there are plenty of good criticisms of the SWP (like the fact that they're a patronising, authoritarian, dogmatic liberal-reformist New Labour lobby group), but critising them for not support Cuba and China... Come on you Stalinist dickheads wake up and smell the fascist dictatorships. They're as bad as fucking fascist Italy.

'rednblack' seems to be confused about the nature of the admittedly far from ideal governments (all right, regimes) in china and cuba, &c. indeed, far from criticising the SWP, you seem to be agreeing with them on overturning them, which is where the essentially correct point made by 'left opposition' comes in; the SWP have abandoned marxism, and you can read through late trotsky and NOWHERE find any call for the toppling of the soviet regime. instaed, trotsky calls for a defence thereof, whilst trying to save the USSR from the clutches of stalin, NOT because it was 'imperfect socialism', but precisely because one day it would end up reverting to capitalism, as happened in 1989-91.
since then weve seen the results of this neo-capitalism, and all told, we must admit the result has been far worse than we could have imagined in 1989. do we seriously want the same to happen in china too ? i dont.
when you take a close look at the SWP cornerstone philosophy, that of tony cliff, which essentially REJECTS Trotsky, you find it isnt based on a critique of Trotskys analysis at all, but on some of the wilder predictions he made about the course of the war, which was yet to fully develop in 1939; now, perhaps politicians shouldnt make predictions at all, for this very reason, but in fact we could go through the substantial works of marx, lenin and hegel to find endless wrong predictions; its all a matter of WHOM you want to find at fault.
on a more prosaic level, the SWP used their rejection of Trotsky and the (far from perfect) USSR to mount a support of British imperialism (is it any coincidence that most of their fellow parties are based in the Commonwealth zone ?), especially under a Labour government, as now. "Soft on British Labour Capitalism, Tough on China Stalinist Statism" might be a way to sum them up...

Look, "the organization", everybody knows that you and the "left opposition" are the same people - you're the fucking Sparts (using American spellings doesn't help you y'know). The Spartakists are a bunch of insane Stalinists in case you didn't know who love the USSR, China, the gulags etc.

And "the organization" nobody gives a flying fuck what Trotsky did or did not say - it's 2002 you lunatic! He's a complete irrelevancy and the "correct" interpretation of what he said 80 years ago has no relevance to working class everyday life. It's dead ideology - kaput, finito! Give it up already.
We've got to look at problems facing us, working class people and come up with solutions relevant to our daily lives, not ramble on about dead Russian intellectuals. Come on people!

Firstly, I didn't use any American spellings.
Rednblack may not understand that the Trotskyism of Trotsky has it's roots firmly in Marxism, Leninism and Bolshevism, and they may be prone to the same inability to differentiate a deformed workers' state from a capitalist one, but at least their honest; they don't believe that Trotsky has any relevance to the present and it would be a breath of fresh air if Cliffites admitted that they feel the same more often, rather than distorting Lenin and Trotsky wherever it suits their reformist ends.

The above only goes to show that orthodox Trotskyism, as its critics have often said, is simply Stalinism minus state power. It is a sad note that "the organisation", was I understand the title adopted by the party of Pol Pot in Cambodia. The Sparts and their like have long been suspected of being Western intelligence run outfits as the real "agents of Stalinism" (e.g the CPGB, now CPB) always follow the "popular frontist" line and accomodate themselves with Labourism, which is what our "friends" (not!)above criticise in the SWP. In the mind of most anti authoritarian revolutionaries and radicals (in Britain at least)the SWPs break from the orthodox Trotskyist defence of Stalinism is amongst their few positive attributes! Those who defend every Stalinist regime regardless of policy on spurious economic determinist lines sit upon a pile of millions of dead - the historic victims of the ideology they defend. As some French radicals once said - they speak with "a corpse in their mouths".

I am an individual who has spent some time giving a lot of thought to the socialist movement after it collapsed in Europe, 1989-91. At that point I threw myself into reading the far from obsolete philosophy of Trotsky and I conclude, as an indidvidual, that he was largely right, and if the surviving stalinist regimes fall such as cuba and china, , it will be even more catastrophic than the fall of the USSR.
I used the term @the organization@ as an intended witty ironic nom de plume, and i have no connection with any actual existing organization, not the Spartacus and certainly not evil Pol Pot.
I hopt this clarifies things .
Thank you.

Just out of interest, Left Opposition, which sect are you in? I'd guess you're a Spartacist, but you could be in Workers Power. Do tell...

There's nothing wrong with attacking the SWP - but for someone who feels strongly about politics, as you do, being anti-Cliffite is not enough. Is it?