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Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League?

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Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League? Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League? International Bolshevik Tendency First published April 2005 by Bolshevik Publications PO Box 332, Adelaide St. Stn., Toronto, Canada MSC 2J4 PO Box 405, Cooper Station, New York, NY, USA l 0276 BCM Box 4771, London, WCl N 3XX, Britain Box 9671, Wellington, New Zealand Postfach l 0060 l, 47006 Duisburg, Germany www.bolshevik.org Labor donated Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League? ........ 1 Appendix No. l Debate in the ICL Over Yeltsin's Coup 1.1 On the Counterrevolution in Russia Tony R., London, 26 June 2003 ••••• . ....... 20 1.2 ['Our Position on the Russian Question1 Bonnie B., New York, 27 June 2003 ..••......•.....•....•.....22 1.3 On the Counterrevolution in the USSR Ben M., London, 28 June 2003 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • 23 1 .4 The Proletariat is Key Ralf Neuer, 29 June 2003 . 25 1.5 Smoke and Mirrors Over August '91: Beware BT's 'Allegory of the Cave' (A Reply to Comrade Tony} Chuck, Toronto, 30 June 2003 26 1.6 On Yeltsin' s Coup Ed C., Chicago, l July 2003 • • ..... 27 1.7 Dating the Counterrevolution-A Reply to Comrade Tony's document Olly, London, 3 July 2003 • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • . • • . • • • • . • • • 28 1.8 On the Capitalist Counterrevolution in the USSR-A Reply to Tony R Edward, London, 3 July 2003 . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • 29 1.9 Once Again on Counterrevolution in Russia Tony R., London, l 0 July 2003 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • 31 Appendix No. 2 ICL vs. I BT on Stalinism & Soviet Defensism. 37 Stalinophilia, Stalinophobia, Flinches & Opportunism: Whatever Happened to the Spartacist League? In the Spring 2004 issue of Spartacist (No. 58), the Interna­ During the 1980s, however, the SL leadership began to de­ tional Communist League (ICL) characterizes its recent political part from its Trotskyist program with a series of Stalinophilic record as one of "opportunist lunges," "sectarian moralism" and gestures.The resulting confusion, combined with the leader­ an "increasingly abstract and sterile approach to politics," con­ ship's subsequent lurch in a symmetrically Stalinophobic di­ cluding that: "An inability to deal with the world created by the rection, accounts for much of the ICL's ideological disarray fallof the USSR, and the consequent retrogressionin conscious­ over the Soviet collapse. Yet why would the cadres of a ness, lies at the root of the ICL's current crisis." This is a signifi­ Trotskyist organization (which the SL was in the 1960s and cant admission, given that the leaders of the Spartacist League/ 70s) swallow such deviations in the first place? The explana­ U.S. (SL-the ICL mothership) have always claimed a special tion lies in the incremental transformation of the SL from a expertise on the "Russian Question." Capitalist restoration in revolutionary, democratic-centralist organization into a group the Soviet bloc represented a world-historic defeat for the inter­ in which the fundamental organizing principle is unquestion­ national workers' movement, demoralizing millions of leftists.It ing obedience to the leadership in general, and founder/ produced enormous confusion wit�n theJCL, �r?ded the s�If­ leader James M. Robertson in particular. The poisoned in­ confidence of its cadre and undermmed the polltlcal authonty ternal regime of the SL was both the initial departure from of the leadership. But it is not the root cause of the SUICL's Leninism and the framework within which all subsequent de­ malaise. viations developed. Long-time readers of Spartacist may recall a similarly The transformation of the SL took place over several years, "candid and critical assessment" that appeared a decade ear­ during which its internal life was dominated by repeated, and lier in the Autumn 1994 issue (No. 51) following the SL's increasingly apolitical, authority fights and purges. By 1982, Ninth Conference, which reported "flare-ups of philistin­ the predecessor of the International Bolshevik Tendency esti­ ism," "impressionism," "sectarian posturing," "time-ser in " � � mated that: and the "passive and propagandist (at best) or abstennomst "the central core of the leadership of the SL is today too (at worst)" appetites of the group's "office-bound leader­ consciously cynical to be capable of spontaneous self­ ship." We commented at the time: reform. The fact that the organizational abusiveness of the "This unflattering self-portrait undoubtedly reflects the regime has developed largely as a means of bureaucratically thinking of [SL founder/leader] James Robertson, who, short-cutting the expenditure of time, energy, cadres and from his vantage point of semi-retirement in the Bay Area, opportunities which is demanded by the repetitive educa­ can look upon the organization he built with greater detach­ tional process by which a Bolshevik party retains and devel­ ment. He is obviously not pleased with what he sees. But, ops its older members while politically assimilating its precisely because the Spartacist League is his own creature, newer ones, (not to mention the draining effect of a faction Robertson cannot provide a plausible explanation of what fight) does not make it any less destructive." went wrong." -Declaration of an External Tendency of the iSt -"A Dismal Symmetry," 1917 No. 15, 1995 [international Spartacist tendency], October 1982 The 1994 piece also attributedthe SL's morbid Spartacist We also observed that the "hyper-centralist, paranoid condition to the demise of the Soviet Union, and complained and personalist characteristics" of the SL's internal regime that the victory of counterrevolution "has shered in a nd ­ � � � "have reached a point where they call into question both the mentally new, turbulent and radically different penod m possibility of significantlyenlarging the organization and of re­ world history" for which there are no "close historical prece­ producing Trotskyist cadres within it." This assessment was dents to guide our analysis and political line." But the ICL's confirmed a few years later when Ed Clarkson, leader of the admitted "inability to deal with the world created by the fall SL's Chicago branch, publicly complained that "what we of the USSR" can hardly be explained by the absence of "his­ tend to get in struggles in the youth are confessionals and de­ torical precedents," as the essential issues were address d by � nunciations, as opposed to clarifying fights." Clarkson sug- Leon Trotsky in his brilliant analysis of the bureaucratic de­ gested to the browbeaten and demoral zed youth: generation of the Soviet Union. � . "If you're to develop in the way Lenm proposes, 1t requ1res Unlike the Stalinist Communist Parties constructed on on the level of the individual some capacity for self-assert10n,_ the basis of loyalty to the Soviet bureaucracy, th S arta ist � p � which used to be the hallmark of youth, but which seems to League identified with Trotsky's view o� he Staluust r lmg � . ? have strangely disappeared in the past decade or so." caste in the USSR as an unstable, parasitic and h1stoncally -"Leninist Ta ctics and the Road to Workers Power," transitory formation that functioned as the ';organ of the Young Spartacus, No. 131, November 1985 world bourgeoisie within the workers' state." The revolu­ tionary SL of the 1970s combined intransigent Soviet But this passivity was hardly inexplicable given that, in defensism with denunciations of the crimes of the bureau­ 1978 most of the leaders of the Spartacus Youth League cracy (see, for example, "Stop Stalinist 'Psychiatric' Torture (SYL) had been driven out of the group in an �xplicitly "sub­ in the USSR!," Workers Vanguard [WV] No. 96, 13 February political" purge orchestrated by Robertson himself. A new, 1976). more obsequious, youth leadership was installed, but the SYL 1 Transitional Program, Bolshevik Publications, 1998, p 62 2 never recovered and was finally mothballed in 1986. This was permissible criticism, remain the exclusive prerogative of just the first in a series of leadership-initiated purges that swept Robertson and his intimates, by a strange coincidence most of through virtually every unit of the international Spartacist ten­ the errors identified happen to be ones that we and/or Jan dency (iSt) over the next few years. The result was the qualita­ Norden's Internationalist Group (IG) have previously noted. tive degeneration of the SL/iSt from an organization with a The Spartacist article reports that the ICL's 2003 confer­ highly political cadre and a healthy internal life into a group ence occurred after an "intense internal discussion" was trig­ in which the leadership openly bragged of its ability to intimi­ gered by our exposure of a vulgar chauvinist reference to 3 date the membership. Kurds as "Turds" by Robertson 25 years earlier. The attempt In our 1985 document "The Road to Jimstown" we by the WVeditorial board to sidestep the question resulted in sketched the whole process, with reference to the various for­ a "pre-conference discussion [that] was dominated by an at­ mal political departures that accompanied it, noting that: tempt to grapple with the political drift from our revolution­ "Such erratic programmatic gyrations in response to imme­ ary purpose that t,pok graphic expression in the WVEditorial diately perceived interests are characteristic of political Board's actions." To rectify this problem, the ICL confer­ banditry-a peculiar and particularly cynical form of cen­ ence elected a new, more atomized, international leadership trism."
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