Wag the dog

This is a "review", or rather an ironic comment, originally posted at another site, since removed.  

It deals with one of my fortes: small sectarian left-wing groups, more specifically the "Marlenites", 
which are occasionally mentioned in footnotes in Trotskyist books. I actually encountered a guy who 
claimed to have met them, back in the 1940´s, since virtually every member of this small group 
worked  at the same printing shop in New York City. According to other sources, they were 
blood relations, too! Marlen apparently broke with Communism in favor of Zionism after 
the war (or non-war), but that´s another story as they say!

This is a fascinating publication (after a fashion). “The Bulletin” was published in New York during 
the 1940´s by the obscure, small leftist group Workers´ League for a Revolutionary Party, 
not to be confused with the (contemporary) Revolutionary Workers´ League, nor with the (later) 
Workers´ League (which also published a magazine called “The Bulletin”) 
or the League for the Revolutionary Party (also based in New York). 

Are you with me so far? ;-)

The Workers´ League for a Revolutionary Party was led by one George Spiro, who wrote 
under the nom-de-plume George Marlen. For this reason, his paltry few followers are usually 
just called the Marlenites. Most people never heard about them, but those who have, often 
consider them to have been the crankiest ultra-left sect around. After reading “The Bulletin” 
and some other material, I beg to differ. Yes, the Marlenites were super-sectarian and had a 
few pretty strange ideas, but they were neither better nor worse than any other small, 
super-sectarian group. I can understand why Joseph Hansen´s SWP would laugh at the 
Marlenites, but with what right do the sectarians of today complain about Comrade Spiro 
and his supposed madness? Projection, much?

This issue of “The Bulletin” contains one article that really is barking mad. The Marlenites 
claim that World War II was a bluff. Yes, really! Apparently, the Nazis and the Western powers 
had a secret understanding to occasionally bomb each other for show, but in reality, very few 
buildings or industries were destroyed. A number of peculiar news telegrams published in
New York dailies are harnessed as “evidence”. The point of the conspiracy? 
To fool the workers and, at a later date, unite Nazi and Western forces against the Soviet Union. 
Even the Hitler-Stalin pact is part of the plot to attack the Soviets. Stalin has been temporarily 
allowed to occupy some small, neighboring nations to the USSR, which will then be used 
against him at a later date as a casus belli. Marlen´s analysis of the war may have looked
interesting during the “Phoney War” or even after the fall of France, when a large portion of 
the French establishment decided to collaborate with the Nazis rather than resisting them. 
However, the Marlenites insisted on their analysis even during the Blitz!

Another staple of this group (the one it´s mostly known for among the cognoscenti) 
is the claim that Trotsky was really a Stalinist. This issue of “The Bulletin” contains 
an article called “The Trotsky School of Falsification”, dealing with discrepancies in 
Trotsky´s published statements about Lenin´s testament. The Marlenites also published 
a number of pamphlets, in which they accused Trotsky of being a co-conspirator with 
Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev against Lenin and Lenin´s true legacy. Once again, we are 
dealing with an idea which makes sense on *some* level, but which Marlen turns into a 
fully-hatched conspiracy theory. It´s a fact that Trotsky didn´t immediately see the danger 
coming from Stalin, that he (at first) didn´t fight him hard enough when he *did* realize the 
danger, and that he eventually united with (and compromised with) Zinoviev and Kamenev. 
It´s probably also true that Trotsky´s writings contain some discrepancies – I haven´t bothered 
checking. From this, Marlen derives the somewhat hasty conclusion that Trotsky 
was a “Stalinist”. He even claims that Stalin may have poisoned Lenin, and that Trotsky 
knew about it!

While attacking The Old Man in this manner, the Marlenites nevertheless had essentially the 
same analysis of the Soviet Union as – wait for it – Trotsky. This raises the question why 
a “Stalinist” and traitor like Trotsky could possibly have developed a correct analysis of 
the Soviet Union and its degeneration? No answer is forthcoming. In a very real sense, 
Marlen wanted to be “more Trotskyist than Trotsky”!

The rest of “The Bulletin” contains polemics against competing anti-Stalinist Marxist groups, 
both those that mattered (the Trotskyist SWP and Schachtman´s Workers Party) 
and those that didn´t (the Oehlerite RWL and the Stammite RWL). The polemics are often 
based on a few sloppy formulations in the magazines of the competitors, which to the
Marlenites prove their “opportunism”. The only polemic that makes any kind of sense is 
the one directed at SWP´s so-called proletarian military policy (it was controversial even
within the Fourth International).

If all this sounds familiar to seasoned left-watchers, it should. This is how *all* sectarian groups 
argue! Long-winding polemics, pages on end, based on nothing more than a sloppy sentence
or a sentence taken out of context. Complicated scenarios turned into simple conspiracy theories
(Churchill didn´t *always* bomb Vichy French troops, therefore…). But, above all, the
inferiority complex towards the great leader (in this case, Leon Trotsky), whose analyses
the sectarian group steals, all the while attacking him and his movement.

We´ve seen it countless of times since the demise of the Marlenites. What about the “polemics” in 
Workers´ Vanguard, magazine of the Spartacist League? What about Enver Hoxha´s followers, 
who attack Maoism while calling the Soviet Union “state capitalist” (the Maoist position)? 
What about the bizarre groups who stole dissident Trotskyist Sam Marcy´s analyses of the 
“global class war”, all the while attacking Marcy´s own party? What about the ICC and their 
conspiracy theory about “the Machiavellism of the bourgeoisie”?

In what sense, pray tell, is this *less* insane than the strange gyrations of George Spiro a.k.a. 
Marlen and his small band of faithful?

I´d say it´s all the same crap. Entertaining crap, of course. Otherwise I wouldn´t be musing about it 
at 3 AM local time…