[PEN-L:33091] Re: multiple anti-war groups

["Michael Hoover" <HooverM@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> cbcox@xxxxxxxxx 12/11/02 05:12PM >>>
>> "Devine, James" wrote:
>> some of the worst sectarianism I've seen has
>> been practiced by people who claim to be anti-sectarian,
>> anti-Leninist, etc. Top-down (bureaucratic) practices are
>>just as common among the "democratic left" as among the >>"sectarians."

>There is a sort of partial corrective for anti-sectarian
>sectarianism as well as the "straightforward" kind. Refrain
>from using the label of "sectarian" for anyone or any
>organization you disagree with. The charge
>of sectarianism should be reserved for self-criticism only --
>i.e. for positions, groups, and individuals whose politics
>and/or organizational affiliations  one shares.
>Sectarianism (the real thing -- not just the behavior of your
>political oponents) is self-defeating; in the classical phrase
>(jargon if you will) it breaks the link between organization
>and base. Hence the need for self-criticism to avoid it within >one's own tendency or organization.
>As Jim suggests (though I'm expanding a bit) there are those >who merely by being "anti-leninist" think they are therefore
>magically protected against all the sins they ascribe to
>leninism. They aren't.
Carrol
<<<>>>

marx wrote (in letter to friedrich bolte, if memory serves) that socialist sectarianism and actual working class movement exist
in inverse relationship to one another... michael hoover