Syria in Brief: Leftist Views on the Syrian Civil War

This is a survey of various groups around the world considered to the left of democratic socialism regarding their stances on the Syrian civil war. I have searched the websites of just over 50 left-wing and far left parties, networks, and international tendencies for any articles, blurbs, statements, etc. regarding Syria since 2011. You’ll notice that I tend to focus on American leftist groups, with which I have the most familiarity. Also note that some of the international organizations overlap with each other.

I have found that leftists have incredibly diverse attitudes toward Syria, even within ideological tendencies. All the groups profiled below support secularism and socialism (or, in the case of some anarchists, socialist-like systems) and oppose intervention by Western powers, but their attitudes towards the Assad regime, the Kurdish PYD/YPG-led Rojava, the vast and multi-colored opposition, and the so-called Islamic State vary greatly.

I will eventually follow up this article with a list of leftist groups in Syria.

The organizations are grouped by ideology. A couple of notes regarding ideological nuances:

• I use “Leninists” to refer to communists who are pro-Lenin but neither pro-Stalin nor pro-Trotsky. “Leninists” usually call themselves Marxist-Leninists, but that same label is also used by those who support Stalin (“anti-revisionists”), so I find use of the term “Marxist-Leninist” problematic.
• “Stalinists” seldomly use this term to describe themselves; as said above, they prefer “Marxist-Leninist”. Nevertheless, I call them “Stalinists” to distinguish them from Maoists, who branched off into their own ideology, and Hoxhaists, who support Stalinism as specifically applied under Albania’s communist leader Enver Hoxha.
• Trotskyists are somewhat notorious for splitting and quarreling with each other over relatively small things. You’ll see that I’ve split the multitude of Trotskyist groups into three tendencies: “post-Pablo”, “anti-Pablo”, and “other”. This refers to the most prominent split in the Trotskyist movement: in 1953, the Fourth International (the original Trotskyist political international) split over the policies of its leader Michel Pablo. Many of the groups that split away, including the Socialist Workers Party in the US, eventually rejoined in 1963 after Pablo had become marginalized and expelled from the FI; the resulting “re-unified” Fourth International is sometimes known as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, or USFI. I refer to Trotskyists who support this reconciliation as “post-Pablo”. Some of the dissidents continued to see the FI as “Pabloite”; I refer to these as “anti-Pablo” (often they will refer to themselves as “orthodox Trotskyists”). Although there is very little ideological substance to the current divide between post-Pablo and anti-Pablo, relations between the two tendencies are often hostile, so I find it helpful to retain the distinction. The third major Trotskyist tendency is the Third Camp, which had split from the mainstream Trotskyist movement in 1940, having become dissatisfied with the latter’s allegedly too-sympathetic view of the USSR under Stalin. Third Camp Trotskyists, as well as mainstream Trotskyists who do not fall into either category regarding the Pablo split, are grouped under “other Trotskyists”.

Read more at https://syriainbrief.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/leftist-groups-on-the-syrian-civil-war/