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Trots in Space
Juan R Posadas was no ordinary Trotskyite; socialists from outer space, the benefits of nuclear war and communication with dolphins were all part of his revolutionary programme. Matt Salusbury tells the story of one of the World’s strangest political thinkers.
We think of UFO cults, typically, as being naïve, fancy-dress Californian affairs, scary religious Doomsday sects, or even neo-Nazi groups convinced that flying saucers operate from a secret Antarctic base. But there was one UFO cult at the opposite end of the political spectrum: a Trotskyite UFO cult.
They called themselves the Posadists after their founder Juan R Posadas and, like many UFO cults, they bore a fierce loyalty to their “dear master”.1 They believed that close encounters were evidence of superior socialist civilisations from Earth’s future. Their bizarre belief in flying saucers was not channelled to them by some tackily-named space entity but “theoretically informed” by Marx and Trotsky, and was for them a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas wrote: “We will travel to planets millions of light years away under a Socialist society.”
Their founder was a leading light of Latin American Trotskyism, one of a select group running the Fourth International (see ‘Posadism for Beginners’ side bar) after Leon Trotsky’s death. Alongside their esoteric texts on “flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary class struggle and the Socialist future of humanity,” 2 they also preached more orthodox Marxism and strove tirelessly to bring about world revolution. Posadist Fourth International affiliates worked to organise trade unions, often operating clandestinely under dictatorships. Some ‘comrades’ even lost their lives in the struggle.
...
It was in the heady summer of 1968 that Posadas’ stargazing tendencies finally led him to leave behind the earthbound World Revolution and turn his thoughts to “other galaxies and solar systems” where “they can eliminate the ruling class”. Posadas began to boldly go where no Marxist theory had gone before and announced that “dialectic concepts can permit the existence of UFOs and other life-forms.”
...
And there is a Marxist explanation for why the UFOs visit but do not stay: “Capitalism doesn’t interest the UFO pilots, which is why they do not return. Similarly, the Soviet bureaucracy (doesn’t interest them) as they don’t have perspective.”
UFOs, predicts Posadas, will show a greater interest in us “at the moment of the collapse of the bourgeoisie and the General Strike.” Star Trek fans will recognise the similarity with the film First Contact, in which Vulcans passing Earth only show an interest in humans after they have developed warp drive.
...
But the true strangeness of the phenomenon that was Posadism lies in the fact that much of the Posadists’ activity was of a ruthlessly rationalist character. Their British Section – the Revolutionary Workers’ Party – was a typical Trot organisation. Its members got into trouble in the Vauxhall and Austin car factories for their industrial militancy around the ‘United Car Worker’ group. They were as preoccupied as any other Trot group with sneaking members into the Labour Party and with a Monty Python’s Life of Brian Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea style feud with their near-identical rivals, the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, with whom they had frequent scraps and fisticuffs.
Author: Matt Salusbury - His job as a teacher working with Kurdish refugees covers his secret identity as a freelance journalist, contributing to BBC History magazine and the sci-fi fanzine This Way Up.
full article
Juan R Posadas was no ordinary Trotskyite; socialists from outer space, the benefits of nuclear war and communication with dolphins were all part of his revolutionary programme. Matt Salusbury tells the story of one of the World’s strangest political thinkers.
We think of UFO cults, typically, as being naïve, fancy-dress Californian affairs, scary religious Doomsday sects, or even neo-Nazi groups convinced that flying saucers operate from a secret Antarctic base. But there was one UFO cult at the opposite end of the political spectrum: a Trotskyite UFO cult.
They called themselves the Posadists after their founder Juan R Posadas and, like many UFO cults, they bore a fierce loyalty to their “dear master”.1 They believed that close encounters were evidence of superior socialist civilisations from Earth’s future. Their bizarre belief in flying saucers was not channelled to them by some tackily-named space entity but “theoretically informed” by Marx and Trotsky, and was for them a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas wrote: “We will travel to planets millions of light years away under a Socialist society.”
Their founder was a leading light of Latin American Trotskyism, one of a select group running the Fourth International (see ‘Posadism for Beginners’ side bar) after Leon Trotsky’s death. Alongside their esoteric texts on “flying saucers, the process of matter and energy, science, the revolutionary class struggle and the Socialist future of humanity,” 2 they also preached more orthodox Marxism and strove tirelessly to bring about world revolution. Posadist Fourth International affiliates worked to organise trade unions, often operating clandestinely under dictatorships. Some ‘comrades’ even lost their lives in the struggle.
...
It was in the heady summer of 1968 that Posadas’ stargazing tendencies finally led him to leave behind the earthbound World Revolution and turn his thoughts to “other galaxies and solar systems” where “they can eliminate the ruling class”. Posadas began to boldly go where no Marxist theory had gone before and announced that “dialectic concepts can permit the existence of UFOs and other life-forms.”
...
And there is a Marxist explanation for why the UFOs visit but do not stay: “Capitalism doesn’t interest the UFO pilots, which is why they do not return. Similarly, the Soviet bureaucracy (doesn’t interest them) as they don’t have perspective.”
UFOs, predicts Posadas, will show a greater interest in us “at the moment of the collapse of the bourgeoisie and the General Strike.” Star Trek fans will recognise the similarity with the film First Contact, in which Vulcans passing Earth only show an interest in humans after they have developed warp drive.
...
But the true strangeness of the phenomenon that was Posadism lies in the fact that much of the Posadists’ activity was of a ruthlessly rationalist character. Their British Section – the Revolutionary Workers’ Party – was a typical Trot organisation. Its members got into trouble in the Vauxhall and Austin car factories for their industrial militancy around the ‘United Car Worker’ group. They were as preoccupied as any other Trot group with sneaking members into the Labour Party and with a Monty Python’s Life of Brian Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea style feud with their near-identical rivals, the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, with whom they had frequent scraps and fisticuffs.
Author: Matt Salusbury - His job as a teacher working with Kurdish refugees covers his secret identity as a freelance journalist, contributing to BBC History magazine and the sci-fi fanzine This Way Up.
full article
Got to love that line.
