Got it! A tactic of adversity rather than a diversity of tactics. Give me a long enough argument and I can change the world! :-) Kidding aside, I get your point, but I think you fail to see how your own criticism applies to you. "Diversity of tactics" is itself an argument, which you are refusing to engage in by dismissing it as a "fetish". -ravi
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Julio actually does believe that by argument one changes minds. See the Dustup thread of a few years ago in which he and Miles argue this out -- neither persuading the other.
He also assumes that the "we" of a conversation is self-evident. The movement (even in its embryonic stages) is 'really' a unified Party, with Principles of Unity which all have agreed on as the basis for legitimacy. But "The Movement" doesn't exist yet; our principles of unity are not agreed on. There is no domain set aside for all legitimate conversation. There is the _potential_ unity of participation in various actions, but there is no basis whatever for rules saying who may participate and who may not. That all remains to be (roughly) settled, and that will take another year or two to shake down. Those who treat "The Movement" as a defined entity are in effect saying, talk in my terms or I will pick up my marbles and go home.
"Debate" over the black-bloc tactic at the present time is empty of content. Lou still assumes the principles of the SWP, and that gives him an illusory basis for arguing that X is right and Y is wrong. He cannot see that his rejection of Democratic Centralism also cuts the ground from under any set of fixed principles. Such principles can only emerge slowly from a diversity of practice, which is not an argument but simply an empirical observation : that diversity is going to continue, probably increase, for some time regardless of any argument that it should or shouldn't. It's a given, not a proposition that can be debated.
Carrol