On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at 05:36 PM, Anthony Teso wrote: > > A policy that is defended solely on the basis of its realism but > ultimately fails to meet realistic standards cannot subsequently succeed > in a competition of realism against its rivals.
Agreed. But I did not defend the PMP as “realistic”. It proved to be unrealistic for the reasons I mentioned with which you concur. But the alternative offered by Schactman's Workers Party - remove Roosevelt and install a "workers’ government" - was equally unrealistic, whether it was meant as code for the forcible seizure of state power by a revolutionary party, ie. revolutionary defeatism, or as the more widely understood and commonplace peaceable election and transformation of the capitalist state by governing parties based on the unions. You also write: Lenin's position in 1914 was not a prediction that the Bolsheviks would shortly seize power. It was a refusal, under conditions of total isolation, to extend political confidence to his state's war and an insistence that the class struggle continues through the war rather than being suspended. Liebknecht cast his vote alone. On the test you propose, could this tendency have taken power that year? Lenin and Liebknecht are LOL material too. I think it was entirely reasonable for revolutionary Marxists in that period of tempestuous class struggle to believe that history was moving in their direction and that their isolation was only temporary. They attributed it to the early war fever which gripped the masses in all of the combatant countries which they expected would soon soon dissipate under the impact of mass slaughter on the battlefield and runaway inflation, shortages, and repression on the home front. In this, Lenin was prescient and Liebknecht, tragically, almost so. Trotsky, Cannon, and other revolutionary Marxists expected the same scenario to unfold during WW II and the prominance of mass Communist parties. So I would not have dismissed and very likely would have regarded this perspective as plausible in the period when there was a militant and growing international workers movement in which revolutionary Marxists were embedded and influential. Today, while I take sides in wars between oppressed nations and imperialist powers and refrain from doing so in wars between capitalist states as they did, I hesitate to draw a parallel between our scattered and isolated solidarity activities and the “revolutionary defeatist” practice of those earlier generations which were engaged in a struggle for power. Sorry for the reference to Cannon and Trotsky LOL. It was unwarranted. I've appreciated your thought-provoking contributions and those of others on this thread which have prompted my replies. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42260): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42260 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119987077/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
