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To the recycle bin, or Marxist Archive, or…. oblivion.
One might ask why the people who took over ‘Workers Vanguard’ wanted to join the Spartacists in the first place. From the outside, it looks like a hostile takeover. Did these people voice opposition to everything the Spartacists had written in ‘Workers Vanguard’ as they joined?
Does this mean that this blog’s ‘Workers Vanguard’ posts about the French Revolution, The Paris Commune, The Russian Revolution, The Founding of the Zionist State, The Kronstad Anarchist Revolt, and others, are most easily accessed on this blog and not the official ‘Workers Vanguard’ site?
After copying and watching and listening to the Neo-Spartacist versus Internationalist Group debate a number of times an impression comes through to me. The Neo-Spartacist leader is an academic. I have no knowledge of this man’s name even, or personal history. I am making this judgement from his speaking style and evident thinking style. He is used to speaking with a condescending self satisfied smirk of someone who is speaking at a podium with an audience that must listen and be graded.
The Internationalist Group speaker seemed like someone who was used to speaking in many different situations, some calling for short declarative sentences, a joke or bit of humor, and a firm voice when emphasizing and important point. Selling ‘Workers Vanguard’ on the street or at a factory gate may teach one to speak in many different ways to convince people. The Internationalist Group speaker gave example after example of actual workers in the audience who had been on picket lines, in labor unions, at universities during demonstrations.
“All you do is call us names,” was the bizarre response from the Neo-Spartacist speaker.
Simply not used to classical debating techniques. Of the levels of argument, name calling is the lowest form. But, saying that the Neo-Spartacists are following the ideas of Michael Pablo and the tired tiny Trotskyists parties faced with the Stalinist victories of the 1940’s is not ‘name calling.’ Saying that the Neo-Spartacists want to join the ‘mass movements’ is not name calling. True or false, the description is about political activity and writing.
The stunning collapse of the Spartacist in the spring of 2020 was simply dismissed by the Neo-Spartacist speaker. “So you put out a few leaflets,” he said dismissively.
So, what were the Neo-Spartacists doing while the biggest demonstrations in decades were happening across the US after the killing of George Floyd?
At the time, with the media full of death from COVID stories, I wondered if key Spartacists had gotten sick, or died.
Now, I wonder if this was the “Night of the Long Knaves” elimination of the Old Guard Spartacists to complete the take-over and then renunciation of the last thirty years of the Spartacist League. The online meeting format works for some things, but limits all kinds of contact people might have in a political setting where all kinds of incidental meetings and communication may take place. Every crisis is an opportunity apparently.
The Internationalist Group speaker noted that the founders of the Internationalist Group were kicked out of the Spartacist League in 1996 and that was to be the Decline and Fall of the Classic Spartacist League.
Bizarrely the Neo-Spartacist speaker admits, in a hurry, that the expulsion was wrong, but won’t say why. What went wrong? The answer is “that was almost thirty years ago, who cares?” The words of someone who is in charge, but not because of the power to persuade people. The technique works in closed organizations. In the rough and tumble real world, not so much.
The thinking seems the same style of academic glibness that throws out a number of points sounding intelligent enough, questioned on a point immediately transitions to a related, or unrelated topic. Assumes that because they are officially “smart” and degreed they must be right. A pedant…
I noted the multicolor ‘Workers Vanguard’ issued 22 Dec 2024. Color print is more expensive than black ink on newsprint paper. Printing photos is expensive. All this could be on a website at less cost. But, the price is still fifty cents. The articles are more general, essay type pieces so that the issue may be sold many months after print date. Okay.
But what happened to the bi-weekly print schedule? When I first subscribed ‘Workers Vanguard’ had just gone from bi-monthly to once a week. But, the output was hard to maintain for a small revolutionary organization. Now, what is it, twice a year. Are all the articles written by Comrade X?
Curiouser, and curiouser….
I don’t see how this organization can thrive in the US at this time. Listening to Comrade X I feel like I’m back in the 1970’s with the constant talk about “The Movement.” Last summer when there was a UAW strike the Neo-Spartacist called for a General Strike to shut down Detroit. The general strike did not happen. Why not just call for a Detroit Soviet, that’s not going to happen either.
The summer when Lenin was fifteen years old he read the populist novel “What is to Be Done?” In some ways that fictional narrative of a workers cooperative and people who wanted to create a new society is the Foundational Myth of the Soviet Union. One commenter noted that religions and social movements are not based on lists of rules or dry documents… some kind of simple narrative is usually at the heart of the idea. Christians were around for decades before anyone dreamed up the Jesus was born and walked the Earth story.
So, narratives matter.
The Neo-Spartacists narrative is “that was a long time ago.” As the Internationalist speaker said “You are all about the Now.”
Again, back to the 1970’s, it seems.
On the Ukraine Russia War the Internationalist group first adopted the classic ‘both sides are capitalists, workers don’t have a side’ and then reassessed and said this is US Imperialism and the European satellites trying to defeat Russia and then go on to China. So, militant workers should militarily defend the Russians against Western Imperialism. The Neo-Spartacists say that workers labor unions in Ukraine and Russia should oppose their own rulers. I must read and hear three or four solid hours of news about the Ukraine War each day. I have never seen one reference to Ukrainian labor unions. What political power or presence in political life do Ukrainian labor unions have? Do Russian labor unions have any political power or projection. I do not know. I never hear of any. The Communist Party of Russia looks like almost every leader is over 70 and they sound like National Stalinists, not organized workers.
The Neo-Spartacist did protest at Columbia University when the college bosses said there was a ban on pro-Palestinian protests. The Neo-Spartacist did mount a protest against the monarchy in the UK that I would have attended if in the area. So, it is not all negative.
Neo-Spartacist Comrade X complained that the Internationalist Group would not join the Neo-Spartacists in a demonstration they had called. A few months ago the Neo-Spartacist were calling on the Internationalist Group to join them and asked for private meetings. Perhaps Comrade X thought he could use his organizational magic to charm the Internationalist Group into joining his project. The Internationalist Group asked for a public debate instead.
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Afterthought…
Comrade X from the Spartacist claimed that “Hundreds of thousands” of black people have been killed by the US police? What? The US police kill about 1,000 people a year over the last half decade that people have been keeping a relatively accurate tally. About 400 of the people shot dead or killed by other methods by police are black. Four hundred a year is a lot, but are there 40,000,000 black people in the US. The police claim that only twenty of the black people killed were unarmed. Do the police lie. Yes. But Comrade X is engaged in hyperbole.
What is the claim “Open Police Archives” supposed to prove. Is it supposed to imply that the police are conducting massive campaigns of repression an violence across the US that is only a vague rumor to the public? 100,000 black people are killed, and no one took note? But, we can expose the Liberals by opening the police archives and see the secret reports of mass systematic repression and thousands and thousands of unknown killings by the state. Hyperbole.
In the Spring of 2020 when the COVID lockdowns and hysteria reigned the Spartacist League…. disappeared. Despite having a functioning website, nothing new was posted. Why? Some have noted in the past that Workers Vanguard articles are edited and checked by numerous people because they are not just a columnist or a person’s opinion but a group statement of matters of public and working class import. Couldn’t that be done online? Or, was something else going on? I don’t know.
The excuse for collapse and other problems that “so did everybody else on the Left” from Comrade X is mind boggling after dealing and listening and reading Spartacist and Leninist and Trotskyist ideas for decades. Having presented Workers Vanguard to workers at factory gates in the morning or on college campuses at noon, the appeal was never “We’re like everybody else on the Left.”
I don’t remember an appeal to build some amorphous outpouring of justified rage like the “Palestinian Justice Movement” as something that militants should seek to build. The outpouring of street protests and anger can and has arrived and then disappeared leaving little of any “Movement.”
So, perhaps the Neo-Spartacist League will latch on to the “Palestine Justice Movement” and become the best builders of the Movement the way the Socialist Workers Party became the best builders the anti-war “Movement” in the 1960’s and 1970’s and then became a cult with the copyrights to a lot of Trotsky’s works that they did not read. The copyrights to those works are close to expiring, and the Socialist Workers Party has a couple of dozen members and they are all over seventy years of age.
I remember in the 1980’s running into American Communist Party members who were outrage that the Spartacists had the gaul to claim to defend the Soviet Union while opposing Stalinist leaders while the CP/USA defended Democrats and held victory parties when Democrats won control of the US Congress. I felt like I was in a play. The old Communist Stalinists were laughable crypto-Democrat Radical Liberals.
And… now the Spartacists are…. crypto-Democrat Liberals looking for Communist allies in the Democratic Socialist USA. Curiouser and curiouser…. I’m still in a play.
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What you see… is what you get.
xenagoguevicene 