Mark, Thank you for your thoughtful reading of Pröbsting and for highlighting the question the pamphlet leaves open. You’re right that a discussion of revolutionary defeatism in 2026 can’t just rely on the old categories. Today, we see Germany and Japan rearming, Europe building up its war economy, and conscription becoming a real political issue again. These are the real forms of militarization now, and any doctrine that only talks about 'inter-imperialist, anti-colonial, dual-character' struggles hasn’t caught up with the present. Your instinct is right.
But before we decide what’s missing, we need to separate the two issues. First, the gap isn’t as big as you suggest. In section nine, Pröbsting actually goes further than you suggest. He says defeatism isn’t just a wartime plan but something to act on now. The 2018 resolution he quotes lists real tasks for today: fighting against armament and militarism among the Great Powers, opposing sanctions and trade wars, voting against nationalist budgets, and organizing in workplaces, schools, and especially barracks. That last point matters. 'Barracks' has always been the main place for defeatist work, antiwar organizing among soldiers, building solidarity, and encouraging resistance. So the issue you raise isn’t that there’s no military policy, but that there’s no clear response to the current situation, like German and Japanese rearmament outside the US sphere. Second, the PMP doesn’t actually fill that gap. I want to explain the issue fully, because it points to a bigger mistake in Pröbsting’s approach. Proletarian Military Policy was Trotsky's answer to a particular situation in 1940: mass conscript armies; an antifascist mood among workers that he judged revolutionaries could not abstain from; and the consequent demand for trade-union control of military training, elected officers, and military schooling under workers' control. It was challenged right from the moment it was formulated, precisely because it was in tension with “the main enemy is at home.” That tension is real, and that’s why the policy remains controversial. But look what Pröbsting does with that tension. He doesn't judge it. He absorbs it. I have to be direct here because the way the pamphlet treats Draper is central to its argument. Pröbsting needs Draper to seem confused so that defeatism looks simple. He presents Draper’s four formulas, taken from Draper’s critique of 'the myth of Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism,' as if they were from an opponent. Contradictions are set up, then brushed aside by saying they are 'complementary elements of a total strategy. 'But that doesn’t actually answer the problem; it just repeats it. Draper’s real point, which the pamphlet ignores, is that Lenin used 'defeat is the lesser evil' in at least two conflicting ways: as a special case for Russia and as a general slogan for all countries at war. This confusion hurt the clarity of the position. You might not agree with Draper; I mostly do, but you must engage with his arguments instead of dismissing him as a Zionist or a third-camp supporter. That’s precisely what Pröbsting does. He goes from 'Draper supported Israel in 1948' to 'opponents of consistent defeatism can’t understand Lenin,' as if someone’s later politics decide whether their earlier analysis is valid. That’s not Marxism. It’s just a loyalty test dressed up as a debate. This focus on loyalty tests runs through the whole tradition on this issue. The RCIT’s position is 'military but not political support' for groups like Hamas, the Mullah regime, or Assad’s opponents, depending on which side fits their camp. is really just campism by another name. Pröbsting even argues that rejecting campism is 'only correct' when both sides are reactionary, which means he keeps the idea but just moves the line so that his own choices don’t count as campism. The third-camp tradition we come from isn’t, as the pamphlet claims, a way to avoid anti-imperialism. It’s about refusing to treat the enemy of our enemy as our friend and insisting that the working class stands on its own, not as backup for any bourgeois or Stalinist group fighting the US. Draper’s 'neither Washington nor Moscow' was not an excuse. The most consistent way to apply 'the main enemy is at home' during the Cold War was to oppose both sides, even when it was hard. Pröbsting can’t do that. In every case he mentions, he picks a side. This argument connects directly to the PMP and your draft proposal, because it shows the problem from both sides. Pröbsting sees the PMP as giving in to the defense of the bourgeois state. I agree, but for different reasons. That difference is crucial. He rejects the PMP because it breaks with a kind of defeatism that already accepts the defense of other states, semi-colonial regimes, or so-called 'anti-imperialist' powers. I reject it because defending any state’s military, ours through the PMP, or someone else’s through campism, shifts the fight against imperialism from the working class to the state itself. The third camp’s objection to both the PMP and the RCIT camps is the same: we oppose allowing any state to use our class for its wars. Pröbsting can’t see this consistency, because admitting it would mean recognizing that the tradition he dismisses is actually the one he claims to support. This brings me to your real proposal, yours and not Trotsky's. You argue that the US should now bring back the draft, arguing that conscription would make endless wars harder to maintain because working-class kids would have to serve. My problem with this idea arises even before we consider any evidence. It tries to limit imperialism by changing how the state recruits soldiers, betting that if the state has to rely on its people, it will hold back on war. But this argument is the same basic mistake as the PMP and campism, just focused on our own state’s army instead of someone else’s. The draft didn’t end the Vietnam War. What made a difference was mass refusal, draft resistance, GI organizing, and the breakdown of discipline from below. It was people’s actions that raised the cost. The idea that 'conscription will make the costs bite' gets it backward; it gives the state the tool and assumes it will not use it harshly. But it will. The conscription thesis says that manpower alone does the work that drones, contractors, and media-driven casualty aversion do. Iraq and Afghanistan went long for reasons that extend beyond the absence of a draft. Your own source makes the point clear. The London report mentions German school children striking against compulsory service three times. That’s real anti-militarist energy in Europe, and it’s against conscription, not for bringing it back. The defeatist position for 2026 is aligned with those strikes. The right program for this moment is independent working-class opposition to conscription and war budgets, organizing among conscripts and those about to be conscripted, and saying no to campaigning to bring back the draft. So, to sum up: the pamphlet does have a real gap, but what’s missing is an anti-militarist program for this new period of rearmament, not the PMP. The PMP is an answer to a different question from another time, and we have strong reasons to reject it. The argument for the draft is also misguided. The key point is simple: the working class must stay independent. We do not ask the state to draft our class to make war harder for it. We do not support any state fighting against ours. We organize our class to say no on both sides. That is the real fight. I’ll respond to your specific comments once you send them. Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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