Stop Vendetta Against Michael Jackson, King of Pop! Buy Tickets to His ‘This Is It’ Performances, Starting July 8, 2009!

Above : Comrade Jackson, King of Pop.

The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) is a proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist tendency committed to the task of building Leninist parties as national sections of a democratic-centralist international. Their aim is the achievement of new October Revolutions—nothing else, nothing other, nothing less. The ICL bases itself on Marxist historical, dialectical materialism and seeks in particular to carry forward the international working-class perspectives of Marxism developed in the theory and practice of the Bolshevik leaders V. I. Lenin and L. D. Trotsky as embodied in the decisions of the first four Congresses of the Communist International as well as key documents of the Fourth International such as the Transitional Program (1938) and “War and the Fourth International” (1934), and as expressed in musical form by the King of Pop Michael Jackson in “Off The Wall” (1979), “Thriller” (1982) and “Bad” (1987).

Above : Karl Marx. “Michael Jackson fans of all lands, unite!”

The announcement on March 5 at the O2 Grand Concourse in London of a final tour by Michael Jackson has been met with the usual howls from bourgeois media and political spokesmen in Europe. We will not be intimidated by these kinds of tactics and we call on workers of the world to join us in obtaining tickets to his final “curtain call”. Spearheading this effort will be the Spartacus Youth Clubs.

Witchhunts like the one against Michael Jackson are manipulated for reactionary political ends and serve to reinforce the bourgeoisie’s warped and indecent values through fear and intimidation.

The Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth/student auxiliaries of the Marxist Spartacist League, seek to develop young radicals into communist militants, through listening to Michael Jackson albums, socialist education and struggle, and to organize and link them, through the vanguard party, to the working class. Our goal is nothing less than the destruction of this rotten capitalist society through the seizure of state power by the working class. While many partial battles loom, it is only the revolutionary transformation of society that will put an end to the racist, witchhunting, warmongering offensive. Join us in the struggle against world filth and for a socialist future!

So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf! And just enjoy yourself! Groove, let the madness in the music get to you! Life ain’t so bad at all! If you live it off the wall! Life ain’t so bad at all (live life off the wall)! Live your life off the wall (live it off the wall)! Go forward in the historical task of leading the working class to the victory of world socialism! Reforge the Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution!

See also : Stop Vendetta Against Michael Jackson!, Workers Vanguard, No.818 (January 23, 2004); Michael Jackson Defeats Racist, Anti-Sex Vendetta, Workers Vanguard, No.851 (July 8, 2005); For Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!, Workers Vanguard, No.887 (March 2, 2007)

“All Aboard! Bolshevik Revolution leaving Trotskyist Platform at 19:17!” Toot toot! (December 30, 2008); Trotsky versus technology (March 29, 2007); Down with DSP Thuggery! Defend Spartacism! (And China! And Cuba! And North Korea! And Vietnam!) (October 2, 2006); Spartacism… the continuing obsession… (September 21, 2006); An Unnatural Obsession with the Spartacist League? (February 2, 2006)

Bonus!

I wanted to join the Spartacist League. True, we used to laugh at them; in fact everyone laughed at them, but in their isolation lay their appeal. The Spartacist League was this bad-tempered Trotskyist group that had probably no more than twenty — no, make that thirty — members throughout the country mainly based on campuses like LaTrobe and Sydney. We occasionally had run-ins with them, although they tended to keep their distance because they imagined that we were out to kidnap them individually and dump the bodies in shallow graves off Rye backbeach. We wouldn’t have done; there were plenty of leftist groups clamouring for that opportunity.

Since the early 1970s, the Australian left had been more gauche than sinister, despite what groups like People Against Communism said. That was the appeal of the far-right, I guess: groups like the League and the Nazis were either nutty or offensive, both of which amused me no end; or it spoke such unambiguous commonsense (like the British NF or the Alliance) that you couldn’t help but identify with it. Well, at least I couldn’t. Most of the left, on the other hand, was dull and earnest and out of touch. You just had to read the left’s papers or, even better, look at the miserable faces of the people selling them. How they ever recruited was beyond me. I certainly didn’t fancy spending my Saturday afternoons in draughty meeting rooms discussing Marx’s Theory of Surplus Value. If I’d wanted to learn that sort of thing I’d have paid attention in fourth form economics classes.

That was the beauty of the Spartacist League. They had this paper, Australasian Spartacist, and virtually every issue had at least one page devoted to sectarianism. Yes, they were Marxists, and yes, they also ran pages of boring leftist tripe that they no doubt thought had some appeal to the working masses — the very same working masses who would never buy their paper, week after week after week — but they specialised in airing the dirty laundry of all the other rival left groups around: the Maoists, the Eurocommunists of the CPA, the Send In the Tanks Stalinists of the Socialist Party, and all the other cheek-by-jowl rivals to the title of Trotsky’s heirs — the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Socialist Labour League, the Communist League (were they still going?), the International Socialists, etc. etc. No wonder they were generally considered to be police agents.

And they had a great writing style — snotty and sneering and puffed-up. It was pretty much like ours, actually. If you could hear what you read, they’d be saying it from the corners of their mouths, then laughing at you. They insulted other leftitsts worse than we insulted other leftists. They insulted other leftists worse than they insulted us. That was no doubt why they kept getting bashed by other Trotskyists. Technically, though, we were the Great Satan, because we were Fascists with a capital F, and the other left groups were part of the workers’ movement.

The politics would have taken a bit of getting used to, but that certainly wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. I envied them. They knew what they believed. They knew who they hated, and why, and it was all footnoted and there was never any room for error and they could pick up deviationism from the most innocuous slip of the tongue and they were as hard on their own people as they were on everyone else and by Christ they were hard on everyone else. No one was good enough for them.

The line was laid down, probably in the US, and you’d know pretty much from the start what you could like and dislike and it would all be explained and there’d be references and cross-references in all the back issues of Australasian Spartacist so no one could just make it up as they went along…

~ David Greason, I was a teenage fascist (1994)