Speaking as a former DSA member, I would probably now advise against joining them. The org is split between right wing opportunists operating in bad faith and guileless leftists who constantly get run over by the right. If you were to join I’d say don’t give dues to the national, join Red Star, support the IC, and push for open hostility towards the right wing of the organization. The one thing DSA has got going for it is that they’re big and can probably connect you to work you’re interested in (until the NPC steamrolls you for not being a lib).

PSL seems cool from an outsid perspective. My one problem with them is they don’t seem to have a great analysis of the US labor movement but there’s basically no organization in the US that does so it can’t count against them too much. PSL split off of Workers World which I personally think has a much better news site/paper but doesn’t seem have as much of a presence on the ground. Both organizations seem to have similar politics in the Marcyite vein though.

I left SAlt recently so I can give you an anti recommendation. Joined because even though they were trots, they seemed to have good union struggles going on and no public abuse scandals like PSL. Unfortunately,

• their meaningful campaigns (Amazon union, NALC reform effort) are national and my branch didn’t want to participate in local struggle on its own.
• public abuse scandal right after I joined. I don’t think national leadership responded adequately and the members didn’t eject leadership
• ultimately the US section’s position on the national question is wrong, and that poisons their analysis of Palestine. They think that Palestine will only be meaningfully freed with the cooperation of Israeli working class. IMO this leads to reprehensible policy positions which prevent them from meaningfully interfacing w the antiwar movement

If you have multiple orgs in your area, you can always just join for a couple months and investigate for yourself. Even though my time in SAlt didn’t improve the world, I still got much better at talking to people about socialism irl, and working through my disagreements with them sharpened me politically. I think the reason the US left is so fucked up and weak is that the working class in general isn’t organized, and a strong left movement grows out of mass class consciousness. There were plenty of social democratic orgs all over pre-revolutionary Russia; where there was no worker struggle they withered away and where there was worker struggle they thrived. When you talk to socialists, the difference between organizers with union experience and activists without it is palpable. With historically low unionization it’s a question of what is the least-bad org to join.

There’s no consistent answer because each chapter is different. But in general, yes, PSL and FRSO are good (if they are in your area). I also wouldn’t rule out DSA, that one is likely to be very different from chapter to chapter. Some are actually very good even if the NPC sucks. Stay away from CPUSA or any Trot org.

FRSO in my area is backing a neoliberal political candidate because they are “progressive” Unfortunately PSL is probably the best bet but the way they have handled SA and other issues saw my local chapter lose dozens of comrades in a short period which kept me from joining. I know several comrades across the country who left their chapters for being transphobic or handling SA badly, so it unfortunately isn’t a local issue to this chapter but an issue across the org.

I ended up joining a group that is only local and I would recommend that above all else - find a group of people who live in your area and will prioritize local struggle before joining something just because it has chapters around the country. What matters the most at this stage is having authentic relationships within your community, so that when things go bad regular people around you know that you and your comrades can be trusted. You and your local comrades can host educational sessions, make decolonization programs, etc etc on your own without having to fold into another org. Once the conditions in the US get to the point where having a national organizing body is relevant, things will be much different than they are now

let’s make a cryptpad survey like the trans one.

The IWW isn’t exactly an ML org, but maybe give them a shot?

If you’re somewhere without a branch, it might be a lot of work for little gain, but if you’re near an active branch there could be as many as a dozen active campaigns.

In terms of proper theory/practice I have some bad news and perhaps a suggestion for you. Unfortunately both revisionism and a broad anti-intellectual attituide are hegemonic today. From my experience theory, if it is even studied at all, is done in an ecltic, unfocused manner based purely off of personal interest rather than directed at understanding / strategizing about a particular problem–theory and practice are entirely separated.

PSL kind of indirectly enforces this by overemphasizing capital P Party (actually Procedural really) discipline among its members. With every comcievable task officially delegated, for instance, if there’s an event a such-and-such person will be told they are responsible for bringing water, the other fliers, etc. Such explicit, granular control is fitting more of a boot-camp than a Communist Party in the sense that there is no way creative applications, or avant-garde developments can occur in such an environment. Not to mention the problem of dissent & censorship endemic among Trotskyite groups.

I’m being too detailed for what I want to get across in this comment. Although I don’t necessarily agree with them 100% the Unity Prospectus by USU covers the lay of the land of the US left quite well:

https://unity-struggle-unity.org/unity-prospectus/

I guess the advice I have for you is that while you should get involved in whatever is available, you should do so with a critical eye–never lose persoective on the ultimate goal of a Communist revolution; understand the difference between tactics-as-plan and tactics-as-process & don’t get lost in the weeds. With that in mind, always strive to criticize incorrect ideas, no matter how unwelcome it may be; claim no false-unity either, divide what can be divided into two sides. Have a sense of separation and think of it as an investigation.

Haven’t met a communist group in America that wasn’t infantile or controlled resistance unfortunately. I’d get in touch with local native/afrikan liberation orgs or non-liberal palestine orgs like palestine action and use ML literature as a guide and encourage others to do the same with study groups etc. PSL calls themselves ML but they don’t abide by the party structure and I’ve had multiple reps say they knowingly aren’t going to be the vanguard party, and the mysteriously rich Becker family that heads it seems more interested in their presidential campaigns than uniting the actual proletariat of our country. Feels like a way to capture people interesting in ML organizing into doing infantile action, I’m not behind the scenes but I’ve just heard enough person horror stories and strange uses of time to not trust them on a national level (most individuals clearly are just interested in doing communist organizing but need better guidance). FRSO is just same but smaller, and every one I’ve seen (especially RevComs, CPUSA, all Trot orgs) has hues of labor settlerism.

For me, I see centering anti-imperialist work as coming first because it creates the conditions for the proletariatization of America, and as it is most communist orgs in America aren’t headed by the Proletariat but instead settlers that think we can put aside anti-imperialism to get the guys that transport the weapons of oppression higher wages and reinforce their relationiship with empire. So it depends on where you are in America, but doing the decolonization work and if you live in Hawaii focusing on their native struggle or if you live near a large American Indian population or near the black belt focusing on them and what nationalist orgs have popped up around there… Prisoner and homeless aid orgs are very radical as well, John Brown/socialist gun clubs…

As communists I think we can serve to try and bridge the gap between these clearly connected struggles and connecting with and connecting together comrades in all of them. Maybe there are PSL/FRSO chapters doing these things so maybe look into your local ones if you’re curious, but I’d honestly avoid pledging allegiance to either one of them and following their work blindly. In addition to avoiding labor settlerism if any of these com orgs are doing drug/“sex worker” legalizing efforts run far far away, these “leftist” brainworms bring so much more harm than good and are a sign of an infantile org. (To explain, drug abuse goes up keeping us all down and coping harder rather than trying to find a way out, black people are still incarnated for their use and stuck in jail for ridiculous prison sentences. Sex trafficking goes up and pimps become legal slave owners, opening up a new market for capitalism in the most abusive industry of naked exploitation, this is libertarianism, not socialism)

I’m gonna give some different advice to the rest of the comments:

I think the most important thing is to consider what you want to achieve out of joining a party. On the face of it this sounds like opportunism but hear me out before you jump to conclusions prematurely.

Do you want to develop your skills with activism in its many forms?
(Creating agitprop, making speeches, recording, making effective social media posts, and of course the pointy end of activism like hardcore protest strategy)

Join your local affiliation groups that are doing stuff like climate activism, Stop Cop City, anti-war protests, Palestine solidarity groups etc.

Do you want to develop your understanding of theory?

Join a local reading group or a larger national one like the PSMLS (did they have a split or something? I don’t keep up with the drama…)

Do you want to do mutual aid work?

Generally your local orgs are the best (and often the only) option.

Do you want to learn how to canvas and do the more formal party organising work?

Here I’d tentatively recommend volunteering for a campaign like Bernie/Jill Stein/Cornel West/the current PSL candidate. This will likely require you to hold your nose at least to a certain degree but if you want to learn the ins and outs, getting irl experience by rolling up your sleeves and doing the work is the absolute best way to do it.

Do you want to build connections and networks?

There are a lot of good options here but I’d recommend aiming for the stuff that is closest to the labour struggle/similar types of unionism (e.g. tenant unionism, radical prison outreach orgs, etc.) or to join a national organisation (assuming it has an active branch in your local area) such as the DSA(!) or even the CPUSA(!)

Remember that if it’s about building a network, you want to leverage the reach of the organisation you choose to affiliate yourself with so the bigger the org on a national as well as a local level, the better.

Do you want to form a vanguard?

This one is a little bit tougher. I’d recommend a good local reading group as the starting point but the other option would be to play the angles and drive a split in a larger organisation that is terminally revisionist like the CPUSA or the DSA (sorry CPUSA and DSA members, I know that your local people are probably really solid comrades but the top end of your orgs are absolutely dismal - I know you know it too and I don’t intend to shit on your local branch).

The ethics of causing a split are a very big discussion that is kinda tangential to the purpose of this comment. In cases like the CPUSA and DSA, I’d argue that they are already very much in motion (especially in the case of the DSA) so this is significantly different to joining a unified party and acting like some Trot wrecker within those ranks; a split where it’s only you splitting is the same as getting booted from a party. A faction of malcontents is a necessary precondition for a split and while you shouldn’t go fomenting disunity within a party, if one already exists then so be it.

There are probably some other aspects of development that I haven’t given attention to here but this is just a quick rundown off the top of my head for you to consider and to use as a point to spring off from.

Note that these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive; your local mutual aid group might also be deeply involved in activism and it’s likely to be a decent place for developing connections in too. You get the idea.

Party-hopping is poor form, generally speaking, so do commit to a course for a good while unless you have genuine cause to leave (corruption, gross mismanagement of the org, the org goes dormant or is disbanded, serious misconduct from org members, irreconcilable ideological differences etc.) although you can also pick and mix, depending on what your involvement allows so you might be able to be part of a national org while dedicating some time on the side to local unionism or solidarity/mutual aid work etc.

I guess in a sense what I’m trying to impress upon you here is that it’s okay to treat organising work in a similar way that you would a career. Obviously it shouldn’t be about ruthlessly selfish personal advancement at any cost but considering your own personal strengths, your passion, what areas you want to develop, and where you want to take your organising work is actually really commendable imo, especially if you plan to be a leader of some sort or you want to become part of a backbone of an organisation because you have critical skills and experience in certain domains; anyone can join and org and just follow along but almost invariably there will a desperate need for more niche skills like public speaking, skilled artists or organisers, and stuff like administration. So think about what you want to get out of joining a party/org and consider what you want to get out of a mutually-beneficial arrangement with them as well as where you would like to end up focusing your organising efforts on.

The military

Honestly whatever you choose, any org in the US is going to be hamstrung by the fact that the US is an imperial power. Wins are incredibly hard to come by and that lack of forward momentum can lead to burnout and all kinds of insular tendencies.

That said, if you are clear eyed about those limitations I think the best org to develop your skills as an organizer would be DSA. It’s not demcent so there is room to advance ML politics.

Also one of DSA’s national cochairs is actually in an ML caucus called Red Star. They put out a piece recently about why communist should join DSA which I think is fairly convincing.

https://redstarcaucus.org/communists-belong-in-dsa/