Michael, On the question of objective reality, I don't think we actually disagree. I never doubted that Pearl Harbor happened or that the fear it caused was real. What matters is what happened politically afterward, not whether the event itself occurred. The same applies to the Hague letter's point that "the overwhelming majority of the working people will inevitably decide in favor of their bourgeoisie." That is exactly what happened in 1941, and I don't think anyone here has said otherwise. Regarding my earlier point about Lenin and defeatism, I checked the original texts before replying because I wanted to be sure, not just rely on Draper's summary. You are correct that the December 1922 Hague notes mention "defeatism." But that passage is actually Draper's main evidence for his argument. In his chapter on this (section VI, "After Lenin: Revival and Reinterpretation"), Draper finds that Lenin only mentions the defeat slogan three times between the November Revolution and his death. The Hague note is the third, and Draper calls it "ambiguous"—it is just a short instruction to explain the historical language of the World War to a delegation preparing for a possible future one, not a new order to revive the "wish for the defeat of one's own government" as an active slogan. Draper also examined the Comintern's first four congresses, draft programs, Zinoviev's war-period writings, and the Comintern's monthly journal through 1923 and found no sign of defeatism as doctrine in any of them. Draper argues that defeatism was reintroduced as "a principle of Leninism" in 1924 by Zinoviev, after Lenin's death, to use against Trotsky. So I overstated it when I said Lenin "moved away from this concept." That makes it sound like he abandoned the term, which isn't exactly Draper's point, and the Hague note doesn't prove that either. Draper says what really changed was the specific 1914-15 idea of "wishing for the military defeat of one's own country." This idea stopped making sense once the Bolsheviks became the government and had to negotiate the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. After 1917, Lenin never brought up or defended that idea again, even though he still talked about "turning the imperialist war into civil war" and "the main enemy is in your own country." The Hague note doesn't change this; it's just the one ambiguous case Draper already discusses. I should have said "moved away from the concept," and I appreciate you pushing me to be more accurate. It also helps clarify my main point to Mark: "revolutionary defeatism" isn't a fixed slogan with the same meaning in 1914, 1917, and 1941. Its meaning changed over time, and treating it as a single, unchanging doctrine is what lets people apply 1914 ideas to 1941 without question. Sources, since you'll want to check my reading against the primary text rather than my summary: Lenin, Notes on the Tasks of Our Delegation at The Hague ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/04b.htm ) , and Draper, The Myth of Lenin's "Revolutionary Defeatism," Ch. VI ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1953/defeat/chap6.htm ). On isolation and "swimming against the stream," I fully agree with the principle: the way to deal with isolation is through organizational preparation, not by changing your position just to avoid being isolated. But it's important to think about what that means in practice. The Hague letter advised people facing total repression, like under Tsarist or fascist regimes, to "preserve existing and form new illegal organizations." In 1941, the SWP was working under a bourgeois-democratic government that prosecuted and jailed people under the Smith Act but did not ban the party itself. That situation is more like facing a tough prosecutor than living under an autocracy. So "prepare for illegal existence" needs to be adapted to that context rather than taken literally. Deciding what that adaptation should have looked like—legal defense strategies, what to publish, how to use resources—is really the main issue in the Munis-Cannon debate I mentioned to Mark. On the evidence, I agree with you. Just to be clear, I never doubted that you had sources for the charge against Cannon and the SWP. What I told Mark was that Munis's 1942 pamphlet is a stronger source to show him because it was written at the time, is detailed, and comes from someone who supported the defense campaign and read the trial transcript. That makes it harder for Mark to dismiss it as just looking back and settling old scores. My point was only about which citation is more effective with Mark, not that your sourcing was wrong. I also agree about the "shades in between." I've said that from the start. Not keeping a consistent defeatist position is not the same as Ebert signing the war credits, and I don't think ignoring that difference helps anyone in this discussion. About the Anschluss, I agree. Let's leave it out. It doesn't add anything, and the German and Austrian Trotskyists' refusal to take sides was a different situation. That was an inter-imperialist territorial dispute, not a case where either side could really claim "defense of the fatherland," so it doesn't relate to the American issue. -- Tony
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