Open Letter from the Internationalist Group to the Spartacist League and ICL (tags)
The Spartacist League/U.S. and the International Communist League it leads are in deep political trouble. On April 27, the International Executive Committee of the ICL issued a statement “Repudiating Our Position on Haiti Earthquake,” headlined “A Capitulation to U.S. Imperialism.” After three months of “zealous apologies for the U.S. imperialist military intervention” in the name of humanitarian aid, the ICL suddenly declared that this was a fundamental “betrayal” and the Internationalist Group had been right all along in demanding U.S./U.N. troops out. While agreeing with the IG’s characterization of the ICL’s policy as “social-imperialist”and calling for a “savage indictment” of its own line, the ICL’s explanation for this betrayal – failure to have a formal discussion – doesn’t answer how an entire organization which proclaims itself revolutionary Marxist and Trotskyist could swallow this support for imperialism for months. Its origins can be found in years of capitulation to U.S. imperialism, notably by abandoning the call for its defeat in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Open Letter by the Internationalist Group urges those in the ICL who do not wish to continue gyrating in centrist confusion to examine the real record of their organization’s adaptations and capitulations to “its own” bourgeoisie over the past years.
What Will It Take to Defeat the War? (tags)
On June 28-29, an “Open National Antiwar Conference” was held in Cleveland, called by a newly minted National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation. Over objections from the conference organizers, centrally Socialist Action, the assembly voted to change the name to include reference to the war on Afghanistan, and to emphasize the connection with U.S. backing for the Zionist occupation of Palestine. (The sponsors of the confab were so right-wing that they feared losing “unity” with Democratic Party supporters of Israel and the Afghanistan war!) What did not change at all was the popular-front character of the new outfit, tying it to the bourgeois parties despite the fig leaf of electoral “independence.” Making this utterly clear, it was decided not to call a national antiwar mobilization prior to the November elections explicitly in order to court those forces who wish to aid the Democrats (and therefore want to avoid making problems for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama). Here is the leaflet issued by the Internationalist Group at the conference.