”Spartacist”
is the publication of the so-called International Communist League (Fourth
Internationalist), a network of small revolutionary groups centered on the U.S.
Spartacist League (SL). The Spartacists are notorious on the far left for their
pro-Stalinism (despite being Trotskyists), sectarianism, and general kookery. They
have also been frequently accused of First World chauvinism, anti-immigration
racism and pro-imperialism. In issue no 65 of ”Spartacist”, dated Summer 2017, the
group reprints a conference resolution titled ”The Struggle Against the
Chauvinist Hydra”. The issue itself has the title ”The Fight for Leninism on
the National Question”. The resolution supposedly reverses the erstwhile
chauvinist course of the organization.
Or does it *really*?
The traditional Spartacist position on the national question is that ”interpenetrated
peoples” can´t demand self-determination under capitalism. The examples usually
given were Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland. In practice, the Spartacists defended
the national rights of the Jews in Palestine and the Protestants in Ireland beneath
a cover of ra-ra-revolutionary verbiage. It´s *not* clear from ”Spartacist no 65”
whether they have revised their understanding of these conflicts. Nor is it
clear whether the SL has repudiated its opposition to open borders or its de
facto pro-British stance during the Falkland-Malvinas War.
What is
clear is that the SL has changed its understanding of many other national
conflicts, but these don´t involve ”interpenetrated peoples” as usually defined.
Still, it does represent a break with the traditional line of this particular tendency.
Thus, the SL now supports independence for Quebec and a privileged position for
the French language in that province. Their previous position is condemned as
Anglo-chauvinist. (Strictly speaking, the Spartacists began calling for
Quebecois independence already in 1995, but mostly to get rid of the national
question from the Canadian agenda altogether, in effect a position of kicking Quebec
out so Anglo workers could go on with more important ”class struggle” issues.) The
Spartacist League now also calls for the independence of Catalonia, the Basque
countries and Corsica. Further, they propose the partition of Belgium into three
or four new republics.
Only a few Third
World issues are commented upon. Apparently, the Spartacist tendency used to
oppose the independence of Guadaloupe, a French colony in the Caribbean with
nominal status as a French departement. This position was reversed by the
conference. Curiously, the Spartacist take on Puerto Rico used to be the exact opposite:
this U.S. dependency should be *forced* to become independent regardless of whether
the inhabitants like it or not! Here, the international conference took the
eminently sensible position that the Puerto Ricans themselves should decide on their
exact relation to the United States – many Puerto Ricans, in fact, demand statehood
(i.e. they want the island to become the 51st U.S. state).As for Syria, the SL
upholds the (bizarre) position of military support to the Islamic State
terrorists against the Kurds – the Kurds, it seems, are still Turds. If the
Albanians are still goat-fuckers is, alas, never explained…
Why did the
”International Communist League” suddenly change some of its long-standing
positions in this manner? I suspect the reason is a power struggle within the
tendency between a certain Comrade Coelho and an old guard of entrenched petty apparatchiks
at the Spartacist HQ in New York City. Spartacist founder-leader James
Robertson has apparently left his semi-retirement and joined forces with Coelho,
who thus carried the day. The new ICL executive committee is said to be 70% non-American
and the goal is to make the entire organization 70% ethnic minority. In their
fight against the old-timers, Jim & Coelho had the support of
non-Anglophone sections in Quebec, Greece, Mexico and elsewhere. Since the
Spartacist League and their co-thinkers don´t really *do* much, I strongly suspect
that the entire change of line is really the reflection of a change of guard within
an increasingly irrelevant sect. Those who liked the old line better can join two
old splits from the SL, the Bolshevik Tendency and the Internationalist Group,
which both uphold the right of English-speakers to carry out their business in
Anglais even in Montreal, Acadia and (perhaps) Paris.
