Views on the SEP

[Brosa Luxemburg]

What are your views on the Socialist Equality Party.

[Prinskaj]

I started a thread on this a while back.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/socialist-equality-party-t168067/index.html?t=168067

[Q]

There are in fact many threads on this. Please use the search function.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

You might want to consider this site for a comprehensive analysis of the SEP's degeneration: permanent-revolution.org. The polemics contained within were written by two Trotskyists who fell out with the Northist leadership. I found their polemics extremely valuable.

[daft punk]

I think the wsws is a good site for historical stuff, but Marxist Historian or someone did tell me some dodgy stuff about them once, cant remember the exact details. I think it was some bizarre claims they made about other Trots.

Anyway, the only rubbish bit I've seen on there was an article condemning the Lindsay strikers, which a few sects on the left did in their ignorance. I'm sure there are other things they will have got wrong.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I'll go back to the OP -- the SEP is a really awful group. The developed as the US wing of Healy's ICFI. Originally led by Tim Wohlforth, who was purged when he hesitated in purging his own girlfriend (usually Tim did whatever Healy demanded). Wohlforth is the asshole who told the Buffalo Marxist Collective -- "the working class hates hippies and fags and so do we." The worst part of their history came in the late seventies when they were on the payroll of Qadaffi, fulsomely praising the "Arab Revolution" and calling Qadaffi a socialist. They were also involved in fingering some Iraqi Communists to the Hussein regime (very ugly anti-communist shit). Later, Healy's group blew up, with all sides being SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY, that the WRP in Britain had received Hundreds of Thousands Pounds from Qaddaffi and other class alien dictators. Internally, the Workers League in the US was an ugly little outfit. They had a twice-weekly press and maybe 70 members. North was there, toeing Healy's line, until Healy was thrown out in England (well, he continued with a few of his followers).

My point is, that among ostensibly Trotskyist groups, this is the worst. They really are a cult -- they have crossed the class line many times. There is lots of literature about this out there if you can find it. The Spartacist League initially tried to be part of the ICFI after they were expelled from the US SWP. Their documents on trying to work with Healy are illuminating. Some of these can be found in the archive section of the International Bolshevik Tendencies website www.bolshevik.org. Also there was an article in Workers Vanguard in the late Seventies, "Kill a Commie for Qaddaffi" -- I don't know if it is available online.

If you are interested in Trotskyism, I suggest that you check out the Spartacists, the Internationalist Group, even the Bolshevik Tendency (although they seem to have almost no presence outside of Toronto). These groups hate each other, but are all, at least legitimately putting forth their version of Trotskyism. The SEP are con men.

[RedZezz]

The Socialist Equality Party is one of the few parties that upholds Trotskyism and bases its actions on continuing that legacy. Essentially founded by sections of the SWP which fought against the move towards pabloism. As a party which upholds its history, a lot of the criticisms presented by other factions have been explained in detail though published documents. Some of these have appeared frequently here so I would like to address them.

First, Wohlforth was not "purged". His leadership in the 1970's was disasterous. Furthermore, he had also withheld imformation from the party that his companion, who had been elevated to a leadership position, had close family as high ranking personel in the CIA. He was voted out of his leadership position by the central commitee and Nancy Fields, his companion, was suspended pending further investigation into the matter. Wohlforth then resigned a month later.

After his departure, the Workers League reformed itself durastically and departed significantly from the British Workers Revolutionary Party. The Workers League, which would become the SEP, did not support the WRP's in their defence of Ghaddafi, Hussain, or Khomeini. In fact, when challenged by the WL, the WRP refused to discuss it and threatened to break from the ICFI. They would eventually implode upon themselves for their break with Trotskyism.

Today, the SEP bases itself on Orthodox Trotskyism, a result from its history of combating Pabloism and allying itself with petty-bourgeoie positions.

[Sir Comradical]

The SEP & Sparts are the two leftist websites/publications that I find worth reading.

[BOZG]

The SEP is an organisation that considers not updating your website every 15 seconds with articles on every conceivable event a sign of your anti-working class, pro-capitalist revisionism while ignoring the fact that unlike themselves, some left groups actually have a real world presence and can actually be too busy being involved in the class struggle to satisfy their demands for real time website coverage.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The Socialist Equality Party is one of the few parties that upholds Trotskyism and bases its actions on continuing that legacy. Essentially founded by sections of the SWP which fought against the move towards pabloism. As a party which upholds its history, a lot of the criticisms presented by other factions have been explained in detail though published documents. Some of these have appeared frequently here so I would like to address them.

First, Wohlforth was not "purged". His leadership in the 1970's was disasterous. Furthermore, he had also withheld imformation from the party that his companion, who had been elevated to a leadership position, had close family as high ranking personel in the CIA. He was voted out of his leadership position by the central commitee and Nancy Fields, his companion, was suspended pending further investigation into the matter. Wohlforth then resigned a month later.

After his departure, the Workers League reformed itself durastically and departed significantly from the British Workers Revolutionary Party. The Workers League, which would become the SEP, did not support the WRP's in their defence of Ghaddafi, Hussain, or Khomeini. In fact, when challenged by the WL, the WRP refused to discuss it and threatened to break from the ICFI. They would eventually implode upon themselves for their break with Trotskyism.

Today, the SEP bases itself on Orthodox Trotskyism, a result from its history of combating Pabloism and allying itself with petty-bourgeoie positions.
Lies and distortions.

The SEP emerged from the toilet of Healyism. North followed Healy's orders until Healy was purged. And I read the Bulletin during the period AFTER Wohlforth left, and it had all kinds of fulsome praise for Qadaffi and Hussein and other dictators in the Arab world, who apparently gave millions of dollars to the ICFI to print stuff supporting their brutal nationalist regimes. When the WRP exploded in Britain, it also came out that at the Iraqi government's request, the WRP had sent some photographers to take pictures of Iraqi students protesting against Hussein in London. And the WL in the US following the lead of Healy in Britain praised the execution by Saddam of 21 Iraqi Communist Party members. Of course much of what the WL printed was slanderous shit called "Security and the Fourth International" that claimed Trotsky's murder was an inside job! And that Joe Hanson, a leader of the SWP (and who led the party away from Trotskyism toward reformism) was a CIA spy. The evidence was stupid and I will not take that issue up here.

So where was North at that time? Where are his documents fighting against these betrayals? Why did he stay in an international that was consistently crossing the class line? My guess is that if he didn't like it, he would try to speak with Banda, or Slaughter or Healy, and be threatened with immediate expulsion from the IC and he capitulated.

This is an awful group with a completely vile history. It is well documented. Please, by all means investigate Trotskyism. Between their economic chicanery and their willingness to be used as a tool of bourgeois governments, these guys are not really a left group. They might be able to sound orthodox, and make claims about anti-pabloism, but underneath it, they are anti-working class slime and should be avoided with prejudice.

And you can check my other posts, I disagree with many here at Revleft, but these are the only folks I would argue are not leftists at all. Or that I would call slime. It's because they are that special.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Here's a passage from an article from WRP's Newsline, Feb 2, 1979:

“At the obvious instigation of the Kremlin, the Communist Party of Great Britain has become the centre of an immense slander offensive against the bastion of the Arab Revolution - the Republic of Iraq and its revolutionary vanguard, the Arab Ba'athist Socialist Party...
“It is true that 21 CP members were executed early last year for illegally forming cells in the armed forces. The purpose of these cells was to fight against the government. There are no prizes for the answer to what would happen to Ba'athists who set up cells in the Soviet army. They would be ruthlessly purged!”

This is the pedigree of North's SEP. Enough said.

[daft punk]

Here's a passage from an article from WRP's Newsline, Feb 2, 1979:

“At the obvious instigation of the Kremlin, the Communist Party of Great Britain has become the centre of an immense slander offensive against the bastion of the Arab Revolution - the Republic of Iraq and its revolutionary vanguard, the Arab Ba'athist Socialist Party...
“It is true that 21 CP members were executed early last year for illegally forming cells in the armed forces. The purpose of these cells was to fight against the government. There are no prizes for the answer to what would happen to Ba'athists who set up cells in the Soviet army. They would be ruthlessly purged!”

This is the pedigree of North's SEP. Enough said.


Interesting, never knew that.


I do agree with the Militant position, what i wrote should have had better punctuation.

Cool. No problem. I should have made my initial statement unambiguous in the first place so I didn't give the impression of supporting the British army at the time. You were right to pull me on that.

[thriller]

Well WSW is a pretty good place to visit IMHO. The fact that they keep going on about Jerry White running for president seems to me like the position SPUSA has (electoral politics instead of revolutionary action). I will say the members I ran into during the Wisconsin protests were very sectarian. One guy just turned his back on me and walked away during a conversation because I said I was a member of SPUSA. I doubt this is how all the members act, but it left me with a negative view.

[Dabrowski]

Today, the SEP/ICFI/WSWS is the right-wing political hobby of David "North," CEO of the non-union Grand River Printing and Imaging company.

This group has a long and sordid history. They sold out Iraqi communists to Saddam Hussein back when he was a hit man for the CIA (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/07/kill-commie-for-qaddafi-29-april-1979.html), sold out Iranian leftists to the Ayatollahs (http://www.internationalist.org/wherewasdavidnorth.html), and alibied the Stalinist massacre of Vietnamese Trotskyists (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/04/vietnam-pabloism-healynorth.html). The SEP loves cops (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/08/workers-league-cop-lovers-october-1986.html), hates unions (http://www.internationalist.org/wgastrike0712.html#wsws), (apparently with the exception of cop unions and the counterrevolutionary polish Solidarność (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/09/walesas-left-fans-run-for-cover-1990.html)) and is a-ok with racist white segregationists (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/10/wl-blocks-with-white-segregationists.html). Recently these "color-blind" racists (WSWS, 5 April 2012) argued that those who point out the obvious racist nature the lynching of Trayvon Martin "promote the reactionary politics of racial identity." The Northites tried to spike labor-black mobilizations against the KKK (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-was-wl-doing-at-207th-st-dec-1988.html), cop-baited and outed leftists in the unions (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-is-workers-league-1988.html) while suing socialist parties in the capitalist courts to demand government oversight of their membership (http://anti-sep-tic.blogspot.com/2009/08/healyite-slanders-and-swp-cowards.html)!

The left is full of examples of opportunism, cowardice and class treason. The WSWS/SEP cybersect manages to be the worst of this sorry bunch by a country mile. If you're looking for Trotskyism, the only Trotskyist organization is the League for the Fourth International (Internationalist Group in the U.S.)

[Kassad]

Of course David North and his cult organization hate unions. How else could they run such an effective printing company? They showed up at the Senate Bill 5 rallies in Ohio last year and came off almost as bad as the LaRouche fuckers. Making revolution by crossing one picket line at a time.

[A Marxist Historian]

Lies and distortions.

The SEP emerged from the toilet of Healyism. North followed Healy's orders until Healy was purged. And I read the Bulletin during the period AFTER Wohlforth left, and it had all kinds of fulsome praise for Qadaffi and Hussein and other dictators in the Arab world, who apparently gave millions of dollars to the ICFI to print stuff supporting their brutal nationalist regimes. When the WRP exploded in Britain, it also came out that at the Iraqi government's request, the WRP had sent some photographers to take pictures of Iraqi students protesting against Hussein in London. And the WL in the US following the lead of Healy in Britain praised the execution by Saddam of 21 Iraqi Communist Party members. Of course much of what the WL printed was slanderous shit called "Security and the Fourth International" that claimed Trotsky's murder was an inside job! And that Joe Hanson, a leader of the SWP (and who led the party away from Trotskyism toward reformism) was a CIA spy. The evidence was stupid and I will not take that issue up here.

So where was North at that time? Where are his documents fighting against these betrayals? Why did he stay in an international that was consistently crossing the class line? My guess is that if he didn't like it, he would try to speak with Banda, or Slaughter or Healy, and be threatened with immediate expulsion from the IC and he capitulated.

This is an awful group with a completely vile history. It is well documented. Please, by all means investigate Trotskyism. Between their economic chicanery and their willingness to be used as a tool of bourgeois governments, these guys are not really a left group. They might be able to sound orthodox, and make claims about anti-pabloism, but underneath it, they are anti-working class slime and should be avoided with prejudice.

And you can check my other posts, I disagree with many here at Revleft, but these are the only folks I would argue are not leftists at all. Or that I would call slime. It's because they are that special.

And, of course, the wsws is simply a computer hobby funded entirely by a non-union Detroit printing company, which is what really makes whether or not they are part of the left questionable. The SEP is simply an appendage.

Capitalism is capitalism, and being determines consciousness. That the WSWS is against unions is not exactly accidental.

-M.H.-

[Sentinel]

Thread split -- please continue the discussion on the SPEW, the SWP and the goal of forming of a new broad left workers party, electoralism etc here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/spew-swp-split-t170245/index.html), and the Falklands/Malvinas conflict here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/falklands-war-malvinas-t170247/index.html).