Why then do I call the DP leadership _principled_? My argument with the DP is that their principles are vicious, not that they are unprincipled. And why do I call Justin, with whom I have extremely sharp disagreements, principled? And I have recently attacked a poster on psn who, in disagreeing with Martha Gimenez's position on the election accused her of "elitism." I agreed with the substance of his rather than Martha's position, but saw his criticism of her in this respect as 'unprincipled.' An argument can easily be correct but unprincipled, or principled but incorrect or even (as in the case of BDL on Sweezy) principled but contemptible. It is in reference to the likes of BDL and other lap dogs of the imperialists that Marx's "ruthless criticism" which must be completed with the criticism of arms applies.
Kelley's posts on this have been excellent, and the following is intended to be complimentary both to her posts and my own earlier posts.
Principled means (a) the target is specified (and specifiable), (b) that the criticism is based on a shared principle with the target (otherwise it is polemics, which can be either honorable or dishonorable; they are dishonorable if they disguise themselves as criticism), (c)that the acts and/or style and/or theories of the target violate the shared principle(s), (d) that a focus on acts or ideas, _not_ on personality, and (e) the practice/act/theory criticized must be correctable by conscious action. (Doug, for example, seems almost congenitally unable to focus on an argument independently from a character analysis of the person making the argument. As Ian is sure to point out that sentence is an instance of the practice it condemns. :->)
In so far as "The Left" is an utterly vague concept, and in so far as (ususally) there is no instance of the practice or theory 'criticized' on this list, almost _all_ criticisms of "the left" or "leftists" in general on this list are unprincipled. They don't specify a recognizable object of their criticism beyond a generalized "left" and since the Left is so nebulous a category, all these alleged criticisms constitute merely an isolated whine that things should be different. They contribute _nothing_ to making different the condition which they weakly gesture towards but are unable to specify.
An off-list discussion has called to my attention the misuse to which Marx's "ruthless criticism of all that exists" is often put. First a commonplace -- practically every word in a language must be used in quite different senses (naming not just different things but quite different _kinds_ of things: there are, after all, more genera in the universe than there are words in any language). "Criticism" in Marx's use of it in this instance simply has nothing to do whatever with "criticism" as argument within the (broadly conceived) workers' movement. One of the poisonous features of intra-movement debate in the '70s was precisely this conception of criticism and self-criticism as involving "ruthless criticism." Marx was using the term to refer to the critique of capitalism, of a whole mode of production which he already saw as "governing" the whole of humanity. And, used in this sense, it is quite correct to go on to observe that "the arm of criticism must be completed with the criticism of arms." If you don't think the person or persons you are criticizing can only be changed by violence, then don't justify your criticism with this quotation from Marx. (I sometimes suspect that this is precisely what some of the more frenzied anti-stalinists think: that the likes of Yoshie & me can only be handled by physical destruction. I filter out such since there seem to be no shared principles as a context for argument. I remember a long debate here back in '69 with Jeff Jones & one of his sidekicks lasting til the wee hours of the morning in which said sidekick's fondling of a bicycle chain made me wonder whether or not that was their viewpoint towards SDS members who would not accept the Weatherman program. :->)
Again, criticism that does not aim at unity with the person(s)/groups criticized has nothing to do with the tradition of criticism and self-criticism in marxist movements (except in so far as that tradition is marred by violations of its own principles.)
I hope this helps, because I don't see how there can be any useful discussion among marxists (or leftists more broadly conceived) unless all understand and at least try to observe the criteria for principled criticism. There can certainly be no reaching for unity without that understanding.
Carrol