In a Thread, somebody referred to his brother as a Communist, a Trotskyite, & a Spartacist.
The latter intrigues me.
Does this involve running around in loincloth & armor, battling Persians?
What is a Spartacist?
The Spartacist League.
I can’t imagine there are too many of them around today, not even in the most fervant right-wing fantasy.
In the modern context, I think they are a somewhat crazy communist splinter group. The kind that keeps itself busy purging itself of members who do not follow the current revision of the correct line. I’ve seen them at demonstrations. Other leftists seem to avoid them.
REG: Right. You’re in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah…
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters…
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People’s Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
LORETTA: And the People’s Front of Judea.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters…
REG: What?
LORETTA: The People’s Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG: We’re the People’s Front of Judea!
LORETTA: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG: People’s Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG: He’s over there.
P.F.J.: Splitter!Stranger
Actually this is the group Marley was talking about: International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) - Wikipedia
They never were terribly numerous - several hundred tops and rather less than that now, I suspect. I’m fairly certain they still lean heavily on aging veterans of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
I’ve known quite a few. Decent enough folks in many ways, but yep, quite zealous and prone to factionalization and some ( not always entirely misplaced, see COINTELPRO ) paranoia.
Ah, that is more likely.
But only relatively more. 
No matter what your political stance is, there’s always somebody you wish was on the other side.
Just to clarify this: The term “Spartacist” doesn’t have anything to do with the ancient Greek city of Sparta. It’s derived from Spartacus, a slave who led the revolt of a rebelling slave army against Rome in the first century BC (and who was famously played by Kirk Douglas in the Stanley Kubrick film version). Many leftist groups, as well as the official propaganda of the communist states idolized him (because he fought for the rights of the oppressed masses against a privileged caste of exploiters, to use communist terminolgy). There was also a series of communist games, modelled after the Olympics, called the Spartakiad.
Are the contemporary Spartakist “legitimate” successors to the post-WWi German leftists organization founded by Rosa Luxemberg, or do they just like the sound of the name?
I have to go for the latter, since the original Spartakists officially merged with the German Communists soon after Luxemberg’s murder by the Freikorps (who themselves either merged with or where supressed by the Nazis; so these neo-nazi louts who call themselves Freikorps are equally posers)
As a side note, the movie was written by the Communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. It was the one of the first movies he got a screenwriter credit in his own name for after he was blacklisted.
You’d think I’d know the answer, but you’d be wrong. (He’s been a member for years, so I’ve long since made every Spartacus/Sparacist joke you can imagine.) Anyway, if you wanted a sense of their ideas you could look at the Workers Vanguard online. My brother has been a subscriber for a few years and has hung out with Trotskyists since college. I couldn’t tell you what makes this group distinct from other Communists groups. The internecine rivalries are intense and I’ve asked him why they can’t have the revolution first and work out the other stuff later if it’s such a good idea, but that’s how it is. The Judean People’s Front analogy couldn’t be more apt in my opinion.
After the revolution, when the quarrels about what exactly has to be done and how the planet should be run start, everyone will ask: “Couldn’t you have figured that out before?” That’s the way it all ended up in Russia, so they’d rather fight it out now.
I’m just saying it isn’t working out so great. The Spartacists devote a bunch of their time and ink to attacking some other group whose name I can’t recall, and the other group responds in kind. Meanwhile the clock is ticking and returns seem to be diminishing.
My suggestion for the first thing to do after the revolution is putting the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation against the wall.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
That’s pretty much what Eric Blair discovered while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. At some point he couldn’t even figure out who he was fighting for, or indeed, against, except that it was often no longer the Fascists he’d come to Spain to fight against. Homage to Catalonia details his experience of the confusion of rivalries between and within the POUM, CNT, and Communist International Brigades and how it completely undermined the revolutionary effort against Franco.
Stranger
Previous posts saying there’s bad blood between the Sparts and other leftist parties / “tendencies” is absolutely correct. During the 80s I attended quite a few events where the Sparts would show up just to make trouble – publicly ridicule people, take photos of people in other leftist groups at demonstrations, etc. It was often suspected they were working for the FBI. One time I was at a conference and the Sparts showed up in mass formation with truncheons and started a physical fight.