About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Spartacist League (modern)

Encyclopedia : S : SP : SPA : Spartacist League (modern)

Popularly referred to as the Spartacist League or the Sparts, the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) — formerly the International Spartacist Tendency — is a Trotskyist international organisation based primarily in the United States. The Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacist League of Weimar Republic Germany, though the current League has no formal descent from it. Depending on the context, the League will often self-identify as a "revolutionary communist" organization.

There are smaller sections of the Spartacist League in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom. The Spartacist League characterizes itself as a revolutionary fighting propaganda group and devotes much attention to polemicizing against both capitalist parties and groups that consider themselves to be Marxist-Leninist.

Their publications frequently criticize the Christian Right's opposition to abortion and homosexuality as examples of an attempt to establish a "sex police." Less popularly, the Spartacist League has defended groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association on civil libertarian grounds and have called for an end to age-of-consent laws.

Since the early 1980s the group and affiliates have also organized mobilizations against Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan; in the late-1980s it was an early campaigner to save Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row. The Sparts regard what they term the "struggle for black liberation" as central to communist revolution in the U.S.; to that end, they promote "revolutionary integrationism". They also prominently support the right to bear arms.

Contents

Publications

The League operates the Prometheus Research Library in New York City, which includes the tendency's archives and other material on the history of Trotskyism. The U.S. group publishes the newspaper Workers Vanguard, which is known for its running commentary on the activities of other leftist groups, its sarcastic wit, and its obituaries of leftist figures whose lives often are inadequately analyzed and/or memorialized in the mainstream media, recently including Bill Epton, Richard Fraser, Robert F. Williams, and Myra Tanner Weiss. Since the 1990s Workers Vanguard has also featured original essays on the history of Marxist and pre-Marxist radical ideas written under the party name Joseph Seymour. Spartacist is the official theoretical journal of the Spartacists and is published in four languages.

Positions

Regarding similar groups

The League rejects left-wing political coalitions and campaigns, on the grounds that they are popular fronts aimed at providing platforms for bourgeois politicians from the Democratic Party and the U.S. Green Party. The group denounces all support to capitalist parties, especially the ones founded through popular front formation, in favor of an independent workers' party aiming for state power.

The Spartacists also devote much attention to polemicizing against other communist and socialist groups. These polemics are usually exceptionally forceful and are often seen by the groups being attacked as unnecessarily disruptive of their activities. Specifically, the United States Democratic Socialists of America and the International Socialist Organization have accused the Spartacists of having become violent at their meetings. The Sparts in turn have claimed that these and various other groups have acted in a violent fashion towards them and their sympathizers. The Spartacist League is also highly critical of groups associated with the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, whose politics they characterize as Pabloite.

On Islamic states

Much of the left supported Ayatollah Khomeini during the Islamic Revolution in Iran as "anti-imperialist," but the Spartacists gave no support to this. However, the League was one of the few communist groups other than the Workers World Party to hail the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the occupation that followed. The Spartacists believed it provided an opportunity to extend the gains of the October Revolution to the Afghan people, especially women, in a struggle against the misogynistic Islamic fundamentalists of the Mujahideen that were being bankrolled by the United States.

Later, when that U.S. intervention led to the formation of the successive Islamic governments of the Mujahideen and the Taliban, they denounced these governments as clerical fascist and anti-woman, just as they characterized (and continue to characterize) the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

On The League also fought hard in mobilizing to defend the Soviet Union and East Germany from capitalist restoration, though they were obviously unsuccessful. Their group in Germany waged a campaign in 1989 calling for political revolution against Stalinism and opposition to the capitalist reunification. Today, the Spartacists maintain a position of defending what they see as the remaining deformed workers states, including, more recently, its call for defense of North Korea's right to nuclear arms as a necessary component keeping North Korea free of U.S. military intervention. This is a continuation of their earlier positions on what they consider the deformed workers states of the Republic of Cuba, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the People's Republic of China. On these countries they continue to call for political revolution against the ruling communist parties while at the same time calling for the defense of these revolutions from imperialism and internal capitalist counter-revolution.

History

Background

A group of left wing youth recruited to the American Socialist Workers Party in the late 1950's formed the Independent Socialist League led by Max Shachtman which was then about to dissolve in order to join the Socialist Party USA. This small group included James Robertson, who would go on to be the central leader of the Spartacist League, and Tim Wohlforth. Also important in the early days were Shane Mage and Geoff White.

By 1960 this grouping, mostly active in the youth group associated with the SWP, had become worried by what they saw as the opportunism of the leadership of the SWP headed by Farrell Dobbs and by overtures by the SWP to the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. Particular issues in the dispute included the character of the Cuban revolution, characterized by the majority as a "healthy workers' state," and proper orientation towards the Civil Rights Movement, where the majority attitude was that of uncritical support from afar.

Rather than continue as leadership of the youth group, Robertson and the others formed an opposition caucus named the Revolutionary Tendency and made clear their loyalty to the International Committee of the Fourth International in 1962. Differences developed in the Revolutionary Tendency as to how to characterise the SWP, leading to a split within the caucus. A minority closer to the ICFI left to form the Reorganised Minority Tendency, led by Tim Wohlforth, just as the Robertson-led grouping was being expelled from the SWP. The RMT played a role in the expulsion of the Robertson grouping, on grounds of "party disloyalty."

Lyndon LaRouche, who would ultimately head what many categorize as a fascist movement, was briefly a member of the Revolutionary Tendency and then the Spartacist League as he circulated through various groupings on the Left in the 1960s.

Having been expelled in 1964 the Robertson group were swift to publish a magazine entitled Spartacist from which they would later take their name. They still stressed their loyalty to the International Committee for the Fourth International, and attended that body's conference held in London, England in 1966, only to find themselves shut out from the conference's ranks. The period after the founding of the Spartacist League was difficult, and saw the loss of Geoff White, the leading figure on the West Coast. Several other splits closely followed; see below.

Early Activities

Initially the Spartacists sought to intervene in the Civil Rights protests, on the basis of their support for the idea of revolutionary integrationism, but as small as they were, this activity foundered. They also developed a small presence in the Students for a Democratic Society; within the SDS they opposed all the major factions that developed from that body as these factions turned more and more towards Maoist ideas by 1969.

As the student and anti-Vietnam war movements passed their late 1960s peak the Spartacists did begin to recruit from the then large milieu of radicalised students. This led to substantial growth and the development of a national presence as they expanded from their intitial branches in New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. In part this process involved the recruitment of former students who had formed local Maoist collectives which had then came across Trotskyist ideas, including the Communist Working Collective in southern California and Buffalo Marxist Collective in Buffalo, New York. Some time later they recruited a not dissimilar "Gay Left" group based in the Bay area. Throughout the 1970s the Spartacists did develop a series of what they described as exemplary interventions in industry and the trade unions. For example, there were supporters involved with the ILWU in the Bay Area, Auto in California, Telephones and others.

Splits

Most major internal factional struggle in the group have tended to lead to the split of the dissenting minority.

  1. The first struggle happened in 1971. A number of members developed criticisms of the nature of the group's activities. In general the criticisms made were marked by a stress on the need for the group to emulate the methods of the French Voix Ouvrière group with which one member, Rose Jersawitz, had spent some time. They place great emphasis on agitating among industrial workers and on a secretive, semi-underground, method of organisation. The result was a split; subsequently, some of the breakaway minority formed The Spark. The Spark remains the fraternal group of the Internationalist Communist Union (Trotskyist). Its activists are concentrated in a few select industrial U.S. cities. Harry Turner tried to forestall this split and his group briefly remained in the Spartacists as a faction, only to split off within a few months. By the end of this split, James Robertson was the only leader of the former Revolutionary Tendency to remain central to the League.
  2. In 1972 after the Spartacists experienced a major loss of leading cadres: leaders Moore, Stewart, Dave Cunningham, and Treiger were all purged. A very short-lived group resulted from the people expelled, but disappeared after publishing one pamphlet. That split did not interrupt the growth of the League. Critics have argued that the unchallenged domination of Jim Robertson dates from the 1972 purge.
  3. According to the International Bolshevik Tendency, Robertson conducted a further preemptive purge of the group later in the 1970s so that no rivals to his leadership could emerge: they refer to this as "the Clone Purge" [link].
  4. The International Bolshevik Tendency formed in 1985 from members who had variously quit and been expelled, claims that since they left the Spartacist League has engaged in very little trade union activity. The IBT also claims that the Spartacists have degenerated into an "obedience cult" centered around Robertson.
  5. In 1996 the founders of the League for the Fourth International were expelled, allegedly for maneuvering with a group from Brazil involved in bringing court suit against a trade union.[link] In the United States their group is called the International Group and their newspaper the Internationalist.
  6. The Australian section of the Spartacist League, who had previously been involved in IBT events, split again in 2005, with one member leaving to found the Trotskyist Platform.

International Affiliates

Spartacist League in Sweden

The League had a small nucleus of supporters in Sweden from the late 1970s until the early 1980s. The members of that group are today found in other Trotskyist groups in Sweden or remain active in other League sections. [Bob Malecki] is a Swedish supporter of the League, publishing the magazine Cockroach as well as some books and brochures on his website.

Spartacist League of Britain

The British section of the ICL was founded at a conference held over the weekend of 4-5 April 1978 at which the Trotskyist Faction, which had split from the Workers Socialist League on 19 February 1978, fused with the London Spartacist Group. The LSG being a grouping of members of other sections of what was then the iSt based in London for political purposes. The newly formed Spartacist League was led by Bill Logan and Adaire Hannah who had previously led the Spartacist League of Australia. (Logan and Hannah were later expelled from the ICL over misconduct.) The British section publishes the quarterly newspaper Workers Hammer, a paper similar in style and content to the Workers Vanguard.

Trotskyist Group of Greece

The Trotskyist Group of Greece was founded in late 2004 by a tiny number of militants recruited to the ICL(FI) from rival Trotskyist groups.

External links

See also: List of Trotskyist internationals

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: