hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
And, indeed, the difference between the sacrifice involved in having to get up early to flog papers and the sacrifice involved in not taking medication prescribed by your doctor while pregnant.
What's the Spartacist League up to these days?
- Thread starter Idris2002
- Start date
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Everything would be fine if only there was better regulation of revolutionaries. Perhaps with a Revolutionary Industry Authority vetting, training and licensing revolutionaries to a state-approved standard?('Professional revolutionary" though. Can't leave the Revolution to amateurs.)
nogojones
spelling is overrated
But you'd need at least an NVQ2 in revolutionaryism before you could even sell a paper.
That's actually not a bad plan...
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
Yes. I take it to mean that for some people, the actual objective situation -- and prospects for its dramatic change -- are not really important. Being a member of the group is what really counts.
I think this is true to one degree or another for all of us. Being in a 'primary allegiance group' -- on the Right it's usually a church -- brings us something that we need, being primates: fellowship.
So some people will just carry on, regardless. Well, so long as no damage is done to them psychologically by an abusive regime, good for them.
And on the other hand .... Robertson was fond of saying that we fall too easily into the fallacy of indefinite linear projection of the current situation. Today was like yesterday, tomorrow will
probably be like today, and on and on. And yet we know that there are periodic dramatic ruptures.
I recall reading a quote from the memoirs of the late Harold MacMillan, walking back with a friend to their flat early Sunday morning in 1914, seeing headlines in the morning press, 'Archduke
Assassinated in Sarajevo". MacMillan remembers saying to his friend, "There, at least, is something we don't have to be concerned about."
And of course every good Marxist knows the famous Lenin quote, in a letter to someone in, I think, January of 1917 ... "We older generation may not live to see the Revolution."
So those people plodding away in nice fat social democracies selling their newspapers are not entirely without hope. (What is ironic is that the Spartacist League imploded just as the US was
exploding.)
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
Polanski was/is a sexual abuser of below-age young people, and Kyle killed one.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I'm pretty sure this VirulentNeoCon guy is here to troll us, lads, even if he is who he claims to be.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
I mean, I haven't really had the pleasure of many Spartacist interventions myself, but wasn't that basically the point of how the old Sparts interacted with the rest of the left anyway? So at least he's consistent, I suppose.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
If you've never experienced a Spartacist intervention you've never really lived. But don't despair, the Spartacist League of Britain has recently quivered back to life and I believe they are holding a public meeting in February. Details here.
I'm fairly sure he is who he claims to be. He is a troll but he'd be better off playing his game elsewhere. Maybe Fox News, Dave Rubin, Eric Weinstein, the remaining Koch brother etc. would be interested.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
At this point, I feel like this thread was probably single-handedly responsible for reviving the SLB by reminding them that they exist.
Having had a look, there's an absolutely classic graphic here:
As I understand it, they seem to be suggesting that the Queen gave Boris Johnson syphilis, which through a complicated series of events then led to Dave Ward of the CWU infecting the entire RCG?
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Something like that.
I remember the term "syphilitic chain" from the 80s. It was used in Spartacist Britain, maybe during the miners' strike. Can't remember who came up with it though.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
Is it utter bampots who join the SL, or are they varying degrees of normal and are then converted to complete loon-dom during their membership?
Are there recognised steps of fanaticism that one must attain for advancement into the inner circle, or is it more random?
Or, perhaps, is it not fanatics who are advanced, but the utterly cynical?
Are there recognised steps of fanaticism that one must attain for advancement into the inner circle, or is it more random?
Or, perhaps, is it not fanatics who are advanced, but the utterly cynical?
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Alienated, psychologically angry, socially disconnected are all positives for a potential Spart. The longer you stay in the worse you will become. The Sparts are not hermetically sealed from the outside world but contact is very limited and they are usually in hostile situations. It is a world unto itself, you are one of the elect.
The people who do best are those who understand the political formula (consciously or unconsciously) and can come up with the correct position seemingly spontaneously. Fanaticism is a requirement, included in this is a willingness to trash transgressors.
The leaders generally believe in what they do or say, even when they contradict what they said last week. Shame and guilt make the glue that holds the organisation together, many remain members long after they've given up because they can't face the shame of leaving.
Robertson was a very cynical man in my opinion, he knew it was all crap for many years, but he was the only one who (apart from his wives) benefitted financially from the Sparts, so he didn't tell anyone.
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
When Robertson, along with a few of us, first came to Britain ... and before we had formed an organization which would make all the other Left groups' public meetings so pleasant ... we met
several 'independent Trotskyists' .. people who had been around for a few years.
What was interesting is that they were all ... odd. All male, evidently without girlfriends -- not gay, in fact today the post-Marxist Left would call them "homophobes" -- and all eccentric.
People who could never have fitted into any organization but the very 'loosest'.
Robertson -- who was brilliant at personal psychological analysis, which he used to devastating effect on anyone within the organization whom he suspected of disloyality -- said
that for these people, "Sex was a toilet function."
I wonder what he would say about all the pathetic ex-socialists here, none of whom seem capable of making a political argument?
several 'independent Trotskyists' .. people who had been around for a few years.
What was interesting is that they were all ... odd. All male, evidently without girlfriends -- not gay, in fact today the post-Marxist Left would call them "homophobes" -- and all eccentric.
People who could never have fitted into any organization but the very 'loosest'.
Robertson -- who was brilliant at personal psychological analysis, which he used to devastating effect on anyone within the organization whom he suspected of disloyality -- said
that for these people, "Sex was a toilet function."
I wonder what he would say about all the pathetic ex-socialists here, none of whom seem capable of making a political argument?
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I'm not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, but I have to say when Freud came up with the idea of projection he was probably on to something.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
It'd be a good online personality quiz, "How would Robertson from off of the Sparts denounce you?" Apparently uquiz is quite easy to use if you fancy trying to design it.
You seem completely smitten with this Robertson bloke. Is/was he a 'Professional Revolutionary' or more an interested amateur?
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
Yes, there is something in what you say. He was a very interesting, and complex person. I first met him face-to-face when I was doing voter registration work in
Fayette Country, Tennessee -- part of Freedom Summer. (Look up "Tent City" if you're interested.)
I had gone to the March on Washington the year before -- five of us jammed into a VW bug and drove up from Austin, Texas -- had encountered the SWP/YSA there,
and was invited to attend the YSA convention as an observer. (I was a member of the Young Peoples Socialist League at the time, but not happy with the organization,
which was also differentiating itself into a subjectively revolutionary Left, and a reformist Right .. the latter eventually became one of the initiating components of the DSA).
I went to their convention, and witnessed a faction fight between the pro-Castro leadership, and the opposition, which was critical of Castro, led by Robertson.
I was definitely critical of Castro so I kept in touch with the opposition, who were later expelled.
When the project was completed, he flew to Nashville, and we drove together home to Houston. He seemed to me -- an impressionable 21 year old -- like the real thing.
I won't go further into it, but he had read everything, and seemed like the real deal. If you are not now, or never have been, a revolutionary -- seriously wanting to overturn
capitalism in the US and the whole world with some understanding of the potential sacrifices this will necessary require -- this won't mean much.
The psychology will be alien to you.
All the socialists I had known seemed like a tame opposition, compared to him (and the other Spartacists). I'll tell you one thing that impressed me.
As we were driving down, I brought up the situation in Cambodia ... which was in the news at the time, Communist guerillas vis monarchists -- and I
naively said something about a proposal I had seen which seemed like a possible solution, to partition the country and police it with an army from the
UN ... and he exploded! (People who know him will know how he could shriek!) NO! PARTITION THE US AND POLICE IT WITH AN ARMY FROM LAOS!!
Whoa... he had a very good feeling, I think, for what it was like to be part of a non-dominant group -- Blacks, Palestinians, and was really sensitive to the
unconscious arrogance and chauvinism of people who are in the dominant group. I know political opponents, given the SL's (past) refusal to tail 'revolutionary
nationalists' -- will find this hard to believe, but it's true.
And congruent to this, he had a good understanding of 'the National Question', and what happens when you get 'interpenetrated peoples', something few
Americans are aware of. Thus the ludicrous bit of cant popular on the Left: "Diversity is Strength".
It's paradoxical .. . he was very American ... no foreign languages, not much appreciation that I ever saw for other cultures, but very definitely an internationalist.
Another paradox: he had a lot of insight into people's personal psychology, but this didn't translate into effective agitational or propaganda work.
Not only were Spartacist interventions at other group's meetings needlessly antagonizing, but the newspaper, when we finally got one, was not snappy or appealing.
Oceans of grey print, and very formulaic articles. (I recall when I started studying programming, I considered writng a computer program that could generate Workers Vanguard [the SL
paper} editorials. "Only the working class, under the leadership of ..." blah blah blah. (People who have been around a while will probably be familiar with the wonderful
Post-modernism Generator, based on a recursive grammar, here: Post-Modernism Generator }
He slowly gave up any belief that he would see a revolution, starting in the mid-70s. However, there is no reason to believe that this was conscious.
We all do many things, driven by impulses which are below the level of consciousness, and rationalized in various ways.
(It's a common trope on the Right that Democrats are consciously trying to destroy America -- ridiculous, but thinking in this was avoids the hard work of
trying to figure out what is really going on.)
Anyway, this is probably of no interest whatsoever to anyone but two or three people, and they're not necessarily going to read it.
So ... future PhD student, doing your doctorate on this minisucle bit of American history, it's all yours!
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
Funny ... several times, reading the little whiners here, I was going to say almost the same thing. It's one of those things you can almostI'm not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, but I have to say when Freud came up with the idea of projection he was probably on to something.
always apply in any argument about personal character, the grown-up equivalent, of "Nyah, nyah, I'm rubber and you're glue, bounce
off me and stick on you!" But it was obviously a cheap retort, so I didn't.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
It's interesting Doug, how much you still admire Robertson. I see nothing admirable in the man. He created an organisation in which a young woman was driven to a suicide attempt by his (at the time) favourite lieutenant, your lifelong friend Bill. He knew all about this and did nothing. Then, a few years later, when it was convenient to him, he used the young woman to drive Bill out of the organisation. The cynicism and corruption of the man you quote with such fawning admiration is utterly nauseating. As is your hypocrisy.
You've talked about the nightmares you had after leaving the Spartacists. Do you think Vicky had nightmares, surrounded as she was by "comrades" who for about a year tried to force her to give up her baby. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Month after month, meeting after meeting, you're betraying us, get rid of your baby. Actually I don't think you can. Because you don't care.
You've talked about the nightmares you had after leaving the Spartacists. Do you think Vicky had nightmares, surrounded as she was by "comrades" who for about a year tried to force her to give up her baby. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Month after month, meeting after meeting, you're betraying us, get rid of your baby. Actually I don't think you can. Because you don't care.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
The Sparts definitely weren't a cult and I can't understand why all these people keep suggesting they were. By the way, have I mentioned how Our Glorious Leader was great at analysing people to work out their weaknesses and then fucking them up if he thought they might be disloyal?
I can just about understand you falling for this/him as an impressionable youngster but...you don't seem to have unfallen for it/him. It's very strange.
From the things Carl Steele has posted (which you don't seem to deny) and some of the things you've posted yourself, he sounds like a despicable and very manipulative person.
Which is why I thought it was strange when you seemed to be trying to provoke an argument with the 'What would Robinson have to say?' thing. I mean who gives two fucks what some unpleasant no mark bloke would have to say? Seriously.
Eta Sorry, meant to say 'political no mark' but hopefully my meaning was clear.
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Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
It is strange, it's the worse case I've come across of someone being completely unable to assimilate the experience. Robertson removed Doug from a position of central leadership and pushed him to the margins where nobody took him seriously, and yet ...
And you are right in your implication, Robertson was not at all the Svengali Doug describes. He was an alcoholic mediocrity who preyed on young women and built a tiny organisation in his own image.
Well IIRC, the 'original' Svengali manipulated and exploited young women so it actually sounds quite apt.
spring-peeper
Well-Known Member
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
No, that's not how the word "cult" is generally used. In a cult, the Great Leader is followed, and worshipped, as a person, openly, explicitly, regardless of what he believes. He can change his beliefs, even to their diametrical opposite, and the cult leaders will continue to follow him.
Allthough I am not familiar enough with the Lynn Marcus group to say whether the word 'cult' fully applies, I think it must come pretty close. They were an example of how such a group's explicit politics are secondary to faith in the Great Leader. They moved from the Left to the Right, without even -- to my knowledge -- a serious factional fight.
Robertson occasionally speculated about this, in fact, but the SL's political evolution only occurred after he was effectively out of the leadership, and was only a deviation from their previous positions.
The Revolutinary Communist League is a cult -- they make no bones about it. Bob Avakian -- not their political program -- is continually featured in their press.
In fact, Robertson also joked that the model to follow --- it was a JOKE -- was not the grotesque Chinese or North Korean adulation of an individual, but the practice of the German Stalinists: he
quoted the current Party leader, speaking to a Party congress: "Comrades, I am charged by the Central Committee with presenting to you this report....."
I believe that neither cult, nor sect, nor even cult-sect (as the SL once called the Seattle group around Richard Fraser and his wife) adequately describes the organization. The personalization that a cult involves just wasn't there.
It became a one-man show, for sure, politically monolithic internally, where the only safe attitude was full-hearted total enthusiastic agreement with the Party Line.
Lenin said somewhere that to be a Bolshevik, you needed patience and a sense of irony.
Robertson had a similar observation: you needed (1) above-average intelligence, (2) the capacity for indignation, and (3) a sense of humor, including the ability to laugh at yourself.
The first quality is obvious: all that reading!
As is the second: if you're not indignant at injustice, if you're just following a fashion in becoming a 'revolutionary', you won't last.
As for the third, it's a counterweight to egoism ... precious little me-ism.
The problem we Americans (and West Europeans) had was that we grew up in a very soft environment, the years of the post-war boom.
No one faced any real hardship, with the exception of the draft and Vietnam, and that was easily evaded by anyone from a middle-class background who really wanted to.
So lots of young people became radicals, even 'revolutionaries', but from a position of privilege, of being indulged in their childhood and young adult years.
It would be interesting to contrast their character, with that of young radicals in Latin America, who faced real, tangible, threats to their lives, frequently enacted.
I think you would have found much better human material there.
And you can see that essential self-centredness, magnified a hundred times in today's snowflake left, looking for 'Safe Spaces', demanding not to be exposed to anything that might challenge their own beliefs. They are the descendants of the radicals of fifty years ago, with each interceding generation amplifying the worst characteristics of its predecessor.
And the main reason the Sparacists were hated then, and are hated now, was that they didn't honor anyone's safe space. They 'said what was', as they saw it, regardless of the effect on
petty-bourgeois radical opinion. Although they underwent a serious degeneration, even by the 90s, I think that was an admirable quality.
VirulentNeoCon
... and yet, it moves.
That was like for like. Make a political argument, I'll give you a political reply.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
And you suffered because of this Doug, didn't you? You fell from grace. Perhaps you could tell us what happened.
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