PSL is a high-control group with an ineffective strategy
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is undemocratic, well-funded, and unsuccessful.
Written by an anonymous writer at the Rose Garden
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a revolutionary socialist party organized on a Leninist cadre model.1
PSL is very good at quickly organizing protests, usually against war (such as the US invasion of Iraq) or against social conservative policies (such as the Dobbs decision). Thanks to coverage from its BreakThrough News cameras and Liberation News writers, PSL events usually earn a lot of positive attention in leftist social media spaces.
As a result, it is not hard to find new socialists singing praises for PSL. In DSA, some of these members suggest working on PSL’s projects, endorsing PSL’s candidates, or outright merging with PSL.
I strongly reject this view, for three reasons:
PSL has a high-control, low-democracy internal structure.
PSL has many front groups but a small membership.
PSL has a large budget but few successes.
These are strong claims. I present evidence for each below. My citations overwhelmingly come from official PSL literature, current & former PSL members, and tax filings.
If you are a current PSL member or PSL supporter: Please read with an open mind. Many PSL members do good work. My criticisms are all aimed at the organization’s structure and strategy.
Table of Contents
Section 1: PSL is high-control
Section summary: PSL sharply limits member communications, prevents meaningful internal democracy, and empowers its leadership.
In the sections below, I show that PSL has a small but active membership, many front groups, and few concrete victories. Socialist organizations with this profile are often high-control groups. For examples, see NATLFED or the Newmanites.
Unlike those groups, PSL is not a full-blown cult. However, PSL’s structure uses several high-control features, which empower its leadership and destroy meaningful internal democracy. In the sections below, I will proceed from the most obvious to the least publicized examples of high-control structures in PSL.
1.1: Weak transparency
Like most high-control groups, PSL publicizes almost nothing about its internal activity.
PSL runs multiple extremely prolific newspapers. However, PSL has almost never publicized important details about its internal democratic processes:
No public constitution: PSL has had half a dozen party constitutions. However, PSL has never made any party constitution public. If you ask why, PSL leaders will cite “security reasons”. This is absurd. In 2023, a copy of PSL’s constitution was leaked. Its contents, discussed below, make clear why PSL kept it private.
No public convention results: PSL has held ~10 national conventions since 2004, but never publicized in any detail who was running, what debates occurred, or which resolutions passed or failed.
No public leadership: PSL doesn’t even list their current or former Central Committee members!
This lack of transparency continues inside the organization. PSL provides no financial reports to the public. In 2014, one former PSL member wrote that, at one meeting, their branch provided a very brief financial summary, but prevented members from taking it home due to “party security”. How can members democratically run an organization whose finances they can’t study?
For any organization that claims to be small-d-democratic, even one of these would be a curious omission. Together, their absence is glaring.
1.2: Restricted communications
PSL leadership severely restricts communications between PSL members. It monitors members’ social media, it bans critical “horizontal” communication between members of different chapters, and it expels those who express dissent “vertically” to leadership.
Monitoring of social media
It is hard for an outsider to gauge the level of dissent allowed inside an organization. But it’s very easy to see that there’s nearly zero visible disagreement between PSL members in public spaces. Social media can be a very visible signal of high-control structures.
Take one example: In 2020, multiple PSL members alleged that PSL leadership was protecting sexual abusers in their ranks. PSL National released a statement denying these allegations.
PSL leadership then expelled members who had posted or liked tweets that disagreed with PSL National’s statement, as one former PSL member (Jacob) shows:
Most PSL members seem to be aware of this monitoring. For those that stay in PSL, it is normalized. Consider two examples:
In 2020, one current PSL member mocked Jacob, saying: “We dont monitor likes – if you’ve got comrades on your Twitter, and they see you liking inappropriate shit – it gets reported by another comrade”. (The apparent implication: PSL leadership doesn't need to monitor your likes, because other PSL members will voluntarily do so for them. That’s reassuring: PSL leadership doesn’t need to monitor your likes, because other PSL members will do so instead.)
In 2021, one former PSL member wrote “PSL guys stalk members' online interactions – but this isn't that weird in party organizing”. (Actually, parties that stalk their members’ social media are very weird! Something has gone very wrong when an organization shows more interest in monitoring its members than achieving victories.)
This monitoring is corroborated elsewhere, and interventions sometimes go beyond just group calls: not new:
In 2014, one former PSL member wrote that they were visited by PSL’s national leadership after liking a post which criticized PSL for being slow to expel an alleged sexual abuser. They were then expelled.
In 2017, one former PSL member wrote that “both the national body and local branches have ppl checking on members[’] social media and other online activity”. They were expelled after their partner (also a former PSL member) posted about their expulsion from PSL.
If you are a current PSL member, you may doubt my claims. It should be easy for you to disprove me: Post a Tweet that sincerely criticizes PSL’s leadership, show it to your chapter leadership, and don’t get punished. (After all: Does any good, ruthlessly critical socialist have no thoughts on how to improve their own organization?)
Limited internal communications
You can’t find any intra-PSL debates in PSL’s newspapers. That’s unfortunate, but not unusual. Most organizations will not publish self-criticism.
As shown above, you also can’t find any intra-PSL debates on social media websites. Not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not anywhere public. If you check Twitter, you won’t find debate between current PSL members. These facts are not accidents: They are PSL policy. PSL limits internal communications by:
Banning “horizontal” communication
Punishing negative “vertical” communication
In 2018, PSL leader Ben Becker publicized a document outlining PSL’s views on social media. PSL argues that social media “poses considerable challenges to the Leninist party form” because “it creates unlimited potential for horizontal communications between members”, while a Leninist party’s communications must be “vertically organized”. This is alarming! A socialist organization has no good reason to view political speech between members of that organization (!) as undesirable.
This document was originally written in 2015. It was substantially modified before publication. In 2018, a former PSL member quoted its original version, which was more openly restrictive: “Communication between members in different branches that does not first go through the leadership bodies of the respective branches — which can be called ‘horizontal communications’ — is generally prohibited.” This is doubly alarming! While the public version simply notes “horizontal communication” poses “challenges”, the original version openly prohibits member-to-member communication without leadership approval.2
Both versions express extreme distrust in PSL’s membership – and PSL certainly acts in line with the restrictive original policy.
Most PSL members seem to be aware of this restriction. For example, in 2020, one former PSL member wrote: “as a former member of six years, [...] keeping communication between branches from developing has been mentioned as a goal since at least the second party Congress [in 2013].” At the same time, it’s obvious that many PSL members have friends in other PSL branches. What gives?
PSL leadership selectively enforces this rule. PSL leadership does not punish most horizontal communication. In 2018, one former PSL member wrote that “the restriction of horizontal communication between members has been abused to prevent those marginalized by the party from seeking support from other members”. Instead, PSL leadership cites this rule only when convenient. For example, it has been repeatedly cited to expel members critical of PSL leadership, as in these three examples from former PSL members.
PSL also asks members to limit what information they share with each other. In 2013, one former PSL member wrote that multiple members levied sexual harassment allegations against the PSL’s candidate for governor of California. He was not expelled, but eventually left PSL voluntarily. The PSL chapter leadership chose to delay these revelations from the membership until after Election Day. Leadership also asked members, when “asked about his whereabouts from another member”, to simply say that “his politics have changed”.
This restriction of internal communication makes real internal democracy impossible.
Expulsion of dissent
The subsections above show many examples of undemocratic behavior in PSL, each of which prevented members from substantively criticizing PSL inside the party or outside the party.
Nearly all of those examples ended in expulsion.
These expulsions appear to be fairly common. For example, in 2023, another former PSL member wrote that, in 2020, 1/3 of their chapter’s members were expelled for internally criticizing PSL over a sexual abuse investigation. Two former PSL members claimed that at least 50 known members were expelled or publicly resigned over the same incident.
In 2020, those two PSL members wrote an internal document criticizing PSL leadership’s handling of that same sexual abuse investigation. (As you’d expect, they were expelled.) They wrote a document outlining what had happened, which listed several high-control tactics used by PSL leadership:
In its response to the release of our above document (first internally and then externally), as well as in its response to dissent within its own ranks, PSL has deployed several cult-like tactics, including:
1. One-on-one meetings between members and leadership, which members are not allowed to discuss with anyone outside leadership. [....]
3. Punishing members suspected of “horizontal communication” within the party itself. [....]
6. Intense scrutiny of social media and social practices. [....]
8. Invoking vague (and unsubstantiated) fears of state repression to avoid criticism. [....]
10. Unilaterally terminating membership of or suspending (without notification of actual charges) anyone even suspected of dissent, in violation of the party’s own Constitution.
All of the claims listed above are supported by the evidence presented earlier. Taken together, these tactics cannot be an accident: They represent a strategy to limit communication between PSL members and remove dissent from the party.
Restricting communication between members and with non-members is a very common kind of milieu control. Limiting information flow enables leaders to constantly depict themselves in the best light possible. It also increases the “cost” of being expelled: Losing one’s friends and community is a high cost, which makes members endure more bad behavior to stay in the organization.
No democratic organization should tolerate this behavior.
1.3: Undemocratic leadership
PSL’s structure sharply limits the flow of information. It also includes major, undemocratic biases that allow its leadership to almost always win.
40% delegate boost
Many DemCent organizations are structured to ensure that their leadership always wins. In the Communist Party (CPUSA) – and in many undemocratic socialist sects – this looks like the “slate system”: Each election, the current leadership puts themselves forward as a single bloc, which can only be voted up or down altogether. Add strong incumbency bias, control of the party press, and expulsion of dissenting factions, and it’s obvious why the leadership almost never loses.
That’s why the same small group around Gus Hall led CPUSA for 40 years, from 1959 to 2000.3
PSL’s constitution, to its credit, partially rejects the slate system. While the Central Committee can “propose [...] a slate of candidates for the new Central Committee”, all slate candidates “are voted on as individuals”, not “as a slate” (4.2.2).4 This gives the leadership slate a strong incumbency advantage, but removes their bloc vote advantage.
But in lieu of using a traditional slate system, PSL simply allows its leadership to rig the vote in its favor. PSL’s constitution explicitly allows the Central Committee to directly appoint up to “40 percent” of “voting delegates” at each national convention (3.2.3).5 To make that very clear: PSL’s leadership directly appoints up to 40% of the vote. As a result, if PSL leadership can win even 17% support among PSL members, then PSL leadership will always have an absolute majority of delegates.
This fact is not recent, nor is it a secret: In 2016, PSL published a convention announcement which noted that “the Party Congress is attended by [...] voting delegates elected by the Central Committee” (but failed to mention that these delegates could hold 40% of the vote).
When you combine this advantage with PSL’s severe restrictions on communication & the inherent incumbency advantage in elections, it’s no wonder that PSL’s leadership is de-facto guaranteed to win. What meaningful opposition can successfully organize in that environment?
That’s why the same small group of people who founded PSL in 2004 still lead it 20 years later. In 2004, PSL’s leadership was centered on Brian Becker, Gloria La Riva, and Eugene Puryear. In 2023, the same held true. Even where individual members fade from the national scene, they are replaced by their handpicked successors. As one former PSL member put it, “core leadership never changes”.
Undemocratic centralism
The subsections above outlined the severe restrictions and undemocratic biases that PSL imposes on its members. How does PSL justify all of this? In short: Either spurious claims of “party security” or appeals to Democratic Centralism (DemCent).
PSL's 2022 party constitution opens with the assertion that PSL is a strong DemCent organization: “The Party organization and its internal life are guided by the fundamental features of democratic centralism” (2.1.1).
In theory, DemCent is just a method for maintaining strong organizational unity: A party has robust internal democracy, but once an internal decision has been made, all party members must end debates and publicly uphold that decision. PSL is no exception: PSL decisions are “binding on all members” (2.1.2). “[A]ll members, including those who disagree, are duty bound to publicly defend and carry out” all PSL decisions (2.4.1).
Nearly all DemCent parties claim to allow robust internal debate and maintain strong protections for disagreement. Again, PSL is no exception: When PSL leadership declares a “period of discussion”, party “members are expected to fully and freely participate without any restrictions on presenting their views” (2.1.2).
In practice, DemCent groups rarely tolerate any real dissent. As shown below, PSL is once again no exception. It is very hard to square “full and free” discussion with the dozens of expulsions documented above. Critics call these organizations “bureaucratic centralism” – all centralism, no democracy. PSL fits this profile.
Summary
In short, the section above uses a combination of PSL documents and former PSL members’ statements to prove:
PSL releases very little internal information to the public.
PSL monitors its members’ social media and punishes anti-PSL statements.
PSL requires all member discussions about PSL to be held internally.
PSL limits “horizontal communication” between members of different chapters.
PSL routinely expels members who internally criticize leadership.
PSL leadership can appoint 40% of the vote at each convention.
PSL defends the above as “democratic centralism”, when it is anything but.
Section 2: PSL is small but well-funded
Section summary: PSL has few members, many fronts, and a big budget.
PSL supporters claim that it is the largest democratic centralist (DemCent) organization in America. Even some of its critics call it the “largest organization to the left of the DSA”. This seems mostly true.
However, this results from two facts:
No DemCent group, except the Communist Party, has ever grown beyond 3,000 members.
The modern Communist Party is arguably to DSA’s “right”, where “left” means “socialists who refuse to work within the Democratic Party”.
2.1: Small membership size
In 2004, PSL started with about 40 people, when it claimed 9 chapters. Keeping with PSL’s very low public transparency, PSL has not released any membership numbers since then.
Our best estimate of PSL’s size comes from PSL’s chapter count, as archived on their website over time:
More chapters probably mean more members. However, we cannot know how accurately these chapter counts reflect PSL’s real membership size.
We know that PSL’s public-facing chapter count did not decline during incidents of mass membership loss. For example, in 2020, PSL members accused PSL leadership of negligence or coverup in at least half a dozen sexual abuse allegations. This caused many members to leave or be expelled. One former PSL member claimed that 1/3 of their chapter’s members were expelled. Two former PSL members claimed that at least 50 known members publicly resigned or were expelled. However, in that same period, PSL claimed that it grew from 42 (2019) to 46 (2020) to 50 (2021) chapters.
As a result, if we want to know PSL’s membership, the best we can do is guesstimate. In 2023, PSL claimed 55 chapters. If we pick some arbitrary “average members per chapter” – say, somewhere from 20 to 60 – then PSL would have around 1,500 to 3,300 members.
I’d guesstimate that PSL has around 2,200 members, or ~40 members per chapter. I’ve asked former PSL members whether this seems reasonable. They’ve either agreed or suggested a lower range of 1,000 to 2,000. (I’ve also asked current PSL members. They do not answer.)
That puts PSL behind the larger leftist organizations – the Democratic Socialists (~50,000 paying members), Communist Party (~15,000 claimed members), Greens (~8,000 national donors), and Sunrise Movement (~3,000 active members) – but also puts PSL well ahead of the smaller leftist organizations – Socialist Alternative (~1,000 paying members), Freedom Road (~1,000 paying members), and Socialist Party USA (~1,000 paying members).
PSL’s membership is larger than every cadre organization and smaller than every mass organization. However, its membership is, on average, more active than those of mass organizations. Like most Leninist organizations, PSL expects its members to be “cadre”: Members must pay large dues (around 5% of income), regularly attend PSL events, and regularly perform PSL work, or else they will be removed.
In short, PSL has a small-to-medium-sized, but very active membership. This matters because if PSL’s strategies are effective, we should expect real, substantial victories from PSL.
2.2: Many front groups
PSL either does not or cannot recruit a large mass membership. Instead, PSL is fond of working through front groups. I’ve listed the biggest fronts for PSL National below:
BreakThrough News (BN) is a socialist podcast/newsfeed. BN makes no mention of being PSL-run despite being staffed almost entirely by PSL members.6
People’s Forum (PF) is a leftist meeting space that hosts the BreakThrough News studio. To PF’s credit, it sometimes hosts events from non-PSL socialist organizations, including DSA. PF frequently mentions PSL and PSL events, but never that it is PSL-run despite being led mostly by PSL members.7
ANSWER Coalition (ANSWER) is an anti-war protest organization. ANSWER frequently mentions PSL and PSL events, but never that it is PSL-run despite being directed by a PSL founder and Central Committee member from 2001 to 2024.8
Some minor PSL National fronts include:9
Progress Unity Fund (PUF), parent to ANSWER Coalition
March Forward! (veterans’ arm of ANSWER)
Pivot to Peace (pro-China arm of ANSWER)
Justice First (chaired 100% by PSL members)
Justice Center en El Barrio (PSL NYC project)
US Labor Against Racism and War (defunct in 2022)
Cancel the Rents! (defunct in 2021)
Women Organized to Resist and Defend (defunct in 2016)
PSL National and its candidates also dominate the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), a minor party in California. PFP is not a PSL front per se, and it also runs non-PSL candidates (usually from the Greens and other small socialist parties). However, the PFP party conventions are almost always stacked by PSL delegates. As a result, PFP has endorsed PSL’s selected candidates in 2012, 2016, 2020, and likely 2024.
In addition, most PSL locals form front groups of their own. For example, if you ever see a “[CITY NAME] Liberation Center”, such as “Philadelphia Liberation Center”, it’s almost certainly a PSL front.
Where PSL locals cannot form a front group, they will usually enter into existing groups. For example, a leaked 2022 Baltimore PSL presentation on “current operations” showed that PSL members are “diluted in other orgs” at Johns Hopkins University. This is fairly explicit entryism, and its goal is to convert these groups’ members into PSL members.
Lastly, we have funding groups, none of which seem to be controlled by PSL. These groups are funded by Roy Singham, a software billionaire who uses his wealth to fund pro-China leftist organizations. For example, People’s Forum received ~$20 million from Singham through Goldman Sachs' philanthropy anonymizer.10 The organizations below are overwhelmingly funded by Roy Singham and mostly used to fund PSL and its front groups:
Justice and Education Fund (JEF) funds research and grants for leftist organizations. JEF makes no mention of PSL despite being led mostly by PSL members.11
Tricontinental Institute for Social Research (Tricontinental) funds research and grants for leftist organizations. Tricontinental is NOT a PSL front.12
United Community Fund (UCF) funded research and grants for leftist organizations. Now defunct, replaced by JEF.
Why are these front groups worth mentioning? Two reasons: First, to demonstrate that PSL often operates through front groups, but is not transparent about that fact. Second, to lay the groundwork needed to prove that PSL has a very large budget for an organization of its small size.
2.3: Large budget
We cannot know PSL’s true total revenue. That’s because PSL is legally registered in California as the for-profit corporation LIBERATION NEWS, INC. (3488507). Because it is legally a for-profit organization, PSL does not file 990 (nonprofit) tax returns or 527 (political party) tax returns. As mentioned in the “transparency” subsection above, PSL does not provide detailed financial information to its members. As a result, only two entities know PSL’s true revenue: God, and the IRS.
However, most of PSL’s front groups are registered as nonprofits that do file public tax records. How large is PSL’s total budget?
If we average across the last 5 years, 2018-2022:
People’s Forum made $4.95 million per year
Progress Unity Fund, made $0.50 million per year
BreakThrough News made $0.37 million per year
Justice First made $0.16 million per year
US Labor Against Racism and War made $0.1 million per year
We can also guesstimate PSL’s own dues & donations: If we assume 2200 members, at $150 per month,13 that yields about $3.96 million per year. If we assume that members give ~5% of income (as SAlt members do) and that members have a median income of ~$40,000 per year, then that yields about $4.40 million per year. Even if we cut these estimates in half, that’s at least $2.09 million per year.
Averaged across 2018-2022, PSL National and its major front groups likely earned about $8.17 million to $10.48 million per year. This total does not include minor front groups, local PSL chapters, or local front groups.
In addition, the Justice and Education Fund made $11.96 million and Tricontinental made $3.93 million. Neither of these groups are PSL front groups. However, a significant portion of those funds goes to PSL, its events, and its front groups.
Taken altogether, PSL has a larger budget than any other socialist organization in the United States. We will discuss this fact in more detail in the “electoralism” section.
Summary
In short, the section above uses a combination of PSL documents, tax filings, and approximations to prove:
PSL has a small but active “cadre” style membership
PSL has many front groups, none of which mention their control by PSL
PSL has the largest budget of any socialist organization in the country
In short, PSL is in a strong position for a “cadre” organization: A small but active membership, lots of money, and successful front groups across the country.
These points suggest that PSL has the labor, resources, and connections to be a successful socialist organization. Are they?
Section 3: PSL is well-situated but ineffective
Section summary: PSL is great at organizing protests, terrible at winning elections, and overall bad at winning power.
Socialists love to criticize the work that other socialist organizations do. I want to open this section – and each of the subsections below – by acknowledging that many PSL members do good work, especially mutual aid/charity work for the poor.
Socialists also love to criticize other organizations’ work merely for following a different ideology. For example, PSL is a self-described Leninist organization that pursues a self-described Leninist electoral strategy. I am not a Leninist.
I will not degrade PSL’s genuinely good work or complain about PSL’s ideology. Instead, I will argue that PSL is ineffective: By any reasonable metric, and despite having all the ingredients necessary, PSL fails to achieve its political goals. PSL ultimately spends its almost unprecedented access to financial resources (at least for a contemporary left-wing organization) for little material gain.
3.1: Strategies
PSL is nominally a Leninist party working toward a socialist revolution. Their 2022 program states that capitalism “cannot be reformed” and “cannot be voted out of power—it will take a revolution”. That is why PSL must be a “Leninist party” and an “organization of professional revolutionaries”.
In practice, PSL’s work falls into three broad strategies:
Educate: Produce leftist news
Vote: Run election campaigns
Protest: Organize mass demonstrations
What victories has PSL earned through these strategies?
3.2: Educate
I will open with praise: PSL’s leftist news program has been remarkably successful. For example, its BreakThrough News (BTN) front group has:
790,000 subscribers on YouTube, where it gets 400,000 views per day
2,000 paid members on Patreon, where it gets $144,000 per year
BTN performs three orders of magnitude better than socialist organizations. (For comparison, in terms of views per day: SAlt gets 10, DSA gets 100, CPUSA gets 250, and PSL’s main channel itself gets 150.) PSL has clearly created a successful media machine.
How does PSL do it? In short, money and staff: BreakThrough was created in February 2020, after billionaire Roy Singham donated roughly 15 million dollars to PSL. That money enabled BTN to purchase advertising and to pay a production crew. BTN now produces frequent, high-quality videos. (In its 2022 tax filing, BTN reported 10 staff and $529,000 in employee expenses; in its 2021 tax filing, BTN reported 0 staff but $280,000 in employee compensation.)
Unfortunately, most socialist organizations cannot replicate this model, because few socialist billionaires exist.
3.3: Vote
I will open with praise: Many PSL members work hard on their election campaigns and are proud to run independent socialist candidates.
However, since its creation in 2004, PSL has never won an election. PSL has run about 40 races for local, state, and federal offices. None won. PSL’s best performances so far:
In Congressional elections (7 attempts): The 2010 House election in CA-8, where PSL candidate Gloria La Riva won 2.5% and Dem candidate Nancy Pelosi won 80.1%; margin: -77.6pp
In state legislative elections (14 attempts): The 2008 election in IL-HD-14, where Green-PSL candidate John Beachem won 14.5% and Dem candidate Harry Osterman won 85.5%; margin: -71.0pp
PSL supporters acknowledge these losses but highlight their upsides. They argue (correctly) that every election, even an election loss, is another chance to put forward the socialist case to the American people and to build a mass socialist party.
This argument has a simple problem: Some election losses are useful, but most election losses are not. Let’s contrast two 2016 presidential campaigns:14
In 2016, Independent-Democrat Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic primary by 12pp and won 13 million votes.
In 2016, PSL candidate Gloria La Riva lost the general election by 48.195pp and won 0.08 million votes. It would take 160 Presidential elections (!!) for PSL to get as many votes as Bernie did in 2016.
Both election wins and close election losses can inspire people to action.
In the two years after Bernie’s 2016 campaign, about 300,000 people joined socialist and leftist organizations. In the two years after the 2018 campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, another 300,000 people joined. Even PSL benefitted: PSL’s chapter count was stagnant from 2011 to 2016. By 2020, PSL claimed twice as many chapters.
In contrast, weak performances like that of La Riva 2016 do almost nothing to build a socialist party or build left-wing organizational membership. When PSL loses, it loses badly. On average, PSL candidates for Congress win about 2,500 votes (or 1.5% of the total) and PSL candidates for President win about 43,000 votes (or 0.03% of the total).
That’s why there is no obvious relationship between PSL’s chapter count and its presidential campaigns:
The same phenomenon occurred in the Workers’ World Party (WWP), from which the PSL split in 2004. WWP has run a Presidential candidate every cycle since 1980. WWP candidates never earned more than 0.1% of the vote – and the WWP never built a mass party. Outside estimates put the WWP at ~200 members in 1978, ~500 members in 2002, and ~300 members in 2010.
So far, I have shown that:
PSL loses every election it runs
PSL’s election losses are not inspiring
But there is a third concern: wasted resources.
Because PSL’s budget is not public, we do not know what percent of this budget goes toward PSL campaigns. (In 2016, La Riva’s campaign raised just $31,400.) However, we do know that PSL puts a high priority on its presidential campaigns, where it spends significant volunteer time. For example, one former PSL member claimed that, in 2021, cadre members focused on other priorities, such as tenant rights, were asked to “drop all that to focus our time/resources into Gloria’s vanity campaign”.
Unfortunately, PSL’s electoral strategy seems to be almost entirely incapable of spreading the party's message or building its membership. Let’s compare three contemporary socialist organizations.
First, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which mostly runs socialist candidates inside the Democratic Party:
Size: DSA has ~50,000 paid members and made $4.89 million per year over 2018-2022. DSA is bigger but poorer than PSL.
Efficiency: With this budget, DSA endorsees and members hold about 200 elected seats across the country, including about 60 state legislature seats. That’s about $24,000 and 250 members per 1 elected.
Win rate: DSA often wins electoral power outright. Since 2017, DSA endorsees have won about 350 of our 840 races, or ~40%.
Extra-electoral impact: Both our wins (such as Tlaib & AOC) and our losses (such as Bernie) have built political power and grown participation in socialist organizations as a whole.
Second, Socialist Alternative (SAlt), which runs outside the Democratic Party, usually as Independents or Greens (like PSL):
Size: SAlt has ~1,000 cadre members and made about $0.76 million per year over 2018-2022. SAlt is both smaller and poorer than PSL.
Efficiency: With this budget, SAlt held 1 elected seat. That’s about $760,000 and 1,000 members per 1 elected.
Win rate: SAlt has won 4 of its 10 races since 2007, and had two close losses:
SAlt candidate Kshama Sawant was elected to Seattle City Council in 2013, re-elected in 2015 and 2019, and defeated a recall attempt in 2021.
In 2013, SAlt candidate Ty Moore was almost elected to Minneapolis City Council, taking 47% of the vote.
In 2017, SAlt candidate Ginger Gentzen was almost elected to Minneapolis City Council, taking 44% of the vote.
In contrast, even compared to the smaller and poorer SAlt, which also runs an independent third-party strategy, PSL has seen consistently worse results:
Size: As mentioned above, PSL likely has about 2,200 members. We know that PSL and its national front groups had a budget of about $8.17 million to $10.48 million.
Efficiency: With this budget, PSL has not yet won a single elected seat. That’s about $9 million and 2,200 members per 0 electeds.
Win rate: PSL has won 0 of its 40 races since 2008, and had one close loss:
PSL has only received more than 40% of the vote in one race: In 2021, candidate Colin Dodson won 57 of 142 votes for Urbana City Council. This is a very small race.
PSL has only received more than 15% of the vote in three races: In 2010, PSL’s candidate won 16% for Mayor of Long Beach. In 2008, PSL candidates won 18% and 21% for Los Angeles Board of Supervisors.
By any objective metric, PSL’s electoral strategy has failed to produce material gains. In fact, PSL’s strategy has produced just one candidate that came remotely close to winning an election.
3.4: Protest
Again, I will open with praise: PSL conducts a lot of rallies and marches. If you count each PSL local’s event separately, the number seems to be something like ~300 events per year. Many of these protests have a large attendance. They will motivate attendees and persuade observers.
PSL places a very high priority on rallies.15 When a notable event occurs, PSL is often the first to protest it: Trump hosts SNL? Protested. Trump elected? Protested. Anti-Muslim travel ban? Protested. No Medicare for All? Protested. Racist police brutality? Protested. Evictions during COVID-19? Protested. SCOTUS allows abortion bans? Protested.16 Since October 7, PSL has led dozens of protests for Palestine and against Israeli ethnic cleansing.
I will not criticize these protests. These are good actions for good causes. Instead, I will criticize PSL’s protest-centric strategy.
What is PSL’s strategy? Despite PSL’s emphasis on protests, the party does not seem to have any single, authoritative strategy. For example, one former PSL member wrote that “[t]here's not really a national protest strategy past 'print signs and hold protests'[,] so what's valid criticism of one branch may be off with another.”
However, a pattern emerges across PSL’s protest statements. For example, consider abortion rights, for which PSL protested extensively in 2022-23:
In 2022 May, PSL quoted their speaker: “Thousands of people across the country have taken to the streets in outrage over the past week … Momentum is building, and if we keep it up, we can win.”
In 2022 October, PSL wrote: “[R]ally around a message of revolutionary optimism: We take back our rights the same way they were initially won — by staying in the streets!”
In 2023 January, PSL wrote: “[T]he people fought back, and this still continues. What has been missing are powerful and sustained mobilizations[.] [M]ainstream reproductive rights organizations did not [...] call for millions to come to D.C. after the Dobbs ruling was first leaked. Such actions had played a pivotal role in shaping the national discussion and pushing back the far-right in decades past.
In 2023 May, PSL wrote: “[T]here has been grassroots resistance[.] [....] The key task remains to build a fighting movement in the streets on a massive enough scale that the rightwing has no choice but to back down.”
We see a common theme across PSL’s statements: If our street protests are militant enough and big enough, then we can win back abortion rights. So far, this strategy has not succeeded.
In recent years, many leftists have reconsidered the role of protest. They argue that protests are useful for promoting leftist causes, but make high demands of protesters’ time and energy, and often fail to achieve their goals.
This critique has come from a very broad ideological spectrum. It is remarkable to read very similar rhetoric on the limits of protest from both democratic socialists and revolutionary anarchists, two groups not known for agreement on socialist tactics.
For example, from Black Rose / Rosa Negra (BRRN) Anarchist Federation, several anonymous members write:
Reflecting on the 2003 protests against the invasion of Iraq, it’s clear it takes more than marching from point A to point B — and even more than scattered direct actions like taking over highways, occupying politicians’ offices, or minor vandalism. Coming out into the streets, pouring our energy into actions, escalating to risk arrest, disrupting business as usual, and then feeling exhausted and defeated is a common cycle in the anti-war movement and in every struggle. [....] We were reacting to crises just to end back up where we started, only with depleted morale and fewer resources. [....] This is one reason why BRRN prioritizes rooted movement-building where we live, work, and study and thus seek to move away from a focus on single-issue campaigns and activist subcultures.
And from Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), members Bill Fletcher and Bill Gallegos write:
[T]he focus on protest has not evolved into the building of strategy and organization capable of constructing a counter-offensive against the Right, while simultaneously undertaking the struggle for progressive governing power. From the Occupy Movement, to the mass actions of the Dreamers, through the mobilization around Standing Rock, and later with the eruptions of 2020 that followed the George Floyd murder, progressives have been able to take to the streets but leave little in our wake, at least little at the scale at which we need in order to defeat the Right and bring about a political transformation.
In short: Leftists can march in the streets, but our marches in and of themselves do not generate concrete wins or build lasting political power. Without results to eventually show for them, protests become demoralizing rather than energizing.
Because of the scope of their protests, it is easy to find examples of unsuccessful protests with PSL support. In that 2023 May article, PSL highlighted a protest in Nebraska against an anti-abortion bill: “[H]undreds of protesters filled the state capitol building”, drowned out “debate inside the chamber”, and forced “lawmakers to flee the building”. One week later, Nebraska’s governor signed that abortion ban into law.17
That lack of success holds for PSL’s protests in general. On every “notable event” above, protests failed. It’s not just PSL: Virtually every protest-centric organization has protested on dozens of issues without obtaining any concrete wins. That’s for a simple reason: Protests help galvanize people to action,18 but protest alone will almost always lose.
This is not mere speculation. Social science research also shows that protests alone, even large and sustained, rarely change public policy. For example, Giugni 2007 examined major protests by environmentalist, anti-nuclear, and anti-war social movements and related public policy in the USA from 1977 to 1995. Protests did not significantly affect policy directly (giving policymakers “no choice but to back down”) or indirectly (by shifting opinion in the public or among elected allies).
Instead, protests did significantly affect policy through a “joint effect”: When a strong social movement, popular opinion, and elected allies aligned, policy changed substantially. This is the “joint-effect model” 3C below:
Similarly, Luders 2016 showed that post-WW2 feminist movements in the USA were successful only where feminist organizing was strong, anti-feminist organizing weak, popular opinion positive, and elected allies supportive.
In fact, PSL notes one failure that fits this model well: In 2018, PSL members in New Mexico protested against the state’s “trigger ban”, but “failed to move conservative Democrats”. Instead, progressives in “the 2020 primary elections” removed those conservative Dems, and “[t]heir “replacements helped lead the way to” a 2021 bill that strongly protects abortion. In 2018, protests and popular opinion demanded abortion protection, but conservative electeds prevented it. In 2021, all three aligned, and abortion was protected.
It therefore follows that if leftists want to succeed, then we need strong mass organizations, popular demands, and supportive electeds. Any approach that plans for just one requirement is planning to fail.
That brings us back to PSL’s electoral strategy: It is a double failure. It builds neither a mass organization nor electoral power. As propaganda for socialist demands, PSL’s news strategy and protest strategy are both somewhat successful. But as a method to build a mass organization, PSL’s news strategy and protest strategy are both failures.
PSL’s strategy fails to win concrete policy change. Even when we combine PSL’s protest strategy, news strategy, and electoral strategy, PSL fails to build the multiple powers needed for victory.
Summary
In short, PSL is inefficient. It has a surprisingly big budget, an active membership, a popular newspaper – and vanishingly few wins. The section above uses a combination of social media analytics, election returns, and social science to prove:
PSL runs a successful news outlet, but its success is dependent on major outside donations
PSL loses every election it runs, and those losses do not inspire growth
PSL holds many protests but does not accomplish those protests’ goals
PSL’s protest-centric approach is great at generating headlines but bad at winning its goals
Many PSL members do great work. However, PSL’s strategy fails to convert that into great socialist victories – or even progressive victories..
Why does it matter?
This article is long, but my critique of PSL is simple: It makes large demands of its members’ time, money, and freedom, but does not deliver correspondingly large political wins.
Plenty of other small socialist organizations are similarly undemocratic, inefficient, and ineffective. Hell, that describes most liberal NGOs! If PSL is too, why does it matter? Three reasons:
Truth is important.
Current and future PSL members deserve to know the nature of their organization, which conceals, stifles, and obfuscates exactly this kind of information. Former PSL members often took years to recognize issues described in this article or to even understand the practical workings of their organization.
PSL’s strategy takes in socialist activists and produces few victories but many disillusioned leftists. Because society produces few people dedicated to socialism, we must spend their time and energy wisely.
In summary: PSL severely restricts the political expression of its members. PSL claims a robust internal democracy but limits member communications, expels dissenters, and undemocratically empowers leadership.
PSL has a small but active membership. It has access to a large budget, funded by both high member dues and a billionaire supporter. It has many un-announced front groups across many important issue areas. In terms of resources, PSL is well positioned to fight for socialism in the United States.
However, PSL has few notable achievements to show for its resources. Taken as a whole, the organization is exceptionally ineffective. PSL's largest success is BreakThrough News, but this is financed in a way that other socialist organizations cannot replicate. PSL’s protests lack a cohesive strategy. PSL’s election campaigns always lose. Charitably, PSL has helped popularize socialist demands. But it has never won these demands on its own.
Before you promote PSL or join PSL, you should be aware of the facts above.
Endnote for current PSL members
As noted above, many PSL members do good work. However, that work is limited by PSL’s undemocratic structure, communications restrictions, and ineffective strategy.
It’s not just PSL. Undemocratic internal structures in the name of “democratic centralism” have hampered the political work of nearly all communist organizations in the US for the past century. (For example, see Draper’s 1973 “Anatomy of the Micro-Sect” or Minnelli and Levin's 2018 “Where's the Winter Palace?”)
If you agree, what can you do? You have two options:
Work inside PSL to make it democratic.
Leave PSL and join another organization.
Leave PSL and create a new organization.
Plenty of unions have seen democratic reform caucuses succeed. (For example, the UAW’s Shawn Fain was elected because the UAWD caucus won one member, one vote.) The next PSL convention will be in 2025. If you want to change PSL, you need to plan to win a majority on the Central Committee. Unfortunately, far fewer undemocratic socialist organizations have been successfully reformed. For example, every attempt at democratic reform in CPUSA from the 1950s to the 2020s has failed and its members have been expelled.
If you truly believe in PSL’s theory of change or are a Marxist-Leninist, it may still be worth trying to reform PSL from the inside. Only one internally democratic socialist organization exists in the United States: The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). While DSA has ML members – who would be happy for you to join – DSA does not follow a ML theory of change. As one former PSL member writes: “I've heard more than one PSL loyalist say something along the lines of ‘what other Marxist-Leninist party am I supposed to join if they're gone?’”
The third option would be to leave PSL and try to create a new, democratic communist organization. (Perhaps “Democratic Communists of America”. 😉) This would require building an organization that is intentionally multi-tendency, that explicitly allows factions, that sharply limits purges, that term-limits leadership, that explicitly allows internal and external communication of all kinds. To my knowledge, no organization like this has ever been created in the United States. If it could prevent even one person from being abused or having their democratic rights curtailed, it would certainly be worthwhile.
Endnote about sexual abuse
Many of the quotes above came from former PSL members who were expelled for criticizing their chapter leadership’s handling of a sexual abuse investigation.
I chose not to include the substance of these abuse allegations for two reasons:
Current PSL members have likely already heard of these allegations and rejected them as false. Including them in the article would allow PSL members (and PSL leadership) to reject the article outright.
The substance of these abuse allegations would be a PTSD trigger for some victims of sexual and/or relational abuse. Including them in the article would prevent some people from reading it freely.
It is deeply concerning how many former PSL members – roughly a dozen, all over the United States – allege both abuse in PSL and that PSL leadership protected abusers. In 2023, one former PSL member called this a “pattern of abuse”.
It is worth noting that the Workers World Party (WWP), from which the PSL split in 2006, saw its membership collapse in late 2018 after multiple members alleged that the WWP protected abusers. While the WWP and PSL are separate organizations, their high-control internal structures share many similarities, and may enable leadership to protect abusers in their ranks.
In 2021, former PSL member Jacob S previously posted a compilation of testimonies alleging abuse and high-control behavior in PSL. This compilation was report-spammed until it was taken down.
I have created another compilation, focused only on former PSL members, that includes a permanent copy of all former members’ statements and marks testimonies which include sexual abuse. You can see this compilation here.
If you’re interested in writing pieces for the Rose Garden, participating in reading discussions, and/or chatting with like-minded folks, make sure to join DSA and fill out the Rose Garden interest form!
This article will not extensively discuss PSL’s ideology. Ideologically, PSL is post-Trotskyist, roughly Marxist-Leninist, and follows the “global class war” framework, where workers in “imperialist countries” must defend “anti-imperialist countries” despite their flaws. For a short overview: Sam Marcy was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the largest US Trotskyist org. Marcy developed a “global class war” worldview that advocated “unconditional defense of the USSR”, despite its Stalinist failures. In 1953, he wrote: “At a time when the USSR is playing such a tremendous role on the international arena [....] we are not only for the defense of the USSR, but that we are its most determined, most devoted and most loyal defenders.” This was a significant break with Trotskyism toward Marxism-Leninism, though Marcy argued that his view represented “true” Trotskyism. Where most Trotskyists were “third-campists”, Marcy was a “second-campist”: pro-Soviet, pro-Maoist. In 1959, Marcy led his “global class war” tendency out of the SWP and created the Workers World Party (WWP), which was based around his writings. (Hence: “Marcyites” and “Marcyism”.) In 2004, PSL was created by members expelled from the WWP. PSL continued to defend Marcy, writing, stating that they “defend [the WWP]’s historical tradition and mission, particularly that of its founder Sam Marcy”. PSL represents one step further from Trotskyism and toward second-campism. This can be seen in several areas: In PSL’s newspapers’ aversion to mentioning Trotskyism, in PSL’s self-identification either as a Leninist party (often) or a Marxist-Leninist party (rarely) and in PSL’s argument that “it is the responsibility of all revolutionaries and progressive people to resist the imperialist offensive and offer militant political defense of the Chinese government”, despite explicitly rejecting China as socialist. In short: Where Marcy argued for “unconditional defense” of all “socialist countries”, PSL argues for “militant defense” of all “anti-imperialist countries”.
In 2020, a Philadelphia anti-racist organization alleged that the 2015 social media policy, which bans “horizontal communications”, is still maintained as originally written.
The CPUSA membership detested the leadership’s strategies of expelling dissenters and “slate” elections. In 1991, fully 1200 members (33% of CPUSA, including Pete Seeger and Angela Davis) signed a statement demanding real internal democracy. By 1992, they had all been expelled or quit. As a result, CPUSA continues to maintain its slate system. (In fact, CPUSA is proud about the slate system, which it calls “unifying” and says “empower[s] the individual as part of a collective”.) Unsurprisingly, undemocratic leadership is a recurring theme in the (smaller) expulsions from PSL, where members who criticize leadership are routinely expelled.
Full quote: “2.2 The outgoing Central Committee may choose to propose to the Party Congress a slate of candidates for the new Central Committee. This serves as a nomination for those candidates. When a vote takes place, all candidates who were part of the slate are voted on as individuals, as are other nominees, not as a slate.”
Full quote: “2.2 The Central Committee shall determine a ratio of delegates per full members in each branch by a set date. [....] 2.3 The Party Congress may also have voting delegates nominated directly by the Central Committee, the maximum number of which shall not exceed 40 percent of the total elected delegates. Such delegates shall be elected by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the Central Committee (for two-thirds votes, round up when the outcome is a fraction).”
Breakthrough News leadership: Current list here. BN’s hosts are Eugene Puryear (PSL central committee member and 2x PSL vice-presidential candidate) and Rania Khalek (journalist for Russia Today); BN’s editors are Ben Becker (PSL central committee member) and Rachel Hu (PSL member); etc. BreakThrough News funding: BN appears to be mostly self-funded, with some contributions from UCF and JEF.
People’s Forum leadership: Current list here. PF’s directors are Claudia De La Cruz (2024 PSL presidential candidate) and Manolo De Los Santos (PSL writer, JEF director, Tricontinental researcher). People’s Forum funding: PF has received at least $20 million from Neville Roy Singham, a software megamillionaire and pro-China socialist.
ANSWER Coalition leadership: ANSWER doesn’t provide a list of its leaders. However, we do know that Brian Becker (PSL co-founder and PSL central committee member) was the ANSWER “Co-Leader” from its first march in 2001 (against invasion of Afghanistan), ANSWER National Coordinator from at least 2007 (against invasion of Iraq), and ANSWER National Director from at least 2017 (against NATO support of Ukraine). Before that, he was “Co-Director” of the International Action Center, a WWP front group and precursor to ANSWER, from at least 1999 (against bombing of Serbia). ANSWER Coalition funding: ANSWER is funded by PUF.
Most of the minor front groups do not publicize their current leadership but do work closely with PSL. If they file a 990 nonprofit tax filing, their leadership is usually 50% to 80% PSL members. For example, in 2021, 50% of the leadership listed for US Labor Against Racism and War were PSL members.
While I have many disagreements with PSL’s structure and strategy, “getting millions in funding for your socialist organization from a software billionaire” IS based and Engels-pilled.
Justice and Education Fund leadership: Current list. JEF’s directors are David Chung (PF manager), Manolo de los Santos (PF director, JEF director, Tricontinental researcher), Karina Garcia (PSL central committee member), and Pilar Troya Fernández (Tricontinental researcher).
Tricontinental leadership: Current list. Few are PSL members, though its director Vijay Prashad is a frequent collaborator with BreakThrough News. Tricontinental did create the Justice and Education Fund, which is led by PSL members.
PSL does not publish its current dues structure, which depends on income. For an idea of how much PSL demands: Each year, PSL runs a national dues drive. Per this leaked email, all members are expected to contribute 1 week’s pay, or about $800 at the median wage of $40,000. (Unemployed members are pressured to contribute $200.) If the average member earns just $20000, and PSL has 2200 members, that’s about $0.9 million each year from the dues drive alone – which goes on top of monthly dues.
PSL explicitly argued that Sanders should NOT run in the Democratic primary, but as an Independent: “If Sanders ran as an independent candidate for president, as a ‘democratic socialist,’ he would receive the votes of millions of people. That would be something really significant in creating a new political dynamic in the United States.”
PSL’s strong focus on protests is inherited from the Workers’ World Party (WWP). In 2018, one former WWP member wrote: “In practice, our WWP branch’s work was entirely centered around attending and/or organizing street protests. We would show up at whatever demonstrations were going on, or sometimes we would hold our own. We would bring our own signs that expressed our own slogans, and on bad days we would show up with just the “usuals” (i.e. already-politicized ‘activists’).”
PSL also conducts many rallies about international relations. I have not included these, because some (especially around Ukraine and Taiwan) would be innately controversial. My goal is not to discuss PSL’s ideology, but its organization and strategy.
In Nebraska’s 2024 November elections, a pro-abortion initiative will likely be on the ballot. Though the initiative was Dem-backed, progressive activists are the ones collecting the 125,000 signatures needed.
Social science research shows that protests help by energizing people who share your views. For example, each attendee at Women’s March rallies or Tea Party rallies caused 19 more people to vote Dem or Rep, which correlates with activism as a whole.
“The American Left” is the DSA? We really are screwed then.
The assertion that PSL is a “high-control group” adopts an idealist view of democracy, rooted in liberal individualism rather than Marxist organizational principles. The bourgeois conception of “democracy” — focused on abstract freedoms divorced from material conditions — ignores the dictatorship of capital. Revolutionary organizations shouldn’t be judged by procedural openness or electoral visibility, but by their ability to centralize working-class needs, resist co-optation, and maintain strategic clarity in a hostile capitalist environment.
Calling PSL “ineffective” is just as shallow. It reflects a voluntarist, idealist view of political success: one that expects quick, visible results without accounting for the immense power of the U.S. empire. But socialism isn’t built overnight; It takes years of study, organization, and mass work. PSL has survived surveillance, media hostility, and sectarian attacks yet is still organizing in unions, tenant movements, anti-police brutality protests, and anti-war campaigns. That’s not failure.
These critiques also ignore PSL’s principled anti-imperialism, its support for the Global South, and its practical organizing around police violence, evictions, and mutual aid which cannot be seen with the same emphasis from other organizations.
None of this means PSL is beyond critique, it would be anti-marxist for me to say differently. But many attacks fail to grapple with the material realities of organizing in an imperial core, relying instead on assumptions shaped by liberal NGO or western academia.
If we want to build socialism in the U.S. (something I believe we can agree on) we have to seriously engage with disciplined revolutionary organizations. That means judging them not by surface-level impressions, but by the class interests they serve, their role in struggle, and the contradictions they navigate in the real world.