PSL’s Brian Becker promotes the flawed argument that reinforcing key liberal ideas is a worthwhile compromise

The task of illustrating why Brian Becker and PSL’s practice isn’t right for the communist movement is different from the one of illustrating why Joe Sims and the CPUSA’s practice isn’t right for it. Unlike with the CPUSA, the ways that PSL reinforces the Democratic Party’s dominance aren’t obvious on the surface. Its leaders don’t call for voting for Biden, like CPUSA’s do. Their commentary doesn’t say that Russia is an imperialist power, and they don’t platform left neocons who say Russia is the “biggest threat to world peace.” These offenses of CPUSA are severe enough for the average Marxist today who’s serious to distrust it. So isn’t the case for the PSL’s offenses, yet that’s what makes these offenses actually more detrimental to the struggle. Because PSL is able to lead many genuine anti-imperialists in a direction that perpetuates the Democratic Party’s grip over organizing spaces, without their noticing that this is the effect of the practice being prescribed to them.

The first major indication that this is what the PSL’s practice has become appeared in 2020, when Becker announced a policy of critical support for Bernie Sanders in the primary and a refusal to run the party’s candidate in swing states if Sanders won the nomination. Becker’s reasoning was that even though he recognized Sanders held reactionary stances in certain important areas, supporting him represented a net gain for the socialist movement due to Sanders supposedly being an overall progressive force. As in a force that was hurting the DNC more than he was helping it. Becker concluded: “Tactics can never be absolute, designed for all situations or last forever. On the contrary, revolutionaries must combine a rock-hard adherence to core principles with tactical suppleness to advance the movement for socialism under varying conditions and on shifting terrain. For now, the Sanders campaign represents a dynamic insurgency promoting radical social changes in the face of increasingly stiff headwinds from a criminal ruling class that fears the loosening of its absolute grip over U.S. politics and the economy. We support the insurgency against the reactionaries.”

The problem with this calculus was that for years by that point, it had been evident Sanders was more of a help than a hindrance to the DNC. He had made a non-aggression pact with Clinton prior to running in 2016, he had tried to bring his base into the Democratic Party by endorsing Clinton, then he had furthered this project to leverage his platform in favor of reformism by promoting the new cold war with Russia. Becker either directly or implicitly recognized that Sanders had committed these offenses, yet he felt in spite of this that Sanders was worth supporting. Not because Sanders himself was a friend to revolutionary politics, but because his project supposedly represented something which brought revolution closer.

The flaw in Becker’s argument about Sanders weakening the DNC is clear when you see what Becker didn’t want to admit: that the effect the Sanders campaigns had is one where their leader brought many ideologically developing individuals into a reformist project, then reinforced the anti-Russian biases the media had previously begun instilling these individuals. The Sanders campaigns were a net negative for the revolutionary cause, because they overall reinforced the DNC’s grip. The only ways they weakened the DNC were when many Sanders supporters broke away from his cult of personality, and came to view him as a dishonorable enabler of corruption and imperialism. By calling for PSL members to come into pro-Sanders circles and recruit them into the party, Becker was rationalizing supporting Sanders by asserting that Marxists can bring Sanders supporters to Marxism via this strategy. 

The problems with this plan, and with the parallel reformist actions the PSL has taken since then, were 1) that backing Sanders meant backing a project which had a net negative impact for the revolutionary cause, and 2) that the PSL’s reformist tendencies made it unable to bring whatever Sanders supporters it recruited into a genuinely revolutionary organization.

We know the latter is true because ever since the Ukraine proxy war began, and forced those on the left to show whether they stand for revolution or opportunism, Becker and the PSL have shown they stand for opportunism. PSL has revealed its true allegiance is to the liberals, not to the working class. PSL has denounced both NATO and Russia in its statement on the war, as well as displayed the Ukrainian and Palestinian flags together to convey the idea that Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression and subjugation. These are undeniable signs that PSL has taken on an opportunistic practice. Not merely because they reinforce key pro-NATO narratives, but because they’re motivated by a desire to gain more support from liberals at the cost of not challenging fundamental liberal pro-imperialist beliefs. The org has done these things because as Becker effectively explained three years ago, the PSL views liberals as the most important demographic to appeal to. So much that PSL is willing to compromise on revolutionary principles if this means it can reach even one more liberal by doing so.

When Becker made his critical support statement, one of my fellow organizers criticized him by saying he was arguing off of one of the few things my friend thought Lenin was wrong about: the popular front. My friend felt at the time, though he doesn’t anymore, that Lenin was wrong to ally with social democrats. Even though my friend was right that Becker’s Sanders alliance project wasn’t a good thing, my friend has since admitted that his criticism of Lenin was ultra-leftist. The conclusion I’ve come to from this is that whereas Lenin was right, Becker was wrong. Because the problem with Becker’s practice isn’t that he utilizes the popular front, it’s that he seeks to create such a front with the wrong group. That group being the liberals.

In our time and place, a better group than the liberals to form a popular front with is instead the types of libertarians who’ve come to believe fighting U.S. hegemony is the most important priority. This is because whereas the liberals have shown they’ll only ever attack the communist organizations which support Russia’s anti-fascist war, the libertarians have shown they’ll ally with these most principled kinds of communists. And predictably, when such a front between the ideological groups that care the most about imperialism emerged this year in the form of the Rage Against the War Machine organizing coalition, the PSL’s reaction was to attack it. The organizers of the PSL’s March 18th ANSWER rally sought to discredit RAWM, based on Black Agenda Report’s radical liberal argument about how an anti-imperialist coalition shouldn’t be supported if it doesn’t meet some ill-defined diversity quota. Using these left gatekeeping rhetorical tactics, ANSWER tried to censure and isolate RAWM, revealing itself to represent a sectarian force within the antiwar and socialist movements.

It’s an unfortunate thing that aside from the unease about Becker’s critical support statement which Marxists like my friend articulated in private conversations, seemingly no one wrote any polemics decrying Becker’s decision. But with PSL’s attack against RAWM, many Marxists have decided that it’s crossed a boundary, and we’re now beginning to see more public statements exposing this org’s opportunist pattern of activities. The PSL has been making it ever clearer that it doesn’t intend to challenge the foundational beliefs of pro-imperialist liberals. And that even when it does things which would otherwise be positive, like anti-NATO rallies, it uses these things as platforms for sectarian attacks upon the groups that are principled on anti-imperialism. 

Becker keeps promising that these compromises are worth it, then he and those who share his ideas prove that they’re ultimately going to help reinforce the DNC’s power. The only way to break the Democratic Party’s grip is by building an antiwar movement that’s organizationally and ideologically outside of its control, which RAWM is letting us do.

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