It is not often that we get to watch a “middle class” left group self-destruct due to its own contradictions, but we are being treated to it these days in the form of the self-described Trotskyists of the Spartacist League/U.S.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Spartacists were seen as “the Orthodox Trotskyists,” and their newspaper, Workers Vanguard, was read in increasingly wider political circles.

But that was then. Today, the Spartacists are a dwindling sect constantly in organizational retreat. Their paper has become more and more incoherent and rambling, with most of its space reserved for seemingly mandatory polemics against the International Socialist Organization.

But for an organization that to this day thumps its chest over its slogan, “Hail Red Army in Afghanistan,” the latest version of that catchphrase must be an especially bitter pill.

The lead article in the Jan. 29 issue of WV, “Haiti Earthquake Horror: Imperialism, Racism and Starvation,” outlines the Spartacists’ position on the current crisis.

Long story short: Hail U.S. Army in Haiti!

Yes, you read that right. The Spartacist Super-Trots have jumped on Obama’s “humanitarian imperialist” bandwagon head first, and are openly defending the deployment of 15,000 soldiers throughout Haiti as part of a new occupation.

In their WV article, the Spartacists specifically criticize raising the slogan, “all U.S./UN forces to get out” of Haiti. In their view, if such a slogan were to be realized, it “would result in mass death through starvation.” Oh, really?

Perhaps someone should clue the Spartacists in to the reality on the ground in Haiti. Our comrades in the Workers Party did a pretty good job of offering the SL a clue:

And as tens of thousands of Haiti’s people cry out for food and water, Washington’s soldiers have begun dictating who can bring in aid and supplies, turning away flights from “unauthorized” relief agencies. This has led America’s rivals to accuse the U.S. of staging a new “occupation” of the island country.

At the same time, Préval and his state, as well as the UN-sponsored MINUSTAH “peacekeeping” force, are following the orders of the generals of the U.S. Southern Command in violently suppressing incidents of “looting” by starving, homeless Haitians. As one reporter put it, the Port-au-Prince airport where supplies (and soldiers) are arriving “looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a center for aid distribution.” (“Aftershock,” Working People’s Advocate, Jan. 18, 2010)

The Workers Party wasn’t the only one to report this. Numerous capitalist news agencies, from MSNBC to al-Jazeera to the BBC have also taken note of how Washington has “taken charge” of the operations in Haiti by militarily occupying the country and suppressing acts of desperation.

Ironically, the Spartacists make this leap into the camp of social-imperialism (“socialist” in words, imperialist in deeds) while at the same time criticizing other leftists, the ISO, Workers World Party and Internationalist Group.

While the IG was singled out over the “all U.S./UN forces to get out” slogan, the ISO and WWP were criticized for demanding Washington aid Haiti without using the military. While these organizations “call for the U.S. to provide aid without the exercise of American military might,” the Spartacists write, “we have no such illusions.”

Translation: We know the Pentagon is planning to occupy Haiti under the guise of “humanitarian aid,” and we’re OK with that. We have no illusions in it being any other way.

It gets better. WV writes: “We have always opposed U.S. and UN occupations in Haiti and everywhere — and it may become necessary to call for U.S./UN out of Haiti in the near future — but we are not going to call for an end to such aid as the desperate Haitian masses can get their hands on.”

Why, yes! We’ve opposed it before, and we might in the future, but right now, when it matters most, we have no interest in opposing imperialist intervention in Haiti — not when Anderson Cooper is crying on camera in prime time!

Way to build a revolutionary movement, comrades!

If you were really interested in aiding the people of Haiti, and making sure the “desperate Haitian masses” were getting “such aid as [they] can get their hands on,” we’d think you would look to joining with the Red Star Society and other groups in coordinating workers’ aid and relief.

Ah, but there’s the rub! Workers’ aid and relief requires workers at both ends of the line. And the Spartacists believe in a totally phony “stark reality” that “even before the earthquake, there was virtually no working class in Haiti.”

Well, will wonders never cease! Apparently, the earthquake swallowed up the nine major Haitian labor union federations, including the revolutionary union, Batay Ouvriye (with whom we are coordinating through the RSS), and every one of the millions of workers in Haiti. And only the Spartacists knew this cataclysm took place!

The reality is that the Spartacists are, once again, declaring that a country with a long history of militancy by poor and working people have none of which to speak. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this; the Spartacists are infamous for writing off working people around the world if they do not meet their rigorous standards ... or are actually fighting.

This position is merely an extension of the view that the Spartacists took in the 1980s, when they wrote off U.S. cities like Detroit as “lumpenized ghettos” devoid of workers. It was an excuse then to abstain from activity, to dismantle their work in existing labor unions, and to pull back on to university campuses and recruit only “class traitors.”

More to the point, it gives the Spartacists a convenient excuse to declare the principles of communist organizing and action irrelevant — to declare the necessity of workers’ revolution irrelevant — and capitulate to imperialism.

And as for the workers that are there, that do exist, and that keep on fighting in spite of the Spartacists? Well, it’s their fault for not meeting the SL’s exacting standards.

There is stupid and rotten, and then there is this.

Any working person who might be looking at the Spartacist League should also look carefully at their position on Haiti, and consider the implications of their analysis. In the meantime, our brothers and sisters are welcome to talk with us, learn more about the League, Workers Party and our movement, and help build up workers’ aid and relief efforts.