Third camp

Third camp

The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to support neither capitalism nor Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp".

Leon Trotsky described the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state which should be defended against capitalism, while supporting anti-bureaucratic political revolution against Stalinism. Third campists typically disagree with his analysis of the Soviet Union and claim that their position of favouring neither "camp" is in the spirit of Trotsky, although not his conclusions.

This approach was developed by Max Shachtman and is one of the major components of left Shachtmanism. It underpins his theory of bureaucratic collectivism. Analyising the USSR's invasion of Finland in 1940, Shachtman concluded that the USSR's policy was one of imperialism and that it was a reactionary war in which the best result for the international working class would be the defeat of the USSR. Conversely, Trotsky argued that a defeat for the USSR would strengthen capitalism and reduce the possibilities for political revolution. [A series of articles and letters from Trotsky's debates with Shachtman was published posthumously under the title "In Defense of Marxism."]

The Congress Socialist Party of India also adopted a Third Camp position, with the slogan “We want neither the rule of London or Berlin; nor the rule of Paris or Rome; nor that of Tokyo or Moscow.” (September 1939). [ [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/judd/1940/04/india.htm Sherman Stanley "India and the Third Camp" (April 1940)] ]

Shachtman's support for defeat of official Communist nations' expansionism (the second camp) drifted rightward into support for the capitalist nations (the first camp). This position has led mainstream Trotskyist groups to declare the position reactionary. However, some supporters of the third camp split with Shachtman and continued to develop their analyses of the changing world situation.

A third camp position is held today by the Workers Liberty groups [ [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/3186 Workers’ Liberty and the “Third Camp”] ] , "New Politics" [ [http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue27/johnso27.htm Alan Johnson "The Third Camp as History And a Living Legacy"] ] , and by some in the multi-tendency Marxist organization Solidarity in the United States, as well as some in the Democratic Socialists of America and the Socialist Party USA.

The Worker-Communist Party of Iran, together with groups including Left Worker-communist Party of Iraq, which do not come from a Trotskyist background, also started an initiative called "Third Camp against Islamic Terrorism and US Militarism" which has nothing to do with Trotskyist Third Camp position. [http://www.wpiran.org/English/WPI%20Briefing/197wpibriefing.pdf]

Criticisms

Many critics of the Third Camp tradition have argued that it tends to lead its adherents, sooner or later, into support for U.S. interventionism, as the only force willing and able to defend human rights and democracy against movements or regimes that are thought to pose a threat to them, such as (historically) Stalinism and (more recently) "Political Islam" and various Third World dictators, like Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic.Fact|date=September 2008 The main source of evidence advanced on behalf of this criticism has been anecdotal: the long list of ex-Third Camp adherents who ended up as either neoconservatives [According to John B. Judis, in a "Foreign Affairs" article [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19950701fareviewessay5058/john-b-judis/trotskyism-to-anachronism-the-neoconservative-revolution.html] on the link between Third Camp Trotskyism and neoconservatism, "Many of the founders of neoconservatism, including The Public Interest founder Irving Kristol and coeditor Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert Wohlstetter, were either members of or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Younger neoconservatives, including Penn Kemble, Joshua Muravchik, and Carl Gershman, came through the Socialist Party at a time when former Trotskyist Max Schachtman was still a commanding figure."] or "hawkish" social democrats. Among the people who passed through the Schachtmanite movement are the following: Elliott Abrams (briefly associated with the Young People's Socialist League [YPSL] in 1969, long after the Schachtmanites left), Gertrude Himmelfarb, Jeane Kirkpatrick (briefly associated with YPSL in 1945, after the Schachtmanites left), Linda ChavezFact|date=September 2008, Richard PerleFact|date=September 2008, Paul WolfowitzFact|date=September 2008, Irving Kristol, and former "left Schachtmanite", Alan Johnson, a co-sponsor of the Euston Manifesto, which attacks critics of the Iraq War as appeasers of tyranny and calls for the renewal of an imperial or "democracy-promoting" approach to British military deployment. [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/125akrsu.asp] All of these figures have been vocal advocates of an assertive use of military power by the United States, notably in Iraq. However, support for American interventionism - whether enthusiastically or as a form of "lesser evilism" is not itself a Third Camp position. [Alan Johnson [http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue27/johnso27.htm "Neither Washington Nor Moscow": The Third Camp as History And a Living Legacy] "New Politics", vol. 7, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 27, Summer 1999]

Other uses of the term

More recently, a movement has emerged calling for a "Third camp against US militarism and Islamic terrorism" [http://www.thirdcamp.com/indexe.php] , mainly an initiative of Worker-communist Party of Iran and its leaders such as Hamid Taqvaee and Maryam Namazie.

References

External links

* Max Shachtman, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/shachtma/1940/04/ussrwar.htm The Soviet Union and the World War]
* Leon Trotsky, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1940/1940-finnish.htm Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events]
* Pierre Frank, [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/frank/1951/12/3rdcamp.htm Under Pressure of the Coming War, Imperialism Beckons “Third Camp”]
* Tony Cliff, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1948/xx/burcoll.htm Marxism and the theory of bureaucratic collectivism]

ee also

*Centrism
*Anti-Stalinist left
*Neoconservatism
*Third Way (A social-democratic theory, popularly supposed to have been a significant influence on Tony Blair - it has no political connection with Third Camp Socialism).


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