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Campism is the belief that the world is divided into large, competing political groups of countries ("camps") and that people withleft-wing politics should support one camp over the other camps.[1] Unlikenationalists, campists do not support any countries for reasons such asethnicity ornational identity. Instead, campists support their camp for ideological reasons, because they believe their camp promotes their ideology, such associalism oranti-imperialism.
In general, afirst-campist is someone who sides with theUnited States and its allies; asecond-campist is someone who sides with the bloc of countries opposing the United States (such as with theSoviet Union and its allies, withcommunist countries in general, or withRussia and its allies); and athird-campist is someone who takes neither side and instead hopes to organize the globalworking class into a third bloc.
Campism is an application oflesser of two evils toglobal power politics: A first-campist or second-campist believes their camp, for all its flaws, is better than its opposition.[2]
Socialists have long held sharply divergent views on major international crises. For example, theinternationalist–defencist schism during World War I led to the split of the anti-warIndependent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) from the pro-warSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the split of the pro-warSocial Democratic League of America (SDLA) from the anti-warSocialist Party of America (SPA).
These divisions were also present in the 1930s, afterLeon Trotsky was expelled from theSoviet Union byJoseph Stalin. AllTrotskyists opposedStalinism, but differed on why and how. Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union was adegenerated workers' state. Although a small ruling class had taken control, the Soviet Union had made (social revolutionary) gains for workers and should be defended from outside aggression. Instead of outside invasion, the Sovietworking class should lead apolitical revolution to seize back control.
From 1929 to 1933 (theThird Period), the Soviet Union attacked unaligned socialists and social democrats associal fascists. In a sharp reversal afterAdolf Hitler's rise to power, the Soviet Union pursued apopular front strategy from 1934 to 1939 and again from 1941 to 1945, in which communists attempted to build broad anti-fascist alliances. In this view, the world was divided intofascist andanti-fascist camps:[3]
In contrast, and especially after theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939,[1] Third camp Trotskyists such asMax Shachtman argued that the Soviet Union was abureaucratic collectivist regime which had joined one of two great imperialist camps that wanted to conquer the world. Third-campists believed the world was divided into three camps:[4]
In World War II, theUnited Nations defeated thefascistRome–Berlin Axis. Afterwards, third-campists believed the new camps were those of theCold War:[4]
In this context, a "campist" was someone (especially a socialist) who supported the first or second camp instead of participating in building the third camp. For example, some Trotskyists and members of theSocialist Party of America became "first campists", and laterneoconservatives.[5] In contrast, other Trotskyists (such asSam Marcy of theWorkers World Party[6]) became "second campists" who supported the Soviet Union, such as during theHungarian Revolution of 1956.[4] Second campists are sometimes calledtankies.[4]
Duringdecolonization, billions of people won freedom from imperialism in Africa and Asia. Most of these countries did not pick a "side" in the Cold War. These divisions led toAlfred Sauvy'sthree-world model in 1952:
Both the United States and Soviet Union supported the identification of the first camp with capitalism and second camp with communism, in order to orient their allies away from infighting and toward fighting the "other" camp.[7]
The "bloc" system became increasingly complex after World War II. After the 1948Tito–Stalin split and 1960sSino-Soviet split, the socialist "second camp" was increasingly fractured into many competing ideologies (such asMaoism andHoxhaism) and countries.[4] As a result, many "second camp" socialist organizations split, based on their support for specific socialist governments. For example, the pro-SovietCommunist Party USA (CPUSA) expelled the pro-ChinaProgressive Labor Party (PLP) in 1961.[4]
After the 1955Bandung Conference, many post-imperialized countries joined theNon-Aligned Movement (NAM), which was opposed to both "blocs" in the Cold War. This NAM was ideologically heterogenous, and member countries received support from both American and Soviet benefactors, but the movement leaned toward socialism.[4] Many nominally socialist countries, such asEgypt (led byNasser),Yugoslavia (Tito),Indonesia (Sukarno), andCuba (Castro), took leading roles. In Castro's Havana Declaration of 1979, he summarized the NAM's purpose as "struggle againstimperialism,colonialism,neo-colonialism,racism, and all forms of foreign aggression,occupation, domination, interference orhegemony as well as againstgreat power and bloc politics."[8] NAM represented an alternative to the two-camp order of the Cold War.[7]
The NAM is sometimes associated withThird-worldism, which promotedGlobal South governments (as representatives of peasants and workers andpeople of color) againstGlobal North governments (as representatives of capitalist imperialism).[4] Third Worldism also led topan-Arabism,pan-Africanism,pan-Americanism andpan-Asianism.[9] Third Worldism identifies imperialism as the "primary contradiction" in the world, and some Third Worldists sort the world into two camps: Imperialist countries and imperialized countries.[4]
All of these developments — the fragmentation of the socialist "camp", the rise of non-Communist socialist countries, and a new way to divide the world into "camps" — created new types of campism.[4]
Modern first-worldist organizations, especially neoconservative organizations, reoriented their worldview arounddemocracy promotion by the United States andIslamic extremism.[citation needed] In the modern first-worldist view, there are two real camps:
After thedissolution of the Soviet Union andWarsaw Pact, the "second camp" mostly disappeared, and with it, most second-campism.[4] (SeeList of communist states.) Modern communist second-campists adhering toMarxism–Leninism usually support only Cuba and/orNorth Korea as "actually existing socialism" ("AES").[citation needed] Others also support China,Vietnam,Laos, and Venezuela, despite their adoption ofsocialist market economy-type policies.[citation needed] In the modern communist second-campist view, there are two real camps:
Other socialist organizations, especially those inspired by Maoism, shifted toward Third-worldism orMaoism–Third Worldism andlabor aristocracy theory.[4] This view became substantially stronger after theUnited States invasion of Iraq in 2003[10][6] and again after theRussian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.[6][11][12] In the modern self proclaimed "anti-imperialist" second-campist view, there are two real camps:[1]
Critics of modern campism argue that it creates an inaccurate one-dimensional view of each camp, such as a "monolithic Global North" against a "monolithic Global South", whereas each camp is a heterogenous bundle of alliances.[6][2] In this view, second-campism will often "boil down to the simple procedure of determining which side the US is on in any given conflict and automatically taking the opposite position".[6][3] In addition, campist logic encourages a simplified,Manichean (purely good or purely bad) analysis of social movements.[12][13][14] For example, pro-Russia campists often claim that the2014 Ukrainian revolution was a West-orchestrated fascist coup, while anti-Russia campists often deny any far-right presence.[12] For another example, supporters of thewar on terror describe their opponents asterrorists or sympathizers[10] (such asGeorge W. Bush's"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"[15]).
More broadly, "support" for a camp usually amounts to rhetoric and protest that yield no "concrete gains", because few campists hold political power and each "camp" is a massive entity. A "preoccupation" with "abstract" questions of foreign policy "has been historically corrosive for the left, leading to bitter fights over precisely those issues which we are least able to affect".[6]
For example, during the Cold War, first-campist capitalists who adoptedDomino theory supported late European imperial projects, as in theFirst Indochina War, and autocrats, as inSouth Korea (Rhee),South Vietnam (Diem),Indonesia (Suharto), andChina (Chiang). Second-campist socialists similarly supported autocrats, as in the Soviet Union (Stalin), China (Mao), North Vietnam (Ho), and North Korea (Kim), and expansions of state socialist power, as in theEastern Bloc takeovers and invasions (Germany in 1953,Hungary in 1956, andCzechoslovakia in 1968).
Modern "anti-imperialist" second-campists often support undemocratic, interventionist, and non-socialist countries, including Russia (Putin), Iran (Khamenei), andSyria (Assad).[2][11]
Because campism encourages people to support some countries over others, campism can discourage people from supporting truly international egalitarian institutions,[2] such as theNew International Economic Order (NIEO) ordemocratizing the United Nations.
Some second-campists support "multipolarity", in which severalgreat powers compete for power, and argue that the United States should not haveunipolarity. Critics argue that, while multipolarity has limited US ability to control societies around the world, it has expanded the ability of other countries to pursue their own imperialist agendas.[6]
[A]ny approach to (anti-)imperialism that reproduces the idea that there is a monolithic Global North, developed world, first world, the West, core, and so on that exists in an imperialistic relationship with a similarly monolithic (but not necessarily homogenous) Global South, developing world, third world, the East or non-West, periphery, and so on, ensures that socialists will continually be compelled to embrace human-rights violating, anti-democratic, pro-capitalist, and indeed imperialistic regimes, so long as they are from the Global South, periphery, non-West, developing world, third world, and so on. That is to say, a supposedly anti-imperialist reason becomes an imperialist reason.
Meanwhile, Cold War "campism" was reemerging under a new guise: No longer defined by alignment behind the USSR but by direct or indirect support for any regime or force that is the object of Washington's hostility. In other terms, there was a shift from a logic of "the enemy of my friend (the USSR) is my enemy" to one of "the enemy of my enemy (the USA) is my friend" (or someone I should spare from criticism at any rate). While the former led to some strange bedfellows, the latter logic is a recipe for empty cynicism: Focused exclusively on the hatred of the US government, it leads to knee-jerk opposition to whatever Washington undertakes in the global arena and to drifting into uncritical support for utterly reactionary and undemocratic regimes, such as Russia's thuggish capitalist and imperialist government (imperialist by every definition of the term) or Iran's theocratic regime, or the likes ofMilosevic andSaddam Hussein.
The emergence of the "non-aligned" countries at the end of the 1950s, notably encouraged by leaders in Egypt (Gamal Abdel Nasser),India (Jawaharlal Nehru) and Yugoslavia (Josip Broz Tito), were the expression of heterogeneous resistance to this bipolar order.
This article argues against "campist" approaches in both contexts, because they lead to downsizing criticisms of real relations of dominations within the chosen supported "camp", preventing the establishment of real conditions for popular self-determination. [....] Taking side against one single enemy cannot permit the analysis of real conflicting common interests and links between the different powers.
The reassessment of '2-campism' led to further reevaluations which went to the very heart of the understanding of "capitalism" and "socialism" in Soviet discourse. The rejection of the Stalinist thesis about the inimicable hostility of capitalism and socialism meant a move away from the view that everything which was Soviet was socialist and thus inherently "Good"; whilst everything in the West was capitalist and thus "Bad." The two systems were no longer seen in stark, diametric opposition. The picture painted by Soviet theorists was far more complex, diverse and multifaceted.
Campism entails dividing the world into good and bad, allying with some dubious regimes to do that and, in the process, excluding the left. It is tempting to assume that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but this is a very dangerous mistake to make, both in the realm of friendships and in the sphere of world politics. No less in the case of internal disagreements among anti-capitalists as to how to make sense of the balance of forces and how best to fight back.