Talk:Communist Workers' Group (US)

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-- Well let's set the record straight regarding the history of the Communist Workers Group. First off -- it was never called the Communist Workers Group (US). In fact, it only had supporters in the Bay Area and Toronto, identifying the group with the United States in the first place would have been rather silly.

The group essentially evolved out of the Bay Area branch of the Bolshevik Tendency's attempts to participate in activities centered around a liberal student group in Berkeley called Copwatch. When the New Zealand branch of the International Bolshevik Tendency teamed up with the senior leader of the Toronto branch to take over the organization, resistance developed within this stratum of supporters who were involved in these activities around Copwatch.

This group initially called itself the Working Committee.

There might have been initially 4 or 5 supporter of the IBT in the Working Committee. Additionally, perhaps 4 or 5 old time supporters of the IBT were at least somewhat sympathetic to the Working Committee and the minority in the IBT; and there were a handful of newer supporters of the IBT including myself who gravitated to the Working Committee in support of the IBT minority.

The IBT minority in the Bay Area numbered two out of the four local members. It was actually amazing how small the IBT had become given that in the early to mid 80's they had numbered several dozen locally. After the split, the IBT virtually ceased to exist in the Bay Area, although they did have, theoretically, two members left. As is typical among bureaucratic groups that suffer a split, their numbers and activities dwindling to nothing was of little concern to the triumphant bureaucrat/ cult leaders who took over/ strangled the IBT.

The Communist Workers Group put out some interesting literature,but was an ill fated group virtually from the beginning. One of the key founders of the group, a long time leftist and member of the printers union split from the group because his girlfriend was horrified by the popularity of science fiction among other members and particularly the cover of the first issue of Revolutionary Theory which featured a space scape. We called this the "cover split" and it took out one member and one supporter, reducing the group by about 10%.

I walked out in disgust when I wasn't admitted to the group, but a long time local leftist who had been a member of a pseudo clandestine group called Spark was admitted, even though he was politically remote from the group. At that point, I realized that this was just one more collective of old left backscratching. Unwilling to revive my older organization, the Epigone Liberation Front, I founded the Generic Trotskyist League 40%off.

Then came the Spectre split, which actually took out three members including the guy from Spark who had just joined. I think the Spectre split was around 93 or 94. I had trouble over the years getting copies of their lit. Spectre did try to posture as being more militant and uncompromising than the CWG. It was all very unclear. However, it should be noted that the leading member of the CWG, an ex Black Panther, had some measure of electoral success in Oakland's moderately left titled local elections, and it seemed the founder of Spectre's sense of revolutionary purity was offended.

In 94 or 95, what was left of the CWG, which wasn't much, merged with the Argentine PBCI which was an organization with a very different political outlook. To give just one example, the Argentine PBCI was not in conformity with older positions of the Spartacist League that members of the IBT and the CWG generally supported like the position on Israel/Palestine which recognize some national rights for Jewish worker while overall siding with the Palestinian people. The Argentine PBCI was the type of organization which didn't discriminate much in who it would form a bloc with and insisted in its literature that Marxists must form a block with whomever led the Palestineans regardless if such leaders were sexist religious fanatics who would murder advocates of women's rights/ communists.

The CWG liquidated itself into the PBCI, but certain 'old school' members soon split and resumed independent political activity, two members stayed in the PBCI for some measure of time, one of them spun out of politics and the last one posted a website which seemed to claim that PBCIers had beaten him up in Argentina which I suppose is plausible as they did seem pretty nutty.

That guy was the last member from Canada. His political career had spanned the Spartacus Youth from the time of the anti apartheid protests in the 80's, to the IBT where he actually influenced me to think twice about the Sparts, to the CWG, to the PBCI to this final lonely website...all in Spanish. The other guy from Toronto went back to the IBT.

The last news I heard was that there had been some kind of regroupment of members that had left the PBCI with one guy that I had gotten interested in the thing and some people from New York and they had some kind of boring new group with no new ideas to offer. I have no idea if they ever made a website...but it sounded like they might have a half a dozen people interested. YAWN.

Does that make five groups emerging from the CWG? You would have to count very carefully, it's kind of hard to say. Furthermore, the Generic Trotskyist League 40% off, did not exactly emerge from the CWG as no member of the GTL 40% was ever in the CWG. One must recall that the CWG, despite some hip aspects, was a group still modeled on the old Spart/ IBT model and they were hesitant to recruit anyone who was not a member of a trade union. In fact, in many ways the IBT, for all of its bombast about being more democratic, had been MORE sectarian in this regard than the Sparts.

Thus the relationship of the GTL 40% to the CWG was very amorphous, and it would be more correct to say that the GTL 40% off was a product of one supporter of the CWG's frustration with the groups sectarianism. :Unsigned comment.