File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-08.012, message 83


Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:25:50 -0800 (PST)
From: Scott McLemee <mclemee-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: M-I: One step forward, two steps back



Here is the article on the tempest in the Spart teapot that Doug Henwood
mentioned yesterday.  It is lamentably short on political analysis.  So
purge me.

=09

---------- Forwarded message ----------


                       SECT APPEAL

                           An ugly family feud cleaves a
                           Trotskyist publishing empire in
                           twain.

                           BY SCOTT McLEMEE

                           it is never difficult to spot the
                           Spartacist League at a
                           demonstration. They are the ones
                           with the most intricate (not to say
                           unchantable) slogans. To the
                           consternation of many who opposed
                           the Gulf War, television cameras
                           invariably zoomed in on the Spart
                           banners reading "Defend Iraq!
                           Defeat U.S. Imperialism!" And
                           though the League itself has always
                           been tiny, it maintains a vigorous
                           publishing empire. The Spartacist
literature table offers a biweekly newspaper, the Workers
Vanguard, plus two or three issues a year of the magazine
Spartacist (which also publishes in French, Spanish and
German). There are other journals and pamphlets too numerous
to mention, much less read. Yet a consistent tone runs
throughout the whole catalog - an in-your-face quality, Camille
Paglia meets Lenin.

Now, there is no accounting for taste, to be sure, but the five
bucks a year it used to cost to subscribe to the Vanguard always
seemed to me like a bargain, given the entertainment it
provided. The Spartacists, who may best be termed
"fundamentalist Trotskyists," have a flair for logic-chopping,
and for mercilessly ridiculing their opponents, who are many. It
has long been a point of pride for the League never to agree
with anyone else - least of all the several other, virtually
indistinguishable, Trot organizations spread thinly across the
globe. Their means of differentiation have been curious indeed:
For a long time, the League showed a strange enthusiasm for the
Soviet military (exemplified by the unforgettable Spart
headline/banner/slogan "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!"). And
in recent years, various Spart journals have been adorned with
pictures of Nina Hartley, a socialist activist somewhat better
known for her pornographic videotapes.

When the Sparts doubled the subscription price, I had to let the
Vanguard pass me by - capitalist austerity being what it is. But
then, last July, a particularly exciting issue hit the newsstands.
Nearly half of it was devoted to explaining the expulsion, a few
weeks earlier, of Jan Norden, the Vanguard's editor for almost a
quarter century. It was as if Regis had tossed Kathy Lee out of the
studio amid angry recriminations. In contrast to the shrill but
lucid quality of most League polemics, the denunciation of
Norden seemed very odd. The charge on which he was bounced
>from his post had no precedent in the rich and varied history of
Spartacism: "For some eight months, he had stopped asking the
party for reimbursement for bills incurred in discharging his
political responsibilities from his home by phone, or through
fax and computer equipment that had been supplied by the
organization."

Anyone intrigued by all this could order from the League a
sizable work entitled "Norden's 'Group': Shamefaced Defectors
>From Trotskyism." The Nordenites, undaunted, promptly replied
with a tract of their own ("From a Drift Toward Abstentionism to
Desertion From The Class Struggle"), of only slightly less
elephantine proportions. Scarcely had the photocopiers cooled
when a manifesto announced the birth of Norden's
Internationalist Group (with membership in the one-digit
range). Then, in January, the Group launched "The
Internationalist," a bimonthly magazine, with Norden at the
editor's desk. And so the periodical literature of U.S. Marxism was
enriched by one more publication.

Even 10 years ago, when the family tree of the American left was
a bit leafier than today, a new magazine would not have been
that big a deal. Every organization, no matter what size, had its
"mass organ" - usually a tabloid paper, though a mimeographed
or photocopied newsletter would do in a pinch. And usually it
also had a theoretical journal, where party cadres and "advanced
workers" were instructed in revolutionary concepts (applied to
information gleaned, very often, from The New York Times). The
groups and their publications were numerous, and various: A
hundred flowers bloomed.

Which isn't really the case so much anymore. Sure, there are a
few. Stay around a college campus long enough these days and
you will eventually see Socialist Worker, the coy imitation of a
Murdoch paper issued by the International Socialist
Organization. In the past five years, the ISO has gone from
around 200 members to something under 1,000 - in consequence
of which, numerous slightly deluded student-Leninists now
expect to take state power sometime late in the Clinton
administration. The labor and sacrifice of aging revolutionaries
in other Marxist formations keep a few of the other established
papers alive. But new groups today are far more likely to
concentrate on building a Web page - like those of the Canadian
New Socialist and the Detroit-based Workers Voice.

But the Spartacists (both paleo- and neo-) have valiantly fought
the seductions of the Net. The League does not have a Web site,
nor does The Internationalist. In recent months, the Vanguard
has taken notice of alt.politics.socialism.trotsky - only to
characterize it as a "fever swamp." (Not a bad description of
Usenet as a whole, come to think of it.) And there is something
nicely retro about The Internationalist, which looks and feels
just like a Spart publication from decades past.

As well it might: Between them, Norden and his associates have
accumulated about one century of membership in the League,
and written many thousands of pages for the party press. At this
stage, grasping the political differences between the
Internationalist Group and the organization that spawned it
requires a microscope. The first issue of their magazine contains
its share of revolutionary boilerplate: Free Mumia, support the
South Korean strikers, cops are racists, the Indonesian
government is brutal. Doubtless, Norden and his associates can
write such articles while in a light sleep, and probably did.

Still, for the magazine's premier, the Internationalists also put
together some interesting coverage of Mexico (a blend of
bourgeois sources and palpable outrage at the condition of the
maquiladora workers). And a group of cothinkers in Volta
Redonda, Brazil, report on their struggle to throw the police out
of their union - which has become a very sore point indeed
between the IG and the Sparts. For here, at least, the line of
distinction between the groups is clear.

It seems that a couple of years back, the Spartacists established
fraternal ties with a group of Brazilian metalworkers. In the
Southern Hemisphere, there are no branches of the
International Communist League, which is what the Sparts call
their network of mailboxes around the world. Nor, for that
matter, are there all that many industrial workers in the League,
either. So the Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil/Liga
Metal=FArgica was quite an addition to the extended family.

In the friendliest possible way, the Spartacists encouraged the
Brazilians to purge the cops from their union - until just about
the time Norden and his dinner companions were expelled.
Suddenly, the League decided that active support for their
Brazilian associates "presents unacceptable risks to the
vanguard." (Perhaps the Brazilian cops proved more frightening
to deal with in person than they had on paper.) The Spartacist
League vowed never to let its shadow fall on Volta Redonda again.

As for Volta Redonda contingent, it has cast its lot with the IG
juggernaut. As far as Brazilian Trotskyist metalworkers are
concerned, the Spartacist League reposes in the trashcan of
history. Long live Jan Norden and the intransigent
revolutionaries of the Internationalist Group! For the
communism of Lenin and Trotsky! Defend the advanced positions
of Nina Hartley!
Feb. 6, 1997

Scott McLemee writes about politics and culture for The Nation and Lingua
Franca.


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