John, You asked me a direct question, so here is a direct answer. Yes. I will write it, and I will raise it where I can.
But before I take credit for a task, let me correct the premise. The broad left front you are asking Tempest to organize already exists, and Tempest is in it. The United Left Platform is an alliance of six revolutionary socialist organizations: the International Marxist Humanist Organization, Socialist Horizon, Solidarity, Speak Out Socialists, Tempest, and Workers Voice. I am a member of Solidarity, which is one of them. Carl found the statement. It is on Tempest's site. So the honest report is worse than "nobody is doing anything" and better than it at the same time. The front exists. What it has produced so far is a call to join the protests against ICE killings and a call to join an organization. That is not nothing. It is also not a contingency plan for a seizure of the count. There is a difference between a united front against the regime's daily violence and a united front prepared for a specific date on which the machinery of certification is broken. The first exists. The second does not, and you are right to say so. So here is something concrete rather than another warning. The ULP has announced public speakouts and meetings at Socialism 2026 in Chicago, September 4 through 7. That is a body already constituted, already meeting, and has a date. I will argue inside Solidarity that the ULP put the November question on that agenda: what the six organizations do jointly if boards refuse to certify, what is asked of the unions we have members in, and what the trigger is. If you want to be involved, this is where you should do so. I would rather bring you a proposal from an existing formation than promise you a new one. On your question to me about the unions, we do not disagree. Of course we campaign in the unions for a stoppage. I have never argued otherwise, and you correctly quote me back to myself on why you raise a demand you will lose. My point was not against raising it. It was that a demand becomes a threat only when someone can be held to it. Which is what "one layer too high" meant. Your account of the East Bay caucuses may be entirely accurate and still leave the diagnosis at the level of who holds the offices. Replace all three caucuses with people who agree with you tomorrow, and nothing will bind. Convention does not bind the NPC; the NPC does not bind the chapters; endorsement does not bind the endorsee; and the membership that pays the staff cannot discipline it. If an organization cannot enforce a decision in August, it can not enforce one in November. That is not a defense of DSA's leadership. That is why changing it is not sufficient. This brings me to Marv and Mark, who are arguing about the wrong clause. Marv, one small thing first. The document at that link is the ECCI's theses of December 1921, reprinted as an appendix to the Fourth Congress Theses on Tactics. The internal references to the Washington conference as still unfolding and to the Third Congress slogan date it. Nothing turns on the issue, but the Fourth Congress in late 1922 is where the workers' government formulation gets worked out, and the two are often run together. On the substance, you are both half right, and the half you are each missing is the same one. Mark is right that a united front is an agreement, not a mood. It has a definite basis in a concrete action or demand, and "we all showed up" is not one. Marv is right that the basis is not a common program, that participants keep their own banners, and that the theses explicitly cover anarchists and syndicalists to the left and reformists to the right. But the operative paragraph is 18, and neither of you cited it. The categorical condition, the same for every party, is the complete independence of each organization entering the agreement and its freedom to state its views and its criticism of its partners. And then the phrase that decides the argument: the necessity of discipline in action, combined with the right to voice an opinion on the politics of every worker's organization without exception, not only before and after but also during the action. Unity in action, freedom of criticism. Paragraph 21 states the corresponding danger, which is that parties not yet consolidated dissolve into a formless united bloc. Read that way, the theses are not about demands at all. They are about capacity. A united front presupposes organizations that can be disciplined in an action they did not author and can criticize an ally in public without the agreement collapsing. Both halves require the same thing: a body whose decisions bind its members. Without that, a united front is not achieved. You get a coalition letterhead, which is what we mostly have. That also answers your third point, Marv, and I agree with it. You cannot intervene in the liberal and left reformist milieu as an individual. But the reason is not resources. It is that an individual cannot be held to a line, and neither can an organization built like one. Hari, on the label, please be brief, since you have already made your case at length. I concede your third point, but it does not achieve the effect you intend. Nobody is transposing 1851 France onto 2026. The Brumaire is not a template of class composition to be matched; it is an account of how an executive floats above a bourgeoisie that cannot rule in its own name and buys a coalition it cannot otherwise hold. What I take from Fould and the Bourse is your evidence, not mine against me: the financial bourgeoisie went Bonapartist because Bonaparte guaranteed order and the funds. That is a purchase, and purchases must be renewed. My claim is about what breaks it, and on that the difference is practical. A regime that has hollowed out administrative capacity can seize every office and cannot administer it to one man. That tells you how long a stoppage has to last. And on your sixth point, yes. I retract nothing I said to John about resolutions that bind no one, but you are right that arguing about what the issue is does not constitute fiddling. What would constitute fiddling is if the ULP meetings in Chicago in September and November were not on the agenda. Comradely, Tony -- Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42887): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42887 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120623848/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
