Thanks for the prompt reply, Michael. I have a couple of clarifications, since I think several of your rebuttals address arguments I was not making. The central issue, as I see it, is whether “defeat is the lesser evil” can be both a universal, symmetrical slogan and a comparative ranking of powers. As a universal slogan, it means that socialists in every imperialist country oppose their own ruling class and its war effort; as a comparative judgment, it means that one state’s defeat is objectively preferable to another outcome. Those are different claims, and I do not think the response acknowledges the shift between them. So the burden is to show how the same phrase can function in both ways without sliding from revolutionary defeatism into political support for another state.
-------------------- PMP and conscription -------------------- On the PMP and conscription (item 5): I did not say you opposed the Proletarian Military Policy. My point was more specific: your concession regarding conscription (point 4) does not align with the PMP’s logic. The whole gambit of the PMP was to meet workers within the bourgeois military machinery and fight for proletarian control of military training, not to prefer one recruitment mechanism because it provides better agitational access. If the question is “which staffing model is easier to organize inside?” that is a tactical-opportunity argument, not the PMP’s strategic argument. I am glad we agree that our tradition supports the PMP; my point is simply that your argument about conscription does not actually rest on it. Your own caveat about Cannon succumbing to social patriotism in WWII highlights the danger identified by the third-camp critique: isolating that “mistake” from the policy is more difficult than you would like. ------------------------------ Draper and the genetic fallacy ------------------------------ On Draper and the genetic fallacy (point 6): I think this argument comes close to a textbook genetic fallacy. The implication seems to be that because Draper (or the Shachtmanites) held positions you condemn in 1948, his 1953–54 textual analysis of Lenin must be wrong. But the validity of a reading of Lenin’s 1914–1917 writings is determined by the texts, not by the author’s later voting record. Reading Lenin settles whether Draper correctly identified an equivocation in Lenin, regardless of Shachtman’s record on Palestine or defensiveness. The textual claim still needs to be answered on its terms; otherwise, the issue shifts from the argument to the author’s biography. That risks doing what the pamphlet often does: turning a textual disagreement into a loyalty test. --------------------- The two uses of Lenin --------------------- On the substance—the two uses of Lenin (point 7): this is the real disagreement, and I think your response inadvertently confirms it. I take your point about preserving the anti-imperialist core of Lenin’s position; my concern is that the formulation does more than that. You make two claims that are in tension: first, that Lenin’s defeatism was aimed from the beginning against all imperialist powers (Manifesto of 1914); and second, that “the lesser evil” is not an objective international judgment as to which power is more dangerous but a “political statement of intransigent opposition against every imperialist power.” If the second claim is correct, then “defeat is the lesser evil” cannot mean what it literally says—because “lesser” is comparative. No comparison between the powers is being made. That is Draper’s point exactly. Lenin used the phrase in two registers: (a) the symmetrical slogan, in which every socialist works for the defeat of his own government, making the policy uniform across all belligerents with no comparative judgment implied; and (b) the Russia-specific claim that Tsarist defeat would be the lesser evil for Russia, a substantive comparative judgment about a particular state. A German socialist and a British socialist can both advocate the defeat of their own governments without either claiming that the other state is the “lesser evil.” You may hold (a), but then “lesser evil” does no work and should be dropped as misleading. You can keep (b), but then it is a special case about Russia, not a general law. Your paragraph says both, and the equivocation between the two is precisely what is in dispute. Quoting the 1914 Manifesto establishes (a); it does nothing to rescue the comparative language of (b), and it certainly does not license extending (b) into a general method of ranking imperialisms today. ----------------------------- Campism and political support ----------------------------- On campism and political support (point 8): you take my position as a denial of the distinction between imperialist and semicolonial states. That is not my position. The third-camp position makes the distinction perfectly well; it simply denies that the distinction creates a duty of political support for the bourgeois or sub-imperialist regime doing the fighting. My objection is not to opposing imperialism, but to turning that opposition into political support for another state. “Anti-imperialist united front” tactics against an occupation are one thing; political support to the Iranian state, or to the war aims of a clerical-bourgeois regime, is another. Your formulation, as I read it, collapses the two: it derives “support its enemy’s state” from “the US is the greater power.” That is the move I am objecting to—the substitution of a comparative ranking of states for an independent class line. Once “lesser evil” becomes a ranking of states, it becomes easy to move from opposing one’s own ruling class to granting political support to its opponent. Which brings us back to point 7: the slide from “lesser evil for Russia, 1917” to “support the lesser imperialism / the semi-colonial belligerent today” is the same equivocation, now doing geopolitical work. My last paragraph—“we do not support any state fighting against ours”—is not a refusal to oppose occupation; it is a refusal to translate opposition to our own ruling class into support for another ruling class. ---------- Conclusion ---------- So the argument is not whether to oppose German rearmament or Japanese rearmament (we agree) or whether you formally endorse the PMP (you do). It is whether “defeat is the lesser evil” can be both a universal, symmetrical slogan and a comparative ranking of powers simultaneously. I think that equivocation runs through the response: it appears in the appeal to the PMP, in the treatment of Draper, in the two registers of Lenin, and finally in the move from opposing one’s own ruling class to politically supporting another state. That is the point; I still do not think the response addresses the question. In solidarity, Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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