Thanks, you raise important points, as always, Tony. > On Jun 27, 2026, at 10:45, Anthony Teso via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > 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 ... > > 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.
Where did he see that? > 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. The question is "how do you oppose it?" And when has such opposition been successful at stopping a war? Success comes from mass organizing: "You can't organize against the war in prison, but you can in the army." That was the message I got from a Philadelphia SWP member nine months before I was drafted. The PMP does not make any sense today but was alive and well in 1971. The PMP strategy, however, remains relevant today: As explained in the original 1940 resolution: "Under conditions of mass militarization the revolutionary worker cannot evade military exploitation any more than he can evade exploitation in the factory. He does not seek a personal solution of the problem of war by evading military service. That is nothing but a desertion of class duty. The proletarian revolutionist goes with the masses. He becomes a soldier when they become soldiers, and goes to war when they go to war. The proletarian revolutionist strives to become the most skilled among the worker-soldiers, and demonstrates in action that he is most concerned for the general welfare and protection of his comrades. Only in this way, as in the factory, can the proletarian revolutionist gain the confidence of his comrades in arms and become an influential leader among them." > > This brings me to your real proposal, yours and not Trotsky's. Actually, Trotsky was a fan of conscription in at least some circumstances. Trotsky voiced the Bolshevik strategy towards the military. Neither Trotsky nor the Bolsheviks advocated for conscription in Czarist Russia. That's not relevant to my suggestion to reinstate the conscription in the US, which also has nothing to do with PMP, Trotsky, or the Bolsheviks. > 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. Well, I did write that, but there's more to it. The military is not the police. It is massive and can be deployed against us but at great risk because troops can be massively sympathetic to the people that are ordered to repress; historically, troops have been used against us, however, and we should think this through like the Bolsheviks did (https://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/m/i.htm). > 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. I don't get the connection to campism. > 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. That was largely led by draftees. > 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. They didn't need the working class to do anything in 1973 when they created the all-volunteer army. The whole point is that they did not want to depend on the working class providing a cross-section of the population to fill the ranks. We give the state our money and they hire professional soldiers with it. > 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. What were they? > > 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, What if that opposition proves to be as unsuccessful in Europe as it has been in the USA? If Europe develops a mass movement that stops militarism, then no, there is no need to agitate against conscription. But we haven't seen that work well in the USA and I doubt it will work in Europe. In part, because the military buildup is presented as a national need for defense. > organizing among conscripts and those about to be conscripted, and saying no > to campaigning to bring back the draft. Europe is about to militarize and that has all sorts of social and cultural ramifications. We should not say "yes" or "no" to any tactic until we participate in the process. > > 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. In and of itself, the PMP from 1940 is an historical relic. But I think that the foundational concepts are still relevant. I quoted one of those concepts above: To organize the working class, you need to be where they are. If Europe's armies start recruiting like it's 1935 again, we may choose the PMP. > 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. What you read as "support" I read as "subversion." > > I’ll respond to your specific comments once you send them. I hope to get around to that tomorrow. Mark > > Tony > -- > Tony > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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