Louis Proyect gave me another bit of something to look at sectarianism with. The straight edge kids in Utah have a "moral" system that they apply as a group to offending frats who smoke. This loose group of kids developed through association a common "moral" judgement which is nearly instantaneous. In other words drive down the street, see someone smoking, and jump out of the car and go into a violent rage. Racism seems to affect me the same way. In the streets I find that the quickest way for me to fly into a rage which is "unreasoning" is any old act of racism.
The early Christians were accused by the Romans of atheism because the Roman state religion was pantheistic, or tolerant of a diversity of gods. The exclusiveness of a moral order was practically unknown before the Christian use of Judaical methods. If you look at the non-Jewish origin religions, they don't have a moral order in them of exclusiveness.
The Christians used their association with Greek culture to introduce Greek thought in logic to morality in order to make Christianity inclusive of whomever joined a more "universal" gesture. The Church used writing, and the bibilical tradition to formalize the method of logically working out an all inclusive moral order.
The Feudal Monarchs broke the authority of the Church, and moved over time to remove the "logic", and science from Church influence. Mostly because a moral system was very slow to change. Moral systems as we see above with straight edge are closely allied to strong or intense feelings. The "Enlightenment" went further, and tried to create a "rationality" outside of human feelings. Paul Henry Rosenberg respresents this postion on LBO. Marx rejected Rationality, in part as a sense that the totality of human life is the key issue. Economics being one method to consider "all" of the human universe. So Marx looked at Capitalist morality (if making profit allows for it in some individuals), and posited a workers position which is universal.
The moral stance of the straight edge kids is one of simple association. They probably did not think much about the division of labor of whipping the asses of the frat boys. They just brought enough heavy metal to get past the simple fist or foot defenses of the frats. Labor organizations utilized their association with work place organization to adapt business methods and ideas to workers organizations. For instance Louis remembers on the Marxism list some conflict he participated in between Progressive Labor, and the SWP many years ago, when he was young enough for such exertions. These kinds of conflicts looks a lot like how the military organizes itself. But a crucial difference between capitalist armies and socialist organizations is that the capitalist army doesn't care if your morality conflicts with the soldiers duty. Just kill whom you are told. Socialist organizations are based upon "common" shared ideology. This shared judgement is a moral system. To be continued.
regards, Doyle Saylor