Thank you Louis Proyect for sending the article over about sectarianism. I think it is a worthy subject of discussion about what we think we ought to have in the movement. You raised that I referred to the Marxism list as the nameless list, I was in a playful mood, and being silly. Did that bother you? In the future I will refer to the list as the Marxism list, if my sillyness was disrespectful?
I take note of your reference to me as "Saylor". What does it mean to you to refer to me that way? I would prefer typical respectful forms of address as am I due.
John Taber draws some parallels with political sects in the Soviet Union, and earlier church heresies. I think there is a continuity myself also. I am struck by reading about early Christianity and the development of a single orthodoxy through moral exclusion and the properties of many national movements who develop conflicts with rival groups. Angola, and Unita, but there are many examples. I also agree with John's point that sects are natural. In that sense there is no cure for sectarianism. The basic term simply refers to a body or section of opinion within a grouping.
Christianity depended upon a process of moral exclusion in a "universal" church. Moralizing was and is a very strong mental process that is heavily related to how strongly someone "feels". Sects seem to arise from moral fervor. Morality appears to have been a tool which the pre Christian Jewish community used to unify their community from the tribal divisions into a single community. Their tradition includes a sense of the debate that is part of their moral tradition. The Christian tradition is about the inability because of the threat of exclusion to debate moral stands. The coupling of a universal church, that is including everyone, and the use of a sort of mental calculus related to instant judgements, and we call morality, is a very effective way of creating community wholeness and uniformity, and especially belonging to something bigger and more powerful than the individual.
Belonging, that is the sense that one is a part of community is a very important part of creating a movement. We are in a different position after one hundred years of experience with mass labor movements in state power, and in other forms of non state power to observe the nature of belonging to the movement. What are those lessons? regards, Doyle Saylor