[Marxism] WSWS and the SEP

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't think Ashley McDonald has to worry about flame wars on the WSWS
and SEP on this list.  We're vulnerable on some things, but this won't
be one of them.

The WSWS is a product of an ultra-sectarian, in a  DANGEROUS way,
evolution of groups that came out of the Fourth International.  The
hobby-horse at that time was bitter hostility to the Cuban revolution.
They held Castro to be a capitalist dictator.  Actually, if all
capitalism was like Cuban capitalism, leaving aside the accuracy of the
designation, the world would be a much, much better place even though
"socialist revolution" against this would be off for a long, long time.
Cuban-style "capitalism" actually strikes me as a reform worth fighting
for -- even if it takes a revolution (as it always has, so far).  Their
evidence consisted of outright misstatements, faked quotations, and wild
misrepresentations.  You would have had to go back to the Moscow trials
to find such a bizarre frameup.

In the mid-1970s, the leader of this international current, Gerry Healy,
went on a reactionary lunatic bender against the US SWP, claiming that
its leaders were accomplices of Stalin's GPU in the murder of Trotsky.
They later designated the younger generation of  SWP around Jack Barnes
are CIA agents.  They followed this up with a thoroughly reactionary
campaign against Mark Curtis, based on aggressive support to the
prosecution, adding their own frame-up style and rhetoric to the mix,
and direct, explicit denial of the presumption of innocence in rape
cases.

In the 1980s Healy's group fell apart, partly over differences over the
nutty campaign against the SWP.  Most of his movement rejected the
framework, afterward going their separate ways.

North led a group in the United States that split over DEFENDING THESE
REACTIONARY FRAME-UPS.

For many years they carried material about these frame-up on their
literature tables.  Lately this material has stopped being publicized,
but they still carry resolutions of THEIR  "fourth international" that
endorse them.

These days they are a quiet little sect, that attempts to convince
people that they are well-behaved.  But they are still mad as March
bunnies, in my opinion.  They sponsor this website, competently run and
highly regarded in some circles, to give themselves some legitimacy.
Some leftists think of them as a kind of good, gray New York Times of
the left.  But when one of their idees fixes (or whatever) comes into
play, all bets are off and the slander machine starts rolling.  The
slander of Camejo (an ex-SWP leader) was one example.  I objected to
this even when I still thought I would be opposing Camejo in the
election, and supporting one or another "socialist candidate."

They lie just like the New York Times but, unlike the "gray lady," they
lie for insane -- though very politically reactionary -- reasons.

On the left, there is a tendency to view their past misbehavior as
simply typical inter-"Trotskyist" madness, but they went beyond that
into very reactionary type behavior.  They are nuts, but frankly, that
isn't the end of the world.  They are lying, faking, vicious
movement-hating  reactionary nuts -- and of that the left may yet need
to take special note.

At any rate, I give Ashley McDonald credit for smelling them out.


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