Lenin is turning in his mausoleum

I already commented the Marlenites, but here we go again. What I find so fascinating about Marlenites, Oehlerites and other strongly sectarian groups is how closely they resemble today´s sectarians, including the fine print. Clearly, we are dealing with some kind of psycho-sociological phenomenon here, not "politics". 

There are sectarians, super-sectarians and, I suppose, ultra-sectarians. And then, there are the Marlenites. On my personal top ten list of “most crackpot leftist sect ever spawned”, the Marlenites are in second position, the everlasting winner being (no surprise) the Posadistas. (LaRouchians and Newmanites don´t count.)

So who or what were the Marlenites, then? Led by one George Spiro, who used the pen name “Marlen” (after Marx and Lenin), this small group emerged circa 1937 as a split from Hugo Oehler´s Revolutionary Workers League. The place was New York City, United States. At first adopting the name Leninist League, they later changed their name to the Workers League for a Revolutionary Party (don´t confuse them with the League for a Revolutionary Workers Party, the League for the Revolutionary Party or the Workers League).

This issue of the Marlenite “Bulletin” was published in 1940. George Spiro´s political line is a bizarre blend of ideas stolen from Trotskyism (while repudiating Trotsky himself), various ultraleftist abstractions, and something akin to conspiracy theory. The notion that the Soviet Union has to be defended against “capitalism” and “imperialism”, despite its Stalinist bureaucracy, is clearly taken from Trotsky. However, in the hands of the Marlen group, Trotsky´s defense of the Soviet Union becomes something much closer to its opposite – the ultraleft position that one should *not* defend the Soviet Union. The correct slogan, we are not-so-kindly informed, is: “The victory of the proletariat over Stalinism and its Trotskyist collaborators is the prerequisite for the defense of the Soviet Union and the destruction of world imperialism”. In other words, the Stalinists must first be overthrown before one can defend the Soviet Union, really a position of revolutionary defeatism. The rest of “The Bulletin” is filled with equally abstract or confused polemics against other Marxist groups, some of them just as small as the Leninist League.

George Spiro´s main claim to fame was the idea that Trotsky was really a pro-Stalinist. In another text, he claims that Stalin murdered Lenin by poison, that Trotsky knew about it but chose to cover it up! What struck me when reading the Marlenite exposition is its strongly “personal” character. Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky are painted as power-hungry people who are depraved on a purely individual level, as if the failure of the Russian revolution could be given a purely psychological explanation. Stalinism is painted as a dark conspiracy. Trotsky in particular is hiding something. In plain English, the Marlenites believe that their political opponents are evil! This is Marxism? Obviously, the only way to get rid of evil is to smash it outright, hence “The Bulletin” exclaims: “For the destruction of the Stalinist political system – which includes all the pseudo-Leninist groups and currents – as the *first condition* for the possibility of saving the remnants of October and developing the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie”. In other words, the “first condition” for saving whatever is left of the Russian revolution is the “destruction” of all leftist groups in America except the Leninist League?!

No defense of the Western democracies or the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, Stalin and Trotsky are equally bad, all other leftist groups must be destroyed. Let´s be blunt. If taken at face value, these ideas are objectively fascist. Lenin is turning in his mausoleum! You can take it from me. I´m not a Leninist.

The Marlenites also claimed that the war between the Western powers and Nazi Germany was a conspiracy. No real war was being fought in Western Europe, in their estimation. Instead, the Western nations and the Nazis had a secret agreement to attack the Soviet Union at some later point. During Chamberlain´s “Phony War”, and even after the fall of France, this analysis seemed to make *some* kind of sense, but the Marlenites insisted on it even during the Blitz, when it had become obvious that Britain and Hitler´s Germany really had incompatible interests. In a later issue of their publication, our cranky “Leninists” insist that the Blitz is some kind of conspiracy, too, and that very little destruction had been wrought on London!

“The Bulletin” is very similar to the sectarian leftist publications we all loved to hate during the 1970´s, 1980´s and 1990´s. It´s all there: the long-winding polemics against other sectarian groups, the abstract categories into which everything has to be pigeonholed, the moralistic revulsion against the evil opponents, the arrogant and super-militant slogans, and the ideological borrowings from political tendencies you claim to oppose. What makes the Marlenites stand out are their weird conspiracy theories. More savvy sectarians would crack a “sophisticated” theory rather than blaming everything on the murky ego-trips of Dzhugashvili and Bronstein…

But OK, I´m starting to feel a bit sectarian myself, commenting this claptrap, so I feel I have to bring this to a conclusion. Hence, concluded it is!