and began building new revolutionary parties in a period that came to be known as the New Communist Movement. By the 1980s it had largely collapsed due to relentless sectarian splits, dogmatism, and international communist crises. As it fell apart, organizations tried to account for what had gone wrong, and one of them, the Bay Area Socialist Organizing Committee, wrote a study that named these organizational failures. Their description of commandism reads quite similar to what we experience now:

The discouragement of independent thinking and discussion in the party leads to an overdependence on leadership. We have noted the crucial role of organizational leadership. Yet if only officially sanctioned ideas have a place in the party, it can quickly develop a bureaucratic spirit: leaders command, members become ‘employees’… Commandist parties quickly tend toward dogmatism because the cadres will not or cannot take responsibility to apply the organization’s line in an intelligent way to the specific circumstances they face. Even though the members of the organization may discuss how to apply the line, their discussions cannot get very far–because applying a political line in a concrete situation requires dynamic understanding rather than dogmatic memorization. In this atmosphere members avoid reporting problems or failures for fear of being thought disloyal or defeatist.

In our movement, commandism has often reflected the leadership’s mistrust of the members (not to mention their mistrust of the masses) because of the members’ low level of political development. Yet commandism is not a cure for uneven political development; it is a prescription for continuing it. Commandism can never result in members gaining that critical grasp of Marxism-Leninism necessary to develop communist leaders and cadre.

The PSL, as Walter points out, is about as far from being the “vanguard” of the masses as a supposed “revolutionary” party could possibly be. There is a culture of deflection and a refusal to engage in meaningful criticism, in which anyone, or any group, who criticizes, distances from, or rejects the PSL is treated as little more than a “hater” or even a fed. The PSL encourages comrades to dismiss those who distance themselves from us as simply not understanding democratic centralism or Leninist organization, when in reality this is a gross negation of the mass line which only harms our work and our connection to the proletariat.

The PSL manages and contains working-class energy rather than organizing it in the direction of independent proletarian power, becoming what Lenin called a “bourgeois labor party.” Lenin explained that the opportunists are “better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeoisie itself,” because they perform a service for capital that capital cannot perform for itself, which is keeping the proletariat tied to safe, non-threatening, system-preserving activity.

Those who earnestly seek to see the dictatorship of the proletariat in our lifetime must abandon the opportunists, and must realize that their energy has been driven into non-threatening measures that drill their passion into the ground. In the past, when the PSL has had membership ruptures, many of those comrades never rejoined any organization or returned to political work at all, which is far more a victory for the ruling class than for the PSL or the proletariat.

So, comrades, I ask you not to lose sight of why we joined the PSL in the first place, and to understand that there is a great deal of work to be done, and that every day we spend with a party that has abandoned its revolutionary premise is another day without challenging the ruling class, another day it gets to inflict violence on the masses. The remedy for this diagnosis is to complete the task set before us by Engels and sweep away the “colossal pile of garbage inherited by tradition,” namely opportunism, by going to the workers and the oppressed to engage in revolutionary mass organizing at the heart of class struggle.

We cannot allow ourselves to be lost to the wind, nor can we abandon the tasks before us. If comrades read this and are inspired to persist in our historic task of revolution, please reach out so that we may coordinate and determine the path forward!!! Had Lenin remained within the undivided RSDLP, the Bolsheviks would never have formed, and the October Revolution would never have happened. Lenin explained in an issue of Iskra that “Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation.” You do not stay in the ranks of an ineffective, corrupt party, even when the alternative is a significantly smaller group.

As Comrade Mao said, “a single spark can start a prairie fire.”

Assalamu alaikum Comrades,

I want to begin by explaining how incredible I think each of you are and how much you’ve all inspired me. After having to start over in a state where I knew so few people, watching ICE terrorize my new home and feeling completely powerless without a community to fight back with, I joined the PSL, and it gave me both a community and a sense of purpose. Because of you all, I have so much hope for the future, and I genuinely believe that a revolution in our lifetime is possible and inevitable.

However, I have decided to discontinue my membership with the PSL.

This is a decision I have been dwelling on for months, one that has tugged at my heart and led to immense guilt. My decision to leave has absolutely nothing to do with any of you, and I am so grateful to have struggled alongside each of you. Lenin was famous for announcing his departure from an organization and distributing it to the membership, so, in the tradition of Lenin, I will offer a clear explanation of why I’m leaving. Criticism is a longstanding tradition of revolutionary parties, and I genuinely hope my criticisms are understood in good faith, rather than as an attempt to sow disunity.

My decision rests on fundamental disagreements with national’s political orientation and strategies that, from my perspective, have led to a significant gap between the national leadership and the needs of local units. I have voiced many of these concerns in internal meetings and in private to leadership, and though I genuinely appreciate our incredible unit leads, leadership, and other comrades for patiently discussing them with me, I have not been able to reconcile them.

There is a tendency that continually emerges within revolutionary parties, one that every single revolutionary has had to reconcile with in the past, this tendency is what Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and others have identified as the biggest threat to revolutionary parties. This tendency is opportunism, and importantly, it isn’t a moral failing of individuals within the party, nor is it intentional! Its a structural drift that, according to Lenin and Mao, must continually be combated to prevent this tendency to cause the party to abandon the revolutionary cause altogether. A party that has drifted towards opportunism will still present as a Marxist-Leninist party.

And, indeed, the PSL identifies as Marxist-Leninist, its public political analysis is generally correct, and its propaganda and longer-form content retain the language and conclusions of Marxism, these are what drew me to the party in the first place! Diagnosing opportunism requires an analysis of the political character, content, and action of the party and continually holding it next to the ultimate objective, which is a proletarian revolution. This letter will break down my primary concerns with the party’s political character, content, and action by continually grounding it in the objective goal and pairing it with the wisdom of our revolutionary predecessors. My concerns break down into a few primary categories: political education, party propaganda, failure to convert spontaneity into action, lack of underground work, and electoralism.

(Addendum: I would like to note that the PSL carefully distances itself from identifying as a Marxist-Leninist party. In both their “About” and their “Party Program” sections on pslweb.org, the party never mentions Lenin at all. Instead, they frame themselves as simply ‘Marxists.’ They never specifically utilize Leninist or Marxist phrasing such as “vanguard,” or “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and instead soften these terms with less descriptive language. These specific terms are not “communist jargon” you can abandon for accessibility, they are literally the dividing lines that separate Marxism from reformism.

In The State and Revolution, Lenin writes that someone who extends the recognition of class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a Marxist, everyone who accepts class struggle but stops short of the DotP is a reformist or opportunist. This is an extension of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, where he is clear that the transition between capitalism and communism is the revolutionary DotP. Comrades, we must recall that the Gotha is a furious polemic against a socialist party watering down its program with vague, conciliatory language to make themselves palatable.)

Political Education

Beginning with political education. As Lenin states, “there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory.” Marxists have gotten a reputation for obnoxiously harping about the need to read theory, this has been exacerbated by those who treat Marxism as a dogma that must be strictly adhered to and applied. But Marxism isn’t a dogma, is it comrades? It is a science! And like any other science, it must be approached using skepticism, observation, hypothesis, and application, but we can build on the existing scientific research instead of starting from scratch. If enough evidence has disproven our hypothesis, we can begin to reanalyze and rehypothesize, rather than continue on without question (that would be dogma).

Theory represents the practice and research of revolutionaries who came before us, who diagnosed the problems in our society and how to address them, with each building off the work of the last, and all grounding their theories in the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. For a revolutionary party, theory is indispensable. Many challenges that Marxists face today are the same challenges that revolutionaries of the past confronted. Reading, understanding, and applying theory not only helps us become better agitators and propagandists, it equips us to make the right analysis and decision in a time of crisis.

Perceptual knowledge comes from our direct experiences with the world, and these perceptions are what help us to realize things like the unfairness in the justice system, wealth inequality, or that everything feels bad all the time. These data points reflect certain realities of the objective world, but they are one-sided and superficial, an impression that reflects things incompletely without revealing their essence. Rational knowledge is what you get when those scattered impressions are synthesized into an understanding of the why and the how. This synthesis helps to explain the laws and relations that produce these impressions. This is, as some of you may know, an overly condensed explanation of Mao’s theory of knowledge which isn’t limited to book clubs and study groups, it requires reflection and is incomplete without actual practice. Practice is what makes theory dialectical and material, rather than purely ideological.

The reason why many of us became leftists is because of this perceptual knowledge that helped us identify the impressions of capitalist exploitation in the world, rational knowledge is what leads us to become Marxists, and application is what transforms us into revolutionaries; this application is what produces new theory. Anyone can recognize and diagnose problems within society. But without taking these observations past their impressions, they will be captured by the ruling class, converted into an understanding that is compatible with ruling class ideology. Due to the nature of ruling class cultural hegemony, their conclusions are what seem most natural or inevitable to us. The theory is what produces the difference between a Marxist and a leftist.

This is why we need revolutionary theory. However, it is entirely unnecessary to start at step zero and to insist on rediscovering, by our own trial and error, things that were settled ages ago. The same way we wouldn’t need to come up with our own theory of gravity in order to understand that what comes up, must come down, as this has already been extensively tested and iterated upon. In the same way, revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin put Marx’s existing theories to the test and developed them further, which other revolutionaries like Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro have done with Lenin’s ideas. The body of theory is the rational knowledge of the entire international proletarian movement!

However, theory without application is useless and produces dogmatists who are incapable of acting. As Marx said, the point of studying theory and discussing it is to change the world! Rational knowledge is only verified and developed when it is put to the test in our own material conditions, which is why every revolutionary party should pair practical application with a continual study and revisiting of theory. This doesn’t mean that “right” ideas come only from those who’ve read every volume of Das Kapital. The masses often have many right ideas, but those ideas are usually isolated to individual issues, and our role as revolutionaries is to systematize them into something coherent, a strategy. We cannot do this without theory.

In the PSL, theory is de-emphasized in practice. Our political education often vulgarizes theory and simplifies it to the degree of obscuring it altogether. The format is accessible, which is lovely, but this format cannot and does not supplement engagement with the revolutionary theory and pedagogical discourse that produces rational knowledge. The most important part of theory is NOT the conclusions drawn from it. The value of reaching the rational stage is understanding the analytical movement from impression to essence, so that we can perform that analysis ourselves on new conditions.

The PSL’s political education condenses almost two centuries of Marxist theory, supplemented with other PSL publications, all of which are secondary sources that place a barrier between us and the words of the theorists themselves. In the instances where actual theory is studied, it is often paired with study materials provided by the PSL. I’ve been informed that this is only to provide historical context, which is frequently what makes theory so difficult to absorb (so true). However, as I will demonstrate later in my letter, historical context is not neutral, and providing it pre-interpreted is where the PSL’s conclusions get inserted into the theory itself. (Note: It has been revealed that this is intentional, not incidental. In this letter I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, which I would revoke today.)

Leadership has framed the PSL’s resources as a pragmatic means of continuing education, one that alleviates the burden of study, which is time-consuming and often inaccessible. But theory isn’t just reading or learning, it is a cycle of analysis and application, and it is the PSL’s responsibility to treat political education as a continual project of sharpening our analysis and strategy. This isn’t to say we should hand comrades a stack of texts and wish them luck!

A presentation of historical context, in a classroom setting guided by analysis and dialogue, lets us develop our analytical skills against the texts themselves. A summary of that history paired with pre-determined discussion points intended to steer comrades toward a fixed conclusion does not. Education is the investment a party makes in its members to produce capable, confident revolutionaries, and the decision to de-emphasize it in favor of PSL-produced summaries is one I fundamentally disagree with.

Lenin himself already assessed the pragmatism in de-emphasizing theory in favor of practice, his conclusion is that there is no middle ground between ruling class ideology and Marxist ideology, without a full understanding of Marxism we will default into ruling class ideology. This default to conclusions that are acceptable to the ruling class, which is subconscious and unintentional, is what produces opportunism. This is what happened in Lenin’s time, in his polemics against the “Economists.”

These were Marxists who believed they should focus on the workers’ immediate economic struggles, wages, hours, conditions, because that is what workers “actually respond to,” and that they should meet workers where they are rather than ply them with abstract theoretical demands. They thought this was the practical, non-elitist, mass-connected approach, and they accused Lenin’s emphasis on theory and professional revolutionaries of being aloof and disconnected from the “real movement.”

Lenin argued that they fundamentally misunderstood the task, which was to elevate the consciousness of the masses, and that because they refused to study theory, they could not see that all they were doing was tailing after the masses. This brings my opening quote from Lenin fully into context:

“Those who have the slightest acquaintance with the actual state of our movement cannot but see that the wide spread of Marxism was accompanied by a certain lowering of the theoretical level. Quite a number of people with very little, and even a total lack of theoretical training joined the movement because of its practical significance and its practical successes… Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.“

Public Propaganda

This leads me into political propaganda. Now, when it comes to the masses, they do not need to be experts in political theory, but it is our job as revolutionaries to bring theory to them. This doesn’t mean we should show up to No Kings chanting that the “bourgeoisie’s appropriation of surplus value from the proletariat is the primary contradiction that will lead to capitalism’s downfall!” However, we are supposed to use our understanding of theory to take the working class’s ideas and connect them to revolutionary theory in a way that they can grasp, and to continually raise their consciousness rather than just reaffirm what they already understand.

What I’ve noticed about the PSL’s agitation and propaganda geared toward the masses (think social media, campaign platforms, statements and speeches) is that it doesn’t seek to elevate the consciousness of the masses (though some of our longer-form content is better in this regard). When Lenin explained that the masses will always achieve a degree of political consciousness (”trade union consciousness”), he was trying to convey that the masses are fully capable of diagnosing the problems in their society based on their own experiences, as we’ve discussed. But this consciousness would not develop into revolutionary consciousness due to the hegemonic function of ruling-class ideology, which was always lurking in the shadows to redirect their political consciousness back into the system rather than away from it.

This is why populist phrases like “eat the rich!” and “people not billionaires” emerge organically from the working class! They’ve identified the economic element that leads to exploitation, but it is our responsibility to provide a class analysis that connects those phrases to the problem, capitalism. The masses are intelligent and will understand this. As Lenin put it, “the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia, and only a few (bad) intellectuals believe that it is enough “for workers” to be told a few things about factory conditions and to have repeated to them over and over again what has long been known.” When our propaganda only mirrors back what they already understand, we fail in our job to raise their political consciousness.

The Democrats and Democratic Socialists and other reformists center the entirety of their political agitation on socioeconomic “improvements” for the working class but they do not provide a class analysis. This is why Lenin explained that they “limit the tasks of the workers to a struggle for immediate, palpable results; they refuse to recognize that we Social-Democrats cannot reduce our tasks to those that are ‘attainable’ at the given moment… It is precisely the role of Social-Democracy as the vanguard in the actual struggle against autocracy to lift the spontaneous workers’ movement onto a higher plane, to raise it to its proper level of class struggle.” (Note: the Social-Democrats here are the Russian Marxists; Lenin would later break with this term.) Diluting our propaganda into left-populism that isn’t entirely dissimilar to that of the Democratic Socialists (like Bernie Sanders) is a grave error, as Lenin observes: “to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”

What our propaganda should do is take that degree of spontaneous consciousness a step further by explaining that even if every billionaire disappeared, everyone’s material conditions would remain the same, because “billionaire” and “the rich” only describe a wealth category, and it isn’t the wealth in itself that produces systems of exploitation like wage labor and imperialism. In fact, not all billionaires are capitalists, plenty of capitalists are millionaires or small business owners. Whenever we simply reaffirm that billionaires are the problem, we allow the working class to conflate wealth with class, and we never help them understand that capitalism is the problem, and that IT needs to be abolished. We should have confidence in the working class’s ability to reason and to understand theory (insofar as it applies to their own conditions), and recognize that we may even have much to learn from them.

It is a common pitfall of leftists, not just Marxists, to underestimate the capability and smarts of the working class. Sometimes the argument is made that we still need to “dumb down” our agitprop because the average American reads at a sixth-grade level. This, too, is an excuse. Almost every historical revolutionary had to raise the political consciousness of an almost fully illiterate population. Lenin, Mao, Che, the Panthers, etc., all elevated the consciousness of a peasantry or working class that, in many cases, could not read at all! Lenin called out this tendency to belittle the masses’ capability as follows:

“Attention, therefore, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the ‘working masses’ as the Economists wish to do, or to the level of the ‘average worker’… You, gentlemen, who are so much concerned about the ‘average worker’, as a matter of fact, rather insult the workers by your desire to talk down to them when discussing working-class politics and working-class organisation. Talk about serious things in a serious manner; leave pedagogics to the pedagogues, and not to politicians and organisers!”

Failure to Convert Spontaneity into Action

In the PSL, we have this idea that our primary tasks are to “popularize socialism” and “meet the moment.” Neither of these is inherently wrong. We should popularize socialism in the Marxian sense, and we should meet the moment. Wherever the masses are, as most Marxists argue, we should be there too, to listen to their needs, meet their needs, struggle with them, and elevate their consciousness. In the United States, the ruling class has successfully distorted the history and intention of protests, turning them into a pacifist performance, an outlet for working class rage. But even these entirely harmless, pacifist demonstrations are being pushed into less and less effective means (from protesting in streets to protesting on sidewalks, not being able to block traffic, police escorts, etc.).

As a result, protests are now viewed as a single solitary action lasting an hour or two at most, with everyone returning to business as usual afterward. Some on the left even refuse to attend due to the inefficacy of them. But protests contain immense potential, particularly for revolutionary parties, who should view them not only as a means to agitate and recruit, but as a way to turn the directionless rage of the masses into immediate, organized direct action. This shows the working class exactly what we are capable of while elevating their consciousness. If we show up to No Kings protests only to chant along with the masses, we once more fail to guide their consciousness a step further. As revolutionaries, we are the leaders of the proletarian movement, and it is our job to take the disorganized ideas of the masses and turn them into political action.

We should never push them to do something they aren’t ready for, but we should be able to gauge an individual situation and gently push them toward a more and more impactful flexing of collective power. This means turning pacifist parades into direct action by creating a list of demands, either in advance (with the entire objective of a protest oriented toward these demands) or being ready to create one and encourage a longer, sustained protest from the spontaneous one. This also applies to our current agitation for general strikes, which is one of significant error. When I’ve raised concerns about it, namely that it doesn’t make sense to agitate for one without the infrastructure to support one, I’ve been told that the PSL doesn’t intend to dedicate party resources toward building said infrastructure.

A revolutionary party that is only interested in vaguely gesturing toward the need for a general strike, rather than dedicating party resources and capacity to building the infrastructure, is unintentionally betraying its role as a leader within the proletarian movement. Strike funds, legal defense networks, food distribution, childcare, communication systems, and all the alternative systems are what sustain a successful strike. The historical strikes in the United States all had this infrastructure, built by communist or socialist organizers who prioritized these forms of organization. Such actions are prone to being co-opted by reformists, social democrats, and the ruling class, so it is paramount that communists build these networks rather than allow them to be diverted & squashed by counter-revolutionary forces.

The PSL’s stance on the current moment is what seemingly prevents national from directing resources and capacity toward this. However, Lenin firmly believed that the party should stay ready so it never had to get ready. In their own period of “counter-revolution,” the Bolsheviks did indeed prioritize propaganda and agitation. But importantly, they also used this time to build the skeleton that could support higher-stakes actions, like a general strike, but that often included uprisings many leftists would wrongfully categorize as adventurism. Take the 1905 general strike, which actually shifted the political climate to one of revolutionary potential. Lenin wrote in a letter that the endless deliberation over whether the working class was ready for xyz, or whether to escalate, irritated him. Let me provide the passage in full:

“I need hardly say that I do not undertake to judge of the practical side of the matter… However, judging by the documents, the whole thing threatens to degenerate into office routine. All these schemes, all these plans of organisation of the Combat Committee create the impression of red tape… disputes and discussions about the functions of the Combat Committee and its rights, are of the least value in a matter like this. What is needed is furious energy, and again energy. It horrifies me— I give you my word—it horrifies me to find that there has been talk about bombs for over six months, yet not one has been made! And it is the most learned of people who are doing the talking…. Go to the youth, gentlemen! That is the only remedy! Otherwise—I give you my word for it—you will be too late (everything tells me that), and will be left with “learned” memoranda, plans, charts, schemes, and magnificent recipes, but without an organisation, without a living cause. Go to the youth. Form fighting squads at once everywhere, among the students, and especially among the workers, etc., etc. Let groups be at once organised of three, ten, thirty, etc., persons. Let them arm themselves at once as best they can, be it with a revolver, a knife, a rag soaked in kerosene for starting fires, etc. Let these detachments at once select leaders, and as far as possible contact the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee. Do not demand any formalities, and, for heaven’s sake, forget all these schemes, and send all “functions, rights, and privileges” to the devil. Do not make membership in the R.S.D.L.P. an absolute condition—that would be an absurd demand for an armed uprising.”

This is why a firm grasp on the history of revolutions, revolutionaries, their mistakes, and their successes, all of which is contained within theory, is crucial to creating a revolutionary party capable of making the correct assessment and decision at a moments notice. Many Marxists would be shocked to find Lenin advocating for what many would classify as “adventurism.” But please understand that I’m not at all stating that every protest should turn into violent “Combat Committees” lol. As I’ve mentioned, a simple list of demands would suffice, and whenever the working class sees victories from these types of actions, it moves their understanding of working class power from the ideological realm into the material realm, making it tangible and achievable.

The PSL has an admirable degree of discipline and responsiveness. As I mentioned, I am continually inspired by you comrades and your ability to set aside your individual needs to respond to the cries of the people! However, our inability to convert spontaneous uprisings into direct action we can support is of concern. We often hold the attention of the masses in a time of crisis, but once the momentum dissipates, so does the attention we hold. Ebbs and flows are natural, but if we are not building infrastructure in the interim to actually prepare the working class for the next crisis, we will continue to lose them when momentum dies down.

Importantly, this cannot be the decision of one individual unit. Dedication to building infrastructure must be agreed upon by the entire party and prioritized by ensuring we dedicate appropriate organizational capacity and resources to it. This is a slow-burning, long term project that requires continual renewal of our dedication. There are days when the free breakfast programs of the Black Panthers didn’t have a single child in attendance, for example, but refusing to give up and maintaining these long term projects will ensure that we stay ready so we don’t have to get ready.

But unfortunately, we often must drop even short term projects to accommodate national’s orientation to prioritize, for example, door knocking. This frequently includes canceling existing actions, like book clubs or community defense meetings, in favor of these more “urgent” priorities. To be clear, I am not discussing when we need to urgently respond to a working class crisis such as ICE raids or emergency rallies! I also understand that we are limited in organizational capacity, and oftentimes we need all hands on deck to be effective in our other strategies.

However, the continual habit of dropping longer and shorter term projects for shorter term ones signals to the working class that we have no interest in seeing these projects through. This continual pivoting is a form of commandism, which is a structural problem when a party grows in size, but it is worrisome that we do not have (many) long term projects we’ve sustained for more than a year. Comrades, I ask you to look into the history of revolutionary movement building and find one movement that has not sustained long term projects! Worse, these pivots are rarely discussed among the units first. They’re decided on by central leadership, either at the national or district level, and comrades are expected to comply.

This is not democratic centralism; abandoning a project, whether at the local or national level, is something that requires discussion when it is not emergent. This is national’s orientation for how the party should be run, and many of you may be okay with this as a strategy, but my analysis is that we regularly sacrifice long term strategies for shorter-term ones that produce small “achievements” but never larger, meaningful “wins” for the working class as a proletarian movement toward the objective of revolution.

(Addendum: Upon reflecting on the PSL’s assessment of the “current moment,” I would like to further push back on this claim. If we look at the political analysis of the world, it is one of revolutionary potential, as evidenced by the political uprisings across the globe. This is not a time of low political action or consciousness; even in the United States, we have had more protests in the last five years than at any other point in history, and more people are turning up to explicitly political action by the millions. Yet we continually fail to raise this spontaneous consciousness further.

So, what is it, exactly, that the PSL means by “meeting the moment,” and what if the “moment” in question is rooted in the same poor political analysis of a leadership that is more concerned with optics and “building the party” than building the capacity to support THE moment for the working class? Because the leadership does not understand what a genuine revolutionary moment looks like, and because they are not cultivating comrades who are capable of utilizing such a moment, we risk squandering the opportunity to elevate the consciousness of the masses to usher them toward that moment.)

Participation in Bourgeois Elections

Seeing as this essay is already approaching 12 pages in its current form, I will keep this critique short but for anyone who is interested, I have written a longer form theoretical polemic and analysis critiquing participation in bourgeois elections for all Marxist parties. Effectively, we spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars within the four year election cycle on these campaigns. We are told that this is a Leninist strategy, but it isn’t really. Those who make this argument rely on Lenin’s polemic in Left-Wing Communism, where he criticized the German and Dutch left for declaring bourgeois parliaments “historically obsolete” on principle alone, he insisted that communists were obligated to participate so long as the masses were still engaged in them.

Once we contextualize Left-Wing Communism, we find that its argument does not map onto our current conditions. Lenin wrote within a climate of immense revolutionary potential, among a working class that was already heavliy organized and politically conscious, and within electoral systems (the tsarist Duma and the Weimar Reichstag) that have absolutely no resemblance to our red-tapped, anti-communist, anti-third party “democracy.”

The Third International, the authoritative codification of how Lenin’s tactics were meant to be applied, also clearly states that any participating party must identify openly as communist, draw a clear line of demarcation from the social democrats, treat elections as a tactic subordinate to other work, and that if conditions are ripe for (as an example) a strike, electoral participation should halt. Our candidates platforms in our recent Vote Socialist campaigns are indistinguishable from those of progressive liberals and social democrats. This is a form of opportunism where we flatten our message to “meet the masses where they are,” but only to keep them there, echoing their spontaneous consciousness rather than systematizing it and raising it a step further.

More importantly, people who turn out to vote are overwhelmingly the labor aristocracy, the petty bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie proper. Roughly half of all adults earning under $50,000 and $100,000 did not vote in 2024. That is over 100 million eligible voters who did not vote. For comparison, only about 22% of adults earning $100,000 or more did not vote. Those who are the most impacted by the system (systemically the poorest, undereducated, marginalized) are those who have already given up on it.

And while statistics do not reveal the complete nuance or the entire picture of one’s class, and those who earn a higher income (such as myself) are capable of joining the proletarian movement, they’ve been repeatedly identified as those with the least revolutionary potential. Further, there are at least 27 millions more (the unhoused, the undocumented, the formerly incarcerated, those in US colonized “territories”) who are legally barred from voting, who our campaigns are also not reaching.

I am not saying we should refrain from participation altogether, but it should heed the contingencies laid out nearly a century ago that distinguish us from the bourgeois Democratic Socialists, and it should be deprioritized. Dedicating party resources to building the infrastructure for a general strike, which the working class has expressed interest in, would be far more valuable. This means establishing distribution networks with storage and pickup sites, neighborhood committees and coalitions, alternative systems to sustain the working class like community gardens (some PSL units in other states are doing this short term), training in first aid, self defense, and childcare.

(Addendum: I am saying that running in presidential and governor races is a woeful misallocation of resources, whereas running in smaller elections across more cities would be significantly easier to win and would have a higher probability of materially improving policy to aid our class, providing the support necessary to engage in class warfare.)

This is exactly what the Black Panther Party did! Their programs were dismissed by other leftists as pointless mutual aid, but they were tactical, a skeleton built to support the proletariat in a time of crisis rather than an end in themselves. As Huey P. Newton put it, they were “survival programs, survival pending revolution, not something to replace revolution or challenge the power relations demanding radical action, but an activity that strengthens us for the coming fight, a lifeboat leading us safely to shore.”

We know their method works here, that it has shaken the ruling class, and we have the Panthers’ own mistakes to learn from, which is again why theory matters. The PSL already knows how to do much of this work, but we don’t currently sustain it long term. We take these types of projects up for short periods and let them crumble in our absence, when sustaining them through the ebbs and flows is where the difficult work is. And much of it must be sustained independently of electoral or bourgeois arenas, so that when the state inevitably moves to crush it, we remain afloat.

In Conclusion

I sincerely appreciate those of you who’ve been able to read through this entire letter. Now, the reasons I’ve provided, for those of you still tuned in, may still seem trivial or unimportant, certainly not a reason to leave the party. But these reasons constitute Lenin’s definition of a party that has unintentionally abandoned the revolutionary premise of Marxism. Without theory, we cannot distinguish revolutionary work from work that only resembles it, and without propaganda that elevates consciousness, the masses will continue to be redirected toward ruling class ideology. This is a critique of the party structure, not of any individual comrades! As I mentioned, each of you is a dedicated, loyal comrade, and I do not question your intentions at all. But opportunism is defined by the use of revolutionary language to legitimize strategies that do not threaten the capitalist system, and that is effectively what our propaganda and political education have resorted to.

Lenin’s point in What Is To Be Done? was that there is no middle ground between revolutionary socialism and liberalism! Any de-emphasis of Marxist theory strengthens bourgeois ideology by default. What makes this dangerous is that the party, functionally, absorbs the energy of dedicated, loyal people who want to be revolutionaries and channels it into work that never actually threatens power, abandoning the necessary and patient work of developing leadership prepared to support the working class in times of crisis.

Every revolutionary leader you’ve ever heard of (Lenin, Mao, Che, Castro, Sankara, Minh, Luxemburg) identified opportunism as the greatest threat to revolutionary parties, more so than violent state repression, because repression leads to revolutionary clarity while opportunism eliminates or distorts it. The worst manifestation of opportunism is what Lenin identified as social chauvinism, when the party actually allies with the bourgeoisie and uses its organizational capacity to achieve their objectives. Lenin explains: “Opportunism is our principal enemy. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working-class movement is bourgeois socialism, not proletarian socialism. It has been shown in practice that the working-class activists who follow the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeois themselves.”

(Addendum: the PSL has resorted to social chauvinism by mobilizing our organizational capacity to support legislation put forward by the Democratic party such as the recent redistricting in California.)

It may seem as though I’m purity testing the PSL and failing it simply because it doesn’t live up to my ideals of what a revolutionary party “should” look like, that all these theorists I’ve been quoting represent the standard I’m measuring the PSL against, and that we simply aren’t “radical” enough. HOWEVER, opportunism is a structural diagnosis with a long history within Marxist movements, and not a single revolutionary movement has avoided it. It is not representative of the individual moral failures of comrades and their work.

It is identified when a party sacrifices the long term interests of the proletarian movement for short-sighted gains. It is also identified when the question of revolution is continually put off into the distant future and intentionally delayed, treating the masses and the climate as not yet “ready”! Personally, I find this assessment by Parvus (written in 1901, though for transparency, Parvus was a promising revolutionary before the material success of the war persuaded him to abandon the cause, nevertheless, his revolutionary theory remains decent) to be the most astute:

As is well known, it is the dictatorship of the proletariat that opportunism criticises most. It does not directly deny the possibility of realising it, but it doubts it, it pushes it as far as possible into the distance, and above all wishes to eliminate it from present-day political considerations. The conditions, it claims, are still so unripe that they are not yet ready for it. The conditions, claims opportunism, are still so unripe that if the proletariat were to get hold of the machinery of the state, it… would end in a colossal defeat for the proletariat. So, for the time being, we leave the running of the state to those who already do so… And we must regard with trepidation every electoral victory as a step that brings us closer… to our defeat. But due to the inconsistency on which opportunism depends, it of course avoids drawing this conclusion from its premise. But what does it offer us instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which it no can no longer countenance as a political guideline? How is the proletariat to abolish capitalist exploitation if not by conquering political power? What should be done, how should the working class act in order to achieve this goal…

It is only logical that opportunism, having abandoned the hope of the political rule of the proletariat, should seek to mediate between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Where socialism has hitherto uncovered the fiercest class antagonisms, opportunism seeks points of agreement. It pursues a policy of compromise. It wants to break off the peaks, to bridge over the antagonisms. This is how the theories of adaptation, of growing over into socialism, arose, with which opportunism seeks to conceal the hopelessness of its standpoint from itself and from the world.

Allowing opportunism to remain unchallenged is tantamount to allowing the party to forfeit the revolution. We will continue to invest our time and energy into strategies that never pose a threat to the ruling class, we will tail after the masses to “meet the moment,” we will substitute left-populist sloganeering for class analysis, we will never earn the trust of the working class, we will make short-sighted pivots that sacrifice the long term project of cultivating the masses, and we will distort the revolutionary character of our messaging.

Worst of all, we will be unprepared to assist the masses in times of crisis. One of the most dangerous aspects of opportunism is that it is rarely intentional (though it certainly can be)! As Lenin states, the opportunist “does not betray his party, he does not act as a traitor, he does not desert it. He continues to serve it sincerely and zealously. But his typical and characteristic trait is that he yields to the mood of the moment, he is unable to resist what is fashionable, he is politically short-sighted and spineless. Opportunism means sacrificing the permanent and essential interests of the party to momentary, transient and minor interests.”

In conclusion, I hope my criticisms do not read as an attack on the decent, genuinely good work we have done for the working class. I am aware of how strong my critiques are, and how, like myself, many of you have found a political home and community in the PSL, and it is not my intent to diminish that. The point of this letter is NOT that the PSL’s work is totally pointless or unimportant, nor that everyone should abandon it. The PSL does meaningful and important work, and for many, that work is valuable enough to continue.

But I do not believe this work, in its current form, is building the infrastructure or capacity to support a proletarian revolution.

Though it may not be apparent to everyone reading this, I have tried to address these concerns with varying levels of leadership and to emphasize the need for improved tactics, strategy, and political education. Over the last year I have suggested internal book studies, strategic mutual aid, infrastructure building, self defense training, targeted strikes, and more. Many of these suggestions were supported by our (amazing) local leads, but they require the material support of the PSL’s central leadership, and cannot be carried out by one unit of 6 to 10 people. (Addendum: They have absolutely no interest in doing this type of work.)

I have insisted on different formats for our public-facing “meetings” and “forums,” which often become a lecture with preset discussion points. I’ve heard from at least a dozen people that this format alienates them from attending, people who came expecting their own observations to be heard and taken seriously as a contribution to the struggle, are instead lectured at and forced to engage in timed, predetermined discussions. This overly corporate formula for community organizing is what happens when leadership tries to formalize the cultivation of political consciousness in a way that is totally removed from the actual proletarian movement.

There is nothing wrong with having an agenda or discussion points to keep a conversation productive. The problem is that they reverse the pedagogy of the oppressed, resorting to a style of dialogue that treats the community as empty vessels to be filled with the “correct” knowledge and guided to the “correct” conclusion, rather than letting us be led by them and learn as much from them as they might from us. To assume that only we possess all the knowledge, and must therefore guide their conclusions accordingly, underestimates and, as Paulo Freire argued, dehumanizes the working class and their capabilities.

What has troubled me most in my time with the PSL is that every time I have offered productive criticism, a change of tactics, an improvement to our political education, I have not been truly heard. The responses from upper leadership are often so defensive that you would forget I am a member of this party who deserves to contribute to it meaningfully! My criticisms have, rather, been taken as an attack on you comrades and your hard work.

In my final conversation with [Redacted], I was told that the only way for me to “understand” the work is to “do it.” As if I have not attended dozens of protests and rallies, given speeches at them, driven 20-plus miles in the middle of a workday to defend my comrades from police, ICE, or counter-protesters, as if I haven’t been teargassed and shot at trying to aid my community and my comrades, as if I haven’t harassed my friends and family to vote for our candidates, as if I haven’t tried to bring the PSL to my Muslim community, as if I haven’t spent my own money, time, and energy struggling along the party line with everyone else.

As if it were not from these experiences that I made my observations and earnestly sought to contribute by analyzing where we could improve! For God’s sake, I have been in the PSL almost as long as I have lived in this state lol! It has been the center of my life here. How utterly demoralizing to have my critiques received as though they come from an overly dogmatic, unrealistic armchair revolutionary.

I ground this letter in theory to show that these concerns have a history, a solution, and a name. The PSL claims to be Marxist-Leninist and uses theory to justify many of its stances, and it is for that reason that I have brought theory into this discussion, to substantiate my perspectives with historical precedent, in the hope that they will be taken more seriously after my departure. (Addendum: I implore comrades to genuinely reflect on their work in the party and determine if that work is valuable enough to continue at all.) But I know leadership has meant no ill will and did not intend to push me away or diminish my perspectives. I know they are defending work they believe in, and I still believe in them as individual comrades.

Despite these efforts, despite my attempts to raise these concerns with higher levels of leadership, I have not been able to reconcile these differences. And because I cannot reconcile the party’s strategies, I cannot defend them. It is for these reasons that I have decided to leave the PSL.

I want to end with a special thank you to [redacted comrades] who have taught me so much through their own actions, who have offered me friendship and comradeship, who have had more faith in me than I have at times had in myself, and who I know will continue to do meaningful, hard work both in and out of the PSL, work that all future comrades can depend on to lead them toward the good fight. That love extends to each of you, and I look forward to seeing everything that you all will accomplish and cheer you on from the periphery. <3

Love you all! Salaam!

Recommended Reading:

• The Labor Aristocracy: The Material Basis for Opportunism in The Labor Movement
• Lenin’s polemics against the Economists
• On the Tactics of Opportunism
• The Foundations of Leninism – Theory
• The Foundations of Leninism – The Party
• BE CONCERNED WITH THE WELL-BEING OF THE MASSES, PAY ATTENTION TO METHODS OF WORK
• Mao’s Little Red Book
• How To Be A Good Communist

“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.

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”¹

Introductory Note

Before I begin, I would like to be transparent in sharing that this piece is largely reflective of my own experiences and observations of myself and others. Only in the past year (after more than four years of actively organizing and calling myself a Marxist) have I built up the courage and ability to truly notice, and more importantly rectify, my own liberal hobbyist tendencies. I want to encourage others who see themselves in this piece to do the same. Such rectification has come about not through metaphysical, undefined markers such as time or age, but as a result of intentional rigorous political education, reflection, struggle, and discomfort. The most important part is that I have not done any of these things alone. My beloved partner and comrades have helped me learn and grow in ways that I never thought were possible. So, to get things started, I wanted to thank my comrades in CCAP and the AEWL for their continued guidance and wisdom, not only generally but also with helping in the development of this piece. I never thought I would be able to actually write anything, but you allowed me to believe in myself. You all genuinely give me life and every action I take is inspired by you. In this horrid and dying place, in the face of true evils and insurmountable odds, if we have each other and are armed with the scientific application of Marxism, I am certain that we can win.

Secondly, as I will elaborate further in this piece, hobbyist tendencies stem from unchecked, individualist selfishness (a form of liberalism) which runs rampant among the west, particularly among the white settler amerikan left. To this point, in this article I will use “we” to refer to white leftist amerikan settlers, particularly those of the privileged petit-bourgeois or “petit-actionnaire” class. I am directing this piece mostly towards my peers in this similar class position. For further reading on the petit-actionnaire class, I highly recommend Morgan Phos’s article titled the“The Middle Class is Not a Myth“. In it, Phos lists one of the defining factors of this class as a unique phenomenon existing between the traditional definition of both proletariat and petit-bourgeois classes. People who “receiv[e] a lessened [but still significant] share of the imperial pie” but are still “enriched during the financial market’s upswings” through investments such as savings/interest accounts, small enterprises, ownership of land/property, and university education.²

On Hobbyism

Many settlers not only benefit, but also participate — whether actively or passively, willingly or unwillingly— in the genocide and suffocation of the Global South. Thus it is plain to see that our current “leftist” movement is filled with unprincipled organizations and individuals consisting of opportunists, misogynists, influencers, sellouts, spineless electoral candidates, u.s. “patriots,” and as we will get to, hobbyists. As frustrating as this is, it is to be expected of a nation that has been so ideologically stunted as theorized by Walter Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa:

“If underdevelopment were related to anything other than comparing economies, the most underdeveloped country in the world would be the United States, which practices external oppression on a massive scale, while internally there is a blend of exploitation, brutality, and psychiatric disorder.“³

Amerikan settlers suffer from a horrible and fatal case of liberalism and racist narcissism, while also living in the most powerful country on the planet with enough resources to suck the life out of everything that exists. We are genuinely raised to believe — and in many cases fully DO believe — that the u.s. has pretty much always existed and always will, and not only that, but also that it is the greatest place on Earth to live, and those other slummy countries can only wish that they had it as good as us. When this evil narcissism and oblivious selective memory is combined with actual world power and multiplied across the minds of millions of people in a single nation, it is no wonder that even our “socialists” consistently miss the mark and fall into the traps of hobbyism.

Hobbyism, or “the hobbyists”, are those individuals or even entire organizations who simply treat Marxism and Communist organizing as a hobby, rather than their life’s work or purpose. This is a grave error plaguing our movement today.

By definition, a hobby is an activity that an individual does in their free time. Even here in this definition, we see western mind-bending at play. The concept of “free time” implies that there is a separate portion of your time, in some instances even a majority of your time, which is not free, i.e. your “work time.”

Since many Communists are forced to work wage-labor jobs to survive, it is true that organizing is something that they do during their “free time” (outside of work time). However, this results in many organizers wrongly conflating their free time enjoyment activities with the work they do as an organizer. Doing one activity or another in your free time does not make that activity a hobby; the distinction lies in your prioritization of different free time tasks or activities. It is still important to make time for hobbies and interests, as they are vital to our own individual well-being, and thus allows us to have the capacity to do important organizing work. But rather than being viewed as an enjoyable, feel-good activity (i.e. a hobby), revolutionary organizing must be prioritized on the same plane as that of your own survival, and the survival of your family and community.

As stated above, hobbyism is a form of liberalism. It is easy to identify the liberals engaging in hobbyism, as that is essentially what liberal “activism” is. They use their artistic abilities to make quirky, funny protest signs, knit/crochet pussy hats (or its newest iteration, “melt the ICE” hats), or design Instagram infographics with milquetoast messaging. As Communists, we are quick to notice in what ways we are more dedicated and serious in our goals than the liberals. However, in leftist or Marxist circles,there are often individuals who conflate their hobbies and their activism, i.e., they see them as one and the same and do not see a need to separate them.

Mao writes in Combat Liberalism:

“Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second,and this gives rise to ideological, political, and organizational liberalism.”⁴

Hobbyism stems from a similar class-urge as careerism and is its dialectical opposite. The careerist seeks to resolve this contradiction (limited supply of time and responsibilities) by turning their organizing work into a full-time job, and thus descends to opportunism to ensure they can make a buck. The hobbyist attempts resolve it by making organizing into “play time,” often to absolve guilt or ease one’s worries about capitalism and their role in it. Hobbyists see Communism as something to do on the weekends, a cool aesthetic/personality trait, or a way to gain social media followers. I really encourage the reader here to identify any ways that they have noticed this tendency in themselves. It’s important to realize that the hobbyist is ultimately a liberal who is fine with the continuation of global suffering and will just hold rallies ad infinitum, run their candidates, and stockpile all of their funds until the very end. Flashy Communist aesthetics are often diametrically opposed to real, risky organizing. The hobbyist is loud and blatant to assure themselves of their dedication; the true Communist is not, to prevent the eyes of the state from falling upon them. Is this who you want to be? At what point will or won’t you give up on everything that is worth fighting for? It is time to be serious.

I would like to clarify here that I am not arguing that hobbies are useless or a waste of time. Quite the contrary! We still need interests outside of Communism, we still need hobbies. We cannot transform into warrior-monks and deny our human needs for mental breathing room. Creative outlets are imperative to our well-being, especially as the world around us crumbles. However, hobbies should be treated as assets for, and secondary to the movement for revolution, decolonization, and socialism.

Additionally, there is a difference between using your skills for the movement and treating organizing like a hobby. If you make music, host a benefit show to fund revolutionary activities or mutual aid; if you enjoy writing D&D campaigns, practice polemic and agitprop writing; if you’re good at drawing or knitting, commission your pieces to fund actual revolutionary organizations; if you’re into exercise or body-building, teach your comrades how to fight and defend themselves. All of these examples are important for the movement, but they are not the end all be all of organizing. The real work starts with rigorous study, struggle, and party building — eventually leading to tangible action to bring down the state apparatus.

Rachel Corrie, an amerikan settler who dedicated her life to the anti-zionist movement on the ground in Palestine, puts this in perspective for us as well. In a letter she wrote to her mother, just three weeks before being martyred by the iof in 2003, she writes:

“This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore.I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop.“⁵

If you say you want a better world, yes, your hobbies and interests, things you find joy in, are extremely important to make time for — and — none of them are more important or worthy of your time than doing whatever you can to bring the murderous u.s. empire to its knees. This is especially true for the white settler Communist. What the movement needs now is dedicated individuals and organizations who are willing to make the struggle for decolonization, world liberation, and socialism, their life’s work. This means risking it all. This means giving up your life, or the one you thought you knew.

“Risking it all” in this current moment does not equate to going out and committing reckless acts of terrorism that gets you or your comrades killed. In fact, as a revolutionary, at this moment in time, your death or incarceration would hinder the movement and your comrades significantly. Even martyrs who have died for the cause, whether by their own hand or not (to name a few: Aaron Bushnell, Rachel Corrie, and Tortuguita, may they rest in peace) arguably have not furthered the movement in a meaningful way, as we still exist under an incredibly oppressive fascist state apparatus. However, this does not mean that their deaths, along with all other revolutionary martyrs around the world, are in vain or will not be avenged.

“Giving up your life” in this context means that any way possible given your unique situation, you dedicate yourself to the movement. You practice criticism and self criticism constantly. You read, write, learn, and struggle. You go where work is needed, you make time. The hobbyist talks about “hating capitalism” and “revolution” but is still mainly focused in building their lives and careers as individuals. They are primarily concerned with their comfortable lives with their careers, precious savings, superwages with annual raises, and their 401(k)s. Even if they in theory disagree with the origins of settler ideals such as nuclear family goals and property ownership, a vast majority of left leaning individuals aspire towards these goals in the imperial core.

I know this to be true because this was me. The petit actionnaire class exists in such droves because the pull to conform, the benefits — however slim they really are — are intoxicating and convincing. One of the most fundamental (and suffocating) tenets of whiteness and settler ideology is to succumb to the urge to look away. Only by staring into the most stained parts of myself was I able to wake up to reality and begin to confront my errors. Every “leftist” in amerika who considers themselves a revolutionary must constantly combat these hobbyist and opportunist tendencies, because none of us are immune to it. We must face the uncomfortable reality that the world we know is dying, if not already dead. You must truly and genuinely ask yourself: do you really want a revolution? Do you really want a war? Are you willing to sacrifice, whatever it takes? Answer quickly, because we are out of time. As George Jackson states in Blood in my Eye:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”⁶

What do you have to lose? Come to terms with losing it. Stare into the gaping, black hole inside of this world and inside of yourself, soaked black with the blood of millions. You will want to look away, and it is important that you do not. This is the solution to the “privilege” question that is often mentioned in progressive circles. You must not only get used to discomfort but actively seek it. You will not have time for the things you wanted. You will not hoard any wealth you might have access to. You will not save for “retirement” in 30-40 years. You may have hobbies and interests, but ultimately the skills that you have should be used towards the cause of socialism. If you’d rather look away, and stay in your safe and oblivious bubble, admit this to yourself and leave the revolutionary circles. You aren’t welcome here.

If you are caught in the middle, recognizing the reactionary and hobbyist tendencies within yourself but wanting to overcome them, I encourage you to be honest and open with yourself and your comrades about this. We all have fear, we all have hesitations and drawbacks. But you must not retreat. Again, choose your fate and choose now.

It is not a recommendation, but a requirement, that as Communists, we must still find joy and pleasures in those things that are inherent to us being humans on Earth. Take care of yourself, because your comrades and the movement need you. Take time for your interests, your lovers, your children, your comrades; but your dedication, your purpose, in the end, is towards a better world, and towards the destruction of the united states and towards a new world order. You can work for a better world, not separate from, but for and in conjunction with your community, your lovers, children, and comrades. We must constantly remember Huey’s words:

“Revolutionary suicide does not mean that i and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.”⁷

1. Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung. Vol. 1. Pei-Ching I.E. Peking, [Foreign Languages Press] ; Oxford, 1978, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan. ︎
2. Phos, Morgan. “The Middle Class Is Not a Myth.” The Middle Class Is Not a Myth – by Morgan Phos, The Red Compass, 20 May 2023 ︎
3. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 1972. London, Verso, 1972, pp. 16-17. ︎
4. Mao, Zedong. Combat Liberalism. Peking, Foreign Languages Press, 1967. ︎
5. Rachel’s Writing and Emails from Palestine | the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. 29 Aug.
   ; 2007, rachelcorriefoundation.org/rachel/emails. ︎
6. Jackson, George. Blood in My Eye. 1972. Great Britain, Penguin Books, 1975, pp. 15–16. ︎
7. Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide. 1973. London, Penguin Books, 2009, p. 3. ︎

We urge all principled Communists to form a primary organization or take their existing primary organization out of the dead “parties” and begin the work of unification. Please contact us if you have questions.

To: CPUSA National Committee & District Leadership

From: “Disco Ambition”

Re: Formal Resignation

Date: 09/07/2025 (effective immediately)

After due consideration of the facts and my experiences within this organization, I hereby resign from any role in the Communist Party United States of America (CPUSA). Currently that role is chair of the Sedgwick County Club.

I am a Revolutionary Communist, in that while I recognize the usefulness of acting within the political field for delivering the message of Communism and reaching the masses, I do not hold to the idea that our liberation can be achieved via democratic or political means. I have no respect for the opinion that we can achieve anything by voting in a nation that has never had a real democracy, and I hold a commiserate level of respect for those who hold that view.

I came into the party, as many do, because of its legacy within the world communist movement. A legacy I see now is capitalized on by those in charge to serve their own ends. I was also foolishly unaware of the party’s entanglement with liberal politics and deviation from Communist principles until much later. I wanted to fight fascism. But fascism is here.¹ People are dying in the streets while the party that is supposed to be fighting it commits itself to singalongs and holds hands with the kinder face of the capitalist class in their vile support for the Democrat Party.

A Communist party is supposed to be the vanguard of the workers revolution. It must therefore be capable of meeting the needs of any moment in time by adapting to current material conditions. It is also supposed to maintain its independence from bourgeoisie movements and political parties. The current CPUSA is structurally incapable of meeting any of those requirements. This is because the leadership is an inbred structure composed entirely of liberal democratic apologists put in place through non-democratic means based on loyalty to leadership rather than competence² or Marxist-Leninist views. More unfortunate is the fact that the general bulk of the party is made up of passionate and committed Communists, which creates a revolving door of members as they come to realize the limitations the party has imposed on them and the movement as a whole. All this has resulted in an organization that takes up space in the cause for Communism while being at its heart distinctly anti-Communist in its refusal to conduct open dialog (material dialectics) and rejection of democratic methods of decision making (while decrying itself as conducting “democratic centralism”). These good members are left blindly organizing their communities while party leadership continues its uselessness.

Due to the time and effort I had invested in this organization³ and my belief in the need to change it from the inside, I too long ignored the lack of democratic decision making and stagnant leadership in the hopes that I could help build the party to the revolutionary Communist organization that it purports to be, problems which result in the party being impossible to change, even if there were enough people attempting to do so. In order to allow that new trajectory for the party, I saw as important two main goals. Those were the eventual reunification of the many Communist organizations in the U.S. and the reorganizing of the current party under a more democratic and flexible system, built to develop leadership and facilitate advancing Communist theory. My attempts at initiating formal procedures to those ends were met with years of neglect due to the incompetent and indifferent leadership of this organization at all levels.⁴

At the local level, I tried initiating a system similar to that which I outlined in a Reorganizing Proposal,⁵ hoping to demonstrate its benefits to national leadership. However, it has become more apparent that leadership is made up of people not interested in developing the party or advancing the cause past writing articles for a newspaper nobody reads or giving lectures on topics they are not qualified to give  in a desperate bid to remain relevant.⁶ Using the methods I outlined there, we had taken our club from two people holding infrequent meetings at a bar, to within three years a group that is playing a leading role in local activism composed of dozens of people across the state of Kansas. We did this while our apathetic district leadership were members of a defunct club of retirees.

While I was spending mental energy and time trying to convince non-members of the virtue of our organization and prove that virtue with tangible action, I faced accusations of having bad intentions regarding this party, being called a “wrecker” or participating in factionalism.⁷ The patronizing attitudes I have seen expressed to myself and others trying to effect change in this organization is demonstrative of a culture of elitism and a focus on dogmatic adherence to a misconception of Communist theory and its processes, where structure has been replaced with formality and work has been replaced with words, despite the known dangers of bureaucracy becoming the focus of a party.⁸ 

More patronizing was the constant attempts at gas lighting by some of our members demanding concrete proof of instances of undemocratic actions that we personally witnessed, such as those that occurred at the 32nd National Convention. I will not beat that dead horse more than necessary, but suffice to say that calling something a democratic decision does not make it so, and trying to convince people that witnessed it that they require proof of what occurred for their views to be considered valid is a childish act of bad faith. It is revealing of the direction of this party that most of those I met at that convention, people chosen by their Districts to represent them at the national level, have been either forced out of the party⁹ or have left due to their own frustration with it.¹⁰ I had remained in an attempt to raise the objection to the way things were done while hearing from my now non-member Comrades of the success they have experienced in different organizations that are more committed to ML doctrine.

Recently, I brought up a question for discussion on our club chat concerning a phone call I had just had with a club member who is part of the National Committee. In the effort to present the options for actions we could take in regards to our use of “Kansas Communist Party”¹¹ vs “Sedgwick County CPUSA”.¹² As it pertained to our relationship with our close allies in the local activist community, I also asked for their views on the matter in order to inform my own.¹³ This was seen as a breach of club discipline. This member has, in nearly every instance, raised objections to the presentations of questions or actions before the club or has attempted to subordinate the club to the views held by the leadership he is so unquestioningly devoted to, even when those views run counter to those held by the club members. Many of these objections have been based on an unoriginal devotion to obscure party lines or rigid readings of theory that this party has widely misapplied.¹⁴ It is tedious and interrupts the work being done, but at least it’s in keeping with the party leadership as a whole.

Another instance which now shines bright in my memory is my experience attending the “Peace Conference” in New York City in 2023. During my stay in the assigned dorms, I overheard “Noah”, a member from Illinois speaking about how they had purged members for not being sufficiently supportive of the Democratic Party. When I brought up my concerns with that claim at a club meeting in which Joe Sims was in attendance, Joe called me a liar and demanded proof of those statements, perhaps thinking that I would be carrying a tape recorder wherever I went, but more transparently in an attempt to silence any criticism or concerns with the party (this is made all the more hypocritical due to articles written in which he makes even more damning and unsupported claims, including accusing Kansan clubs being led by “ex-communists”, and other outright lies¹⁵). I later met that same Comrade at the 32nd Convention,¹⁶ in which he called me “chauvinist” for questioning the leadership’s continuing hold on power despite the obvious stagnation we are experiencing.

These stories outline a repeating pattern in the Party in which its leadership ignores its own bylaws and processes and then works fast to expel, silence, or otherwise exclude any member who raises objections to their policies. In the immediate past, the Party has done things like putting people in governing roles as a reward for loyalty, rather than due to competence or the will of those they will be governing, or refusing to issue the required financial reports to what is supposed to be the organizations highest authority¹⁷ (the Delegates of the National Convention). For an example, when the District Organizer position was about to open up in the Kansas/ Missouri district, rather than consult the membership, as is required by the CPUSA Constitution,¹⁸ the leadership unilaterally and unanimously decided to put in place the previously mentioned local club member without any vote or consultation with the membership.¹⁹ Due to these types of actions, we see good members leaving the party in favor of those who do not delve too deeply into the Party’s history or methods of “activism”. The Party cannot fathom itself as anything but the leader of any and all movements, even as they continue to prove themselves unworthy of leadership.

A great Comrade of mine once asked me “at what point [am I] fighting for an acronym”. I can no longer offer my support or participation in the CPUSA. I am tired of making excuses for a bunch of liberals and pork choppers more interested in what they consider journalism and singing than in the success of communism. I’m tired of trying to build a party only interested in perpetuating itself for the benefit of a few in leadership²⁰ while taking up space in activism. I’m just plain tired.

I know it will not happen, but I would encourage this document to begin a series of self-criticism within the party leadership. I would also encourage the present membership to use the structure we have built in the Kansas Communist Party as an example of the way to unite the U.S. Communist movement (at least locally) rather than putting it into the control of the CPUSA.

Update: Since sending this letter to the District and National leadership of the CPUSA, they have engaged in the predictable course of accusations against me, declaring that I am a “wrecker” and removing me from chats they control (overriding a club vote to do otherwise), as well as attempting to gain control over all the assets I created for the use of all local activists (they are claiming that my work was the work of the party, in an echo of the claims used by capitalist corporations when an employee leaves). Furthermore, they claimed entitlement to the name “Kansas Communist Party”, and have decided that they will not work with any organization I am a part of without permission from the national leadership , who will now directly oversee all local elections. They are perhaps forgetting that the entire sequence of events around my final decision here involved the confusion created around having two names for the same organization, and how we created the KCP to be under the sole control of the members as a group and not the national party, even including bylaws to that effect (objected to from those close to leadership). It is clear that the Leadership takes issue with any club acting independently, even when those clubs are doing the work they are supposed to be doing. It does not matter to Joe Sims or Rossana Cambron if the cause is benefiting, if they themselves are not getting the credit and a cut.

“Disco Ambition” – Previous Chair Sedgwick County, KS CPUSA

1. We live in a heavily militarized police state ruled by oligarchs & currently engaged in a genocide. ︎
2. Ex: After over a year, we were unable to get a list of present members contact information from the National or the District. ︎
3. Spent-cost heuristic is something I knew could happen, but ignored. ︎
4. My contacts in other clubs had faced the same, even when we proposed similar plans. ︎
5. See: Reorganizing Proposal. S.G.G. II. ︎
6. Such as the arrogance required for coastal city dwellers to talk about things such as rural engagement (& how Obama was good for us). ︎
7. Despite the party leadership itself having seemingly little understanding of that term. ︎
8. See: The fight against bureaucracy in the Soviet Union under Stalin | The Communists. Carlos Rule. 01/25/2022. ︎
9. I’m constantly told that these purges were “District Actions” in another patronizing and transparent attempt to protect the national leadership. ︎
10. On Why I’m Leaving the Party – The Red Clarion. Comrade Khadija. 08/01/2024. See also Why I Left the CPUSA – The Red Clarion. ︎
11. Registered openly as the “Kansas Communist Association” Kansas nonprofit, rather than by use of shell companies (see also) owned by party leadership (there are no Communist entities registered in NY). ︎
12. My analysis of the question can be found here, and the response can be found here. ︎
13. I, whenever possible, attempt to inform my opinions with those of people around me connected to the issue. ︎
14. I have long wondered if anyone constantly citing “Left Wing Communism” has actually read it. ︎
15. CP National Committee says “Keep your eyes on the prize” – Communist Party USA. Joe Sims. 07/22/2024 ︎
16. Where he was made a member of the NC for his devotion. ︎
17. Violating the CPUSA Constitution, Article VII, Section 1. (accessed 2025) ︎
18. Violating the CPUSA Constitution, Article II, Section 4, & Article V, Section 4. (accessed 2025) ︎
19. Minutes of the CPUSA National Executive Board. September 3, 2025 ︎
20. Ex: John Batchtell, the head of The People’s World and committed democrat, (I previously had access to IRS records indicating his income, but have since lost that access). ︎

On June 16, 2025, days after the Paramount Insurrection and the popular attacks on the ICE facility at Delaney Hall, Unity–Struggle–Unity Press received a double criticism from our comrades at the Southern Coalition for Revolutionary Consciousness identifying two recent articles in the Red Clarion as “left-opportunist,” “adventurist,” “defeatist,” and “bowing to spontaneity.” These comrades ask for a self-criticism to be published by the Press containing the self-criticisms of the two authors and the Editorial Board (“any persons involved in the publishing” of the two articles). The comrades take issue with “Forward the Red Flag,” and “Liberalism and Fascism with Communist Characteristics.”

We disagree with the propositions put forward by these comrades and decline to offer such self-criticism. This article contains our response.

To begin with, we must clearly state the comrades’ argument: that the acts of Elias Rodriguez, and all support for those acts, constitute “left opportunism,” “defeatism,” “tailism,” and “adventurism.” The comrades counterpose the strategy of “raise[ing] consciousness for the ultimate purpose of raising the progressive movement’s consciousness.” What this raising of consciousness involves or how it is to be achieved, our comrades are not at all clear! Certainly, given their criticisms, they believe it does not include the denunciation of moribund parties when they distance themselves from political violence, nor can it encompass the defense of spontaneous political terror. Our comrades also warn us that Communists must not prepare the masses to confront the enemy state with guns and bombs. This, they caution, is “the line of an Anarchist!” They urge instead that we engage in a two-line struggle, although with whom is not clear. The masses? The would-be terrorists? The narrow field of other Marxists?

Before we respond to these criticisms, let us define our terms as Marxists understand them. Opportunism is the adoption of politically-expedient but incorrect positions primarily with the aim of capturing a popular sentiment. Adventurism is the action of “tiny groups” or whole parties without roots in the masses. Defeatism is the position that a revolution is impossible or that socialism cannot be achieved. Tailism is the adoption of positions that have already been made irrelevant by mass consciousness.

The comrades begin their criticism of what they identify as our “left” errors with a quote by Bukharin: “All the aims which a party representing the interests of its class vigorously pursues constitutes the party program.” To this we must ask: What is the purpose of this quotation? What party are our comrades referring to? What class? What program? These are things that do not yet exist. What bearing does the conception of a party program have on our activities? I do not understand the comrades to be arguing that there exists a positive party or program to adhere to. It is my hope that they do not refer to an existing class-in-itself, much less a class-for-itself, within the U.S. that constitutes a revolutionary base. No such class presently exists! It is our job to call that class into existence — indeed, it seems our comrades know (or perhaps instinctually felt) this, for they later quote False Nationalism, False Internationalism, “No revolutionaries find conveniently ready-made, pre-packaged, social bases, but must develop and build the masses and themselves in the same process.”

Indeed, we intend to provide an analysis of the immediately revolutionary strata in a forthcoming article, relying on a formula that compares an individual or household’s present wages to:

Wages
– Superwages
– State benefits
– Real property
+ Value of socialized benefits under communism

(which, not coincidentally, provides insight into the formation of a program, where we identify housing, healthcare, child care, education, transportation, food, and utilities as socialized benefits).

Our comrades clearly see the necessity of building the party, but in their eagerness, their analysis considers that party already built. They criticize anarchic tactics that the masses themselves are adopting. Very well! But they go on to criticize this Press for drawing from those tactics object propaganda lessons to rouse the lowest and deepest members of the working classes to act in their own defense. They mechanically repeat the adages of parties of the past, but the historical development of our present situation must be accounted for. The chief error of the CPUSA, etc., is a warmed-over Lovestoneism. This is the real defeatism! The class that should serve as the motor of the revolution has been completely disorganized over the past century. Its members have trouble even dreaming of a tomorrow free from the capitalist state and have entirely swallowed the Lovestoneite deviation. This cannot be combatted by struggling with other Marxists alone; only propagandizing on the actions and trials faced by the masses themselves can bring them to that understanding.

Indeed, we fear that our comrades have misidentified the masses entirely. “The collective,” they warn us, “is not ready for armed struggle.” It is the advanced masses themselves who are the very people engaging in violence in Paramount and New Jersey! Perhaps our comrades consider the sedate, middle-of-the-road centrist as the “masses.” Perhaps they envision Democratic voters as the masses. The masses, however, the revolutionary strata of the masses, are those who routinely do not vote. Their advanced elements are the Communists. Those coming into consciousness must be guided into our ranks in order to form the revolutionary party.

There is no division between us and the masses.

We are already embarked on the journey to form that party. It is the purpose of this Press and the All-Empire Worker’s League to make it a reality. We ask our comrades to consider advancing the project of forming the party, of adding their voice to the others that now flock to the red banner.

We cannot ignore the spontaneous movement of the masses — this is hardly “bowing” to spontaneity. To disclaim Elias Rodriguez or the Paramount Insurrection as adventurism is to split ourselves from the masses, to declare that the active portions of the masses are in fact not the masses at all. Under this rubric, the masses in motion will never be recognized. We cannot intend to go into direct conflict with the state while wringing our hands about violence against it. On the contrary, we are required to harness this spontaneous energy, not restrain it. The masses must be made ready to do violence. Our comrades accuse us, by refusing to condemn spontaneous terror, of “tailing” the masses. It is the attempt to restrain popular feelings that “tail” the masses — indeed, it is not possible both to bow to mass spontaneity and to tail the masses, for tailism is the adoption of positions that are already outdated, that the masses have already discarded as useless, that have outlived their usefulness.

The comrades also take us to be claiming that any and all anti-state violence heightens the struggle. We say no such thing! But, to deny the evidence of our eyes — the actual heightening of the struggle from October 7, to the Student Intifada, to Aaron Bushnell, to Elias Rodriguez, to the Paramount Insurrection, to Delaney Hall, is to risk a state of permanent tailism and obsolescence. Our comrades are wrong where they suggest that the spontaneous acts of any portion of the masses cannot drive struggle forward. They would, I think, struggle in vain to find any Communist who has held this view uncontested. Spontaneous acts can heighten the struggle, but when they are not guided by the organized party of the revolutionary proletariat, they risk defeat, disorganization, and co-option by the liberal reformist currents.

Although our comrades denounce CPUSA and PSL in words, their criticism in effect embraces the CPUSA position: to allow the “revolutionary” revisionists to teach the masses that Communism is passivity and cowardice.

Briefly, as to our comrades’ last section on safeguarding the movement, here, our comrades fully embrace the CPUSA position with only the slightest hedging. They hold that the security apparatus of the U.S. state requires us to “keep[] our people out of the enemy’s hands and… shield[] them from the political police’s awareness.” No revolution can remain underground. This is a call not to organize an aboveground, unrelated to any of the other issues our comrades address. There is risk. We must be prepared to accept that risk. Anyone who is not prepared to accept that risk is not prepared to be a revolutionary.

These statements also demonstrate a mechanical thinking; there is a dialectic between security and visibility. There is a contradiction between organizing the class and staying hidden. Right now, the disorganization of the class is its defining feature. This means we must overcome that disorganization by above-ground work.

We hope these thoughts are taken in the spirit in which they are meant. We invite our comrades to further conversations on this subject, and further struggle. More, we hope our comrades will take seriously our efforts to unite all that can be united, and, true to their own words, that the thing of greatest importance is the coherence of the movement, act to cohere it and organize it. Let us take concrete steps toward unification.

Southern Coalition for Revolutionary Consciousness (SCRC) Letter to the Editor

“All the aims which a party representing the interests of its class vigorously pursues constitue the party program.”

Nikolai Bukharin, The ABC of Communism

This article is a response to and criticism of the recent Red Clarion articles “Forward the Red Flag” and “Liberalism and Fascism with Communist Characteristics”. The article discusses specifically the left-opportunism present within both articles regarding the prevalence of adventurism, anarchism, and the general tendency towards the so-called “propaganda of the deed”. We see the defense or affirmation of these tendencies by Communists as opportunistic and defeatist. This is also an example of the present ideological weakness of the Communist movement in the imperial core. Ultimately, it is our understanding that moving beyond this current stage of development regarding the Communist movement, as well as the broader progressive movement, requires that all those who have embraced the Communist ideology further dedicate themselves to the development of a Communist program for revolution as well as the establishment of a legitimate Communist party to struggle out the way forward. This task necessarily demands that Communists refuse the opportunistic instinct to bow to spontaneous action, and instead strive to provide the Communist movement, and the progressive movement, that which it has historically lacked and still desperately needs, revolutionary class consciousness and organization.

There is a common refrain that those who critique in any way the spontaneous actions of individuals, such as the action undertaken recently by Elias Rodriguez, are counterrevolutionary, right-opportunists, or simply cowards. In some instances this line is proven correct, as in the instance of the capitulationist and defeatist anti-violence positions taken by the so-called Party for Socialism and Liberation(PSL)and the Communist Party of the United States(CPUSA) regarding the action. These positions, which totally denounced the action, the CPUSA calling for “militant non-violent protest”, are examples of the ideological weakness and counterrevolutionary limitations of these organizations. Both of these so-called parties refused to embrace a revolutionary line on revolutionary violence against the imperial/colonial violence that is regularly practiced by the enemies of the oppressed and working masses globally. In doing so both PSL and the CPUSA have revealed their inability to guide the conscious development of the Communist movement nor the broader progressive movement that seeks to overcome the present state of things.

“Now the struggle will be unfolding primarily within the revolutionary trend around the program, strategy and tactics of socialist revolution which is first of all a question of how is revolution unfolding objectively, the ideological line, and second of all what shall communists do about it, the political line.”

Committee for Scientific Socialism, History of Two-Line Struggle on Party Building

That fact acknowledged, the line that regards Elias Rodriguez’s actions not as adventurist but instead as “liberatory acts of spontaneous terror”(Gracchus) is plainly opportunistic. Spontaneous actions by individuals or by organizations that outstrip the current stage of development of both the objective conditions as well as the capabilities/consciousness of the subjective forces of progress is the essence of adventurism. Communists can and should understand the manifold reasons and forces behind all things in reality, however, there is a line between understanding and affirmation. It remains painfully true that the present organization of the Communist movement and progressive movement at large is currently incapable of stopping or even noticeably slowing down the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by the Zionist entity and its master the USA. This reality is beyond regrettable and deeply shameful to admit, but more than this it remains necessary that this fact be acknowledged. The collective is not yet ready for armed struggle in part because they are not yet conscious of the necessity of armed struggle. Discounting the present state of the progressive movement and running ahead of it in practice without its unyielding support can only and has only resulted in activists, organizers, would-be revolutionaries, and their organizations being overwhelmingly targeted and destroyed by the enemy’s political police. The apparent lack of desire to combat and end this veritable hemorrhaging of our people from the movement at large is due principally to the worship of spontaneity embraced and proselytized primarily by anarchists.

There are certain ideological and political principles that all those who have chosen to embrace Communism and the struggle for its realization must also comprehend. These principles are borne out of the historical and current experiences of Communists struggling for revolution and the end to the rule of the exploiting classes. Opposing anarchism/adventurism and refusing to align oneself with the belittling of the conscious element is one such principle. Comprehending what we as Communists should know through both study and practice, that spontaneous actions cannot be depended on for the development and sustenance of class consciousness, is another aspect of this commitment. The Communists of this era should feel free to be inspired by the ongoing spontaneous actions and rebellions, these are clear signs that the forces of progress and resistance are alive within the masses of oppressed and working peoples. However, we should remember that our duty is to raise our consciousness for the ultimate purpose of raising the progressive movement’s consciousness. The forces of progress and resistance must be cultivated and developed into revolution; dependency on spontaneity has proven insufficient for this monumental task.

“Just as it is important to remember that theory is not just book learning, it is important to remember that practice is more than engaging in spontaneous struggle.”

I Wor Kuen (IWK), Make the Struggle for Marxism-Leninism Mao “Tsetung” Thought Central in Party Building

The claim within Forward the Red Flag that “one of the tasks of the Communists, especially now, while the revolutionary class in the West is scattered and incoherent, is to teach the masses to reach toward a revolutionary horizon; it’s to give the working class the power to imagine a future where they actually confront the enemy class and its footsoldiers not metaphorically, but actually—with guns and bombs” is not the line of a Communist but that of an Anarchist. Where they should argue for coherence of the Communist and progressive movements into revolutionary organizations, they instead argue only for confrontation with guns and bombs. Confrontation with guns and bombs is nothing new to the struggle against the settler-bourgeois state. Confrontation with guns and bombs, and the call for such confrontation, is not enough to develop class consciousness or foment revolution. Communists who know at all the history of the struggle here know this fact, because in the history of the struggle here it has not been enough. The weather in the Communist movement has unfortunately not changed very much since the seventies.

In addition to this ideological and political failure, the author’s further claim that Russia “had to pass through Narodism before it arrived at Marxism Leninism”(Gracchus) unqualified by the fact that this passing only came as the result of bitter ideological struggle between the Marxists and Narodnaya Volya is questionable at best and undeniably problematic. This line lends itself to the legitimizing of the current anarchist trend in the progressive movement. The very trend that has done more to disorganize movements than to organize them, like with the STOPCOPCITY movement in Atlanta. Omitting this fact regarding the history of Communist struggle cannot go without direct criticism, therefore a written self-criticism is called for as a consequence of this lack of ideological and political consistency and quality. In addition to this call for self-criticism, a reading list will be provided for assistance with overcoming this lack of historical and ideological consciousness.

“Opportunism is the sacrifice of the long range interest of the working class for the immediate interests of a minority of the working class. It is bourgeois thinking developed as a trend in the working class movement. Common forms of opportunism in the working class today include such outlooks as reformism, trade unionism, national chauvinism, narrow nationalism and anarchism.”

I Wor Kuen (IWK), Make the Struggle for Marxism-Leninism Mao “Tsetung” Thought Central in Party Building

The author of Liberalism and Fascism with Communist Characteristics makes similarly opportunistic considerations of Elias Rodriguez’s actions. The claim that Rodriguez “tangibly brought the struggle for liberation into the rear base of the US-israeli empire”(Winter), seems to argue that the struggle til May 22nd had not been tangible, and is tangible only now that Rodriguez is in enemy hands and beyond our still limited/non-existent organizational capabilities of freeing him. Furthermore the claim that Rodriguez’s actions represent a “heightening of the struggle”(Winter) is also opportunistic. Is the struggle heightened every time an individual undertakes violent action against the enemy state? If so then this form of heightening is undoubtedly insufficient for heightening the struggle to the level of revolution, seeing that individual actions against the enemy state occur and have occurred regularly for the entire history of the struggle in the US and in the Zionist entity. The conclusion instead should have been, recognizing the insufficiency of individual spontaneous actions, adventurism, that Communists should further commit themselves to the consolidation of the movement for conscious collective armed struggle against the enemies of the colonized and exploited masses.

In their attempts to rightly critique the capitulationist and counter-revolutionary positions taken by PSL and the CPUSA, both authors go too far and lend their conclusions to anarchistic operations. They, like many in the progressive movement, are in awe of spontaneity and it leads them to uncritically support spontaneous actions committed by those who have insufficient faith in and understanding of the masses of this land. The current lack of a Communist program for revolution and the absence of a party are not license for today’s Communists to forfeit ideological principle for the sake of combating capitulationism, revisionism, and right-opportunism. What our movements lack it is incumbent upon the conscious element to develop and provide. That development still underway, failure to resist bowing to spontaneity is a harm to both the Communist movement and the progressive movements generally.

“The unity between ‘left’ and right opportunism is that both belittle the subjective factor in its ability to correctly assess the social conditions and in its role of consciously bringing politics to the masses and transforming the spontaneous movement into a class conscious one.”

I Wor Kuen (IWK), Make the Struggle for Marxism-Leninism Mao “Tsetung” Thought Central in Party Building

Elias Rodriguez should have been surrounded by comrades and acted with the unyielding support of the Communist and progressive movements as he undertook armed action against the Zionist entity and its factotums. That he went without these things is not his fault, but the fault of the current political and organizational insufficiency of the Communist movement. Until we have united our movement around a Communist line on revolution, a program, and until we have consolidated this unity through the establishment of a Communist party, people with the will to struggle like Elias will be left without in their struggle against the forces of reaction. If Elias Rodriguez “would not have done what he did, because there would have been a viable alternative”(Gracchus) then the conclusion reached by every Communist should be that Communists must provide the progressive movement, which is continually conveying a desire to struggle, its viable alternative to spontaneous rebellion. Such a viable alternative can again only be realized through the process of developing a truly revolutionary program and the establishment of a Communist party.

The principal responsibility for Communists in the imperial core is to lead and guide the development of the progressive movement, not tail the spontaneous rebellions that are the inevitable consequence of the constant exploitation and oppression wrought by the settler-colonial bourgeois state.  If the consciousness of the exploited and oppressed masses is limited, and it is, then the practice will also be limited whatever it appears to be at the moment. The principal task of Communists at this current stage of development is to cultivate revolutionary class consciousness among the exploited masses. Revolutionary class consciousness, more than just the acknowledgement of bourgeois exploitation and colonial/imperial violence, means being conscious of the need for and inevitability of the total dictatorship of the oppressed and working masses over and above the current ruling classes of oppressors. This kind of consciousness is not ready-made nor can it be the result of spontaneous or haphazard practice. For its development it requires dedicated ideological and political training in the theory, history, and practice of scientific socialism.

“No revolutionaries find conveniently ready-made, pre-packaged social bases but must develop and build the masses and themselves in the same process.“

False Nationalism, False Internationalism

Call for Self-Criticism from Red Clarion authors

To remain consistent with the goals listed in the Red Clarion mission statement; to develop revolutionary consciousness in the masses and a revolutionary vanguard party, and because you have declared yourselves Communists, we representatives of the Southern Coalition for Revolutionary Consciousness, who have united  to the same goals, are calling for a collective public self criticism from any persons involved in the publishing of “Forward the Red Flag” and “Liberalism and Fascism with Communist Characteristics” on the basis of these articles’ left-opportunism and affirmation of adventurism. We also request a public reassessment of spontaneity and left-opportunism, clarifying for readers that criticism of right-opportunism should not lead to the unprincipled affirmation of anarchism and adventurism generally.

If Communists allow the development of the revolutionary movement to remain at the level of spontaneous action, then we have chosen to sacrifice the future vanguard for moments of temporary excitement and acts of adventurism. Acts that more often than not lead to little more than arrests and movement stagnation must be struggled against. We suggest a thorough reading of the works listed in the provided reading list. We also call for a public reassessment of Elias Rodriguez’s action that emphasizes the importance of a legitimate Communist party to the consolidation of movement practice. Finally, it should be acknowledged that his action, and other such adventurist undertakings, are not required for the development of a legitimate Communist party.  In being critical of these mistakes, and struggling for a more-correct way forward, we not only allow ourselves to evolve, but also affirm the scientific character of our ideology. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge, correcting flawed practices, alongside comprehending the lessons from our revolutionary predecessors, is how the future we have united to building becomes inevitable.

“The Communist Party does not fear criticism because we are Marxists, the truth is on our side, and the basic masses, the workers and peasants, are on our side.”

Mao Zedong, Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work

“We have the Marxist-Leninist weapon of criticism and self-criticism. We can get rid of a bad style and keep the good.”

Mao Zedong, Report to the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Note on Movement Security and Care

Anyone who does not feel any concern at the thought/possibility/likelihood of themselves or others being arrested or targeted by the political police or the other organized servants of reaction either does not know the history of the struggle both here and abroad or has simply decided not to care. Whatever the reason, such a perspective on matters of movement security and longevity is objectively detrimental to the struggle against capitalist exploitation and imperial/colonial domination. This brand of amateurishness has resulted in scores of activists, organizers, and revolutionaries being brutalized, imprisoned, and murdered by the enemy state and their forces. Countless more have chosen to abandon movement organizing entirely on the basis of their negative experiences of engaging with the enemy. At present we have neither the organizational infrastructure nor the resources to protect those who have embraced the struggle. What is worse is that the progressive movement in general seemingly lacks the conscious belief that our activists, organizers, and developing revolutionaries should be protected, that their lives should be valued above and beyond mere spectacles for the masses that have long gone unmoved by mere spectacles.

The “goal of security,” as laid out by J. Sakai in Basic Politics of Movement Security, “is to protect the movement itself, to let the larger struggle against capitalism move forward.” Adopting a lackadaisical perspective on what individuals should be prepared to risk in the struggle, or how they should undertake risks, does not at all protect the movement, but instead views the very people needed to forward the movement as merely cannon fodder for the political police and the enemy state. No one should be expected to “throw their lives away” for the realization of the revolution. Lives must be given and dedicated to revolution, aimed at serving the revolution. The revolution is not served through getting arrested or brutalized by the police. It is not served when people imagine that the only or best way to confront or resist the violence of the settler-colonial bourgeois state is by bowing to spontaneity and forgoing conscious development. It is on the conscious element to ensure that every sacrifice, every gift of a life to revolution, has the impact on the struggle that such a sacrifice should always have. There have already been so many sacrifices, and there will necessarily be countless more to come.

The revolution is inevitable, but the process lags every time Communists concede to carelessness and defeatism regarding our movement, our responsibilities, the broader struggle, and decide to bow to spontaneous action. It is more meaningful to struggle for keeping our people out of the enemy’s hands and increasingly shielding them from the political police’s awareness. It’s more meaningful to work now on developing the networks, strategies, and organizations that will ensure, whatever ways the enemy state and the political police seek to attack the movement, the movement will continue moving forward. 

Reading List

• False Nationalism, False Internationalism, E. Tani and Kae Sera
• What Is To Be Done, Lenin
• On Practice, Mao
• Materialism and the Dialectical Method, Cornforth
• History of Two-Line Struggle on Party-Building, Committee for Scientific Socialism
• Make the Struggle for Marxism-Leninism Mao “Tsetung” Thought Central in Party Building, I Wor Kuen (IWK)

[New Britain, CT] – We are inviting any and all media to our rally at Central Park in New Britain on April 22nd 2024 at 3:30 pm to bring attention to the gentrification unfolding in New Britain and around CT, as well as the gentrification yet to come. It is also to call out one luxury developer in particular, Jasko Development LLC and its CEO Avner Krohn. He and his company have been described as leading New Britain’s “comeback” (translation: bringing rich people in and kicking poor, homeless, and long time residents out). Like all luxury developments that have been built in once poor and underdeveloped areas across the U.S, the 3 luxury developments Jasko is building downtown will release the floodgates of gentrification. As more wealthy people, who can afford Jasko’s $1650 / month rent for a studio, move to New Britain, as more landlords in the surrounding area speculate that they can charge more for rent with the influx of rich people, the homeless, poor, and long time residents who can’t afford the rent increases and housing costs will be displaced. They will either end up homeless or be forced to move to an area with cheaper housing. It’s a process and story that has unfolded in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Boston. Look at the changes in New Haven over the past 10-15 years!

We are here to say enough! Jasko Development LLC and Avner Krohn are the face of gentrification in New Britain whether they intend to be or not. If they want to be helpful to the New Britain community, where plenty of people are desperate for housing they can qualify for, then they should meet the following demands from the community:

1. Cut the rent in 1⁄2 and don’t raise it
2. Remove 3x income requirements, disregard prior evictions, credit history, and criminal records,
   no application fees
3. Prevent police harassment, especially of homeless and poor people, on your property
4. Only rent to New Britain residents, employ residents of New Britain with a living wage
5. Subsidize rents with your estimated $7.5 million tax break

If they are unwilling to do the above, then they make it clear they are not for the people of New Britain in these desperate times, they are only about their money, and we need to evict them before they evict us!

It’s election season in the USA, and once again, we are being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. On one hand, we have Donald J. Trump with his dangerous racist rhetoric, his misogyny, his open bribery and crimes. On the other hand we have Joseph R. Biden with his uncritical support for genocide, his repetition of zionist lies, and his continuation of Trump’s fascist border policies. How is one to choose and proudly cast a vote for either of two obvious evils? 

Comrade George Jackson in 1969 expressed this conundrum succinctly, “The fascists already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose them and combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.”

As communists, we should analyze this election scientifically. We can look at present and historical conditions to reach our answer of what is to be done.  

Rajani Palme Dutt in 1935 spoke on the dangers of lesser evil voting, “the continued hesitation and retreat of the reformist working class leadership at each point (policy of the ‘lesser evil’) encourages the growth of fascism. On this basis, fascism is able finally to step in and seize the reins, not through its own strength, but through the failure of working class leadership. The collapse of bourgeois democracy is succeeded, not by the advance to proletarian democracy, but by the regression to fascist dictatorship.”

We understand that, throughout history, liberals have always sided with fascists. [Editors: Liberals here mean not only the left “aisle” of the U.S. state, but the entire tradition behind liberalism; these liberals — private property owners opposed to absolute monarchy and systems of privilege — definitely turned on the movement for liberation when it attempted to extend its work to property in the middle of the 19th century and have been implacable enemies of anti-propertarian ideologies ever since.] Liberals vote and govern in ways that protect their private property and bourgeois interests. While working class liberal-minded folks can be reached with a message of class solidarity, the professional managerial class will always protect their interests. 

Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds. 

Tailing the Democratic Party is out of the question. This major party is fully beholden to the corporate interests that finance it. The DNC is the party of Silicon Valley, of defense contractors, and is now the party of war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza. We, not only as communists, but as humans, cannot back Joe Biden for president in 2024. 

It should go without saying, but we also cannot back the Republican Party. They are the party of Christian Nationalism, of right to work laws, of abortion bans and homophobia. No, we will not support the GOP nor Donald Trump. 

Section Four of the CPUSA Party Program states:

Both Democrats and Republicans have collaborated over many decades to restrict ballot access for ’minor’ parties, massively increasing signature requirements to get on the ballot and increasing the percentage of votes needed to remain on the ballot over several election cycles. Many media outlets also restrict democracy by focusing on the horserace and personality aspects of elections, reporting endlessly on polls and perceptions rather than on coverage of the issues of importance to voters.

We, as the Communist Party, are considered a minor party. We are running several candidates in local and state races, but we are not running a POTUS candidate in 2024. While we recognize that electing socialists and communists into the bourgeois system will not change it (only revolution can accomplish that goal) we understand that electoral struggle is one method to spread our message of working class solidarity, and to show the masses that the system under which we live is the cause of our pain. We can and should utilize bourgeois electoralism to advance our cause. 

There are many minor parties running candidates with platforms that align more closely to our goals than those of the major bourgeois parties. So the question now is: “Shall we form a United Front against fascism with one or more of these minor parties?”

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is running a presidential campaign in 2024, and standing with them could be a great opportunity to form a United Front against the fascism of the neoliberal Democrats and the MAGA Republicans. 

The PSL candidates, Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, have seven major policy goals stated on their website: 1. Seize the Biggest 100 Corporations, Create A New Economy for the People, 2. Overthrow the Dictatorship of the Rich — Build a Democracy That Serves the Working Class, 3. End the Rule of Money and Lock Up the Corrupt Elite, 4. Cut the Military Budget by 90% — Peace, Not War with China & Russia, 5. End the War on Black America, 6. Defend Women’s Rights, Full Equality for LGBTQ People, and 7. Save the Planet from Capitalism. 

These seven simple goals are not wholly different from the CPUSA party program goals. Claudia and Karina are also under no delusion that they might win the election or if they were to, that their victory would fundamentally change the United States. It couldn’t, but, as Lenin explained, running socialist candidates at all levels is one way to spread our message of socialism, and this is their goal in 2024. 

Many CPUSA members have a lot of experience working with Party for Socialism and Liberation comrades on the ground in our communities. We understand that they are good, principled comrades. PSL has been incredibly active in the FREE PALESTINE movement, they rallied with us against the Dobbs decision, and have worked with us on lobbying city councils regarding issues of policing. 

Dr. Cornel West, while not a Marxist, is running a progressive campaign for president as an independent candidate. His platform contains the following pillars: 1. Economic Justice, including a $27/hour minimum wage and breaking up monopolies, 2. Worker Justice — establishing a workers bill of rights and ending “right to work,” 3. Environmental Justice, 4. Health Justice by nationalizing the entire healthcare industry and protecting women’s and LGBTQ healthcare, 5. Racial Justice, including reparations to Black Americans, 6. Transformative Justice — ending mass incarceration and investing in alternatives to policing, 7. Voter Justice — instituting ranked choice voting, 8. Education Justice — canceling all student debt and making community and state colleges tuition free, 9. LGBTQIA Justice, 10. Gun Violence Justice, 11. Immigration Justice, and 12. Global Justice. 

The Communist Party has worked with Dr. Cornel West in the past through the Poor People’s Campaign. He has never claimed to be a Marxist, but he is an anti-imperialist. Take a closer look at his twelfth campaign pillar, Global Justice. This plan includes the goal of an expeditious closure of global U.S. military bases, disbanding NATO, and ending all weapons shipments to Ukraine to instead invest in peacemaking; ending military aid to Israel, ending zionist apartheid of the Palestinian people, and pressuring the U.N. to establish a program for Palestinian dignity and liberation; ending the embargo on Cuba and normalizing relations by removing the nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; and no intervention, military or otherwise, in Haiti. 

Dr. West’s platform of anti-imperialism is well thought out, and stands in stark contrast to the stances held by either leading bourgeois party in the United States. Working through an independent grassroots campaign like his is one way we can spread our message of working class solidarity and anti-imperialism. He is a candidate who has aligned with us in the past, and would likely welcome our alliance in this election cycle. 

If we want to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, we need to work together with other progressive forces, and this election season is an opportune time to reach out. We have built-in allies in the PSL, the Dr. West campaign, Palestinian liberation and anti-war groups, labor unions, and workers all over the country disillusioned with the two corporate-aligned imperialist parties. We can use our collective power to show people that we don’t have to settle for an “evil” candidate, but that we can demand a different way of life. We can disrupt this election cycle, and use it to bring working class Americans into the struggle. 

So, let’s form a true United Front against fascism in 2024. Let us join forces with other socialist and communist parties, unions, and unaffiliated comrades. Let us work together to defeat all the faces of fascism, including both major political parties in the USA and their corporate overlords. Let us stand firmly against zionism, and all aspects of settler colonialism. Let us collectively say “No!” to militarization of the southern border, “No!” to the oppression of women and trans people, and “No!” to the over-policing of Black and Brown neighborhoods. 

Let us say “Yes!” to solidarity, “Yes!” to working class power, and “Yes!” to socialism. Let us say “Yes!” to a United Front against the fascist threat. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

As a former Sergeant who served in the U.S. Army for almost a decade, I can relate strongly to the guilt that Comrade Bushnell felt from the realization of his complicity. I too, much like Aaron, was prepared to take my life in an act of defiant protest against the crimes I realized I was committing. I was going to shoot myself at a range in front of my battalion command team as an act of desperate protest.

I’m glad I didn’t follow through on that plan, because now I’m able to commit myself to the cause of liberation. I also get an opportunity to raise my children with these values — something that dead people can’t do. I bring this up not to make it about me, but rather to emphasize that l know exactly what drove him to commit self-immolation. 

I never met Bushnell, but it pains me I will never have an opportunity to meet someone with whom I feel so much solidarity. What I see, besides a younger me, is someone willing to forgo a comfortable life of privilege, an awesome DevOps career, and a whole life in front of him. He was willing to forgo all of this so that he could offer himself in service of colonized people he’d never met, half a world away, simply because he viewed them as human beings deserving of liberation. Comrade Bushnell’s selfless love for humanity is the highest example of all that a Communist should strive to be.

I can’t change the fate of Comrade Bushnell, but I do know that I can reach the other Bushnells in the military. I know they’re out there. They aren’t common, and I never met one while I was in service. But I know they exist, because I was one. And Comrade Bushnell martyred himself as one. They’re out there, and they would make invaluable servants to the cause of liberation.

All comrades, civilian or military, are worth more to our struggle alive than dead. This is not said to detract from Aaron’s heroic sacrifice, but it has to be made clear: burning yourself alive does not disrupt the flow of weapons. It does not impact things materially. As Marxists, it is the material which we care about.

It is in that spirit that I want to reach out with a heartfelt plea of solidarity to all United States Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. To put the bottom line up front: I challenge you to be bold, fearless and principled, just as Aaron was. I will close out this brief letter assigning you a mission and laying forth my commander’s intent. You are responsible for executing the principles of mission command to reach the desired end-state.

My commander’s intent to you, American Soldier, is to disrupt the flow of weapons to the Zionist Entity (so-called “Israel”) by whatever means are available to you. The desired end state of this operation is for the United States Military to cease the shipment of arms to the Zionist Entity. It’s a broad vision; I trust in your creative faculties and outstanding leadership to fill in the blanks, draft up your own OPORD, and iteratively implement the Military Decision Making Process. Only you know what you are best equipped with and able to accomplish.

With that said, ensure that you are creative in your thinking, intelligent in your planning, and do not limit yourselves. Be realistic, but be bold. The revisionist Michael Harrington developed the poisonous slogan “Left Wing of the Possible”; I’m telling you fuck that, the sky’s the limit, and the world’s your oyster.

You may feel scared. You may ask yourself “This would be disobeying orders, I’d get in so much trouble by my commander!”  And while I completely understand where you’re coming from, it’s also a misconception. Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states that soldiers have a duty to obey all lawful orders. Genocide is illegal, according to both United States Law and Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The penalty for those found guilty of Genocide is life imprisonment, with the possibility of execution. 

Just Following Orders is no excuse under the law. Neither is rank. A private can be just as guilty as a general officer. This is the precedent that the United States herself set during the Nuremburg Trials. Ask yourself if you want to risk being executed after being found guilty of genocide. The only defense against such charges is an explicitly refusal to comply, or better yet, active resistance to such illegal orders.

Signed,

An anonymous NCO who wants you to do the right thing

TO CONTACT THE NCO, PLEASE EMAIL ANONYMOUSNCO@PROTON.ME

Dear Youth of America, 

So, you’ve read Bin Laden’s letter and your mind is blown. How could such an obviously evil man have a somewhat correct analysis of the Palestinian conflict? I’m very sorry to have to blow your mind further. Osama Bin Laden isn’t really the anti-imperialist fighter he seems to be in that letter. 

Osama Bin Laden was born into the family of a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family. He first gained recognition in the West as a Mujahideen leader in the Afghan-Soviet War, in which he was funded by the CIA in order to foil the USSR. At the tailend of the 80s, guided by his extreme interpretation of Islam, he founded Al Qaeda in order to conduct Jihad against America and its allies. This included operations in Sudan and Somalia. However, operations conducted by his Mujahideen in Bosnia between 1994-1996 draw into question whether Bin Laden was ever truly free of his handlers in Washington, or always serving as their useful idiot.  

Bin Laden gained further notoriety in the West for allegedly financing the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, though he denied involvement. Eventually he would gain international infamy as the architect behind the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, though he remained ambiguous about his involvement for years afterward. Ultimately, by allowing the United States to create a terrorist mastermind mythos around him, Bin Laden was helping the ruling class to obscure an important detail about 9/11 — that everyone, from the CIA and FBI, to the zionist intelligence agency Mossad, to the Saudi royal family, was in on the plot, and could have prevented the attacks. If they’d wanted to. But why didn’t they want to?  

Saudi Arabia’s monarchy has been America’s second most solid ally in West Asia, surpassed only by the zionist occupation of Palestine, commonly referred to as “Israel”. These countries serve as the frontline for the U.S. Empire’s regional imperialist interests — they do America’s bidding, and are granted a degree of autonomy and a share of the spoils. They aren’t the only two regional pawns, however. The United States originally helped Saddam Hussein come to power in Iraq, but he proved to be an unreliable ally whose nationalism exceeded his loyalty to the Empire. Hussein disobeyed his overlords and they overthrew him. They garnered popular support to achieve this through now infamous lies such as Colin Powell’s assertion that Hussein “possessed weapons of mass destruction” and the Nayirah Testimony — in which Iraqi soldiers were accused of dumping premature babies out of incubators. Like Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden was a comprador who disobeyed and invoked the metropole’s ire. In Bin Laden’s case, his mistake was calling for the destruction of Israel and the overthrow of the Saudi royal family, who he accused of straying from Islam. Allowing 9/11 to occur gave the U.S. Empire a necessary excuse to solidify its regional control, and dispose of an asset who had outlived his use. 

Nobody went after the Saudi royal family for their role in 9/11 because they continued to obey America in every way. They normalized relations with the zionist occupation and continue to stoke the flames of the Wahhabi Islamic conservative movement. This strain of Islam is despised by millions of Muslims around the world because it’s insanely hateful to Muslim people who don’t follow its extreme interpretation of the religion. It’s similar to how the Christian fundamentalist movement hates any American Christian who doesn’t follow their interpretation of Christianity. It’s convenient for the U.S. to encourage Wahhabism abroad so they can stoke the fires of Islamophobia and fear of Sharia Law at home.

But what does this have to do with Palestine? Bin Laden’s letter talks about large “Jewish capital” taking control of the American state apparatus, and using it to attack Palestine.. This is a convenient lie for the large capital interests that actually control America (90% identify as Christians, for the record). It serves to disguise who is in control, and makes it seem that Israel is in control, when in fact the current president has said multiple times that Israel protects America’s interests in West Asia. Osama Bin Laden was highly educated and could have easily dispelled this myth, which is the most common and misinformed antisemitic myth on the planet, yet it appears in his letter. In fact, it’s clear from other letters and communications in which he distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism, that Bin Laden himself knew it to be untrue. Yet it appears in his letter. Of course this man, who was born into great wealth, could never tell everyday people that the real enemy is people like him and his family, that the wealthiest people of any country, including America, are their real enemies. 

This, my friends, is what we call shared class interest or class solidarity. The very wealthiest people pretend to fight one another in public, in front of us, but actually help each other behind closed doors. They teach us to suspect each other and prevent us from achieving the class solidarity that they have. They will always try to turn everyday Muslims and Christians against everyday Jews (including countless anti-zionist Jews), because that’s exactly what serves their interests most. Although Bin Laden’s letter rightly decries the occupation of Palestine, by misidentifying the enemy he still performs a useful role to the bourgeoisie. They try to set us against each other in many other ways — along racial lines or lines of gender and sexuality. All of it serves the purpose of a smokescreen, to prevent us from identifying them as the real enemy.

The ultimate result of 9/11 was the American government stripping its citizens of their constitutional rights through the Patriot Act. It was the pretext to re-invade Iraq and invade Afghanistan. Though 9/11 may seem like an attack on America, it allowed the ruling class to consolidate its interests. Though Bin Laden’s letter seems anti-imperialist, it serves imperialism by misleading the people about who their enemies are.

But having been misled is not an excuse for working class zionists in the West who engage in Islamophobic rhetoric to justify Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians. If Osama Bin Laden’s letter can go viral and be widely read, there’s no reason the work of real anti-imperialists, such as Ghassan Kanafani, Leila Khaled, and George Habash shouldn’t — except if you consider the ruling class wants and encourages you to read Osama Bin Laden instead.

At a certain point, working class zionists are choosing to engage in cruel bigotry and sophistry, despite their class interests. They are no better than working class Christians who join the KKK or working class Muslims who joined ISIS. Like Bin Laden, they’re not fighting the real enemy. To paraphrase other genuine decolonial writers Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon: “Those who try to dehumanize others, in fact forfeit their own humanity. By justifying the murder and maiming of the civilians they oppress, oppressors sign away their own right to liberty.” The fate of such oppressors should be no less than that of Julius Streicher, who was rightfully convicted along with his Nazi friends, even though he never personally killed a Jew in the Holocaust. His hands were the bloodiest of all, because he published an antisemitic magazine which inspired countless others to take up arms against their neighbors.

The wars I’ve mentioned in this letter, from the two Afghan wars, to the two Gulf Wars, to the Bosnian War, murdered and maimed countless civilians in dozens of Global South countries. The survivors of these wars, who live with permanent disabilities, survivor’s guilt and immense grief over their lost loved ones, have for decades hated America. The writer of this piece is just one of millions of Global South citizens who have suffered incalculable losses because of America’s “foreign policy.” We don’t hate America or you because of your “freedom” — this is another lie your government tells you. We hate you because you allow your government to butcher us and destroy our freedoms.

You may feel it’s unfair of us to hate you — after all, you’re not in control of what your government does. But that doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility to the almost 200 other countries that you purposely repress (whether as allies or enemies). We’ve all been told that the American government is the Best Democracy on the planet and it’s this exemplary democracy that justifies forcing the same system on all of us. But America is no democracy — it’s a dictatorship of the ruling class. Everything the ruling class does — from the grandiosity of 9/11 to the viral Bin Laden letter, serves some role in their class interest. It’s designed to keep you from recognizing your class position, and that you don’t live in a democracy. 

When you don’t live in a democracy, it’s your responsibility to overthrow the political system which represses your voice and murders everyone else. It’s your responsibility to correct the historical errors of the country you claim as your own, and the first step on this journey is properly identifying who the real allies — and real enemies — are.

In Solidarity,

Comrade Leila’s Whitest Stan

The zionist entity is shaken to its core. They did not expect the Palestinian resistance to be as strong as it is. Decades of torturing children, sniping peaceful protestors and medics and conducting airstrikes against civilian infrastructure has left the zionist entity woefully unprepared to fight a liberation force made up of 9 different Palestinian organisations.  

The zionist response has been brutal massacres of Palestinian civilians. Taking this chance to complete their long genocide, the hard right wing of the reactionary zionist state has bombed entire neighborhoods out of existence. Zionist warplanes, supplied with U.S. bombs, struck the Al-Ahli Hospital and murdered 471 civilians. They repeatedly bombed the Jabalia Refugee Camp, murdering  500 Palestinians on the 31^st of October, and dozens more again on the 1^st of November. The zionist entity has begun a barbaric extermination campaign designed to wipe out the Palestinian population of Gaza — and possibly the West Bank. Those they do not kill, they hope to displace into Egypt in order to claim the land as their own. Already, they have begun to demolish houses in northern Gaza. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza so far, including 3,542 children, and upwards of one million have been displaced by the zionist entity’s massacres. The colonial regime has not spared the people of the West Bank, who spit in the face of efforts to divide and conquer their nation. Sweeping arrests have taken thousands hostage, young and old, to be tortured and publicly humiliated in a futile attempt to crush the steadfast Palestinian will. Since October 7^th, the occupying forces have killed 132 Palestinians in the West Bank, bringing the year’s total to 340. Do I need to remind everyone that these were people? Living, breathing human beings with hopes, dreams, and aspirations. The zionist entity has shown the world its true colours; no amount of propaganda will hide their true face — their depravity and their weakness — from the world now.

While the Palestinians fight, millions in countries around the world have taken to the streets to march in solidarity. 500,000 people marched in London. One million marched in Turkey. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more have marched in the U.S., France, Germany, Bolivia, Ireland, Tunisia, and Egypt. Humanity shines through in those brave enough to stand up against the U.S.-backed enemy; they have not been duped by the constant avalanche of propaganda that has been forced upon us by the zionist entity and its allies.

In response to overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause, the Western imperialist states have done less than nothing. President Biden, commander-in-chief of the United States imperial military, ordered that 14 billion dollars’ worth of “aid” be sent to the zionist entity. He stationed American troops in “Israel” and sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Mediterranean Sea.

The U.K. has sent 30 million dollars to “Israel” over the past three weeks and the leader of the so called “workers party” of the UK, Keir Starmer, has thrown in his support for this genocide, declaring that a ceasefire “only benefits Hamas” and that “Israel” does have the right to cut off life-sustaining water and power to Gaza. This directly contradicts the Geneva Conventions and “international law” that western countries and politicians putatively uphold.

Many Communist parties, ostensibly representing the committed left wing of their countries, have also failed in their duty to stand with the Palestinians. Many of them draw their political line on Palestine from the “Communist” party of “Israel”, while ignoring the existence of the Popular Front for the liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), two Marxist-Leninist Palestinian parties who are actively engaging the zionist entity for the liberation of the Palestinian people, as I write this. This shameless opportunism, this cowering in self-assured defeat despite victory on the horizon, exposes the leadership of such parties as charlatans and frauds, and indeed as anti-communists. 

The people of the world must not ignore the cry of the Palestinian resistance. The PFLP has called us to action.

In a statement released October 31^st, 2023, the PFLP issued a call to action to us, the people of the wider world. For those of us who are truly committed to the progressive cause, to the fight — and it will be a fight — for liberation, this call isn’t a suggestion. We must interpret them as orders. The actions are as follows:

1.    To expel the ambassadors of aggression (“Israeli” ambassadors)

2.    To stop the flow of oil and gas through Arab nations into “Israel”

3.    To close the American military bases in Arab countries

4.  For workers unions across the world to refuse to unload or load any weapons shipments destined for the zionist entity.

To the first point, we have our orders.

To the second point, we have our orders.

To the third point, we have our orders.

To the fourth point, we have our orders.

The Palestinian people are bleeding to free themselves. From the Mau Mau in Kenya to the African Slaves in Haiti, the African National Congress in South Africa, or the Republicans in Ireland — we find constant examples of righteous struggles. And when we read about them, we tell ourselves that if we had been there in those times, we too would have fought, given aid, ensured their victory. It’s easy to declare that after the fact, but it’s much harder to do it in the present. Well, we have our chance now. We can stand with the Palestinian people as they fight for their liberation against a settler colonial, genocidal, apartheid state, or we can sit by and do nothing. We have our orders.

We must apply constant pressure to our governments, we cannot give any ground, we cannot forget about this. We must apply pressure until the zionist entity’s ambassadors have been expelled from all nations around the globe. So far, Colombia and Bolivia are leading the charge on this issue. We must follow where they lead. We have our orders.

The Arab nations must follow the examples of organisations such as Ansar Allah and Hezbollah who have shown no meek capitulation, and rally behind the Palestinian people against the self-serving coloniser. They must cut off all oil and gas to “Israel”. Already in Iraq, protests have been blocking fuel trucks from entering into Jordan where they’d later be delivered to “Israel”. There can be no excuses. We have our orders.

The anti-imperialist/communist organisations and parties must continue their work unflinchingly. Imperialism is the primary contradiction in the world today, with America being the dominant imperialist power. The zionist entity is the frontline of American imperialism. They must fall. We have our orders.

The trade unions throughout the world, particularly in the nations that constitute the allies of “Israel”, must not load or unload any weapons shipments to the zionist entity. Trade unions in Belgium are already doing their part, we must do ours. In 2021, Italian port workers also refused to load weapons destined for “Israel”. In the past, British trade unions refused to work in factories that were making engine parts for the planes of Pinochet’s fascist government in Chile. We must repeat this. It is a proud moment in British trade union history, and ours will be a badge of dignity as well. We have our orders.

We must persevere. Our job is easy; the Palestinians have it harder, but they have not given up for over 70 years. We should aspire to be half as brave as they are. We must not be stagnated by despair, indecision, or fear. We have our orders.

We will not do nothing. We will not accept half-measures.

We have our orders, friends. Let’s carry them out.