The Sparts

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The noble partisans of the Spartacist League have struck again.

For years, the Sparts have harassed, disrupted, and attacked every left-wing movement on campus. Their internal party directives stress the slogan "Split and Wreck": that is, attack and destroy any non-Spart political formation, so that the Trotskyist vanguard can pick up the pieces.

Spart tactics include the personal harassment of campus leftists, and physical attacks on leftist rallies. But the most common Spart stunt involves raising the most strident, obnoxious slogans possible: my personal favorites are "Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!" and "Smash Solidarity's Counterrevolution!" These wacked-out slogans almost seem calculated to upset the delicate balance that goes into any political coalition.

Usually, considerations of free speech prevent the campus left from responding to the Spart attacks. Now, however, the Sparts have done something much worse than disrupt student activism; they have jeopardized a workers union. In a leaflet issued today, the Sparts call on students to support Local 26: their main criticism of Harvard's union-busting administration, however, is that it has invited "the pro-capitalist, clerical-reactionary head of Solidarnose, Lech Walesa" to speak at Commencement. For the Sparts, supporting workers at Harvard means opposing them in Poland.

Now, these miserable ultra-lefts are generally free to push their nauseatingly Stalinisat line wherever they want, but this time their stupid sectarianism is hurting real people. Harvard dining hall workers desperately need student support, and they can ill afford to have Sparts running around "splitting and wrecking" their base of student solidarity. Nowhere in the Spart leaflet is there any mention of the official Local 26 rally, or any indication of the fact that Local 26 will be excluding Sparts from the rally in the church. Union contract negotiations are serious business; Local 26's fight for a decent workplace cannot turn into a playground for would-be junior Bolsheviks.

The funny thing is, the Sparts don't even act like real communists. There are plenty of Leninist parties, notably the pro-Moscow Communist Party (CPUSA) which oppose Solidarnosc, but none of them would endager a union by mixing their anti-Walesa slogans with support for a negotiating American union.

It's time to stop the charade. The Spartacists are not real leftists; their organization has got to be some kind of right-wing front to discredit the left. This does not mean that every Spart is an agent, but it does mean that every Spartacist action is directed by someone with no interest in building the workers' movement.

There, I said it. If I'm wrong, the Sparts are free to sue me for libel. It's more their style, however, to come beat me up. Michael T. Anderson '83