Marv, You responded honestly and summarized your position in four points. Most critics of the campism piece have not done this. Your summary strengthens my argument.
*1. The roof and the wall* Your first point is not campism. Saying that two capitalist states deserve no support is defeatist. If your summary stopped there, my filter would be too broad. But points 2 through 4 drop the balance you started with. You say Russian interventions are limited to securing a buffer zone. You claim the Tsarist restoration You assert that no one considers the Tsarist restoration a possibility, but you do not specify who that is. You assert that no one considers the Tsarist restoration a possibility, but you do not specify who holds that view. You say Minsk and Istanbul You claim that Ukraine and NATO sabotaged Minsk and Istanbul. by Ukraine and NATO. You argue that who invaded is never a decisive consideration. Your preferred settlement is the referendum-and-integration plan, which matches Moscow’s war aim. Every judgment call goes in one direction. You say the class character of each side is what matters. By your words, both sides are capitalist states. Class analysis does not favor either side. But points 2 through 4 lean in one direction. The bias comes from the geopolitical map. With NATO on one side, the other side’s actions receive a more generous reading, its victims’ choices are downplayed, and its war aims become the peace plan. This is the process I described. The neutrality mentioned in point 1 serves merely as a facade; the true support lies within the camp. I did not need to re-argue the case for Ukraine to show this. Comparing your summary to itself is enough. *2. Headcount is not an argument.* You say my filter is sectarian because it would exclude a likely majority of the anticapitalist left, and you list Woods, North, PSL, the CP, Monthly Review, Chomsky, Wolff, and Roberts. This is about the size of the problem, not the standard. If most of the anticapitalist left cannot support Ukrainian miners, Iranian strikers, or Chinese labor organizers without first checking if Washington might benefit, that shows the state of the left, not the standard. A thermometer does not stop working because there is a fever. Your list is the strongest evidence for the pamphlet’s point. *3. You conceded the decisive point.* You say you would let those on opposite sides of these divides take action while focusing on what unites us. An organization cannot participate if its members take opposing sides in major international conflicts. An organization cannot participate if its members take opposing sides in the major international conflicts of our time. from being a party. It is a discussion group with a treasurer. That is what this list is. You are responding to a proposal for a political center by defending a milieu. These are two different things with separate roles. We agree on much. Coalitions, campaigns, strike support, Palestine solidarity, and antiwar actions should be as broad as needed. There should be no litmus test at the door of a protest. The anti-campism rule in Rebuilding the Party Backward applies only to the political line of a center whose main job is to serve as a banner. If a center tries to fly two banners on Ukraine, it ends up with none. *4. Draper will be raised by someone.* You did not cite “Anatomy of the Micro-Sect” against me, but someone will, so allow me to take it up now. Draper’s argument was that organizations built around programmatic faithfulness in advance of a real class movement become sects: membership organizations exercising discipline over a line, shrinking as the line lengthens. His alternative was not the milieu. It was the political center: a pole defined by its politics, gathering rather than recruiting, exercising no discipline over members, and winning adherence through the quality of its analysis and the usefulness of its work. That is the form the pamphlet proposes. The anti-campism criterion is the banner of the center, not a loyalty oath administered at a nonexistent door. The tolerate-everything model is not a solution. An organization with no banner does not escape the sect problem. This model reproduces internal conflicts, leading to fights that occur without clarity and at the most unfortunate moments. The Second International did not split in August 1914 because it had too much programmatic definition. It split because its definition was superficial and lacked substantive content. *5. The Palestine activists* This argument is your most compelling point. You say the young Palestinian activists are as campist as possible and that we all harbored illusions until Marxist veterans warmly greeted and patiently educated us. Your analogy defeats your point. Patient education requires an organization with a settled position to educate toward. The veterans you remember did not adapt to your illusions. They worked on them. A center that reflects the existing consciousness of its recruiting pool has nothing to teach it, and its cordial greeting is just flattery with a paper sale. To play the role those veterans played, we must know what we think, hold it publicly, and argue for it with respect. That is the purpose of the criterion. Nothing in the proposal bars any Palestinian activist from common work. The criterion governs the banner, not the biography of everyone in the center’s orbit. *6. Mark’s point, which addresses a different issue, is that the SWP has entrenched national secretaries, discipline that spun off dissidents, and a party that rotted from within.* Mark raises Cannon and the SWP: entrenched national secretaries, discipline that spun off dissidents, and a party that rotted from within. This situation is a real problem, but it is a different problem. It is a question of regime, not program. Bureaucratic self-perpetuation has afflicted both programmatically tight and loose organizations. DSA has no binding line on anything, and its staff apparatus is doing fine. The SWP’s degeneration shows that programmatic definiteness combined with a combat-party regime and a self-perpetuating leadership is lethal. This is an argument for the center form over the membership-party form. It is an argument for the pamphlet’s proposal, not against it. The center holds its politics tightly and its people loosely. The sect does the reverse. *7. The sect is unengaged in a struggle for power.* You argue that our lack of engagement in a power struggle makes our disagreements less significant than those in the Second and Third Internationals. This is my thesis. We must do the definitional work now, deliberately and in reverse order, because we cannot accomplish it under pressure. while under pressure. When the movement revives, whoever is ready will settle the organization's identity in weeks. You describe the window. I propose to use it. You are welcome in any coalition I am part of, and I would be glad to be in yours. The party is a different issue altogether. That distinction is the whole argument. Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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