I was surprised to read this post, particularly having followed your Substack for a while now and agreeing with much of your analysis, and in fact linking to some of it on the Left Renewal blog. You don’t engage with any of the content of our actual statement. but only with stuff outside the statement. Nobody who signed up to the statement signed up to anything other than the statement, so criticising signatories on the basis of something that one of the authors wrote later is just bizarre. I was also rather shocked by how rude you were about our co-author Daniel M, just because you don’t know anything about him. You called Daniel R “the main author”, which I can assure you is not the case. The text was not an initiative of the AWL, which neither Daniel M nor I have anything to do with. (To my knowledge, the AWL is never publicised the text.) You are of course entitled to criticise what we wrote, and indeed we welcome critical responses, but this was not a good faith criticism of our text. Very disappointing.
Ben, thank you for engaging publicly. Four quick responses, in the spirit of continuing the exchange.
First, on whether the piece engages the statement. The piece engages the statement's treatment of 'consistent democracy' as analytical frame, its 'clerical-fascist' characterisation of Hamas, its silence on anti-Zionism, its silence on BDS, its silence on Standing Together, its extension of 'campism' to positions the Fourth International has always held against actual campists, its use of Moishe Postone, and its SWANA-listening premise measured against the two-year record of who actually wrote in response. Those are all inside the statement or directly about its construction. I take your point that the rejoinder is not the statement. That distinction is made explicitly in the piece, and the argument is precisely about what the statement's silences made possible without co-author disagreement.
Second, on signatories and later writing. I am not claiming signatories endorsed the rejoinder. I am saying that two and a half years on, the signatures sit underneath a body of work that has grown up around the original text, and that has not been disavowed by its authors or by most signatories. Pierre Rousset's withdrawal is instructive here. He did not disavow the text he signed. He disavowed the framework that had been put to work in directions he did not underwrite. That distinction matters, and it is the one the piece rests on.
Third, on tone. 'Less known in Britain' on Daniel Mang was not intended as rudeness and I am sorry if it read that way; it was an accurate description of the reach of his published work in the UK context and nothing more. Happy to update the piece with a line about his actual background if you would like to share it. On Daniel Randall: if the phrasing 'main author' appears in my text I will correct it, as I do not believe he is. Could you point me to the passage you are referring to?
Fourth, on AWL provenance. The piece states explicitly that the statement is 'not formally an AWL document' and does not claim otherwise. The argument is that its analytical apparatus is AWL in origin: the 'consistent democracy' framework, the two-nations-two-rights symmetry, the 'clerical-fascist' gloss on Hamas, the deployment of Postone. Those inheritances are independent of whether the AWL authored or publicised the text, and they are what the piece is engaging.
The critique is offered in good faith and stands by its substance. I would welcome your response on the analytical questions specifically, which is where the argument is.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Just quick responses to your four points.
1. I don't think you have engaged substantively with the text, as opposed to with its omissions. For example, you read Keith Kahn-Harris against the grain of what he says to claim that we ask the left to remove its "last remaining materialist anchor" while putting nothing in its place, when in fact we very clearly call for a return to materialist analysis (a call that Daniel M and I have repeated and unpacked in our more recent "Left Rrenewal in an Age of Waiting" pamphlet). True, you quote the words "consistent democracy" and put the words "clerical-fascist" in inverted commas (even though we don't use those words or that frame), and you critically mention Postone, who we quote once (along with Kavita Krishnan, Rohini Hensman, Frieda Afary, and others) -- but you don't explain why you think quoting Postone is bad, what is wrong with consistent democracy, or which Fourth International positions we supposedly deviate from. The emphasis is on our silences. (I would add that many of our silences, e.g. on boycotts or co-resistance, were designed to enable signatories who take different positions on these questions, rather than bind them to a narrower perspective, especially given the ideological divergence between the three authors.)
2. I still don't understand how the signatories are responsible for "the body of work that has grown up around the original text", but you manage to ignore the largest part of that body of work: our blog and our webinar series. We have reproduced Standing Together there, sure, as well as many other Palestinian voices and other leftists from the Middle East, many descriptions of Israeli actions in terms of apartheid and genocide, and indeed many texts from Fourth International writers, including yourself.
3. "Less known in Britain" was not what I objected to, but the dismissive "Gidley and Randall _and whoever they work with_". You are correct that you didn't in fact call Daniel R the "main author"; your actual words were "its principal author", and this is categorically inaccurate.
4. This final point would make sense if consistent democracy, the critique of reactionary forms of anti-imperialism, or Postone's materialist analysis were the sole property of the AWL, but in fact these positions are taken by a broad tradition on the anti-Stalinist and anti-authoritarian left, from anti-campist Trotskyism to autonomous Marxism, social ecology, democratic socialism or anarchism.
Ben, thank you for the detailed response. Taking your points in order.
On point 3, factual corrections first. 'Principal author' is inaccurate and I have updated the piece. My apologies. 'Whoever they work with' was careless phrasing and will also be revised. On Daniel Mang, I should have done more than 'less known in Britain', as true as that is. I have looked into his public work since your comment and now introduce him properly in the update, including his role in Friends of Standing Together Sweden, which is publicly stated on the FOST website and is relevant to what the piece is engaging. On 'clerical-fascist': you are right that the phrase is not in the signed statement. I will distinguish the statement's actual language ('fundamentally reactionary') from the broader analytical vocabulary visible on the blog, of which more below.
On point 1. On Kahn-Harris: my reading is not that the statement abandons materialist analysis. It is that Kahn-Harris himself diagnoses the fetishisation critique as asking the left to give up the foundationalist work Palestine is currently doing, at a moment when the materialist frame you recommend does not yet have the political grip to do that work for it. The question he asks and admits he cannot answer is how to act politically on an important issue without implying foundational importance. A pamphlet unpacking materialism is welcome, and I will read 'Left Renewal in an Age of Waiting' properly before writing further. But a pamphlet eighteen months later is not the same as the statement itself answering Kahn-Harris's question at the time he asked it.
On 'silences designed to enable signatories who take different positions': this is a significant clarification and I accept it. It is also precisely the dynamic the piece describes. A text whose silences are designed to accommodate signatories with different positions on BDS or co-resistance cannot then protest when some of those signatories later conclude that the silences accommodated positions they did not want to underwrite. Pierre Rousset's withdrawal is the working example. He signed what he understood as 'a list of discussion' for broadening unity, and he withdrew when the framework was put to work in directions he had not intended to authorise. That the text was designed to be capacious is the condition that made his withdrawal legible.
On point 2, the blog and webinar series. You are right that I did not engage this in the piece, and I accept the criticism. The blog is a substantial body of work, and viewing all the webinars would be time-consuming; they deserve their own treatment rather than being folded briefly into a piece aimed at the signed statement and its Responses page. I will write that treatment as a follow-up.
Two observations that carry over from the current piece and will be in the follow-up. First, the blog is where the project's analytical vocabulary is most clearly visible. 'Clerical fascism' appears in Paria Rahimi's January 2026 piece 'Why the Left Is Failing Iranians', and the blog's own tagging apparatus includes 'Shiʿa Imperialism' and 'Welayat-e Faqih' as live analytical categories. The register the piece engages is in the project, even where the signed statement does not use it. Second, the Responses page is the curated critical correspondence on the statement itself, which is a different kind of record from a blog reproducing voices the editors did not solicit as critical interlocutors. Both are worth discussing. They are not the same discussion.
On point 4, consistent democracy. This is where I want to push back directly. 'Consistent democracy' is not the shared vocabulary of a broad anti-Stalinist and anti-authoritarian left. Its roots are in Lenin, yes, but its specific deployment as an analytical framework in British and French Trotskyism is traceable through a definite lineage: Pierre Lambert's OCI in France, its then-partners in the SLL in Britain in which Sean Matgamna was active in the 1960s, and from there into his Workers' Fight, Socialist Organiser and AWL currents that descend from that milieu. It is not the common vocabulary of autonomous Marxism, social ecology, democratic socialism or anarchism. None of those traditions deploys the phrase as a programmatic frame. In contemporary British left politics the AWL is effectively the sole current using 'consistent democracy' in this specific register. That is the sense in which the statement's analytical furniture is AWL: not that the AWL authored or publicised the text, but that its theoretical apparatus is a Lambertist inheritance that now lives almost exclusively within AWL politics.
The related point. The Fourth International has its own substantial tradition of critiquing campism, Assad apologism, Putin apologism and reactionary forms of anti-imperialism. Gilbert Achcar, Joseph Daher and the current Bureau statements do this work in a different theoretical register that does not require the 'consistent democracy' frame. That the statement reaches for the Lambertist apparatus rather than drawing on the existing FI tradition is part of what the piece is engaging.
More soon on the blog and the webinar series. The conversation is worth continuing.
I do hope they take notice of what you have said. Particularly given the time gap......
Excuse my ignorance, but what's BDS? (One should never use an abbreviation without first stating what it is.)
Ooops! I should have explained the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign: I have added a postscript at https://redmole.substack.com/i/194914367/postscript-boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-because-solidarity-starts-from-what-the-oppressed-are-asking-for
I was surprised to read this post, particularly having followed your Substack for a while now and agreeing with much of your analysis, and in fact linking to some of it on the Left Renewal blog. You don’t engage with any of the content of our actual statement. but only with stuff outside the statement. Nobody who signed up to the statement signed up to anything other than the statement, so criticising signatories on the basis of something that one of the authors wrote later is just bizarre. I was also rather shocked by how rude you were about our co-author Daniel M, just because you don’t know anything about him. You called Daniel R “the main author”, which I can assure you is not the case. The text was not an initiative of the AWL, which neither Daniel M nor I have anything to do with. (To my knowledge, the AWL is never publicised the text.) You are of course entitled to criticise what we wrote, and indeed we welcome critical responses, but this was not a good faith criticism of our text. Very disappointing.
Ben, thank you for engaging publicly. Four quick responses, in the spirit of continuing the exchange.
First, on whether the piece engages the statement. The piece engages the statement's treatment of 'consistent democracy' as analytical frame, its 'clerical-fascist' characterisation of Hamas, its silence on anti-Zionism, its silence on BDS, its silence on Standing Together, its extension of 'campism' to positions the Fourth International has always held against actual campists, its use of Moishe Postone, and its SWANA-listening premise measured against the two-year record of who actually wrote in response. Those are all inside the statement or directly about its construction. I take your point that the rejoinder is not the statement. That distinction is made explicitly in the piece, and the argument is precisely about what the statement's silences made possible without co-author disagreement.
Second, on signatories and later writing. I am not claiming signatories endorsed the rejoinder. I am saying that two and a half years on, the signatures sit underneath a body of work that has grown up around the original text, and that has not been disavowed by its authors or by most signatories. Pierre Rousset's withdrawal is instructive here. He did not disavow the text he signed. He disavowed the framework that had been put to work in directions he did not underwrite. That distinction matters, and it is the one the piece rests on.
Third, on tone. 'Less known in Britain' on Daniel Mang was not intended as rudeness and I am sorry if it read that way; it was an accurate description of the reach of his published work in the UK context and nothing more. Happy to update the piece with a line about his actual background if you would like to share it. On Daniel Randall: if the phrasing 'main author' appears in my text I will correct it, as I do not believe he is. Could you point me to the passage you are referring to?
Fourth, on AWL provenance. The piece states explicitly that the statement is 'not formally an AWL document' and does not claim otherwise. The argument is that its analytical apparatus is AWL in origin: the 'consistent democracy' framework, the two-nations-two-rights symmetry, the 'clerical-fascist' gloss on Hamas, the deployment of Postone. Those inheritances are independent of whether the AWL authored or publicised the text, and they are what the piece is engaging.
The critique is offered in good faith and stands by its substance. I would welcome your response on the analytical questions specifically, which is where the argument is.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Just quick responses to your four points.
1. I don't think you have engaged substantively with the text, as opposed to with its omissions. For example, you read Keith Kahn-Harris against the grain of what he says to claim that we ask the left to remove its "last remaining materialist anchor" while putting nothing in its place, when in fact we very clearly call for a return to materialist analysis (a call that Daniel M and I have repeated and unpacked in our more recent "Left Rrenewal in an Age of Waiting" pamphlet). True, you quote the words "consistent democracy" and put the words "clerical-fascist" in inverted commas (even though we don't use those words or that frame), and you critically mention Postone, who we quote once (along with Kavita Krishnan, Rohini Hensman, Frieda Afary, and others) -- but you don't explain why you think quoting Postone is bad, what is wrong with consistent democracy, or which Fourth International positions we supposedly deviate from. The emphasis is on our silences. (I would add that many of our silences, e.g. on boycotts or co-resistance, were designed to enable signatories who take different positions on these questions, rather than bind them to a narrower perspective, especially given the ideological divergence between the three authors.)
2. I still don't understand how the signatories are responsible for "the body of work that has grown up around the original text", but you manage to ignore the largest part of that body of work: our blog and our webinar series. We have reproduced Standing Together there, sure, as well as many other Palestinian voices and other leftists from the Middle East, many descriptions of Israeli actions in terms of apartheid and genocide, and indeed many texts from Fourth International writers, including yourself.
3. "Less known in Britain" was not what I objected to, but the dismissive "Gidley and Randall _and whoever they work with_". You are correct that you didn't in fact call Daniel R the "main author"; your actual words were "its principal author", and this is categorically inaccurate.
4. This final point would make sense if consistent democracy, the critique of reactionary forms of anti-imperialism, or Postone's materialist analysis were the sole property of the AWL, but in fact these positions are taken by a broad tradition on the anti-Stalinist and anti-authoritarian left, from anti-campist Trotskyism to autonomous Marxism, social ecology, democratic socialism or anarchism.
Ben, thank you for the detailed response. Taking your points in order.
On point 3, factual corrections first. 'Principal author' is inaccurate and I have updated the piece. My apologies. 'Whoever they work with' was careless phrasing and will also be revised. On Daniel Mang, I should have done more than 'less known in Britain', as true as that is. I have looked into his public work since your comment and now introduce him properly in the update, including his role in Friends of Standing Together Sweden, which is publicly stated on the FOST website and is relevant to what the piece is engaging. On 'clerical-fascist': you are right that the phrase is not in the signed statement. I will distinguish the statement's actual language ('fundamentally reactionary') from the broader analytical vocabulary visible on the blog, of which more below.
On point 1. On Kahn-Harris: my reading is not that the statement abandons materialist analysis. It is that Kahn-Harris himself diagnoses the fetishisation critique as asking the left to give up the foundationalist work Palestine is currently doing, at a moment when the materialist frame you recommend does not yet have the political grip to do that work for it. The question he asks and admits he cannot answer is how to act politically on an important issue without implying foundational importance. A pamphlet unpacking materialism is welcome, and I will read 'Left Renewal in an Age of Waiting' properly before writing further. But a pamphlet eighteen months later is not the same as the statement itself answering Kahn-Harris's question at the time he asked it.
On 'silences designed to enable signatories who take different positions': this is a significant clarification and I accept it. It is also precisely the dynamic the piece describes. A text whose silences are designed to accommodate signatories with different positions on BDS or co-resistance cannot then protest when some of those signatories later conclude that the silences accommodated positions they did not want to underwrite. Pierre Rousset's withdrawal is the working example. He signed what he understood as 'a list of discussion' for broadening unity, and he withdrew when the framework was put to work in directions he had not intended to authorise. That the text was designed to be capacious is the condition that made his withdrawal legible.
On point 2, the blog and webinar series. You are right that I did not engage this in the piece, and I accept the criticism. The blog is a substantial body of work, and viewing all the webinars would be time-consuming; they deserve their own treatment rather than being folded briefly into a piece aimed at the signed statement and its Responses page. I will write that treatment as a follow-up.
Two observations that carry over from the current piece and will be in the follow-up. First, the blog is where the project's analytical vocabulary is most clearly visible. 'Clerical fascism' appears in Paria Rahimi's January 2026 piece 'Why the Left Is Failing Iranians', and the blog's own tagging apparatus includes 'Shiʿa Imperialism' and 'Welayat-e Faqih' as live analytical categories. The register the piece engages is in the project, even where the signed statement does not use it. Second, the Responses page is the curated critical correspondence on the statement itself, which is a different kind of record from a blog reproducing voices the editors did not solicit as critical interlocutors. Both are worth discussing. They are not the same discussion.
On point 4, consistent democracy. This is where I want to push back directly. 'Consistent democracy' is not the shared vocabulary of a broad anti-Stalinist and anti-authoritarian left. Its roots are in Lenin, yes, but its specific deployment as an analytical framework in British and French Trotskyism is traceable through a definite lineage: Pierre Lambert's OCI in France, its then-partners in the SLL in Britain in which Sean Matgamna was active in the 1960s, and from there into his Workers' Fight, Socialist Organiser and AWL currents that descend from that milieu. It is not the common vocabulary of autonomous Marxism, social ecology, democratic socialism or anarchism. None of those traditions deploys the phrase as a programmatic frame. In contemporary British left politics the AWL is effectively the sole current using 'consistent democracy' in this specific register. That is the sense in which the statement's analytical furniture is AWL: not that the AWL authored or publicised the text, but that its theoretical apparatus is a Lambertist inheritance that now lives almost exclusively within AWL politics.
The related point. The Fourth International has its own substantial tradition of critiquing campism, Assad apologism, Putin apologism and reactionary forms of anti-imperialism. Gilbert Achcar, Joseph Daher and the current Bureau statements do this work in a different theoretical register that does not require the 'consistent democracy' frame. That the statement reaches for the Lambertist apparatus rather than drawing on the existing FI tradition is part of what the piece is engaging.
More soon on the blog and the webinar series. The conversation is worth continuing.