Leaders, sometimes democratically elected committee members and sometimes established cadre with connections to the party's founder and source of funds the Becker family, often make decisions without informing cadres publicly or privately and they are expected to follow without discussion.
This has been very evident and unfortunate in times when people are accused of abuse within the organization
(https://commiewife.medium.com/a-brief-criticism-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation-95923b8cae6)
Or when they take unpopular stances like the Covid ad for the campaign they had to take down that heavily downplayed masking (with Claudia still not wearing masks at events) unfortunately I cannot find a re-upload of this.
The prohibiting of communications between branches except through leadership, the fed/badjacketing of people who don't accept decisions made by leadership, the history of shutting ppl down when questioning national leadership in general, leading to more of a just centralism rather than any kind of democratic centralism
Contrast this with the PSL’s own publications, for example, this one regarding “Social media and democratic centralism” from an internal document circulated first in 2015, which has since been substantially rewritten and appears on the Liberation School website: “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.”
In your view, how does the PSL's structure differ from what you would consider to be a Leninist party structure?
Leaders, sometimes democratically elected committee members and sometimes established cadre with connections to the party's founder and source of funds the Becker family, often make decisions without informing cadres publicly or privately and they are expected to follow without discussion.
This has been very evident and unfortunate in times when people are accused of abuse within the organization (https://commiewife.medium.com/a-brief-criticism-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation-95923b8cae6)
Or when they take unpopular stances like the Covid ad for the campaign they had to take down that heavily downplayed masking (with Claudia still not wearing masks at events) unfortunately I cannot find a re-upload of this.
The prohibiting of communications between branches except through leadership, the fed/badjacketing of people who don't accept decisions made by leadership, the history of shutting ppl down when questioning national leadership in general, leading to more of a just centralism rather than any kind of democratic centralism
Sources and more in-depth explanations:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191207211353/https://medium.com/@newdialectician/women-and-the-vanguard-party-why-im-resigning-from-the-psl-30453e819147
https://web.archive.org/web/20230216163459/https://peoples-voice.org/2021/01/04/psl-proletarian-feminism-weapon/