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

• 

  Proletarian Polemics is dedicated to creating accessible Marxist-Leninist education that is usable for organizers with the aim of countering opportunism and revisionism. The longer goal of the project is to grow into a space for dialogue, classes, and international solidarity forums where organizers can meet and problem solve together. The host’s work also extends into longer form substack essays that confront more theory dense Marxist-Leninist topics and taps into Islamic history through the historical-critical method seeking to revive the radical liberatory tradition of Islam.

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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.