The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of Trotskyism which aims to support neither capitalism nor Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp".

Leon Trotsky described the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state which should be defended against capitalism, while supporting anti-bureaucratic political revolution against Stalinism. Third campists typically disagree with his analysis of the Soviet Union and claim that their position of favouring neither "camp" is in the spirit of Trotsky, although not his conclusions.

This approach was developed by Max Shachtman and is one of the major components of left Shachtmanism. It underpins his theory of bureaucratic collectivism. Analyising the USSR's invasion of Finland in 1940, Shachtman concluded that the USSR's policy was one of imperialism and that it was a reactionary war in which the best result for the international working class would be the defeat of the USSR. Conversely, Trotsky argued that a defeat for the USSR would strengthen capitalism and reduce the possibilities for political revolution.

Shachtman's support for defeat of official Communist nations' expansionism (the second camp) drifted rightward into support for the capitalist nations (the first camp). This position has led mainstream Trotskyist groups to declare the position reactionary. However, some supporters of the third camp split with Shachtman and continued to develop their analyses of the changing world situation.

A third camp position is held today the Workers Liberty groups, by New Politics (magazine) and by some in the multi-tendency organization Solidarity in the United States, as well as by some in the Socialist Party USA.

While Tony Cliff, founder of the British SWP later became a bitter critic of Shachtman, that organisation initially cooperated with him and sold his tendency's magazine. They adopted similar positions including neutrality during the Korean War and its slogan "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism", which has led some outside the party to describe them as having held a third camp position. However, Cliff's supporters point out that this slogan has a broadly Trotskyist heritage, rather than a specifically third campist one: the manifesto of the Fourth International's world congress in 1948 was titled "Against Wall Street and the Kremlin".

External links

• Max Shachtman, The Soviet Union and the World War
• Leon Trotsky, Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events
• Pierre Frank, Under Pressure of the Coming War, Imperialism Beckons “Third Camp”
• Tony Cliff, Marxism and the theory of bureaucratic collectivism

See also

• third way