fredbergen
26th May 2010, 07:54
For three months in early 2010, the Spartacist League supported U.S. imperialism’s invasion of Haiti following the January 12 earthquake, shamelessly repeating Democratic Obama administration’s lie that this was a mission to deliver relief supplies to the victims. The SL accused the Internationalist Group in particular of fomenting mass death by starvation because we demanded that all U.S. and United Nations forces get out of Haiti. While the SL and ICL were portraying the 82nd Airborne Division as indispensable aid workers, the League for the Fourth International, of which the IG is the U.S. section, published several articles, put out special supplements in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish and helped organize demonstrations denouncing Washington’s “humanitarian” invasion. Then suddenly, in an April 27 statement, the ICL leadership made an about-face and declared that the position they had so loudly defended was a betrayal of fundamental Marxist principle, just as we had insisted all along.
This has put the SL in quite a pickle politically, especially since it admits that the Internationalist Group took the correct position and it even agreed with the IG’s characterization of the SL line as “social-imperialist.” So following its denunciation of its own ignominious apology for the U.S. takeover of Haiti (now admitted to be an invasion), and its admission that the SL newspaper Workers Vanguard lied about the Pentagon’s actions and about its own positions, the SL/ICL have been desperately seeking any stick they can find to polemically beat the IG. They have sought refuge in recycling their smears against the IG and the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (LQB), the Brazilian section of the LFI, going back to 1996-98.
The SL/ICL accusations are brazen lies, accusing the LQB of “suing the union” in Brazil when the exact opposite was the case: the LQB never sued the union, and in fact LQB militants were the duly elected leadership of the Municipal Workers Union of Volta Redonda (SFPMVR) who were hauled into court and ousted from their union leadership positions by the bourgeois “justice” system. Their supposed “crime” was to remove municipal police from the union. As a result of this, the LQB comrades were hit with no less than nine separate court suits promoted by pro-cop elements in the SFPMVR and by the employer, the city government. In the face of this repression by a popular front government including Stalinists (PCdoB), social democrats (PTB) and bourgeois populists (PSB), as we sought (successfully) to build international support, the SL/ICL sought to sabotage their defense by retailing the lies about the Brazilian Trotskyists spread by those who actually did drag the union into the courts.
In response to this new offensive of slander and distortion by the SL/ICL, we are issuing a pamphlet bringing together the statements we issued at the time refuting these vile smears. As we showed then, this mudslinging was part of a bureaucratic purge of leading cadres in the ICL. The barrage of lies was intended to cover up the ICL’s own criminal desertion from the struggle to oust the police from the union out of fear that the cop reaction could hit it. For a complete picture of the events recounted here, this collection of documents should be read together with the bulletin put out by the purged SL cadres, titled From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to Desertion from the Class Struggle (July 1996), as well as the IG Dossier on Class Struggle and Repression in Volta Redonda, Brazil (February 1997), which details the first set of court suits against the Brazilian comrades.
Cover: Contingent of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil and Comitê de Luta Classista during 22 November 1999 general strike in Rio de Janeiro whose demands (due to LQB/CLC initiative) included freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sign says: “Police Out of the Unions.”
For copies, send $2 to Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A.
Visit the IG/LFI on the Internet: www.internationalist.org (http://www.internationalist.org/)
This has put the SL in quite a pickle politically, especially since it admits that the Internationalist Group took the correct position and it even agreed with the IG’s characterization of the SL line as “social-imperialist.” So following its denunciation of its own ignominious apology for the U.S. takeover of Haiti (now admitted to be an invasion), and its admission that the SL newspaper Workers Vanguard lied about the Pentagon’s actions and about its own positions, the SL/ICL have been desperately seeking any stick they can find to polemically beat the IG. They have sought refuge in recycling their smears against the IG and the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil (LQB), the Brazilian section of the LFI, going back to 1996-98.
The SL/ICL accusations are brazen lies, accusing the LQB of “suing the union” in Brazil when the exact opposite was the case: the LQB never sued the union, and in fact LQB militants were the duly elected leadership of the Municipal Workers Union of Volta Redonda (SFPMVR) who were hauled into court and ousted from their union leadership positions by the bourgeois “justice” system. Their supposed “crime” was to remove municipal police from the union. As a result of this, the LQB comrades were hit with no less than nine separate court suits promoted by pro-cop elements in the SFPMVR and by the employer, the city government. In the face of this repression by a popular front government including Stalinists (PCdoB), social democrats (PTB) and bourgeois populists (PSB), as we sought (successfully) to build international support, the SL/ICL sought to sabotage their defense by retailing the lies about the Brazilian Trotskyists spread by those who actually did drag the union into the courts.
In response to this new offensive of slander and distortion by the SL/ICL, we are issuing a pamphlet bringing together the statements we issued at the time refuting these vile smears. As we showed then, this mudslinging was part of a bureaucratic purge of leading cadres in the ICL. The barrage of lies was intended to cover up the ICL’s own criminal desertion from the struggle to oust the police from the union out of fear that the cop reaction could hit it. For a complete picture of the events recounted here, this collection of documents should be read together with the bulletin put out by the purged SL cadres, titled From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to Desertion from the Class Struggle (July 1996), as well as the IG Dossier on Class Struggle and Repression in Volta Redonda, Brazil (February 1997), which details the first set of court suits against the Brazilian comrades.
Cover: Contingent of the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil and Comitê de Luta Classista during 22 November 1999 general strike in Rio de Janeiro whose demands (due to LQB/CLC initiative) included freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Sign says: “Police Out of the Unions.”
For copies, send $2 to Mundial Publications, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A.
Visit the IG/LFI on the Internet: www.internationalist.org (http://www.internationalist.org/)