Thank you for linking me here! @SirSmoothAES@lemmygrad.ml here is the reading list comrade CutieBootieTootie mentioned, and comrade @edie@lemmy.encryptionin.space is going to run a weekly reading group for it soon, so join up if you like!

Regarding organizing in the US, I really do not think organizing with the PSL is a bad idea if your local branch is good. I understand that comrades like CutieBootieTootie have been burned by the PSL pretty bad, and do not wish to minimize that in any way whatsoever. However, my analysis has always been that people should organize with whatever organization is most active and theoretically correct in their given area, and in most places that’s going to be PSL. Everyone should obviously read the letters and PSL’s responses. Everyone should pay close attention and judge for themselves.

The US has no vanguard party. The primary task at the moment is to build organizational skills, to build cadre, and to expand the general level of millitancy and organization of the working class. These skills can be built up in any organization, from the DSA to FRSO to CPUSA to PSL. However, of those four, the PSL is by far the best when it comes to cadre training and theoretical positions. It isn’t close at all. FRSO takes a position of settler-reconciliation on top of being far smaller than PSL despite being older, CPUSA is thoroughly compromised and reformist, and the DSA, despite having Marxist caucuses, does not have the same cadre training or militant organizational structure, meaning the entire time you are going to be fighting that and trying to front a Marxist-Leninist line to people who may hate you for it.

It’s my belief that if someone is not organizing or actively searching for an organization, they are fellow travelers, not practicing communists. I don’t mean this in a purity testing way, I mean this in the sense that we need as many practicing communists as possible to create as many disciplined cadre for whatever organization emerges as the vanguard party for the US. This vanguard may come from an organization that does not presently exist at all, maybe even coming from former PSL members. I even think a major revolutionary split from the DSA might plausibly become a vanguard party in the future. It could also be the PSL, having grown and improved. However, without that vanguard, we need to take a sober look at what’s local to us and provides the best safety and cadre training available. For a lot of people, that’s going to be their local PSL branch.

All that is to really say that the most important thing for a communist in the US is to gain organizing experience, wherever you can. If nothing is available, then start something with close friends. If only DSA is available, join and try to push it in an ML direction. If your PSL local is good, then that’s likely your best bet. If your PSL local is bad, see if your DSA local is better. If both are bad, start something or see if FRSO has something and try to push them not to have such a horrible line on settler-colonialism.

That’s my advice. We have to build the working class into an organized and militant one, and that only comes through practice. Who we organize with is not a universal, blanket answer, but one that must be made depending on the general conditions of the US, and our local conditions in particular. There is no one-size fits all answer in the absence of a vanguard, and no org can correctly claim to be a vanguard at the moment, so cadre training is necessary to build one.