What's the Spartacist League up to these days?

[kenny g]

This is quite eye opening with regards to the IBT NZ operations..

Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency

[Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg] Posting To alt.politics.socialism.trotsky –“Publish and be damned” Newsgroup…

rr4i.milharal.org

Making a proper example of Peter and driving him into political suicide was the desirable outcome of the 25th May meeting.



I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting.

 

[kenny g]

Bit more context:. The International Bolshevik Tendency “Explains” Its Demise

 

[Idris2002]

"I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting. "

In fairness, I could see many members of our own tribe that hides from man saying something like this in the heat of the moment of a urban bunfight.

 

[Carl Steele]

"I do not think that Bill’s characterisation of Peter as a ‘pathetic piece of human material’ was inappropriate or unnecessarily abusive, I just think it was unscientific and insufficiently insulting. "

In fairness, I could see many members of our own tribe that hides from man saying something like this in the heat of the moment of a urban bunfight.

In fairness:

"I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.

In the present situation the tasks for the PRG were to get rid of Peter in a manner which accomplished two purposes:-
One: render him ideologically and emotionally incapable of doing the PRG damage.
Two: drive home to the PRG membership the full scope of Peter’s betrayal and his uselessness to revolutionary Marxism."

 

[nogojones]

In fairness:

"I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.

In the present situation the tasks for the PRG were to get rid of Peter in a manner which accomplished two purposes:-
One: render him ideologically and emotionally incapable of doing the PRG damage.
Two: drive home to the PRG membership the full scope of Peter’s betrayal and his uselessness to revolutionary Marxism."

Serious business.

I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?

 

[Shechemite]

In fairness:

"I think it would be useful to address how the PRG would have dealt with the traitor Peter in the context of proletarian insurrection or a civil war between revolutionary proletarian forces and capitalist forces. A revolutionary organization leading such a desperate struggle would have promptly physically disposed of the traitor after extracting information from him by whatever means were found necessary.

In the present situation the tasks for the PRG were to get rid of Peter in a manner which accomplished two purposes:-
One: render him ideologically and emotionally incapable of doing the PRG damage.
Two: drive home to the PRG membership the full scope of Peter’s betrayal and his uselessness to revolutionary Marxism."

This is madness

 

[Carl Steele]

I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?

Permanent Revolution Group

This is madness

Yes it is.

 

[hitmouse]

"Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?

Bit more context:. The International Bolshevik Tendency “Explains” Its Demise

I also liked
"More significantly, we failed to win over members of the Coletivo Lenin (CL) in Rio de Janeiro, some of whom eventually aligned themselves with Sam T., a talented but troubled former IBT member" - I guess that's meant to be a diss, but it sounds more like they're setting him up for the role of the brooding antihero for the HBO adaptation. When the essential revolutionary leadership of the working class is in crisis, only Sam T, a talented but troubled former IBT member, can etc etc.

Serious business.

I had a quick read and I couldn't figure out what PRG stands for. Anyone?

I couldn't work it out either. I hope they're not deranged enough to call themselves a Provisional Revolutionary Government but who the fuck can say?

 

[kenny g]

"Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?


I also liked
"More significantly, we failed to win over members of the Coletivo Lenin (CL) in Rio de Janeiro, some of whom eventually aligned themselves with Sam T., a talented but troubled former IBT member" - I guess that's meant to be a diss, but it sounds more like they're setting him up for the role of the brooding antihero for the HBO adaptation. When the essential revolutionary leadership of the working class is in crisis, only Sam T, a talented but troubled former IBT member, can etc etc.

I couldn't work it out either. I hope they're not deranged enough to call themselves a Provisional Revolutionary Government but who the fuck can say?

I was thinking series 3 when I found that site. You would need shed loads of stamina to craft it all into a drama. Docu series maybe could work. Bill comes across as a kind bloke on the TV interview I've seen where he is talking about gay legal reform in NZ so it is all the more remarkable to read this kind of thing. But I suppose when you are preparing for world revolution and only have a few handfuls of members the gloves do need to come off...

 

[Carl Steele]

"Menshevik bulge" is pure poetry. Is that a Menshevik bulge in your PRG or are you just pleased to see me, etc?

Very good! I'm not sure of the etymology of the term but the Sparts did use it from time to time (I think there were a variety of possible "bulges", they weren't all Menshevik).

 

[Carl Steele]

I was thinking series 3 when I found that site. You would need shed loads of stamina to craft it all into a drama. Docu series maybe could work. Bill comes across as a kind bloke on the TV interview I've seen where he is talking about gay legal reform in NZ so it is all the more remarkable to read this kind of thing. But I suppose when you are preparing for world revolution and only have a few handfuls of members the gloves do need to come off...

Bill is a therapist, so shades of the Sopranos, you could have him counselling clients and trashing his PRG members.

And I'd forgotten, but towards the end of my tenure in the Sparts I went to therapy sessions. I couldn't afford to pay so a therapist found me a trainee who was willing to do it for free to get experience. She was a nice young woman who did her best, but my descriptions of Spart branch meetings often left her lost for words - apart from "it sounds like insanity" - particularly because I kept insisting most of it was perfectly reasonable, if admittedly unpleasant.

 

[Dom Traynor]

This thread has led me down a rabbit hole on some of the nuttier elements of the NZ left, and it's interesting to see how many are still around on the fringes plowing the same furrow.

 

[Carl Steele]

Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency

[Appendix I to Letter of Resignation from the International Bolshevik Tendency by Samuel Trachtenberg] Posting To alt.politics.socialism.trotsky –“Publish and be damned” Newsgroup…

rr4i.milharal.org

One of Tom Riley's big problems with me is that I dispute his claim that the Sparts were a once healthy revolutionary organisation that degenerated from about 1978 onwards. There are a lot of things wrong with the claim. There is testimony, including some of his own, which contradicts this. And it's just too convenient - everything started to go wrong around the time the organisation turned on him. But fundamentally it shows his failure to understand how an organisation like the Sparts or the BT functions.

The madness described in the above Appendix is the underlying reality of these grandiose/socially disconnected organisations. It's not though always in plain sight. It bubbles up or erupts periodically depending upon the pressures or personalities in play. There will be periods of relative calm, when the literary side comes to the fore and the elemental insanity merely lurks beneath the surface. And then something happens, the great leader perceives a threat, the revolution is in jeopardy, the traitor must be driven out ...

 

[Carl Steele]

What I found instead was a load of bellyaching and pseudo-psychology from people who regret their time in the Spartacists but never seemed to realise that it was a voluntary organisation. It might have been cultish, but it was never a cult. They might have taken themselves too seriously, but they were serious about building an alternative to the English Labour Party, unlike most of what passes for the English left.

Just wanted to respond to this complaint.

Let's go back to basics.

"It was a voluntary organisation" - that's kind of the whole point.

An analogy: let's say you visit a friend, and he's in his back garden, and there's stuff strewn all over - balls of string, lengths of piping, tools of various types, lumps of metal, empty oil drums, boxes of fireworks. And he's hard at work, hammering, drilling, and so on. And you ask, what are you doing? And he says, "I'm building a space rocket, I want to go to the moon." You may be forgiven for thinking his behaviour is best explained by his psychology (which is not the same as saying his behaviour is best explained by a psychologist).

So let's say you have fifty people, mostly young and middle class, socially disconnected, alienated from society, who produce a newspaper which drives away other middle class people who are ideologically closest to them, and you ask, "what are you doing?" And they say, "we are building an alternative to the Labour Party." You might be forgiven for thinking there are matters of psychology involved.

The idea that a party that could lead the working class to the revolutionary seizure of power could be constructed by corralling together middle class twenty-somethings from the WSL, IMG and Workers Power was deranged.

There is a reason why the Sparts failed, and there is a reason why the Bolshevik Tendency (both of them) has failed so abjectly. And the reasons are not hard to see, unless you make them so.

 

[PTK]

I have not logged on to this site for a couple of months, and tonight I did so and was pleasantly surprised. So many posts!

I found Doug’s posts interesting. I knew him briefly, and I thought he was a nice person, and perhaps he is, but he has exposed a serious character flaw.

I happen to have grown a very long beard during the pandemic, and I am going to cut it back severely in the next week or so, as I am going to a funeral.

The funeral will be very upsetting, but cutting the beard will not be at all traumatic. Cutting the hairs on my face not at all be comparable to having an abortion. Doug’s penis is simply a collection of cells, but I am sure that he would feel rather differently about being told to have it amputated than he would being told to have a shave.

That Doug can write about this issue in this way demonstrates a severe lack of empathy. He strikes me as not lacking empathy altogether, so I suspect that he is a misogynist. He just cannot imagine how a pregnant women would feel about her pregnancy.

Doug seems unable to accept that the man with whom he has such a great friendship could ever do anything grossly immoral. Doug is not alone in suffering from such a weakness.

 

[PTK]

Down with this kind of thing!

 

[PTK]

Yes and obviously this is the bit that makes them look crazy now - but I was talking about the belief in the transformational political and social revolution, that it was possible and even imminent.

I don't think there's really anyone on the left who actually thinks that now - and to be honest if I met one who did, I'd tend to think they were crazy.

We're reduced to formulations like Hitmouse's above "not thinking that our current social arrangements are going to last for ever" - well sure of course they won't, if nothing else the dynamic nature of globalised neoliberal capitalism certainly makes for a cycle of political/economic instability, collapse and reconstruction. But where's the belief that these open up anything more than temporary spaces giving some of us a little respite, a belief in transformation?

I hope it's obvious I'm not defending Leninism here, I was able to resist its temptation in the 70s and 80s, I'm not likely to succumb now. But reading these posts - I mean it's reminiscent to me of reading political/religious tracts of the Levellers - the certainty of deliverance, the building of the new Jerusalem - incomprehensible faith now.

I was very young in the early 1970s. It is difficult to convey the spirit of the times. There were titanic class struggles in Britain, and all around the world. It did not seem stupid to think that there could be a revolution in Britain.

 

[Carl Steele]

I found Doug’s posts interesting. I knew him briefly, and I thought he was a nice person, and perhaps he is, but he has exposed a serious character flaw.

I found it difficult to tell when he meant what he said, and when he was just trolling. Came across as very cynical.

 

[PTK]

I don't recognise anyone in the photo. But then I haven't seen Marie for about 40 years so she will have changed somewhat. And I notice you called the photo Maria.

Where did you get the photo and why do you think one of them is Marie H? ETA see my next post!!

It could be you are an ex-Spart behaving like someone who's pretending to be an ex-Spart, but if you want to be believed (by me at least) you need to say a little more about an event such as the Logan trial than stuff you can find in a Bolshevik Tendency article. Supposedly you were in the SL/B throughout the whole process - installation of the Logan leadership in Britain, removal of the Logan leadership, revelations from Australia, trial and expulsion of Logan. So what do you think was going on? You say you came from the SL/ANZ so you knew Bill and Adaire for 7 or 8 years. What did you think of them? What made them tick?

And here's something else very odd. We just had Doug Hainline on the thread talking quite extensively about Bill. While this was going on there was not so much as a peep from you, despite the fact that (according to your story) you knew Doug and Doug knew you. The two of you would have been at the Logan trial, maybe you sat next to each other. Then as soon as Doug disappears up you pop. I am sure Doug would know whether your claims about sterilisation/vasectomy are true.

Why didn't you engage with Doug?

The Sparts were not looking to lead the revolution at some indefinite point in the future. Here's what Bill Logan had to say in 1971

"One of my most profound memories was Nixon’s new economic policy, announced in 1971 on the same day Adaire and I arrived in the United States. It was discussed at the expanded Central Committee Plenum which took place shortly afterwards, the biggest gathering of the Spartacist tendency which had ever taken place up to that point, and, of course the biggest communist meeting I had ever been at. This was the Plenum at which the Communist Workers Collective fused with the SL/U.S., and at which the transformation of the Spartacist League was initiated, with the institution of a monthly Workers Vanguard and the implementation of a serious plan of industrialisation.

Nixon’s new economic policy marked, and we knew it marked, the beginning of the end of American hegemony over the capitalist world. It laid the basis for a drift into trade war and posed the spectre of inter-imperialist world war. We knew this, and we were in a world where over the last few years most events had moved very rapidly. We expected the events foreshadowed by Nixon’s new policy to unfold with great rapidity. I remember Jim Robertson and Marv Treiger winding the organisation up for the transformation with talk about how we didn’t have much time—a few years and we’d have our final shot at it.

The expectation was that huge class battles were looming, battles in which we would have our last chance."

The analysis was completely wrong, but that didn't really matter because it was never intended as a guide to action in the real world. The imminence of the coming revolution was an ideological cudgel used for internal control. Did Robertson believe any of this? It's hard to say though I think he probably didn't. As for Marv Treiger, well he was out of the Sparts a year or so after this meeting so it seems he didn't take it too seriously.

And it may have been that in 1973 Bill and Adaire really believed that the coming revolution could be derailed if a young woman was allowed to give birth to a child, but if they did they were both suffering from a borderline psychotic disconnect from reality.

This analysis is not completely wrong. The Nixon Shock, as it is called, meant the end of the post-War Keynesian settlement, and marked the beginning of a transitional period that ended in neo-liberalism. It is understandable that at the time people thought that this presaged a crisis so huge that it would call into question the existence of the capitalist system.

Most Leninists have to believe that capitalism is about to undergo a terminal crisis. This is what keeps them going. Therefore they tend to imagine there are greater possibilities in each crisis than there actually are. However, the Nixon Shock was a significant point in the history of the most developed economies, that would lead to opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene.

 

[PTK]

I found it difficult to tell when he meant what he said, and when he was just trolling. Came across as very cynical.

Doug seems to be joking at times. If he actually believes his comments about Iraq, then he is profoundly ignorant. I am unsure why he would want people to think that he is ignorant.

 

[Carl Steele]

This analysis is not completely wrong. The Nixon Shock, as it is called, meant the end of the post-War Keynesian settlement, and marked the beginning of a transitional period that ended in neo-liberalism. It is understandable that at the time people thought that this presaged a crisis so huge that it would call into question the existence of the capitalist system.

When I said the analysis was "completely wrong" I was referring to this:

"I remember Jim Robertson and Marv Treiger winding the organisation up for the transformation with talk about how we didn’t have much time—a few years and we’d have our final shot at it. The expectation was that huge class battles were looming, battles in which we would have our last chance."

The meeting Logan is describing took place in 1971. As far as I know there was a lull in strike action in USA in the following few years (despite serious problems in the economy). It certainly wasn't the last chance saloon.

Most Leninists have to believe that capitalism is about to undergo a terminal crisis. This is what keeps them going. Therefore they tend to imagine there are greater possibilities in each crisis than there actually are. However, the Nixon Shock was a significant point in the history of the most developed economies, that would lead to opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene.

There is a big difference between "a terminal crisis" and "opportunities for a left-wing group to intervene."

And it is one thing to believe a terminal crisis is around the corner, and quite another to believe that your miniscule organisation can lead the masses out of the crisis and establish a new social order. Though I suppose the two things are often related.

I was very young in the early 1970s. It is difficult to convey the spirit of the times. There were titanic class struggles in Britain, and all around the world. It did not seem stupid to think that there could be a revolution in Britain.

Nothing wrong with a bit of youthful optimism but Jim Robertson was 43 years old in 1971.

 

[charlie mowbray]

Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.

 

[Idris2002]

Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.

THEY WALK AMONG US

 

[nogojones]

Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.

What a wasted opportunity You should have told them to come on here and explain their position at length as we're crying out for serious debate.

 

[Sue]

What a wasted opportunity You should have told them to come on here and explain their position at length as we're crying out for serious debate immensely long wtf posts.

CFY.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Four or five Sparts on the UCU strike demo in London today. Tried to engage us in talk about lockdown but we told 'em to do one.

About two thirds of their membership! Wow! You folks were most honoured.

 

[charlie mowbray]

“For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives.“ FFS, no way will I engage with these clowns.

 

[kenny g]

“For the last year, the position of the ICL was to accept the lockdowns as necessary. We repudiate this position. It was a capitulation to the “national unity” rallying cry that all classes should support the lockdowns because they save lives.“ FFS, no way will I engage with these clowns.

Were any of them featured in the photo's on this thread?

 

[charlie mowbray]

Were any of them featured in the photo's on this thread?

Not really inclined to go back over 27 pages of posts to find out. By the way, the demo was piss poor. Only about 200 on it, and well Trotted out. Apart from the Sparts there was SWP, Counterfire, Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal, Socialist Alternative, Workers Power, WRP (Newsline) but didn't see any AWL or RCG/FRFI, BT

 

[hitmouse]

but didn't see any AWL...

Is that cos they're all in disguise in hopes that they'll be allowed to remain in Labour if no-one can spot them?