Sparts Need Attention Again

LONDON – The Spartacist League of Britain, the Trotskyite sect that everybody loves to hate, feel that they haven’t united the entire global left in condemnation of them enough lately, and have decided to weigh in on what they call “the so-called ‘Coronavirus'”.

Claiming that COVID-19 “is obviously not real”, the purposefully provocative piece in Workers Hammer cast doubt on almost every single claim since the outbreak, laying out an elaborate conspiracy by which China have agreed to go along with the conspiracy in exchange for an increase in USAID, Korea being fooled by reports from China and the puppet regime in the occupied south of the country, and various sections of the US ruling classes, who of course are pulling all the strings, are variously lying or telling the truth about what they do or don’t know, and to make a long story short, Herman Cain was assassinated because he learned the truth.

No word on why the lone truth-tellers of Workers Hammer don’t fear being targeted for their usual bravery in being the only ones to say whatever nonsense pops into their deluded Trotskyite heads.

The Sparts none the less emphasise their “critical support” for the “fake virus” on the grounds that this particular hoax “has none the less exposed deep contradictions in the ruling classes and is plunging capital into ever greater depths of crisis”, out of which “the revolutionary vanguard represented by the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) can finally organise the working class for our long-planned first Trotskyist revolution”.

Trump’s “alleged” infection in particular is being held up as proof that the virus “cannot be genuine”, and therefore as a “warning to all of our many readers about the limitations in putting too much faith in fake bourgeois viruses to effect revolutionary change that only the working class can deliver”, on the grounds that “despite promises, this reformist ‘virus’ didn’t even kill the President of the United States”, a task which can only be completed “by a virus designed and spread by the class-conscious proletariat of the United States, organised and agitated under the leadership of our sister organisation and known virus experts, the Spartacist League of the US”.

As the entire world is rocked with the release of every single statement by any Trotskyite organisation, it comes as no surprise that responses were swift. Rivals in Trotskyism, the IMT, have released a statement of their own which the Sparts, for their part, have preemptively refused to read “as social distancing prevents us from using it as an excuse to show up and ruin one of their events”.

In said statement released on marxist.com and reprinted on all the other various similarly named IMT sources, it was emphasised that with over a million deaths worldwide COVID-19 need “do anything more to separate itself out from demonstrably false bourgeois propaganda, like Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, or ‘the Big Bang’.”

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Fightback Guerrillas Killed in Clashes with RCMP

TORONTO – Canadian sources are reeling at the news of multiple deaths in shoot-outs between Canadian state forces and guerrilla units claimed to be affiliated with the local IMT organisation Fightback, who have apparently gone full Mahir Çayan while no one was paying attention.

At least six guerrillas died in the initial clash with the RCMP, while two of the Mounties are reported dead, apparently killed in an explosion when the guerrillas launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the RCMP vehicle at the beginning of the clash.

A statement released by the “Proletarian Guerrilla Forces”, the group claiming responsibility for the attack, quoted Alan Woods extensively, and stated that the attack was carried out in retaliation for “the colonial authorities suppression of the national will of the Wet’suwet’en people”, and that they intended to “fulfill our vanguard role for the proletariat fighting for the liberation of all oppressed peoples in the prison-house of nations that is Canada”.

The bourgeois settler-colonialist Canadian state aims to keep the Indigenous nationalities in Bantustans, and the only force which can prevent this is the united militant action of the class conscious proletariat of all nationalities. In the final instance, the only means to liberate the oppressed Indigenous peoples of Canada is through proletarian revolution, which will take the form a mass insurrection which will shake the entire Canadian project to its core.

But as we prepare ourselves for the moment when the ruling classes are unable to rule in the old way––in the schools, in the unions, in the streets, everywhere the revolutionary proletariat is to be found––the most advanced sections of the Canadian proletariat must defend the proletariat in the internal colonies by any means necessary. The Canadian state must know this: from now on, their repression of the First Nations peoples will have real consequences.

Despite a denial issued by Fightback of any connection to the “Proletarian Guerrilla Forces”, mass arrests of Fightback-affiliated students and workers took place in the hours following the release of the PGF statement. In general, the arrests took place peacefully, with the Fightback cadres shouting slogans but offering no violent resistance. However, York University witnessed several violent clashes with the police, raising the body count of this week higher still.

One student, upon seeing the police approach her in the library, is reported to have screamed “clear out, clear out!” frantically to the surrounding students, who all ran away looking confused. As the police approached her, she is reported to have screamed “THIS PROBLEM CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY BLOOD AND IRON!”, before detonating an explosive device which the forensics team have determined was kept in her backpack, taking three police officers with her. Her identity has not been revealed by York University authorities, but she is claimed to be one Shilpa Mudaliyar, a York University Economics PhD student who classmates describe as “prone to quoting Alan Woods”.

Another student, whose identity has also been concealed by York University authorities but who has been widely claimed following release of video of the arrest to be Owen Patrick, a Mathematician and known Fightback cadre at the school, was apprehended on his way home. The stony-faced Trotskyist shouted “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE” repeatedly and sternly for the entirety of the video until he was forced into the back of a police vehicle. While the student was taken into custody peacefully, police have claimed that a stockpile of weapons was found in his residence.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Alan Woods was taken in for questioning by British authorities. A spokesperson for Mr. Woods has denied all charges of coordinating “terrorist violence”, dismissing the claims as “ludicrous”:

It is not even clear that Fightback itself is concretely linked with the Proletarian Guerrilla Forces, and neither take orders from Alan Woods personally. The fact that the PGF quoted Alan Woods in their statement is proof only of Alan Woods’s continuing popularity as one of the most critical Marxist voices of our time. The Canadian state and its international allies would do well to cease harassing Marxists and instead to come to an agreement with the Indigenous First Nations which would not provoke such unfortunate violence.

Responses from the various Maoist elements around the world has been mostly shock. The RCP-PCR of Canada were the first to issue a response, stating that “we must repeat, as Fightback themselves have stated, that claims of an armed wing of Fightback are nothing more than rumours which the state is exploiting to repress socialist activists, and those repeating them are objectively aiding the state in this campaign”, but that “it is clear from the PGF statement that they are in fact followers of Alan Woods, so, um… that’s unexpected, eh?”

The German MLPD released a rare public letter to a Trotskyite figure, inviting Alan Woods to come to Germany to “discuss those things that you’re definitely not doing”, “which is not to say you can join ICOR, because of the Trot thing, but still, we want to discuss some stuff with you”. Another ICOR affiliate, the Turkish and Kurdish Hoxhaite party MLKP released a statement claiming to have predicted the developments in Canada, stating that “if the revolutionary wave of the 1970s gave the Trots the PRT-ERP in Argentina, then of course today’s wave of revolution would produce Trotskyite militants on the other side of the American continent. We look forward to the PGF following the PRT-ERP’s path of abandoning Trotskyism in the coming months”.

Trots from various non-IMT traditions have all been united in condemning the violence in Canada as “adventurism” that, even if it leads to a revolution, “will probably degenerate anyway”.

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Frente de Izquierda Caught Buying Argentine Trotskyism

BUENOS AIRES – Following news that Jacobin have been buying followers for their publication through online identity theft, related sections of the international Marxist left are being exposed for these same duplicitous dealings.

“Everyone knows that we in El Militante have the finest of Trotskyisms, with the most brutal analysis and the best international connections,” explained Dario Romano, a local representative of the IMT affiliate in Buenos Aires. “How could anyone pass by our top quality Marxist publication and settle for the petty bourgeois opportunism of el Frente de Izquierda, much less in the apparently large numbers which they are? Only one possible explanation exists: Jacobin are buying them followers.”

The accusation, as shocking as it seemed, was not spurious. The IMT representative produced pages of transcripts of interviews with non-Marxist Argentines who couldn’t even identify which kind of Marxist was angry about which international and why:

“I woke up this morning and found all these posts by el FIT in my Facebook timeline,” explained one bank teller from Córdoba in the transcript our local correspondent read: “I couldn’t figure out why at all. I don’t particularly care about politics, and I don’t come from an especially left-wing family. It looks like I got added by an algorithm because of a post I wrote complaining about banking bureaucracy at my job. You can’t complain about that without mentioning ‘banks’ and ‘bureaucrats’ about a dozen times each, and apparently those are words that Trotskyites use a lot?”

Even quite explicitly right-wing individuals were found to have been remotely linked into el FIT’s social media presence due to their own peripherally related activity:

“I liked a page named ‘Venezuela is a Fascist State’, and next thing I know I’m getting updates and e-mails from el FIT,” complained one reactionary from Neuquén: “Trotkyites, Maoists, Chavists, I don’t care what kind of Castroist you are, just go back to Bolivia where you came from.”

“You see what I mean?” explained Romano to our local correspondent, “There’s simply no way these traitors to the Fourth International deserve their apparent popularity. People should love El Militante. We are like a fine Malbec of Trotskyism that even a Stalinist like yourself can appreciate once in a while, whereas el FIT are some cheap box wine that Macri is trying to get people liquored up on, I’m not sure, it’s not a perfect analogy, but this is some bullshit.”

“No question,” agreed our correspondent, “We’ll be sure to report to the outside world that el FIT is not as popular as people think, and that the real tribune of the Argentine masses is el Partido del Trabajo y del Pueblo.”

“Whatever, as long as Jacobin is exposed,” sighed Romano. “Would you like to buy a copy of El Militante?”

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Unclear if DSA Declaration of “Irony” as Highest Stage of Capitalism Itself Ironic

NEW YORK/CHICAGO – The DSA have stirred up great controversy in US left circles, still reeling from the discussions of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” as the “third and higher stage” of communist ideology several decades too late, with their latest declaration that capitalism itself has reached a qualitatively new stage of irony.

“If you consider Marxism primarily from the perspective of alienation, it’s actually quite obvious,” explained Michael Foreman, a Bronx native and DSA member, to our local corespondent. “Capitalism has advanced so far in terms of alienating us all that even our own internal mental processes have a clear dual audience. Commodification is so total that we can only articulate resistance to the profit motive in terms of ironic humour, even to ourselves.

“O shit waddup,” he concluded.

In the past few months, large numbers of young Marxists have joined local branches of the DSA, an organisation dedicated primarily to making the Democratic Party add “vigorous defence of the legacy of Comrade Stalin” to their Party Platform. Consequently, theoretical discussion at various branches of the DSA have become more rigorous than ever before, with the legacies of such US radical martyrs as Malcolm X, Michael Israel, and Bernie Sanders being mainstays of discussions at meetings. We spoke to Alfonso Casal, professional Malört sommelier and anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist, about developments within the DSA in terms of theory and practice.

“Basically, it’s not untrue that our innermost psychological health is being harmed by capitalism, and that capitalism’s tendency to commodify all things has brought us to this point. The disagreement we have with the DSA is mostly over whether this process, which has been quantitatively increasing since capitalism-imperialism became globally hegemonic, has actually reached some new qualitative stage.

“There was far more merit to the discussion, very popular since the 2008 Crisis, of neoliberalism, with its basis in profit-exploitation, as a qualitatively higher stage of capitalism-imperialism. In this vein, it is our view that the DSA themselves represent a new stage of revisionism. We had the classic revisionists like Bernstein or Kautsky, and then we had the ‘modern revisionists’ of the 20th century that our ‘anti-revisionist’ Marxism-Leninism defines itself in opposition to. However, these have descended so far into revisionism that they are no longer central to our discussions as revolutionaries. In the place of CPUSA or the CPB, we are now primarily concerned with the revisionism of the DSA and Momentum.”

Asked how he perceived a coming struggle with the DSA, Casal responded: “It’s very difficult to say. Just as defectors from the CPUSA played an important role in the struggle with modern revisionism decades ago, I predict contradictions within the DSA will lead to new formations, some of whom will have ideas close to our own.

“Pretty IRONIC, don’t you think?” winked Casal, who, before an explanation could be sought, pulled out an air horn and blew it into the air multiple times. “Capitalism, more like CRAPitalism, AMIRITE?”

The ISO, despite being mentioned much further down the page than they would ever read on a website as “Stalinist” as this one, also had their own analysis of the DSA’s growth and development. We sat down with one of their representatives at Fanxi’s Famous Foods in Manhattan:

“The DSA are reformists, which presents a clear risk of Stalinist growth within their ranks. On the other hand, they call themselves democratic socialists, and we Trotskyists are the real democratic socialists, since we have always militantly defended democracy for the working class, so perhaps we’ll be able to recruit some of them or take them over from within.

“It’s difficult to say, because we always had trouble telling which of their public declarations were ironic, and their latest declaration hardly does anything to clear up that confusion.”

At time of press, the ROL.

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Worker’s Spatula Ayatollah Clarifies Acts Prohibited During Ramadan Fast

BAGHDAD – During his traditional start-of-Ramadan address, Grand Ayatollah Hussein al-Sibatula has reiterated the importance of the Ramadan fast to communists around the world, and in particular the importance for the anti-revisionist faithful in refraining from all forbidden acts.

“No sex, which you shouldn’t be having even outside of Ramadan, unless you want to end up like the Iraqi Communist Party. No masturbation, intellectual or sexual, even after sunset. Obviously no food or drink, until the adhan sounds and it is time to feast upon bream and masgouf.

“No leather shoes,” added Ayatollah al-Sibatula, lest anyone forget.

“May Allah shower blessings upon those who complete the fast successfully,” the learned cleric continued to the assembled Bolshevik crowd. “Many of you will be in Sinjar, with the Yezidis, who will not be fasting. If you persevere, inşallah all your deviations of the past year will be forgiven.

“Naturally Ramadan is not only about the fast. It is a time for reflection on Allah’s mercy and the teachings in the Holy Qur’an and the writings of Vladimir Lenin. When Allah revealed His truth to our prophets, He knew that we would be tested. He tests us with the Ramadan fast, just as He tests us with the followers of Muawiyah, Trotsky, and Tito. But in the face of all these tests, we must be pure, in obedience to Allah. Purify your bodies, but also purify your minds, and your practice. Do not slander, do not backbite. Do not deviate to the left, or to the right. Do not engage in voluntarism, sectarianism, or opportunism.

“Whosoever can make it through all of Ramadan without speaking ill of the other Worker’s Spatula organisations will be forgiven for all the dumb satire they have written, and their organisation will be blessed with many new and disciplined cadre.

“As Allah has willed, you have all made your niyyah. May Allah accept each and every one of your fasts, and may your newspapers be widely read. May the dialectic resolve all contradictions in your favour, and may the workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite.”

“Amin,” responded the gathered communists, reverently, before standing and shuffling out of the mosque, the cleric’s words weighing heavily on their minds for the rest of the day.

Allah bütün oruç tutanların orucunu kabul etsin. –Worker’s Spatula

Trots Secretly Reading Worker’s Spatula

AUSTIN, TEXAS – Following over a year of publicly referring to Worker’s Spatula as “the worst”, “diet Assadism”, “tankie nonsense”, and “Stalinist idiocy”, several “in the know” sources have confirmed that the Trotskyists secretly can’t stop reading Worker’s Spatula.

“The other night I woke up and realised I was in bed alone,” one source told us, in lurid detail: “I went into the living room and saw my partner was awake and staring intently at his laptop screen. He slammed it shut when he saw me, so of course I assumed it was pornography.

“While he was in the bathroom, I entered his password, which I guessed was the same as his e-mail password: P3rm4n3nt. He hadn’t even had time to close the incognito window, which was full of Worker’s Spatula tabs. I had to close the lid before he came out, so I couldn’t tell you what the pieces were, but at least one of them was about Žižek.”

Local Austin Socialist Alternative cadre have likewise been spotted checking the Worker’s Spatula reading list since the start of 2017. Mere hours after the latest reading list assignment was posted, suddenly all the younger cadre were reportedly discussing the importance of Hegel’s stance on the French Revolution, having previously been unconcerned with Hegel or the French Revolution.

One ISO affiliate met with us on condition of anonymity. We can reveal that she had with her a Barnes & Noble bag which contained the Foundations of Leninism.

“You’re not the sort of Stalinists I expect, I’ll give you that. Sometimes you make fairly good points and force me to rethink some of my positions, instead of just appealing to a caricatured anti-imperialism combined with an overly defensive posture about so-called ‘socialist states’. I am a little concerned that you keep joking about murdering Trots, but that is just a joke, right?”

Our ISO source ascribed the lack of reports of SEP and Solidarity affiliated Trotskyists reading the Spatula to Solidarity having “no sense of humour about themselves” and the SEP having “no sense of humour at all”.

A similar investigation was planned to determine the extent to which the “China is still socialist” crowd read the Spatula, but it was called off upon being unable to find any representatives who could confirm reading anything longer than 140 characters.

Pol Pot “Still Fucking Cool”, Says Edgelord

AUCKLAND – Local edgelord and very serious communist Norm Thompson at first glance appears to blend in with much of the Auckland left scene: Passionate about Māori sovereignty and always ready to rail against the National Party-led government, Thompson at first glance seems like any anarchist or Trotskyist in Auckland.

But Thompson is not a Trotskyist. He’s not even a Maoist.

“All I’m saying is, the more the revisionists and the bourgeois media slander someone, the more you have to wonder what they’re hiding. So if you think about it, how much of what you’ve heard about Cambodia can really be true?

“Pol Pot’s still fucking cool. He abolished money, mate. Abolished money. You wish you were that communist.”

Noting that “living in Auckland these days would make anyone want to evacuate to the bloody countryside, eh?”, Thompson extolled the virtues of life under the Khmer Rouge.

“Everyone was treated fairly, all the rice you could eat, the party was truly united with the masses, it was the most advanced socialist society to have ever existed. Bloody Maoists make me sick when they talk about Gonzalo and the third and higher stage, Pol Pot was doing all that stuff first.”

Asked if life under the Khmer Rouge was so good, how did pro-Vietnamese forces manage to take control so easily, the response was harsh as only anti-revisionists can be harsh: “Are you actually defending Soviet social imperialist regime change, Tito? You’re an even bigger revisionist than I thought. Everyone knows the Khmer Rouge was only removed from power thanks to the diplomatic and military might of Moscow.”

Asked if New Zealand had a history of defence of Democratic Kampuchea, like Ted Hill in Australia, which had led him to his current positions, Thompson looked saddened: “Afraid not, mate. New Zealand’s left scene is shit. I mostly just browse communist Facebook and argue with CPGB-ML about the DPRK.”

United Federation of Planets under Fire for “Social Imperialism”

WHEREVER STAR TREK TAKES PLACE, SPACE OR WHATEVER, YOU GODDAMN NERDS – Despite claims made by the Federation to have abolished money, several former RIM affiliates have condemned the United Federation of Planets for operating in accordance with “capitalist logic” and having succumbed to the pressures of “space revisionism (the final revisionist frontier)”.

“The use of credits shows that contrary to the Federation’s claims of having advanced beyond socialism into full space communism, there is still some capacity for a descent into revisionism,” said a spokesman for the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan.

“Indeed,” concurred Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr’s spokesman. “It is our contention that old capitalist habits and relations have been sublated in the newly socialist Federation, but that lack of attention to this fact has allowed capitalist logic to reassert itself through the corrupt Federation bureaucracy. Combined with the Federation’s impressive military force, we are unfortunately beginning to see increasing violations of the Prime Directive, one of the first signs of social imperialism.”

When asked what they proposed as a solution for the dire picture they painted, the spokeswoman for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) prescribed “cultural revolution, by the bucketful. Just keep smashing old things until everything becomes new and good,” causing the other spokespeople to nod their heads in somber agreement.

While the intergalactic Trotskyist movement universally agreed that “degeneracy” was “inevitable” without Trotsky at the head of the Federation Council, they were divided on whether to critically support the Federation as a “degenerated workers’ space-althing” (per the Spartacist League) or whether to claim the Federation, like all practical efforts by anti-capitalists, was “worse than capitalism, which we wouldn’t want to be too hard on” (per Solidarity).

At press time, anarchists were still diving in dumpsters, even though we have fucking replicators now.

Stalin Society of North America Reelects Stalin

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS – The third annual congress of the Stalin Society of North America, an organisation which “serves as an educational and research organization devoted to studying and popularizing the life, work, and legacy of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin”, is reported to have gone off quite successfully and professionally, some might even say ‘bureaucratically’.

Among the noteworthy items under discussion were:

-Whether the Stalin Society’s reddit presence was sufficient, insufficient, or excessive
-Connections with the other Stalin Societies around the world
-New reasons why Trotskyists are liberals
-New reasons why Trotskyists are fascists
-The Lukács situation

Following newly established protocol, the congress was held on a dark street, with all participants wearing masks in the likeness of the late Soviet leader. As the meeting wound down, a unanimous decision was reached to reelect Stalin as president of the Stalin Society.

Comrade Stalin — which, it is unclear — ended the meeting with a rousing speech on the necessary road ahead, which he then repeated in a Cuban-accented Spanish. It ended thus, including a call and response:

In sum, going forward, we should basically keep defending Comrade Stalin. If people ask us our appraisal of Comrade Stalin, it is a positive one. People who attack Stalin should be rebutted.

Who do we like? (STALIN!)
How much do we like him? (A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT!)
Who do we like? (STALIN!)
How much do we like him? (A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT!)

Humourless Marxist Reviews: Radiohead (A Moon Shaped Pool)

Radiohead, for those of you who were too busy reading about dialectics to keep up on the latest in pop culture, are a pop group from England, better known as the shit country next to Wales.

As England has a reputation for an inferior music scene to the one in Wales, it may surprise readers to see Worker’s Spatula, ICOR’s favourite news source, wasting its time analysing the work of some trendy English boy group instead of writing a piece on Super Furry Animals and the national question. This is even more curious given that Thom Yorke is not even very cute as compared to, say, Damon Albarn, the other famous alienated English boy band frontman.

The reason of course, is that Radiohead are all Posadists.

As the only Posadists to capture international attention, it’s worth analysing Radiohead’s lyrics to try to gain a deeper understanding about what role Posadism can play in the communist movement today. Radiohead does not disappoint, with Thom Yorke crooning over textured guitars and droning computer noises the expected Posadist response to the current international situation:

I’m really quite glad North Korea has the bomb
I believe and hope that they intend to use it
Bomb us to full communism
Ah ah ah ah ah

It’s good to know that Posadists uphold the correct line on North Korea in the absence of the Soviet Union, even if they do it in that weird bellicose way that Trotskyists and Maoists are known to talk. Other lyrics reveal other classic Posadist fixations:

I am a sad man under capitalism
But the spacemen and the dolphins
Are gonna take the bad feeling away
Oh yeah

On another song, “I Wanna Be An Amoeba”, Yorke shrieks over jangling guitars:

No more, no more, no more, no more
No more miserable, abominable sexual excitement
I wanna be an amoeba
And never be excited again

Sure Thom, I mean, me too. We all feel that way sometimes. But I don’t imagine we’ll be able to abandon sexuality until a quite advanced stage of socialism, as much as we might wish it.

The obvious shortcoming to the album, like all of Radiohead’s oeuvre, is that in spite of doing quite an admirable job of expressing the ubiquitous alienation under capitalism, it fails to contain any explicit calls to organise the proletarian masses. On the other hand, there’s some cool drumming.

Best song: “Anyone Can Play Guitar”

Worst songs: “Creep”, “Piano Man” by Billy Joel