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Why does everyone call spartacists loonies?
IF i remember correctly from Luxemburg's reform or revolution, the sparcacists were the revolutionary split of SPD, when it became a reformist cesspool.
So why the 'batshit crazy' accusations?
Give me some info please, comrades.Historical, today's, general thesies, examples of insanity, etc
I assume that when people talk about the nuttiness of the Sparticist League they are referring to the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). A rather active Trotskyist organization known for their sectarian attacks. There is generally a fair amount of sourness on the left in regard to the Sparticists, probably because you seldom find a leftist who's organization hasn't been attacked by them. That, and some of their more unorthodox positions, such as their support for NAMBLA.
Last edited by Who?; 1st January 2011 at 00:27.
Yeah, the Spartacis League is a contemporary "Troskyist" organization. They exist in Germany too (they sell the Worker's Vanguard here).
I talked with one member of the "Spartacist Youth" once, who was like 40 and trying to sell me her newspaper. They actually consider China a socialist state (albeit degenerated).
I have a sort of respect for them and than they go and spoil it with evil filth like I have high lighted.
The Spartacist League is not the Spartakusbund, Luxemburg's group. The SL is the leading section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), and is an allegedly "orthodox" split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1963. The SL has a habit of declaring other Trotskyist groups to be "ostensibly revolutionary organizations" and their public actions (and the articles in their press) frequently consist of angry declamations of other tendencies. They are infamous for taking up "angular" slogans that sharply differentiate them from other groups. The high point of this was probably "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" during the 1979 Soviet intervention there.
Spartacists have always been an unbalanced tendency, and have been known for their bizarre tactics. Interventions at public meetings are almost universally denunciations of other groups, rather than projecting any kind of positive politics. They differentiated themselves in the 1980s by taking up an extreme version of Soviet defencism, supporting the crushing of the Polish Solidarnosc and declaring that any tendency refusing to do so was revisionist. These days they take up a very aggressive version of support for the deformed workers states, and include China in that list.
And yes, the Sparts have gotten their share of controversy because they are against age-of-consent laws, including support for NAMBLA. It's more or less a symptom of the overall crazy nature of the demands that they bring up, which mostly serve as a barrier between them and other groups. Their paper used to be a pretty significant source of left gossip, but these days it's mostly on erratic jags like their recent position on Haiti, which actually supported the US intervention until they explicitly reversed course on the question.
I've read (on here I think) they used to recruit young, impressionable and attractive women for the sole purpose of using them to recruit large numbers of men into the organization?
"Horizontal Recruitment" is a common charge leveled against them by some, more so in the past though. I can't say if it still applies today because I haven't really seen their group personally.
They wanted to recruit me, wowz. I was liek: I'm in teh CWI already!
And she was like: But they're reactionary, like their position on cops, which is the opposite of the position Lenin and Trotsky had during blablablabla.....
So I gave her a fake phone number just to be done with her. (Yeah, I can't just tell an old woman to GTFO, even less on a crowded protest dominated by stalinists)
Yeah, the Sparts have made recruiting out of other tendencies a particular favorite; they base the idea loosely on the fact that the Trotskyists tried to win members of the Communist Parties over during the late 20s and early 30s, as those parties were entering the final stage of Stalinization. Needless to say that hasn't won them any friends, considering they come off like lunatics.
(As a side note: the Sparts did have some slightly off but more "normal" members during the 70s, but their high-pressure internal life and bizarre style of interventions have driven most everyone off except the die-hards, who tend to be more unbalanced. This has been a vicious cycle where the leadership realizes the rank-and-file are mostly crazy but can't really fix the problem as their bureaucratic style is partly to blame in the first place. And yes, the crap with horizontal recruitment was real and did contribute to the current sorry state of Spartacism.)
The CWI's stance on cops is pretty backward, though: they do consider police to be a legit part of the workers' movement. Not that this means you should become a Spart or anything, but just because they say something doesn't mean it's not true.
Wow, I'm not a fan of the Sparts at all, but this thread is pretty pathetic.
At least there's a couple highlights:
lol
Name one claim in this thread that isn't true.
Wow nice contribution comrade 9, maybe you'd like to defend the Sparts' position on pedos and NAMBLA instead of just "lol"?
There were a few Spartacists posting on here a few years back, I think they are all banned now. The thread that sticks in my mind was called "XXXX XXXXX the new Rosa Parks" or some such. XXXX XXXXX was a middle aged bloke who was charged in the U.S. with taking indecent photographs of primary school kids, who's name I've forgotten.
The arguement was that by fighting these charges this bloke was standing up for our freedom against the evils of the state, and that this was the new battleground that the civil rights movement should be massing for.
Never mind the insult by linking a paedophile's attempts to escape justice with Rosa Parks struggle for basic human rights, thats bad enough in itself, but how the hell are you going sell the idea of a socialist revolution to the folks if you advocate allowing child abuse. People don't like peodophiles full stop. Can you imagine the reaction at the post revolutionary meeting. "Brothers & Sisters after the great victory for our class we are now going to allow people to fuck your kids." People would get ripped apart if that idea was put forward.
Loonies? Dam right they are.
Oh yes, I'm dyng to; I'm sure if I even attempted to correct the repeated mischaracterization in this thread of their position on NAMBLA - which I completely disagree with, but it isn't what people are claiming it is - I'd be banned in about 0.3 seconds.
So yeah, I'm gonna have to pass. SKIN THE PEDOZ ALIVE!!!!!!1 etc. etc.
i'm really not keen on the spartacists having seen them "in action" at one of our meetings where the guy who was speaking had given a long speech about the situation in a country, described the most horrific things which had taken place towards workers, including some of his friends, only for the sparts to get up and start accusing him personally and the CWI of being fascist, promoting genocide, etc, a fairly disgusting accusation given his background
theyre well known for doing this though, more loopy than harmful or anythingalthough their position on paedophilia is just fucking sick
a couple marxisms (the SWP event) ago i was walking around the stalls of all the left sects talking to them, getting free newspapers and shit. i went to the spart table and they were rude, didnt want to talk to me and gave me no free stuff(and definatly no chance of horizontal recruiting, not that i wouldve, they were ugly IIRC)
they also had their notorious sign "Defend deformed workers states of china, korea etc"
i was also at some event last year organised by the 5th international guys. it was at the time when some workers had occupied a factory, which was inthe news abit, and someone said about them being the vanguard of the working class. the spart then told us that they were not, but him and his group was the vanguard of the working class
What do you think the Sparts' position on the age of consent issue is? My understanding is that the Sparts call for replacing the age of consent with laws that use some other basis for determining effective consent. That seems reasonable to me, and far from the monstrous position it's being described as here. If I'm not mistaken, it's also the line of a few other socialist/communist organizations. Correct me if I am wrong on either of these issues. As for nambla, isn't that a Jon Stewart joke?
Oh, and one last thing. The Sparts should probably avoid putting exclamation points at the end of every single headline in their Workers Vanguard publication. It does make the group look fanatical and silly.
Biggest facepalm evarsomeone said about them being the vanguard of the working class. the spart then told us that they were not, but him and his group was the vanguard of the working class
just a side note the Sparts left the SWP over there support for Malcome X.
That's actually not true at all.
Jim Robertson was a member of a small group (mostly NYC based) of youth who broke from the Socialist Youth League, the youth wing of Max Shachtman's Independent Socialist League, when Shachtman went into the Socialist Party. They became orthodox Trotskyists and fused with the SWP in 1960, but almost immediately came into conflict with Joseph Hansen (who had been one of Trotsky's secretaries in Mexico) and the SWP leadership over the question of Cuba.
Robertson was initially part of the Revolutionary Tendency that oriented toward Gerry Healy, who was the leader of the Socialist Labour League in Britain. Healy's line was that capitalism was not overthrown in Cuba, while Hansen (representing the SWP leadership) argued that Cuba was a workers' state - and a relatively healthy one. Robertson and his wing of the RT developed the line that Cuba was a deformed workers' state, and split from the SWP in 1963. The rest of the RT - led by Tim Wohlforth and Shane Mage - stayed with Healy's line, and didn't split until 1964. (This all played into the complex fallout of the 1953 split in the Fourth International.)
The split difference was 100% on Cuba, but the Spartacist group (later Spartacist League) quickly took up a number of positions opposite to the SWP. The SWP had a lengthy political debate on African-American liberation, between George Breitman who took a position favoring Black Nationalist forces and brought the party close to Malcolm X during Malcolm's last year*, and Dick Fraser whose position of "Revolutionary Integrationism" was staunchly anti-nationalist. Fraser, with his wife Clara, broke with the SWP in 1966 and took the entire Seattle branch with them. They formed a small party, the Freedom Socialist Party, which immediately split when Dick and Clara got divorced. The Sparts took up Fraser's position of Revolutionary Integrationism, which calls for "Black Liberation through Socialist Revolution."
Politically this contrarianism tends to define the Sparts. When most of the US left took up feminism in the '70s, the Sparts became hardline anti-feminists. They took up a "two socialist states" position in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the matching position on Northern Ireland - ironically these are almost the same positions as the British Militant tendency, predecessor of the CWI and IMT. They are anti-environmentalist, pro-porn (Nina Hartley, a famous porn actress, is or at least was a supporter), pro-smoking, they take up their infamous position on age of consent laws and defense of NAMBLA, even their position on Solidarnosc - it's all to be the opposite of whatever is popular in the left at the moment. Lately it's manifested in a severe hatred of third-worldism, such as the claim that there is no working class in Bolivia or Haiti that could be a revolutionary force. But it can't be taken too seriously, their politics are less about solid principle and more about taking the opposite line to whatever's trendy in the left.
* The Spartacists were actually out of the SWP in 1963, while it didn't really start working with Malcolm until 1964.
