the sparts are hipsters, scenesters,and punks

[black magick hustla]

there is this music venue in lansing called basement 414 and they have this huge stand of spartacist league lit. i picked up a workers' vanguard issue yesterday. i dont get this. its a venue where punks, hipsters and all sort of scene people congregate. some friend told me they are spart sympathizers????????? it just blew my mind. i would never expect this type of people to be orthodox trots that call for the defend of the north korean deformed workers state! (spartacist)

its not a criticism or anything just an observation

[Kléber]

That is pretty funny, but not so surprising, Trotskyist punks are actually pretty common, they tend to get mistaken for anarchists. Now for my political rant, the Sparts are far from orthodox; Trotsky was insistent about the need for revolutionaries to put aside small political differences in order to wage class warfare together in a united front; all the Sparts do is try to be as divisive as possible, inflate little differences through a policy of non-stop denunciation, like one might expect from a band of Zubatovist government agents. I agree with that line on Korea but do they even call for a political revolution against Kim any more? They seem to care more about an alliance with the North Korean autocracy than unity of action with much more attractive left groups in their national vicinity.

[which doctor]

The sparts I've encountered tend to be a few old cranks, surrounded by a bunch of college-age nerdy looking girls. Perhaps 'a bunch' is an exaggeration, as they're are usually only 2-3. Maybe being a spart is hip in an ironic way?

That said, the more I think about it the more I find the ICC and the Spartacist League to be two peas in the same pod. I remember outside Left Forum the sparts had a table decrying the convention as a gathering of apologists for the Democratic Party. I could just have imagined the ICC out there decrying all of us for being the 'left wing of capital' (still not sure what this means or what makes the ICC any different). Similarly, they could complement the sparts call to reforge the 4th internationale by calling to reforge the left opposition to the 3rd international. They're both tiny groups, both lay claim to a tradition much older than them their own, and both are obsessed with putting forth the 'correct line' and squeezing historical phenomenon into rigidly defined, static political categories.

[Raúl Duke]

The sparts I've encountered tend to be a few old cranks, surrounded by a bunch of college-age nerdy looking girls. Perhaps 'a bunch' is an exaggeration, as they're are usually only 2-3. Maybe being a spart is hip in an ironic way? I had a similar suspicion when I first saw this thread but wasn't sure since I never really seen a Spart.

[Pavlov's House Party]

I saw Sparts at a demonstration here in Montreal once. They were literally two old men with newspapers and a dog.

[The Grey Blur]

The dog split.

[Lyev]

Defend Polanski!!!1

[Angry Young Man]

Do they only have Sparts in the US? I have never in my life come across one.

[Palingenisis]

They are pretty "transgressive".

They defend and support "sexual and drug" liberation among other things.

Plus they have an "aggro" style.

[black magick hustla]

That said, the more I think about it the more I find the ICC and the Spartacist League to be two peas in the same pod. I remember outside Left Forum the sparts had a table decrying the convention as a gathering of apologists for the Democratic Party.

well mr. platypus you have never met an iccer so maybe you are wrong? to give you the benefit there was once when the icc behaved like that (when they were young and crazy). they dont do that stuff anymore. i dont certainly pull off that shit (i am not a member, but i am a sympathizer and i sell their pubs and i have written for them). i imagine dev nor leo do that stuff either.

[Das war einmal]

*befuddled*

[Raúl Duke]

I don't really think the sparts and ICCers are the same...although I never met any in person.

True, they seem to "dislike everyone else" (although the ICC makes an exception for anarchists who don't follow the anti-imperialist line that the ICC dislike; from what I gather sparts dislike everyone but themselves) but I imagine the sparts voicing their dislike at every moment while the ICC only mention it in some intellectual way (i.e. "that movement is petit-bourgeois because...etc") when the issue gets brought up.

[Palingenisis]

I think the ICC like this group called the Internationalist Communist Tendency quite a bit.

[Palingenisis]

well mr. platypus you have never met an iccer so maybe you are wrong? to give you the benefit there was once when the icc behaved like that (when they were young and crazy). they dont do that stuff anymore. i dont certainly pull off that shit (i am not a member, but i am a sympathizer and i sell their pubs and i have written for them). i imagine dev nor leo do that stuff either.

There seems to be a bit of a split in the ICC not over content but over style in all fairness though.

[Leo]

I think the ICC like this group called the Internationalist Communist Tendency quite a bit.

Aside from the ICT actually, we consider all council communist and bordigist groups, and groups which split from the Trotskyists over the question of WW2 (like the Fermento Obrero Revolucionario around old Spanish militant Grandizo Munis and Natalia Sedova, which had the biggest international presence), and of course all internationalist anarchists to be genuine proletarian revolutionaries. The number of groups we do joint work with is actually quite high internationally. We even work with some Anarcho Punk organization somewhere.


still not sure what this means or what makes the ICC any different

Well in comparison to Platypus, we are not pro-Zionist, we don't support the occupation of Afghanistan by the forces of American imperialism, we are oriented towards class struggles, not the "academic left" and so forth. I'd say these stuff makes us, and other internationalists pretty different.

[Lyev]

Do they only have Sparts in the US? I have never in my life come across one.There's Sparts here, but there's about 10 of them nationally, and they stick almost exclusively to a tiny area of London. Basically, they're absolutely mad: they think pedophilia is somehow a "capitalist construct".

[Invincible Summer]

The Trotskyist League here has like... 5 members that I know of, and back when I attended one of the "general meetings" that supposedly included the Sparts from the US, there were like 10 people altogether. The general crowd was "old cranks w/ nerdy college girls."

[A.R.Amistad]

I heard that when the Sparts demonstrate, they march in militaristic fashion, with drill-marshals and all. I would really like to see a bunch of hipsters and scene kids marching in military formations, what with their fancy shoes and what not :laugh:

[which doctor]

Well in comparison to Platypus, we are not pro-Zionist, we don't support the occupation of Afghanistan by the forces of American imperialism, we are oriented towards class struggles, not the "academic left" and so forth. I'd say these stuff makes us, and other internationalists pretty different.
None of these things about Platypus are necessarily true, but my question was what makes the ICC *not* on the 'left wing of capital,' because as far as I understand it, capital isn't something that can be escaped until it is overcome.


I heard that when the Sparts demonstrate, they march in militaristic fashion, with drill-marshals and all. I would really like to see a bunch of hipsters and scene kids marching in military formations, what with their fancy shoes and what not :laugh:
I don't think there are enough Sparts in the world to even be able to march in a formation.

[Honggweilo]

joining to sparts to be rad, bohemian, and unconventionally uncool is totally hipster. Just another day of post-modernist lulz