Mark, Regarding the strawman, that's fair—I won't press the point. You noted that the courtroom reached fewer people than the paper each week, rather than saying the courtroom position didn't matter. I understand your point, and I agree it's not the main issue. The Palmer Raids and the comparisons to Gramsci or Lenin don't really support your point, because the contradiction is still there. Total silence and softening a message are not the same. When the CPA and CLP went underground in 1919-20, they made no public statements, so nothing contradicted their internal program. Gramsci's notebooks were never meant to be the party's public voice. Lenin used careful language under censorship to say the same thing differently, not to change the meaning. Calling expropriation 'compensated purchase' is not just a different way of saying it; it's a real change in substance. I would appreciate your clarification on whether the caution was solely about the phrasing used or if it actually altered the content. Silence and coded language can keep the program intact. But when the party's position is stated in court, it either matches the internal program or it doesn't. Regarding Ebert, I wasn't comparing you to him, just pointing out the logic. Any leadership under real repression can say they softened their stance only as much as needed for practical reasons. My question isn't about your character; it's about what limits that reasoning. What stops it from also justifying what Ebert did in July-August 1914, since he had his reasons too? You still haven't said where the line is, so my question remains. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had programs while underground, which is what congresses and internal resolutions are for. But that's not the case here. The SWP wasn't silent in 1941-42 like the underground RSDLP cells sometimes were. The SWP published a weekly paper and spoke openly in court. The real question isn't whether a program can exist without public statements, but whether what was said in public matched the internal program. Your answer to my question about when self-censorship becomes adaptation is the most helpful part of your message, so I want to focus on it. You said it happens when the masses are ready to oppose the war and the party refuses to lead them and that this wasn't the case in 1941. I agree that this condition wasn't met, and that's also Michael's point in the Lenin Hague letter he shared: revolutionaries are often isolated at the start of an imperialist war, and most workers are still influenced by nationalist ideas. But that can't be the only standard, or else it becomes 'we're excused whenever we're isolated,' which is what the 1914 leadership said about themselves. Lenin's response to isolation wasn't to water down the message for the minority he could reach but to prepare them for illegal or semi-legal work while keeping the analysis clear. So the test I suggest isn't 'Were the masses ready?' but for those who could be reached—the members, sympathizers, and militant readers—did the party's public statements stay consistent, or did they change? That's a more focused and answerable question, and it's what the Munis-Cannon exchange and the trial testimony are really about. About the PMP, I didn't bring up the Shachtman split to excuse the lack of internal debate. I mentioned it to show why the debate was limited, which is important for determining whether the September 1940 consensus was a real agreement or merely the result of removing likely dissenters. The point about the SWP's internal debate wasn't the main issue anyway. The real criticism came from outside: the Workers Party, Munis and the Spanish group, and the Greek section under Stinas and Karliaftis all criticized the PMP directly as a concession to the state's mobilization framework. Saying that 'any policy will be controversial among some Trotskyists' turns a specific criticism into background noise. But it wasn't just noise; it was the same criticism from three different groups. You asked how I would define revolutionary defeatism, so here's my answer instead of another reference. It's not about counting slogans or hoping for a certain outcome in battle. There are three main points: first, refusing to give any political, financial, or parliamentary support to your own state's war mobilization; second, keeping class-independent organization and agitation going, which under repression means preparing for illegal or semi-legal work instead of softening your message just to stay legal; and third, making sure your propaganda treats your own ruling class as the main enemy, not the foreign power. Based on that, the real question for the SWP isn't whether Cannon avoided saying things that would have made his sentence longer—no one expects a defendant to make things worse for himself—but whether the PMP's call for union-controlled training within the state's mobilization and the way the party's aims were described in court actually asked workers to support their own state's war effort in some way, instead of keeping the class-independent opposition I described. About whether I'm 'siding with Munis,' that's not my conclusion, and I said so on the 7th. The real question is whether Cannon's answer is sufficiently adequate enough. What I can say is that Munis's specific criticisms—the 'compensated purchase' wording and the decision to present the party's war position as reassurance rather than education—haven't been addressed point by point in what I've read from Cannon. That's the gap I want to address before either of us decides the issue is settled. Enjoy your trip. There's no rush on this matter. Feel free to read the Munis pamphlet again if you want; I'm not assigning any reading this time. Tony -- Tony
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