Spartacists / International Communist League

[RED DAVE]

I have met with the Spartacist League on a number of occasions, and i must say, they are VERY strange, both personally and politically. They usually come to leftist gatherings in large groups, then stand up and read denunciations of other groups from a piece of paper, almost as if they were afraid to mess up a word for fear of punishment. The denunciation usually has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Also, they sometimes denounce speakers for not saying something that in fact the speaker did say, but because the paper was written the day before it couldn't be edited on the spot. Very interesting group indeed.

With that said however, the members that I have come into contact with ARE sincere in their desire for socialist revolution. Its just the way they act toward others that puts a lot of people off. If they would just chill out a little bit and approach people differently they might stand a chance of gaining supporters but that seems unlikely to happen. They may be nutty, but they are still our comrades.

The Sparts have been pulling this shit for decades. I remember once at a political gathering in New York, during a discussion of Haiti, a Spart got up and read some kind of rant against the party of the speaker. He wouldn't shut up, and eventually, he had to be dragged out, still reading.

The sincerity of the Sparts isn't the issue. The question is: what kind of mentality considers this to be acceptable behavior by a revolutionary. It's kind of like the RCP and their hero-worship of Kevinbakian.

RED DAVE

[BOZG]

No, the Logan group was separate from the BT until the mid-1990s, when they merged and changed their name to the IBT. In terms of the Logan trial itself, I always thought it was interesting that the only non-Spartacist member of the tribunal, Edmund Samarakkody of Sri Lanka, was also the only one to vote against Logan's expulsion.

I think it's quite funny that they ignorethe criticisms that Samarakkody made of the ICL leadership while emphasising his criticisms of Logan.

The Logan Dossier is definitely one of the strangest documents I've ever read. It merely comes across as the insane ramblings of Jim Robertson and does absolutely no service to the ICL themselves. It's interesting that they completely ignore the racist slurs used by Robertson throughout.

[Q]

I have met with the Spartacist League on a number of occasions, and i must say, they are VERY strange, both personally and politically. They usually come to leftist gatherings in large groups, then stand up and read denunciations of other groups from a piece of paper, almost as if they were afraid to mess up a word for fear of punishment. The denunciation usually has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. Also, they sometimes denounce speakers for not saying something that in fact the speaker did say, but because the paper was written the day before it couldn't be edited on the spot. Very interesting group indeed.

With that said however, the members that I have come into contact with ARE sincere in their desire for socialist revolution. Its just the way they act toward others that puts a lot of people off. If they would just chill out a little bit and approach people differently they might stand a chance of gaining supporters but that seems unlikely to happen. They may be nutty, but they are still our comrades.

Behind this apparently troublesome behaviour is actually a method that John Sullivan described quite well.

[Palingenisis]

Its pretty disgusting to see Trots slander the one principled group among you...But I guess Trots will be Trots...

[Q]

Its pretty disgusting to see Trots slander the one principled group among you...But I guess Trots will be Trots...

Cool story bro.

[Proletarian Ultra]

The Sparts are total assholes and even worse they're right most of the time.

Read all their stuff and avoid personal contact.

[A.R.Amistad]

I've heard that members aren't allowed to marry "outside of the party." Its like theyre mormons or something.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I was at a labor rally a few years ago. The Sparts were selling their paper, "Worker's Vanguard". That was the time of the North Korea nukes scare, whipped up by the US media. The front page of WV said, in big letters, "Defend North Korea's Right To Have Nuclear Weapons!" I saw a union member walking and reading WV. He said to himself, "What is this shit?", and threw it to the ground.

They seem to be cult like. They're oriented strictly to the left and their main activity is heckling other groups.They can be quite funny at times and are good for comic relief.

Their outspoken , in your face support for NAMBLA has created problems. At times when I told people I'm a socialist they've associated it w/this organization.
I can't post links but google "The Road To Jimstown" for a good take on the Sparts.

[A.R.Amistad]

The Sparts are total assholes and even worse they're right most of the time.

Read all their stuff and avoid personal contact.

What do you mean by "they're right most of the time"?

[Q]

I can't post links

You can as you've 25 posts now

Anyway, besides the single IBT member in the Netherlands, I also had a close encounter with a group of Sparts. On Socialism 2008 in London there was this debate between the SPEW and SWP. One of the Sparts on the floor then started to denounce all speakers as they were "reformists" and that we should defend the Peoples Republic of China. The headline on their paper at that time also carried that headline.

I should have bought one and have a real traditional fish & chips. Oh well.

[Proletarian Ultra]

I was at a labor rally a few years ago. The Sparts were selling their paper, "Worker's Vanguard". That was the time of the North Korea nukes scare, whipped up by the US media. The front page of WV said, in big letters, "Defend North Korea's Right To Have Nuclear Weapons!" I saw a union member walking and reading WV. He said to himself, "What is this shit?", and threw it to the ground.

[Q]

The Sparts are total assholes and even worse they're right most of the time.

Read all their stuff and avoid personal contact.

Do you think they're right about that? If so, why?

[Proletarian Ultra]

Do you think they're right about that? If so, why?

NoKo is a very shitty place. Much like the former East Bloc. When the East Bloc fell, despite how shitty it was, the result was a catastrophe for the international working class. It unleashed a wave of reaction and capitalist triumphalism that is only now starting to wane. The way shit turned out post-'89 entirely refutes the Third Camp approach to the Russian question and confirms the degenerated workers' state analysis.

So...NoKo is an awful, awful place to live. But when it falls, want to guess what happens to workers' rights in SoKo, China and Japan?

That's why socialists should support the Norks' right to nuclear weapons - i.e. their right to an insurance policy against invasion or aggression.

And/but: that sign is totally fucking nuts.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

The existence of state capitalism in North Korea improves the lives of workers in Japan how? Do you defend North Korea's right to use nuclear weapons, or just to have them?

[BOZG]

That's why socialists should support the Norks' right to nuclear weapons - i.e. their right to an insurance policy against invasion or aggression.

But they're only a deterrent if you're willing to use them. What does that say to workers internationally?

[fredbergen]

But they're only a deterrent if you're willing to use them. What does that say to workers internationally?

It says to this worker that Soviet nuclear weapons were the reason U.S. imperialist madmen couldn't turn Vietnam and China into radioactive wastelands. "Weapons of Mass Destruction" are why Iraq is suffering under colonial occupation today: Iraq didn't have them, thank goodness the DPRK does!

As the Trotskyists of the Internationalist Group wrote in The Great Chemical Weapons Hoax (see below), the poverty that prevails in North Korea is a result of the unimaginable scale of mass murder and destruction that the imperialists rained down during the Korean war. Every city north of the 38th latitude line was leveled by bombs and incinerated by millions of gallons of Napalm. The Kim dynasty-bureaucracy has its material basis in the extreme scarcity and destruction caused by the imperialist invasion and perpetuated by the DPRK's isolation and constant threat of a new invasion.


[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Korea[/FONT]

The Korean War is often referred to as the “forgotten war.” Certainly, over the decades the imperialist media have done their best to cover up the war crimes carried out there by the United States, Australian and other imperialist military forces during 1950-53 under the flag of the United Nations. A hole in the curtain of ignorance was ripped by the revelations in a September 1999 AP report by courageous Korean journalists, who demonstrated in great detail how the U.S. Army slaughtered 400 or more Korean civilians huddling under a bridge at No Gun Ri on 26 July 1950. Despite efforts by “responsible” American media executives to impugn the U.S. soldiers who confirmed the massacre, and intense pressure from the Pentagon on them to recant their testimony, the facts of this cold-blooded mass murder have been established beyond any doubt.

Yet No Gun Ri was only one of many atrocities committed by the U.S. imperialist forces and their South Korean puppet army in this first major engagement in the anti-Soviet Cold War, a war that lasted almost half a century. Among many other cases, in the same month of July 1950 more than 1,800 Korean Communist political prisoners were executed in Taejon, South Korea and their bodies thrown into a mass grave. U.S. Army photos of this slaughter were long classified Top Secret. A South Korean admiral reported that 200 people were taken off shore from Pohong and dumped into the sea. Another classified document reported the execution in August 1950 of between 200 and 300 Korean prisoners, who were lined up on a cliff near Taegu and shot. Villagers in Dokchon reported that truckloads of prisoners were taken into the hills and shot. Declassified documents confirm that it was U.S. policy for fighter jets to strafe civilian refugee columns. Even before the outbreak of the Korean War, U.S. and South Korean forces massacred 30,000 to 60,000 civilians in suppressing the 3 April 1948 uprising on Cheju-do Island.

U.S. puppet South Korean army massacred more than 1,800 Communist prisoners at Taejong in July 1950. (Photo: AP)

In North Korea, the U.S. policy of mass murder was carried out on an industrial scale. Napalm (jellied gasoline) and phosphorous bombs were systematically dropped in order to incinerate every city north of the 38th parallel (roughly marking the line between capitalist South Korea and the bureaucratically deformed workers state to the north). The North Korean capital was a particular object of Washington’s murderous fury. On 11 July 1952, the U.S. Air Force dropped 1,400 tons of bombs and 23,000 gallons of napalm on Pyongyang, leveling more than 1,500 buildings and killing many thousands. The American bombers returned on August 4 and again on August 29 to finish the job. By that time there was literally nothing left to hit. And not just in the north. General Curtis LeMay described the devastation saying, “we eventually burned down every town in North Korea... and some in South Korea too. We even burned down [the South Korean city of] Pusan – an accident, but we burned it down anyway” (from the PBS TV program, Race for the Superbomb, January 1999).

It is well-known that General Douglas MacArthur unsuccessfully pushed to A-bomb Chinese and North Korean forces in Korea and even Chinese industrial centers north of the Yalu. It is seldom reported, however, that from the very beginning of the Korean War, in August 1950 U.S. president Truman moved ten B-29s loaded with atomic bombs to Guam, that Eisenhower moved them up to Okinawa in 1953 to force the Soviets to accept an armistice, and that the U.S. actively considered using atomic weapons throughout the war. More than 2 million Korean civilians and another 1.5 million soldiers were killed in the Korean War, overwhelmingly by the U.S. and its allies. Today, U.S. president Bush again threatens “pre-emptive” action against North Korea’s tiny nuclear facilities, claiming they are a “threat” to the United States. In fact, it is U.S. imperialism which has not only threatened but carried out mass killings with chemical weapons in an attempt to obliterate North Korea.

As we stressed in “Defend North Korea Against Nuclear Blackmail and War Threats!” (The Internationalist No. 15, January-February 2003): the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has the right to obtain any weapon it requires to defend itself against the imperialist mass murderers, and it is the obligation of every class-conscious worker and opponent of imperialism to defend North Korea against U.S. nuclear threats.

[BOZG]

It says to this worker that Soviet nuclear weapons were the reason U.S. imperialist madmen couldn't turn Vietnam and China into radioactive wastelands. "Weapons of Mass Destruction" are why Iraq is suffering under colonial occupation today: Iraq didn't have them, thank goodness the DPRK does!

I do take your point as I don't have a hard and fast position on it. But it also says to this worker, "If we have to, we'll also drop a nuclear bomb on you".