Marcia Langton ~versus~ the unreconstructed few standing to the left of Fidel Castro & Co.

Huh. Marcia Langton Was A Communist. But the Communist League is not the Communist League. The Communist League explains:

The [contemporary] Communist League was founded in 1989 as part of an international current sharing a course, and the Militant newspaper, with the [US] Socialist Workers Party and its continuity in the struggle for a proletarian party. The earlier Communist League from 1972 to 1977 was a sympathising organisation of the then-Fourth International. Within that organisation, the first CL was not directly aligned with the SWP.

So there you go.

Otherwise, there’s been a ding-dong battle in the media between Marcia, Boris, Jon, Sarah, Germaine, Tom, Dick & Harry. Arena magazine has compiled a range of opinion on recent debates — a product of Langton’s Boyer lectures — on their tumblr; Langton’s criticisms of the left in particular find precedent in an Overland lecture of 2001 [PDF]; some of the most recent contributions to the debate are:

• Why Aboriginal issues are no longer black or white, Marcia Langton, The Age, March 14, 2013: “Boris Frankel’s view of my work is 20 years out of date and reveals his ignorance.”
• Mining does not offer the answer to indigenous woes, Boris Frankel, The Age, March 12, 2013.
• Langton fires up at academic critics, Russell Skelton, The Age, March 9, 2013.
• Inequality gathers pace on board the gravy train, Germaine Greer, The Age, March 9, 2013.

See also : Would the real racists please stand up? (February 27, 2013).