We’re a multinational, multigenerational organization of working-class people fighting for socialist revolution here in the United States. We know that the only way to overcome the crises of war, climate catastrophe, and automation is to abolish capitalism and replace it with a system that prioritizes people and the planet.
I’m gonna be so fr that I’ll defend PSL externally, but they seem like a nightmare and I’m not getting anywhere close to them.
This is an internal-ish space, so I feel pretty comfortable criticizing more than critically supporting them here.
The part they don’t mention is the billionaire funding, the sexual assault cover ups, how they are only a few thousand members who do poor agitation on any relevant issues, and how they don’t allow members to communicate with one another as they suppress communications through social media.
how they don’t allow members to communicate with one another as they suppress communications through social media.
I follow a bunch of my comrades on IG. We regularly talk and even do normal “non-political” stuff sometimes. This is like Stalin Big Spoon levels of anti-communism lol.
The part they don’t mention is the billionaire funding
This has been debunked to no end, and isn’t even based on any money PSL itself has received. The People’s Forum received a donation from Roy Singham using a donation platform. The donation platform was basically the equivalent of using Visa to send money, and people used this to say “THE PSL IS GOLDMAN SACHS FUNDED BECAUSE PSL HAS MEMBERS IN PEOPLES FORUMN!11!” Goldman sachs removed People’s Forumn as a possible recipient of money on the platform after October 7th. End of Story.
the sexual assault cover ups
I wouldn’t say it was a cover-up, but having read Marissa’s testimony, I would say there’s too much reliance on these sort of “reconciliatory meetings” that allow for resentment later on (rightfully so, and ofc a victim can change their mind on how they feel) & the truth coming down to He-Said, She-said situations. I think this is a phenomenon that’s present in any organizing space. Even DSA, yes. I’ve come across many people who’ve been to DSA spaces and having been hit on/ had sexual advances made to them at political meetings or other things that have made them uncomfortable. I still wouldn’t use that to argue that people shouldn’t join the DSA. The solution to an imperfect organization isn’t to stop organizing all together. It’s to improve.
One way to consider the sex pest / SA type of stuff is, it’s not about building a perfect org, but there is a need to treat it as a very serious issue in organizational practice and work out how to handle it more effectively than orgs have in the past. That it may be hard to work through is the kind of excuse that is going to cause vanguard communists to get easily outflanked by liberal feminists.
We live in a world with rainbow imperialism. Communists need to be able to show through demonstrable practice that they take a thing like the dismantling of patriarchy seriously and that they do a better job of it than the status quo.
In that sense, my emphasis to you is not “be perfect”, it’s “are organizations taking this seriously enough? Are they devoting resources to doing a better job with it going forward?” I’m not asking you to answer those questions on behalf of a particular org. Just something to think about.
i think you bring up a really good point, but i just want to emphasize how practically important it is to be anti-patriarchal and fight against SA and punish perpetrators within an org:
- victims of SA who are not supported will be less effective within an org
- victims of SA who are not supported will be more likely to leave an org and talk about it externally (rightfully so!), making other people less likely to join your org and giving bad actors valid, important criticisms to use against you
- perpetrators of SA obviously were not educated enough in order to go through with the assault in the first place, indicating a poor educational process that likely seeps into other areas of theory as well
- orgs like these lack basic conflict/resolution protocols and procedures, a really fundamental aspect of any functional org
i could go on, but these are the things that jump out to me initially. it is really of vital importance.
Reminds me of an article entitled “Misogynists make great informants”
yes, absolutely. reminds me of misogynist informants in the BPP, specifically
Good points!
And to be clear, cause this could read as cynical positioning, I believe in dismantling patriarchy for ideological reasons. For a substantively better world for everybody but mainly women as the ones who suffer from it the most. But I want people to be thinking about the strategic landscape of things too. Consider what you’re up against and work on a foundation that will be solid rather than a poor foundation that you hope to fix later.
I wouldn’t say it was a cover-up, but having read Marissa’s testimony, I would say there’s too much reliance on these sort of “reconciliatory meetings” that allow for resentment later on (rightfully so, and ofc a victim can change their mind on how they feel) & the truth coming down to He-Said, She-said situations. I think this is a phenomenon that’s present in any organizing space. Even DSA, yes. I’ve come across many people who’ve been to DSA spaces and having been hit on/ had sexual advances made to them at political meetings or other things that have made them uncomfortable. I still wouldn’t use that to argue that people shouldn’t join the DSA. The solution to an imperfect organization isn’t to stop organizing all together. It’s to improve.
i dunno, man. i hate talking about PSL on here because obviously some users are members and i know it feels bad to criticize the most public “ML” org in the US, but this seems like an exceptionally poor interpretation of events. why are you comparing being “hit on” to sexual assault (for the record, she claims he literally groped her genitals)? why are you questioning the veracity of her testimony by claiming it’s simply a case of “he said she said”? i mean i hate to say this but this sounds incredibly misogynistic to me.
no organization can absolutely prevent sexual assault from occurring in their organization without a shadow of a doubt, it’s true. after all, literally everyone has some internalized misogyny. but, anti-patriarchal education can be a precondition for membership, therefore vastly reducing incidents. and most of all, how the sexual assault is treated in the aftermath is what is the true indicator of how anti-patriarchal an org is. and yes, any successful marxist org in the west will need to be anti-patriarchal.
and i can’t believe i have to say this, but yes, high incidence of sexual assault and lack of support/consequences for victims/perpetrators respectively are absolutely reasons why people should not join an organization. and, rightfully so: people should feel safe and protected in organizing spaces, in the literal spaces in which we are seeking to end exploitation, not continue it. people should not have to risk sexual assault by joining an org. and no, not joining the DSA/PSL/whatever specific organization is not the same as not organizing whatsoever.
Thank you so much for this comment.
why are you questioning the veracity of her testimony by claiming it’s simply a case of “he said she said”?
I wasn’t disputing the sexual assault, but the claim that there was a cover-up of it. That was the “he said, she said” part of it I was referring to.
You can just say that protecting rapists isn’t a dealbreaker for you, and be done with it.
Who was raped?
You’re a gross person, and it makes me think less of lemmygrad that no one else is here to tell you as well.
I’m not American nor do I have a particularly favourable appraisal of this organisation, I do nonetheless think DSA types like yourself really shouldn’t be throwing stones in a glass house considering that the DSA is functionally a liberal zionist caucus for the DNC. Hate to break it to you, but principled Communists don’t condemn anti-zionists, nor do they side with the imperialist project when it comes to Venezuela and Cuba having their sovereignty threatened. Just as you can’t be half pregnant, you can’t be a communist when you’re nothing more than a means for the right-wing to funnel momentum back into supporting anticommunist formations like the Democratic party.
Well there is a healthy and growing faction of principled communists within DSA and as frustrating as an organization as it is it’s the best organization we have and I intend to continue to work to improve it from within rather than doing nothing.
This is entirely irrelevant from the joke of an organization that is PSL
Vladmir Liberal strikes again
"Voting is to be done!
How am I liberal for working within the largest socialist organization in the US to pull to the left with more revolutionary politics?
Apologies I thought my joke was quite clear. Using “What is to be Done?” As a frame of reference we can adequately conclude that the DSA is not socialist. https://youtu.be/dMfTr8IuWjU https://youtu.be/x8UirV4JcLc https://youtu.be/_o4353seai4 https://youtu.be/R6ZJhwds0Lw
Since WITBD can be a bit hard to understand I have attached a video summary by Red Pen and a video series by Bes D Marx to help illuminate the problems of working within a big tent opportunist party that does not have a concrete ideological foundation.
I particular enjoy the Bes D Marx videos as he helps elucidate the ideological struggles being waged within its pages.
DSA is frustratingly a big tent org with lots of liberals in it. On that we can agree but there are many 10s of thousands of socialists and communists in the org fighting for it to be more than it is.
Also save me the condescension I’ve read WITBD from several different academic lenses I don’t need whatever this is from you.
Since you somehow got “join DSA” from WITBD, I thought it would be helpful to consolidate definitions of terminology as you clearly did not understand the text. I was not being condescending before, these videos legitimately helped me on my study, but for reference now I am.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
DSA is a big tent org.
The strength of that are it gets to actually participate in politics on a scale that matters.
The drawback of this are that it has no consistent ideology and thus no unified goal, which ends up making the strength redundant.
Also you can join both orgs. Nothing is stopping you. The best thing a ML can do is join DSA and agitate to members about communism.
PSL doesn’t let you join other orgs like the DSA at the same time. They want you to focus on supporting the PSL’s work without getting pulled in other directions.
I will not be joining PSL. I’ve already done a college level reading group to a join a caucus within DSA and don’t have the time to do that again for a group that does little more than run protests where I live.
I will continue to agitate for communist politics as I have been and educate my comrades in all the ways I am able within my chapter in DSA and beyond.
How could an organization reasonably prevent communication between members in any world, let alone one in which everyone carries smartphones? You can be anti-communist if you want but resorting to obvious falsehoods doesn’t serve you or anyone else.
Naw, I’ve heard from members that they’re officially not supposed to communicate with members in other cities outside of official channels.
Having patterns for managing inter branch communication is not the same as limiting the ability for individual members to communicate.
I don’t really understand how limiting members from communicating with members from other branches is different than limiting how individual members communicate.
Part of joining is giving them your social media accounts.
WTF 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
This is not remotely true and you should interrogate the motives and knowledge of the source which told this to you.
It’s totally not true that PSL “takes” social media accounts, but they do explicitly require members to share and boost their posts, right? That’s what I was told, but it’s been a while.
Not really. You might be asked to share a post if you have social media but nobody would even notice if you didnt. Frankly I think most members of the PSL just aren’t on social media, given how toxic and frankly useless and unreal everything on it is. Even spaces that claim to be ML like here tend to be quite hostile to organizers. Plus, most radical accounts get throttled by algorithms these days so social media is hardly a meaningful vector of organizing and it’s worth assuming their membership understands this.
https://liberationschool.org/social-media-and-democratic-centralism-opportunities-and-challenges/
^ The going good practice for about 10 years has been to let the party represent itself online, and that this is not within the scope of responsibilities for any individual member. They have comms departments for that sort of thing, with comrades who have the time to focus on productive messaging. You can actually find a ton of the PSL’s suggested practices online, the fact that hearsay and rumor commands the discourse is honestly a condemnation of the depth of investigation which happens online.
If you are curious about the PSL, you should get in touch with them and talk to their members. There are very good chances there is a branch nearby, by design. It might be small, but they’re there if you go looking.
I was told explicitly that they require members to boost social media posts, but that interview was a while ago.
I’m not curious about PSL. I know enough to know that I would never directly support them again.
If you’re active on social media you’ll be asked to occasionally, but it’s not a requirement to either a) have social media or b) actually do that
I am sorry to hear. This is not my experience with the PSL. Could you elaborate why it is that you do not like them? It would be good to be specific, since vague notions do nothing but contribute to hearsay.
Not trying to change your mind, I won’t dispute you. I just hope your local branch can develop the capacity to earn your trust down the line.
My sources are ex PSL members who were forced to disclose and hand over access to their social median accounts lmao
Then you or someone you get this information from is misinformed, because that’s just not remotely a thing. The PSL doesn’t even want it’s members posting about the PSL online, per Liberation News.
https://liberationschool.org/social-media-and-democratic-centralism-opportunities-and-challenges/
Per their own party-line news, it seems like they have a pretty cautious and centralized approach to social media as a whole. You should properly investigate before you speak and not repeat rumors.
That’s not accurate.
