International Communist Current

One of the ideas raised at a recent meeting of the Occupy movement in London has been that the ruling class somehow engineered the current economic crisis in order to preserve its own power. This conception is nothing new; conspiracy theories have been around for as long class society and government and vary widely in scope and plausibility. Even the Ancient World had its share with Nero being accused by contemporary historians of starting the Great Fire of Rome.

In the two previous articles we showed that from the 1890s a proletarian opposition developed within the German unions. At the beginning it was against reducing the workers’ struggle to purely economic questions as the general confederations of the unions were doing. It then went on to oppose illusions in parliament and the SPD’s increasing confidence in the state.

In quick succession over the last few months we have seen a number of important events bearing witness to the gravity of the world economic situation: Greece’s inability to deal with its debts; similar threats to Italy and Spain; warnings to France of its extreme vulnerability in the event of a cessation of payment by Greece or Italy; the paralysis of the US House of Representatives over the issue of raising the debt-ceiling; the USA’s loss of its “Triple A” status...

Growing poverty, the brutal blows of the economic crisis, the yearning for freedom from a regime of terror, indignation about corruption, are continuing to fuel revolt among the populations of the Middle East, especially in Egypt.

In recent weeks, comrades of the ICC have attended, and on two occasions given, talks at the Occupy site in St Paul’s. As has been the case in the last few years with movements in North Africa, Greece and, most notably, Spain there is a multiplicity of ideas being discussed. The Occupy movement is no different.