The International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) offers a very picturesque view of a recent meeting in New York between the International Communist League/Spartacist League (Spartacists) and League for the Fourth International/Internationalist Group (LFI/IG). “The ICL… presented a layer of relatively young, serious and capable comrades, many of whom intervened during the debate, but there was quite a contrast in behaviour. The LFI approach to those from other organisations retained the old stance of coolness and disinterest while the Spartacists seemed to relish their newfound permission to interact on a congenial basis with those outside their ranks. The ICL had booked a room at a local bar for informal socialising after the debate but disappointingly the LFI chose not to attend.”[i]
Along with other recent reports of surprising and relatively affable British Spartacist interventions into the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC, i.e., the Socialist Party in England and Wales’s shit Fleetwood Mac tribute act),[ii] I’m sure I am not the only comrade of my generation to, er, savour the thought of having the chance to “interact on a congenial basis” with Spartacist League members, giving what the somewhat notorious ‘Sparts’ used to be like when they were occasionally let out in public. But, joking aside, the left should welcome the Spartacist League, and all the other elements of the Spartacist diaspora, into meetings and publications. When a group partially moves out of a death dive of sectarian self-immolation, that is positive. I am always innately suspicious when the left-wing social-media ‘groovy gang’ declares that one particular group (the Spartacists, Frank Furedi’s Revolutionary Communist Party, the CPGB-ML and so on) is uniquely awful; that usually means covering up for some appalling outrage on behalf of rival sects and factions.
The root of the Spartacist League’s former extreme behaviour is something it shares in common with many others across the Trotskyist/‘official’ communist/Maoist spectrum. In the words of the Spartacists: “… the workers need their own steeled and tested combat party, modelled on the Bolshevik party of VI Lenin and Leon Trotsky, which led the working class to power in the Russian October Revolution of 1917.”[iii] It was this militarised notion that powered Spartacist ‘interventions’ into the far left that I knew in the 1990s. At that point, such practice had degenerated into provocations and outrageous slurs towards other revolutionary organisations that scarcely bore any relation to reality. The Spartacists were engaged in combat all right, not with the capitalist class or its minions, but with other revolutionaries. Inevitably, this foul attitude spread inside the Spartacist League and its leadership (judging by the evidence heard by the London Socialist Alliance commission into a violent incident involving a member and ex-member in 1999) had indulged in rigorously ‘combatting’ its own members – particularly those deviating from groupthink.[iv]
The last time I encountered the Spartacist League in public meetings was probably in the early 2000s, when it conducted some ham-fisted interventions into Socialist Alliance and CPGB-PCC events. Members came across a bit like pricked balloons, making abstract interventions (whatever the topic of debate) on the need to defend the Soviet Union. When the Spartacist comrade had finished their intervention, any other Spartacist members in the room would ritually clap (I once sarcastically joined in this applause – they looked at me as if I was a CIA agent). This all seemed like going through the motions and was performed without bluster. Here, in other words, was a faction in some trouble, afflicted by a common sore on the body of the Trotskyist milieux – the ‘collapse of Stalinism’ had bought no gains whatsoever.
The Spartacist League knew internally for a long time that its brutal method of ‘engagement’ with the far left didn’t work and its idea of cadre development was completely dysfunctional (both, in fact, loop back to the ‘Leninist combat party’). This is what one of its spokesmen, Jon B, wrote back in 1996 about Spartacist League interaction with other groups: “Unable to deal with a somewhat more complex reality, the [Spartacists] resorted to ‘simplifying’ (i.e., falsifying) the positions of our opponents. That is the kiss of death, enabling our opponents to dismiss us as liars and thereby keep their membership sealed off from our criticisms. And if we have to lie about our opponents in order to deal with them it means we have no confidence in ourselves and our programme.”[v] And this is what the Spartacist tendency’s founder James Robertson wrote about his British section when he removed some of its leadership in the 1980s: “… ostensible Marxist-Leninists are not such if they run their organisations according to the ‘survival of the fittest’… people so abused or neglected either die, become disabled or drift away in disgust. This is an elementary moral question for communists.”[vi]
Given how long it has understood the problematic nature of its existence, the only real wonder perhaps is why it took the Spartacist League so long to move towards what might be called a relative rapprochement with other elements of the far left (particularly with its own errant descendants from various splits). But the theoretical root of its former madness remains, and we know that the concept of the ‘Leninist combat party’ doesn’t automatically result in kamikaze attacks on Leninist opponents or in psychological warfare against your own members. It can take other forms: running around like blue-arsed flies in campaign work with no apparent sense of direction (Workers’ Power); developing poisonous brand identities to differentiate yourself from ‘the other wankers’ (AWL); or belief in your own anointed role as a preordained centre of any future Communist Party (CPB/CPGB-PCC/IMT). The ‘combat party’ idea remains poison, whether it comes in the form of someone foaming at the mouth or as a friendly smile.
However, if the Spartacist League wants to book a local pub in my area for a chat, I’m all ears. They’re paying though…
[i] The continuity of Spartacism? https://www.bolshevik.org/
[ii] https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1477/farcical-labour-party-mark-two/
[iii] https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/238/shame.html
[iv] https://commexplor.com/lsa-enquiry-1999/
[v] Cited in ibid.
[vi] Cited in https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/283/commission-results/
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xenagoguevicene 