Trotskyists: International Communist League, Internationalist Group, etc.

[Kassad]

This question is directed pretty much at everyone, but I figure Trotskyists would be the best people to answer the question. I've been doing a lot of research into the International Communist League (Spartacists), the Internationalist Group (League for Fourth International) and the International Bolshevik Tendency. The two former groups seem to be incredibly sectarian towards just about anyone else who isn't in their organization, whereas the IBT seems to be a much more passive, respectful group. All of them seem to be kind of small in the United States, but they also have branches internationally. Is anyone a member of these organizations or do they know how large they are? I'm just curious to see if they're influential at all, since I've only seen a few of them before at assorted demonstrations.

Their websites are here:

Internationalist Group:
www.Internationalist.org (http://www.Internationalist.org)

International Communist League:
www.ICL-FI.org (http://www.ICL-FI.org)

International Bolshevik Tendency:
www.Bolshevik.org (http://www.Bolshevik.org)

[Holden Caulfield]

They are tiny, and they are mental.
I once saw BobKKKindles talk to one and they guys veins in his head were about to blow, his eyes were twitching and his mate was actually dressed like Lenin ffs.

There political activisty consists of having ago at other socialist groups such as turning up at large SP or SWP events and calling us all social-democrats.

Best to be ignored, both politically and its members socially

[Random Precision]

Basically what Holden said. The Spartacist League started as a split from the SWP in the sixties when the Fourth International embraced the "long detour" theory that guerrilla movements for the time being would be the primary actors of class struggle rather than the working class.

Since then the Spartacists have had these splits known as the IBT and the Internationalist Group. As I recall both groups were expelled; I don't know about the IBT but the Internationalist group is led by the guy who used to edit their paper, in a fit of near-Stalinism he actually voted for his own expulsion I think.

I have never encountered the IBT anywhere so I can't speak to them. The Sparts themselves take the attitude that since the working class has been objectively revolutionary for over a century, it must be the other left groups that are holding them back - what they call "ostensibly revolutionary organizations". But they do show up at big meetings like the ISO's Socialism, a while back a comrade told me some of them got really confrontational and pushed one of our members down a flight of stairs. Also the same comrade has had the Sparts prey on his contacts, trying to sell them things like the "ISO truth kit" I think its called, which more often than not has the effect of scaring people away from the left entirely rather than just the OROs. I suppose the Sparts might call that a victory, they're certainly twisted enough.

[Holden Caulfield]

They are actually mental, I can't stress this enough. They are like the crazy relative of the left who rant on at our family functions while everybody else rolls their eyes because any other response will get you in the firing line.

But seriously, one of them was dressed and entirely modelled on Lenin.
I wanted to have a word, "you look a fool my friend, your trying too hard, go home change and then we will get you some ice cream. you like ice cream don't you"

[Communist]

A comrade in my party told me that once there was a major demonstration (can't recall which it was although I'd read about it from years ago) and the Sparts were there, handing out flyers about "Pabloism and the SWP". Which was certainly a rallying call for the working class, eh?
Confrontational, and not much common sense either.

[Kassad]

It's hard to find an article on the websites for the Spartacists and the Internationalist Group that doesn't attack pretty much every group you can name (ISO, PSL, WWP, RCP, etc.). I recall the Spartacists being in Washington for the march on the Pentagon. One of them gave me an issue of Workers's Vanguard, but didn't say anything about the PSL sign I had. They just seem to have 2-3 people at big events carrying homemade signs with different slogans that they repeat over and over.

[Radical]

"the Spartacist League has defended groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association on civil libertarian grounds and have called for an end to age-of-consent laws."

[Holden Caulfield]

How did I of all people forget they loved paedos.

[BobKKKindle$]

the Sparts were there, handing out flyers about "Pabloism and the SWP"To be fair, this is hardly limited to the ICL-FI or even Trotskyist parties. The CPGB-ML, ostensibly the leading anti-revisionist party in the UK, has meetings which largely consist of them inviting the representatives of capitalist states like the PRC and the DPRK to celebrate so-called revolutions that happened in the past, long before the creation of the CPGB-ML, or alternatively they have meetings on historical questions like the Katyn massacre and the Ukrainian famine where they distort the evidence to try and score points against those whom they regard as bourgeois historians, without any relevance to the lives of ordinary people whatsoever. Why would I or anyone else want to spend their precious time, after a long day of work, listening to Harpal Brar ranting on about how the bourgeoisie goes out of its way to cover up the truth about Stalin and the Soviet Union, any more than I would want to spend my money on buying an inane pamphlet from the Sparts, especially when the CPGB-ML and other parties like it never intervene in the class struggle or any other progressive movement?


"the Spartacist League has defended groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association on civil libertarian grounds and have called for an end to age-of-consent laws." Given the choice between this and supporting the PRC, i.e. what the CPGB-ML does, I'll go for cheering the rights of pedophiles.

[Crux]

It's hard to find an article on the websites for the Spartacists and the Internationalist Group that doesn't attack pretty much every group you can name (ISO, PSL, WWP, RCP, etc.). I recall the Spartacists being in Washington for the march on the Pentagon. One of them gave me an issue of Workers's Vanguard, but didn't say anything about the PSL sign I had. They just seem to have 2-3 people at big events carrying homemade signs with different slogans that they repeat over and over.
I thought their paper was called Worker's Hammer? Who are those guys then?

[BobKKKindle$]

I thought their paper was called Worker's Hammer? Who are those guys then?

That's their British section's paper.

[Kassad]

I thought their paper was called Worker's Hammer? Who are those guys then?

I think their UK paper is called Workers Hammer. It's called Workers Vanguard in the United States.

[Holden Caulfield]

BobKKKindles was going to join the Sparts when he was but a lad

[Crux]

Oh right. I loved their anti-CWI Defend the People's Republic of China article. Made me feel vindicated somehow. And, yeah, though I have no direct personal experience with them, they don't have any supporters in sweden as far as I am aware, it's pretty safe to say that they are mental.

[Crux]

Given the choice between this and supporting the PRC, i.e. what the CPGB-ML does, I'll go for cheering the rights of pedophiles.
Well, with the Sparts, apparently you don't have to choose. ;)

[Radical]

Given the choice between this and supporting the PRC, i.e. what the CPGB-ML does, I'll go for cheering the rights of pedophiles.

Coming from a Counter-Revolutionary that claims to be a Leninist, that doesnt mean much.

[Holden Caulfield]

Coming from a Counter-Revolutionary that claims to be a Leninist, that doesnt mean much.

If you can support your argument in a debate against bobkindles i will give you all my money and posessions.

[Invincible Summer]

I used to attend meetings w/ Trotskyist League (the Canadian branch of the Sparts) members... I was but an impressionable student with strong leftist tendencies at the time, so I didn't know what I was getting into. I did feel that they were a bit ridiculous though.

Anyways, they're the only leftist group I know of that really does anything around here, and they are always on my uni campus which makes me sad... I wish Communism was represented by a better group. I guess I could start a club or something, but I really don't know where to start and I don't really have any resources

[Holden Caulfield]

they're the only leftist group I know of that really does anything around here


what exactly do they do?

[Yehuda Stern]

First of all, I do not believe in characterizing political groups as "mental." It's much better to analyze their politics; to be honest, the "mental"-ness of the groups pretty much flows from that anyway.

To be fair, yes, the Spartacist League is very sectarian and has terrible positions in its past and present:

-That its members are "declassed intellectuals" whose role is to bring Marxism to the working class;
-That Stalinism can make workers revolutions, and that the resulting workers states must be defended even against working class uprisings (though to be honest they're hardly the only ones with such a position);
-That immigration could (gasp!) threaten the national identity of imperialist states: "If, for example, there were unlimited immigration into Northern Europe, the population influx from the Mediterranean basin would tend to dissolve the national identity of small countries like Holland and Belgium," and therefore they support immigration controls.

The SL, IG and IBT all accept these positions as far as I know (certainly the first two). The latter are both a bit more healthy as organizations than the SL, the IBT significantly so, but they all have the same reactionary petty-bourgeois politics.

[A.R.Amistad]

I am a member of Socialist Action/YSA, which split from SWP because they abandoned Marxism-Bolshevism for "Castroism." We are part of the International Secretariat for the Fourth International. Honestly, I don't see how we can survive these petty divisions, but I am very optimistic. I think that we will be united very soon, and I am currently working with many comrades to do this (we are writing a letter to various organizations and tendencies calling for Revolutionary Socialist unity) Just remember (and even though I totally oppose China and Maoism as "communist") the Chinese CP started out with only 24 members in 1917, and then they became a major revolutionery military force within the decade, and look at them now. What I'm saying is, don't be intimidated by small size, every revolution starts somewhere.

[Crux]

I am a member of Socialist Action/YSA, which split from SWP because they abandoned Marxism-Bolshevism for "Castroism." We are part of the International Secretariat for the Fourth International. Honestly, I don't see how we can survive these petty divisions, but I am very optimistic. I think that we will be united very soon, and I am currently working with many comrades to do this (we are writing a letter to various organizations and tendencies calling for Revolutionary Socialist unity) Just remember (and even though I totally oppose China and Maoism as "communist") the Chinese CP started out with only 24 members in 1917, and then they became a major revolutionery military force within the decade, and look at them now. What I'm saying is, don't be intimidated by small size, every revolution starts somewhere.
True. Socialist Action are a part of the Minority Tendency in the USFI, no?

[Q]

In this context I'd like to quote John Sullivan's piece As soon as the pub closes (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/pub-5sparts.html) to give some background on this/these apparently lunatic organisation(s). It's a bit old (written in the late 1980's), but still a good bit:


Spartacist League

THE Spartacist League (Sparts for short) are a colony of an American group of the same name who split from the American SWP in the early 1960s, when the parent group became Castroites, lost interest in the labour movement, and became ardent supporters of armed struggle (except in the United States, where guerrilla war is illegal). Consequently, the SWP fired Gerry Healy, who had been their British concessionaire up till then, made it up with their old enemies Pablo and Mandel, and created the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. Those, mainly in the SWP’s youth wing, who could not accept the change in policy were expelled and eventually became the Spartacist League. They tried to work with Gerry Healy, who the Sparts’ leader, James Robertson, recognised as a kindred spirit, but Healy demanded unconditional obedience and worship at his personal shrine. If the group was to escape from national isolation it needed its own International, so teams of missionaries were despatched to strike at the revisionists’ European base. Although less successful than the Mormons, they managed to recruit some natives and now have a group of about 60 people, which publishes a journal named Workers Hammer.

The Sparts’ complete parasitism on other groups makes them very unpopular on the rest of the left, so, regrettably, little attempt is made to understand the theory which explains their behaviour. The Sparts’ core belief is that, for the foreseeable future, it is impossible for revolutionaries to address themselves to significant sectors of the working class, as anyone open to revolutionary politics is already a supporter of one of the groups which falsely claim to be revolutionary. The key task of revolutionaries is, therefore, to win over supporters of these Ostensibly Revolutionary Groups (ORGs), by heckling their meetings and hoping to be thrown out. The Sparts will in this way achieve the primitive accumulation of cadres which is a necessary stage to be gone through before proceeding to a direct involvement in class struggle. The belief in the long slow haul is combined with the view that there is not much time left to build the vanguard party before the final struggle between socialism and barbarism. Such a theory may be contradictory, but it is necessary if the group is to maintain revolutionary fervour while confining its activity to a propaganda onslaught on the ORGs.

Surprise is sometimes expressed that such an introspective strategy comes from a group born in the stirring 1960s, heyday of youth revolt and the movement against the Vietnam War. Are the Sparts not too kind to the ORGs, in spite of continually bad-mouthing them? As usual, an examination of the group’s own history and political predicament will provide an explanation which eludes us if we confine our attention to the realms of grand theory where the Sparts would like to contain it. The core of the Sparts joined the SWP in the late 1950s, after splitting from Max Shachtman’s Independent Socialist League, a formerly Marxist organisation which moved rapidly to the right during the 1950s. Shachtman had split from the SWP in 1940 and ended up supporting the Vietnam War, so the young men who joined the SWP were accepting that that party embodied the revolutionary tradition. They were almost alone in joining what was already an ossified liberal sect, which is why they immediately dominated its youth movement and breathed some life into a decrepit structure.

When the Sparts found themselves outside the SWP, they had, in order to justify joining it in the first place, to construct a myth that it had degenerated recently. The contention puzzled other American leftists. Some of the old SWP members were loyal and dedicated comrades, but the party’s intellectual level was abysmal, it had hardly any industrial clout, and young people, apart from those who were to become the Sparts, saw it as an irrelevance. So did their younger sisters and brothers, when the anti-Vietnam War movement developed in the 1960s. James P. Cannon, the Healy prototype, who the Sparts continue to see as the American Lenin, retired from active leadership but retained political solidarity with the subordinates who replaced him. The SWP, after the departure of the Sparts, acted as handboys of the liberal Democrats in opposing the more radical elements in the anti-war movement. Our indigenous Sparts are carefully brought up in a myth which dates the SWP’s degeneration a decade-and-a-half later than the facts warrant. The contradictions in the Spart view of the movement’s history conditioned their inability to understand British politics, once they stepped ashore. The antics of the American SWP’s co-thinkers here were appalling, so the Sparts slated them mercilessly. On the other hand, the theory said that such groups embodied the revolutionary tradition, in however deformed a fashion, so the Sparts could not abandon them and search for a healthier corpse to feed off.

Why stick with such a contradictory theory and live in such a repulsive environment? It is a more intellectually satisfying variant of the Mandelite belief in the revolutionary potential of the flotsam of that milieu, and fulfils the same function of providing a justification for avoiding the working class. No one unfamiliar with American society can appreciate the enormous difficulty in maintaining a hold on reality in an environment where student radicals have to compete with Hari Krishna and Lyndon La Rouche, a former Spart who is now a leader of a Moral Majority sect. It is surprising, not that the Sparts are crazy, but that they are not even madder. The Sparts’ belief that the ex-Trotskyist movement was healthy until the 1950s allows them to avoid any discussion of the much more important discussions of the 1940s. They cannot help but be aware that the British section of the Fourth International, the Revolutionary Communist Party, was one of the healthiest and most working-class and that their hero Cannon helped in its destruction when he imposed his clone Healy as its leader. Consequently, their anti-British chauvinism seems like a mirror image of Militant’s patriotism. The Sparts’ fixation on their very individual view of history and their chosen field of operations limit their interests. They found it easy enough to outrage your average middle-class trendy by reiterating traditional Marxist views on such issues as Black and Female separatism. As unusually learned Marxists, they are well aware that the founding fathers’ views on Gay Liberation are even more shocking to many of those who consider themselves their followers, but they wisely decided not to press that point. [1] (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/pub-5sparts.html#n1) It is more difficult to extend this method to cover areas such as political economy where the trendies do not have a view. In any case, the Spart heart was not in this. Once the overriding aim to zap the ORGs is understood, everything else about Spart activity falls into place. For example, a revolt in South Africa is intrinsically less interesting than the wrong response of the Dutch or German Pabloites to that event. As illusions in Eurocommunism, feminism and the youth vanguard crumbled in the mid-1970s and the radical left was thrown into crisis, the Sparts hoped to benefit from the decline of their softer rivals. In practice, the collapse of that milieu had a calamitous effect on them in the early 1980s. When the dog dies, the fleas also die. Unused to developing the independent activity which was clearly necessary, now that there was not much meat on the ORGs, the Sparts lost most of their cadre in Britain.

Because many of the Sparts’ formal positions are more acceptable to labour movement activists than the lunacies peddled by their competitors, there is the danger that people outside the radical middle-class milieu will want to join them. To prevent the inevitable tensions which would result from recruiting working-class militants, reasonable positions are expressed in an intolerably harsh manner that works quite well. American ex-Sparts describe a very Healyite organisation where Robertson sits behind a steadily growing pile of empty beer cans carrying on a rambling drunken harangue interspersed with senile laughter, yet we have found Robertson charming on his visits to London. It is true that many of the leading Sparts go in for a macho-man image of guns and swords. The perfectly reasonable call for the abolition of the licensing hours is elevated to a central demand, and there are signs of a flirtation with Scots nationalism. As befits its American origin, the Sparts are individually competitive. New ideas are floated, and if successful their originators get promoted, while if the idea is found to be revisionist they are demoted. If you believe that she who lives by the sword will die by the sword, you have probably guessed the Sparts’ destiny. In the early 1980s, a group of veteran Sparts in the Bay Area of California, where they had their only toe-hold in the labour movement, defected. The renegades, who originally called themselves the External Tendency, had absorbed their Spart training well. They re-classified their parent group as an ORG and turned up to intervene at its meetings, carefully restraining themselves against attempts to goad them into violence. Innocents in Bootle or Lyon can hardly be expected to understand that the main purpose of all Spart literature is to discredit that tiny group in California.

Goaded by the External Tendency, the Sparts became increasingly unbalanced, and now agree with the despised Pabloites that a wave of sexual repression is sweeping over Britain. If the External Tendency (now known as the Bolshevik Tendency) are able to smuggle a colonist with the requisite ethnic qualifications past Thatcher’s racist immigration police, so that she or he could do to the Sparts what they do unto others, they would lose control completely and go the way of the Healyites and accuse their rivals of working for the CIA. The Bolshevik Tendency is an extremely small flea, but its bite could well prove fatal.

[blake 3:17]

I think the ICL are crazy. I occasionally subscribe to their paper because they do present some valuable historical stuff in it. I know one person I respect in the Internationalist Group.

I'm on friendly personal terms with a few people from IBT in Toronto. Of the ultra sectarian, they are the sanest and most open to dialogue. I worked on a defense campaign for one of their leading members who was getting shafted by the cops. 1917 is a gorgeous little magazine and I enjoy every infrequent edition. I think they aim for annual but often miss the due date.

Edited to add: Socialist Action in the US seems to have a bit of health to it. Socialist Action in Canada has a very destructive leadership.

[Anarchia]

The IBT are the only international marxist grouping headquartered in New Zealand. I'll always find that hilarious...

[Invincible Summer]

what exactly do they do?

Well, I mean they actually hand out pamphlets and try to sell newspapers and such. They're pretty active in that respect on my uni campus and at various rallies that happen around here. Other groups (that I know of) are pretty non-revolutionary (or vaguely revolutionary) or aligned with the social-democratic NDP party here, which is unfortunate.

I remember that some of the Sparts encouraged me to attend meetings of a uni club (the Students for a Democratic Society.. took the name from the old 70's group but are pretty much just campus activists) and criticize them and stuff. They really seem to want to get people to "spy" on other groups and stuff.

[Devrim]

First of all, I do not believe in characterizing political groups as "mental."

I absolutely agree with this.


All of them seem to be kind of small in the United States, but they also have branches internationally. Is anyone a member of these organizations or do they know how large they are?

They are a tendency that comes from the US, and I think that there US branches are probably the biggest.

Devrim

[Holden Caulfield]

I absolutely agree with this.



I sincerely apologise for not taking the Sparts seriously....

[Louis Pio]

I actually do believe that the term mental can be a good dscription on some groups. However I never met the groups in question so I don't know about those.

But there are a number of small groups centered mainly on personal relations and affinity, that ends up in such a small world of their own, with no relation to the surrounding society, that mental is the correct description. Posada would be a good example or this maoist group we had here in Denmark that always talked about the "golden communism" or how "Chairman gonzalo's golden speech will live on forever".

[Devrim]

I sincerely apologise for not taking the Sparts seriously....

After all, it is not as if the media doesn't dismiss anybody who thinks that another system is possible is mad.


I actually do believe that the term mental can be a good dscription on some groups. However I never met the groups in question so I don't know about those.

But there are a number of small groups centered mainly on personal relations and affinity, that ends up in such a small world of their own, with no relation to the surrounding society, that mental is the correct description. Posada would be a good example or this maoist group we had here in Denmark that always talked about the "golden communism" or how "Chairman gonzalo's golden speech will live on forever".

Yes, the UFOs and the dolphins et al is funny. It isn't quite so funny that Posadas was actually a serious militant until he was tortured terribly by the state, and only after that did he start coming out with all these theories.

Devrim

[blake 3:17]

The Sparts are considered a joke here. They don't participate in any of the coalitions that they "support" but mostly criticize like the Free Mumia campaigns we busted our asses over, boycotted the Battle in Seattle because of its anti-China thing they predicted in advance, and lecture Palestinian solidarity activists that the BDS campaign is wrong because it crosses class lines.

On the other hand, I do like their take on Kim Philby...

[Devrim]

This was posted on my visitor messages:

Its nothing to do with the system, its their entire approach, unattatched, dogmatic, unstable etc.

when I was in the SP my way of debating with critics was not to scream in their face that they dont know what they are talking about while my eye twitches.

I know what your saying and i was partly joking the the Sparts are crazy its common knowledge http://www.revleft.com/vb/../revleft/smilies/001_tongue.gif

Nobody likes the way that the Sparts operate. The question is whether they are crazy or whether they have a (very) different analysis of how to build an organisation than others.

I think that claiming they are crazy is a very dangerous road to go down. The big leftist groups tend to be dismissive of smaller groups who criticise them. Of course one can understand that they may not want to give time to the opinions of tiny groups, but I find the campaigns of slander unacceptable. For example SWP members dfismissing the Weekly Worker as a 'gossip rag', or the way the Militant used to go on about 'the sects'.

Devrim

[Invincible Summer]

Nobody likes the way that the Sparts operate. The question is whether they are crazy or whether they have a (very) different analysis of how to build an organisation than others.

I think that claiming they are crazy is a very dangerous road to go down. The big leftist groups tend to be dismissive of smaller groups who criticise them. Of course one can understand that they may not want to give time to the opinions of tiny groups, but I find the campaigns of slander unacceptable. For example SWP members dfismissing the Weekly Worker as a 'gossip rag', or the way the Militant used to go on about 'the sects'.

Devrim

Exactly. It's perfectly alright to disagree with a group's methods, platform, whatever, but to dismiss them as insane is just as sectarian and definitely not helpful.

[chegitz guevara]

If you can support your argument in a debate against bobkindles i will give you all my money and posessions.

Just because someone can argue better doesn't make them right.

[chegitz guevara]

First of all, I do not believe in characterizing political groups as "mental." It's much better to analyze their politics; to be honest, the "mental"-ness of the groups pretty much flows from that anyway.

Some groups should not be given such seriousness. Once a group becomes a cult, it no longer has a claim to be be given serious consideration by other organizations, even though they can sometimes be right. In fact, that they occasionally come up with some very insightful critiques of reality, makes them all the more dangerous to the left. That's how they can suck people into their cults.

[blake 3:17]

I find the Sparts to be a kind of Gnostic sect. As I said above they find elaborate ways to not contribute or participate in the very causes they claim to support. Their participation is usually to hang around a meeting or demonstration and provide endless criticism about why the whole thing is somehow wrong.

There are a couple I'm on polite terms with. They're smart and reasonably thoughtful and manage to not contribute anything. A few years they published a thoughtful article coming out of one of their conferences in which there was some very down to earth plain spoken self criticism on their abstensionism from particular movements and campaigns. I thought maybe it was a signal of some kind of change.

Characterizing them as "crazy" might be wrong, but I can't see the whole thing being healthy for anyone. Liquidationist-phobia?

[bailey_187]

have meetings on historical questions like the Katyn massacre and the Ukrainian famine where they distort the evidence to try and score points against those whom they regard as bourgeois historians, without any relevance to the lives of ordinary people whatsoever.

These are not CPGB-ML events, they are Stalin Society events.

The Stalin Society is a Historical Society - what would you expect?



The SWP held a meeting the other week on Beer. Why would i want to spend my time listening to some guy talk about Beer? Oh wait, no it was a book launch event at a bookshop.

[Yehuda Stern]

that they occasionally come up with some very insightful critiques of reality, makes them all the more dangerous to the left. That's how they can suck people into their cults.

But this is exactly the problem. Maybe you have the luxury of letting people like the Sparts take away potential members from your organization; to me, the fact that they still manage to attract revolutionary minded youth and workers shows the need to expose them politically and not just dismiss them as a "cult."

[chegitz guevara]

That's not the problem. The problem is that organizations like this are cults. They are not comrades, they are not misguided sects. They are organizations which suck people in, isolate them from the real world, friends, and family, and, at best, waste their lives. They contribute little real value to the movement except the occasional good analysis, and the harm, both to individuals and to the movement, outweighs any good. We will have a communist society and these cults will still exist denouncing it as false communism because we don't recognize the greatness of Robertson or Avakian or Healy, etc.

[Invincible Summer]

That's not the problem. The problem is that organizations like this are cults. They are not comrades, they are not misguided sects. They are organizations which suck people in, isolate them from the real world, friends, and family, and, at best, waste their lives.

Wtf? It's not like they grab people and put them on a bus to some farm in rural Indiana named "Glorious Spart City," where they are forced to stay, forever isolated (until their escape) from friends and family.

They are still comrades, although a bit zealous in their strange methodology and analysis.

[chegitz guevara]

If you've never been in a cult, you don't understand how they really work. Cults don't kidnap people. :rolleyes: And most don't try and keep you in if you really don't want to be in. Your questions and doubt could damage the group. They use invisible chains to bind you. It is the threat of having that chain cut that brings people running back to the fold.

I've been in a communist cult (technically two, but the second one was a split from the first). They are not comrades. All they do is hurt the movement. We should not treat them as if they are legitimate. They don't even try to be part of the movement and they don't care where we engage them or not, except that any engagement with them lets them see themselves as legitimate.

Political cults are a serious problem on the left, and comrades need to stop treating them as if they are legitimate organizations. They need to be treated like the enemies of humanity they are, even if they call themselves communists.

[A.R.Amistad]

Hey I'm from rural Indiana :sleep:

[Yehuda Stern]

Chegitz,

I don't consider the Spartacists to be comrades. But then, to be completely honest, I don't consider you one either. You seem like a nice and interesting guy, but politically I think your positions can potentially do as much damage to the movement as those of the Sparts because they disorient people who are trying to become revolutionaries. Having been caught in a maze of such disorienting organizations for several years, and having another comrade who has been in one for decades, I have no intention of treating any reformist or centrist as anything but a political rival and a further block on the development of revolutionary proletarian consciousness.

As it stands, your conduct regarding the SL is actually very reminiscent of what one would expect of a political cult: you denounce them while refusing to address their politics. I was a member of one political cult, called the International Marxist Tendency, which refused to polemicize with any other group on the left, claiming that they were all "sects" for refusing to become entry groups in Labour and support Chavez. We in the ISL aspire to be the complete opposite of that. We are confident that we can always benefit from debate with other groups.

[Invincible Summer]

If you've never been in a cult, you don't understand how they really work. Cults don't kidnap people. :rolleyes: And most don't try and keep you in if you really don't want to be in. Your questions and doubt could damage the group. They use invisible chains to bind you. It is the threat of having that chain cut that brings people running back to the fold.

Yes, but I was addressing your point about "isolating individuals from friends & family" and using the stereotypical cult image of people bringing their family to live on a farm with other "followers." Sorry that you didn't get the joke.

If you consider the Sparts a cult, I've been involved in a "cult" myself then. I surely did not feel isolated from anyone. I did not agree with them, but I never felt as if I was being "guilted" into staying or anything like that.


I've been in a communist cult (technically two, but the second one was a split from the first). They are not comrades. All they do is hurt the movement. We should not treat them as if they are legitimate. They don't even try to be part of the movement and they don't care where we engage them or not, except that any engagement with them lets them see themselves as legitimate.What's the criteria for "not being a comrade" then? Surely anyone you disagree with "hurts the movement?"


Political cults are a serious problem on the left, and comrades need to stop treating them as if they are legitimate organizations. They need to be treated like the enemies of humanity they are, even if they call themselves communists."Enemies of humanity?" Shit...

[chegitz guevara]

Hey I'm from rural Indiana :sleep:

Were you kidnapped and taken there by the Sparts?

[chegitz guevara]

As it stands, your conduct regarding the SL is actually very reminiscent of what one would expect of a political cult: you denounce them while refusing to address their politics.

Again, if I address their politics, I'm treating them as if they were a legitimate part of the socialist movement, and not a cult. I refuse to treat them as legitimate, not because of their politics, but because they are cults. In many cases, I agree with their analysis. I actually agree with the Sparts about a lot. They were right about supporting the USSR in Afghanistan, for example. So what? Doesn't mean they aren't a cult and shouldn't be avoided like the plague.

I'm happy enough to engage in politics and discuss it with other organizations . . . if I think it's relevant. A lot of what people want to divide over isn't relevant. So I refuse to play that game.

On the other hand, I'm very interested in what happened and is happening in China and what it means for socialist theory, or Cuba or Venezuela. I'm interested in engaging with the real world. I'm interested in overthrowing capitalism, here, today, not in Russia in the 1930s.

[chegitz guevara]

"Enemies of humanity?" Shit...

When I was a member of Solidarity in the 1990s, we had a number of people who had recently left the SWP. I have never met a more broken group of people in my life. The SWP did that to them. It destroyed them. It stole decades of their lives. And for what? They were good comrades once. Now they're shadows of people.

You think an organization that does that to its own members is a friend of the people?

[chegitz guevara]

Speaking of Trotsky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBLnTNL5ZPQ&feature=player_embedded

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Am I the only one that's still waiting for that brilliant post from Radical that'll convince Holden to give him all his money and possessions?

Edited to add:
Here is a good sensible communist position from the Workers Vanguard that is definitely sane and of great importance to the working class and in no way represents a mental attempt to defend rape (http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/944/polanski.html).