The communist league

You just don't know what the League is Alfie, so I would suggest you find out what we are doing in the US and Britain, read out site, our publications to learn, or just keep your trap shut. Barkan just acts like that because this forum doesn't really merit any better, neither do the people that frequent it, and I'm referring to the ignorant slandering thats been going on.

There has been a lot of idiotic things said about the League, but that doesn't include the criticisms of Dev and Alf, who have been rather patient with the CL, tbh.

I think part of what frustrates Dev and Alf is that it is hard to classify the League. I'm guessing the poster named "Communist League" thinks this is a good thing. (If your organization is successful, and growing. it is because it is superficially non/anti-sectarian.)

Leftists are always asking about how the left can be unified. And the CL might be an option for that. Which would make it an umbrella group of leftists with little internal discipline. No harm there

The left communists should engage those elements in the CL who are internationalists (and hopefully anti-union, anti-"democracy", pro-party, and Marxist) or are moving in that direction. Many such types could understandably be drawn to the CL's Kumbaya party-building, especially since we left communists are so damn sectarian ourselves.

We are not growing because we are superficially non-sectarian, but because our methods and policies are attractive to those who have been trapped inside the traditional "Left." We are not a group of leftists, but an organization of communists with alot of discipline, those are the kinds of comments that make me wonder what y'all actually know about the CL. We are not an umbrella group, we are united by our principles and what we fight for, but we sometimes naturally have disagreements on strategies and tactics.

And also, ( I can tell you've never read the Principles or our pubs) all our members are internationalist because we are communist.

The whole problem is that left-communist sects and others elevate political positions and strategies to the level of principle, which is simply wrong. For example, you would reject people if they disagreed with your union policy, in the League we would not do so, they would have the right to their opinion, as long as the majority line as worked around and respected. If people disagree with the Principles, its out in that case. Its called bureaucratism to use organizational methods to solve political disputes.

Thank you all. Any more misconceptions?

except the ones that say stuff like "Any resistance is good resistance, and a victory for Hez against Israel is a victory for the world." oh no, that's just their personal opinion, how could that stop them being internationalist

The League is internationalist . It just has members who aren't, who agree with internationalism as a position (not a principle), and who are free to support natioinalism as individuals, but not as spokespeople of the League, all while claiming to be spokepeople of the League.

I give up.

Apart from the sword fighting challenge, someone forwarded me some other hilarious excerpts from the communist league's forums:
http://www.communistleague.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=2964

If you're trying to use italian, the word's "stronzi". "Jospeh (sic) KKK" is a stroke of genius, I think for me you could've come up with something better than " Jonny Toy Boy " though. 1/10.

me, earlier

And me:

It's a bit hard to learn when you refuse to engage with criticism. But hey I hope that "CL vs the world" thing works out for you guys.

Look, i'm not trying to act all tough here, i'm just replying to an insult against my group. My point is that we're actually working. These moderators who hold a position of "professional" respect, aren't, so what gives them the right to slag us off?

You're right about the unity. Whether you're communist, anarchist or whatever, we all need to band together if we're serious about bringing about any kind of changes in the world.

We've got members all over the world, the US and UK, Middle East and Europe. Sorry Peter, no ozzies yet- and we're all working for the same thing. Who cares what books you read in high school? What matters is that you recognise the worlds in a bad shape, and you do anything you can to change it.

Someone who wakes up and decides to wear a badge, addvertising Israel out of Lebanon, for example, is more worthy of respect than a man whos spent his life behind a keyboard constantly critiscing other people who try to make a difference.

I'm sure someone will rip this text apart and answer ever sentence... but who cares right?

Take it easy,

Barkan

it's true, i'm sat on a beach in the bahamas making a grand a day off my capital investments

right, because people posting on the internet can't possibly do anything in the real world. except for you, obviously.

fixed.

I'm not working for Hezbollah victories anywhere.

So calling my mum a whore is helping change the world is it?

Hahaha what are you, 12?

Barkan, defending the honour of his organisation last tuesday

You bastard, I was going to post that pic.

Joseph K.

Bastard.

Can you photoshop in a little leftie/red star hat or something on one of them?

i'm at work (believe it or not barkan) so i don't have photoshop. where's jack when you need him?

In the meantime.....

Barkan tooled up & ready to go, earlier.

Ah, geez. Internationalism is a principle, not a political position or strategy. Therefore, if Barkan wants to voice his opinion on the "resistance" in the Middle East, I told him that he made the mistake of not outlining the League's organizational line against the "resistance," which is the majority position, something that should be done first.

OK. Let me see if I've got this right.

The Communist League can hold different positions on certain questions depending on whether they're "principles", "political positions" or "strategies", and so can individual members, and these can conflict.

I think I get it now.

I don't think we'd have enough icepicks.

Alibadani: admittedly this is getting more confusing by the hour, with this apparent divorce between the 'principles' the CL declares and the positions it (or some of it) actually puts forward - but what leads you to say that "the League is internationalist"? If it's a completely abstract principle, then the USSR could proclaim adherence to it, while arguing that sending in tanks to crush the Hungarian workers was proletarian internationalism in practice. And if - as you agree - it's leftist, then how can it as an organisation be internationalist? But I agree that we should engage with those elements who are open to discussing revolutionary politics.

There is clear line between principle (the working class emancipates itself) and political positions and strategies (we reject trade union struggle or not). The former is absolute and uncompromisable, the latter is naturally subject to disagreement, and when it comes into practical and relevant light, it is debated within the organization and the majority decision is carried through.

And so this is where I refer to our Basic Principles:

19. Proletarians have no "homeland," "fatherland" or "motherland." Rather, proletarians, by virtue of their position in capitalist class relations, have a fundamental bond with their brothers and sisters in all countries of the world. All proletarians, regardless of where in the world they are, share a common position in society: they all have nothing but their labor power to sell, and nothing but their labor power on which they can rely. The concrete results of these common conditions are a nearly universal psychological makeup and habits of life that parallel what we all see as elements of a national culture.
Communists regard themselves as proletarian internationalists, in this sense, and seek at all times to bring forward the unconscious instinct toward internationalism and develop it as part of a conscious struggle for self-liberation. As such, communists do not regard the existing political borders of nation-states to be the boundaries of our activity or solidarity. On the contrary, communists seek to break down these borders and build closer ties between the proletarians of different countries and continents. Communists struggle for the broadest possible unity of proletarians regardless of nationality or citizenship. We reject as a matter of principle the bourgeois conception of "illegal" or "foreign" proletarians.

These are absolute and uncompromising, is this becoming a bit more clear? This is not abstract, its practical and concrete. We are not "leftist" as you say, but a revolutionary communist organization.

Except if your positions and strategies contradict your principles, then one or the other ought to be revised.

Except there seems to be no problem with your members flagrantly disregarding it.

Well, that is up for us to debate and ultimately decide now isn't it?

I want quotes of the comrades that blalantly disregarded the principles. And make sure its objective, not your opinion.

Well actually, it is pretty abstract. It says nothing about national liberation movements at all. In fact it says something that the vast majority of people who refer to themselves as communists would disagree with. In my opinion the CL is deliberatly promoting this ambiguity. It sees itself as uniting people who think of themselves as communists into a 'working class organisation'. This appears to be being done without any political theory whatsoever. As you have yourself explained you recruit people on the principles, (which are meaningless in my opinion), and then make a democratic decision on policy.

Even more ambigious is what follows that:

Now, I would argue that support for the Lebanese resistance is outside the framework of internationalism. Stalinists, Maoists, and Trotskyists would argue that it is an essential party of internationalism. I believe that they are wrong, but at least they are consistant. For us national liberation movements are anti-working class. For the leftists it is a part of the struggles for socialism.

What is it for the CL. I think that you have no idea, and this is why I refer to you as confused. You have discussed it, and democrtically decided that you are against the resistance. What basis is this analysis formed on? Is it something that could change tomorrow if you recruited a few more people who held the opposite position? From what you have described about the methods of your organisation it appears that it is.

Is Barkan's position a difference of revolutionary 'tactics', or is it as we would say an openly anti-working class position?

Let's take a practical example, the PKK in Turkey. We believe that the PKK is a blatantly anti-working class organisation. It is spelt out quite clearly in our basic positions:

Based on this would it then be logical for us to have members who thought that this was a 'progresive' organisation? When people join our organisation, we expect them to understand the politics that we base ourselves upon. The CL on the other hand appears to have thrown away any idea of having political positions in the interest of 'anti-sectarianism. What you have ended up with is a set of basic 'principles' that are so basic that they could be agrees with by all sorts of people. Now, I believe this is probably a political stratergy. What you end up with is an organisation whose members have no idea what they believe in and who argue whatever they like, as Barkan did.

To put it in very basic terms, no clear politics, no theory, no centralism*, and no discipline. In other words confused.

Devrim

*Actually, the point about centralism isn't relevant. The Anarchists don't believe in centralisation. The UK Anarchist Federation though at least is clear on the fact that national liberation struggles are anti-working class. It is their political position, and their members agree with it. That is why they are a part of that organisation.

Our position is a majority against national liberation, easy as that. I think that Barkan's position is anti-working class, therefore I agitate for my position in hopes of keeping it as the majority line, its called democratic centralism. But it is important to understand that his position is a political strategy, not an absolute principle, and thats the problem that all of your sects have made.

Your opinion on whether the Principles mean nothing is...nothing. We don't care what that opinion is, we care about it because it has worked wonderfully in practice, that is what unites us as communist militants.

When people join our organization, it is based on the Principles, and an understanding that they must respect the majority line on political issues, such as long standing lines against the "resistance", national liberation, and others. I recommend our publications for god's sake to find out. We don't call ourself a specific "ism", we won't go to the working class and say, "oh, look, there are so many different sects, but left-communism is the correct one!" You know, that bullshit.

Thats why you are the confused one, we have very clear politics and a lot of discipline, this just goes to show how little you know.

What binds us together is our shared acceptance of the Principles and Rules, our common view of the tasks before us, and our agreement as to what it will take to reach our goals (what you think of this is irrelevant.) We are not shackled by the stale and abstract catechisms of "revolutionary continuity" that guide many of the organizations of the Left.

For that matter, we are not locked into one of the doctrinaire "isms", we leave such petty-bourgeois exercises to the petty-bourgeois pretenders that see themselves as the next Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Stalin, Pannekoek, etc.

We do not have a series of "litmus tests" that turn communist principles into articles of faith (contrary to you, we see communist principles as strong enough to bind us together). They just gotta agree with the BP, programmatic statements and bulletins, but beyond that, we don't place ideological restrictions on our members.

Alf,

I was basically summing up what monsieur Communist League was saying. I don't think the League is internationalist at all. All members are free to define internationalism as they please. It is basically an organisation of folks who call themselves communist, as Dev said. CL actually thinks it is OK to have a minority in his group that holds positions which he himself says are overtly anti-proletarian. What happens if that minority becomes the majority? Then his group holds those positions. He sees no problem with that. It boggles the mind.

If you say so, but that is wrong.

More like an organization of communist militants, see my last post before this.

I think that its Ok to disagree on political issues, unlike other sects.

It boggles the mind how ignorant you are.

My last post sums up my position, if you all dont understand, you can email the League or go to our forums so it can be dealt with and discussed. As for now, I will not be posting anymore due to the inherent childishness and stupidity of many people here, with the exception of Devrim, the Wobbly guy, and Ch4r.

I would just like to say that all the energy spent here could be spent just as well pointing out what a completely rotten piece of drivel that "New Aims and Principles" shit is by AFRASER. I don't think you can slam hard on the CL and not give that a whack too.

I'm not defending the CL, I'm just saying, they are not really more deserving than that piece of populist petty proprietor socialism drivel.

That's all.

chris