International Communist Current

Both congratulations and heartfelt thanks are in order. The ICC might not be appreciated or taken seriously by leftists, but for the revolutionary proletariat I think there is no doubt of its contributions. Internationalism and the wider ICC have done an excellent job in preserving the heritage of the communist left and indeed in further developing the analyses of the communist left.

The 150th issue in particular is illuminating, as always; so far I've only read the article on debt, but it is quite good.

I'd close by wishing you success on the next 150 issues, but hopefully the working class and its social revolution will come and render that unncessary! But if not, well, I can think of worse things than another 150 more issues of Internationalism.

Good work!

June 10, 2009

Dear Comrades:

Congratulations to the American comrades on the publication of the 150th issue of Internationalism in America.

I have become persuaded, despite my decades of previous adherence to Trotskyism, that the International Communist Current constitutes one of the 2 most truly serious left communist political organizations in the world today.

Furthermore, I have become persuaded by the sheer continued existence and persistence of the existence of your organization that the slanders of left communism, and its basically having been airbrushed from labor and proletarian history (as your late comrade-supporter, Ian Hebbes, put it in your book, The Russian Communist Left) by various expressions of organized Trotskyism, demonstrates that left communism is, indeed, an authentically viable Marxist proletarian revolutionary movement.

I realize many of my positions are in conflict with those of the ICC, and your main left communist competitor, the IBRP.

But recently, I have, to my own satisfaction, read through another of your ostensibly left communist competitors' readings, on the site of the Internationalist-Perspective. I did not realize that in the course of breaking from your movement, they had basically physically stolen (ripped off from you) items belonging to your movement. That has changed my initial doubt regarding whether you were guilty of violence within the communist and workers movement, and I'm now persuaded you seemed much more within your proletarian communist rights.

Additionally, the fact of a successful conference you apparently recently had, of diverse working class militants from diverse areas in the U.S., and how you -- how can I put this in a way that conveys my attitude properly? -- terminologically characterized this successful conference as manifesting the "secretion" from among the working class of revolutionary-minded proletarians, has begun in my own mind resolving a long, long, long-time problem over which I'd been conflicted on Trotskyism v. left communism, and in favor of left communism. In my experience in the Spartacists, probably the closest thing to authentically orthodox Trotskyism in today's world, I decades later read through the Logan Regime documents, and Robertson's statement in there about how they prefer aligning themselves with the "captains versus mutineers." This led me to re-think something else in the Spartacists' Declaration of Principles and Elements of Program document, in which they specifically and explicitly declare for what they call the tactic of the united front from above.

The fact you comrades had a successful conference of worker militants who themselves came, apparently, to communist conclusions, or at least seem to have begun to, utterly and completely independently of having to have been "split and wrecked" over to Trotskyism by the so-called tactic of the workers' united front persuades me that there's an organic deformation in organized Trotskyism predisposing it to a kind of innately counter-revolutionary top-down elitism organically hostile to proletarians coming to communist consciousness and moving in the direction of communist activity on their own, simply from reading and thinking over the existing publications and writings of existing communist organizations.

I am not yet entirely sure I am right on this. I am 63, and have felt myself a communist, subjectively, at least, since around 1965 or so. I certainly might be what you comrades would possibly term an "old" or "older" "militant."

But I keep finding myself having issues resolved by reading your website and writings on line that seem to predispose me to a friendlier attitude toward your organization.

I am trying, now, to re-think other positions I've long held and long militantly defended which constitute Trotskyist positions.

Additionally, I might have problems in your theoretical difference that seems to dispose you more to Rosa Luxemburg's version of interpretation of the basis of capitalist crisis, versus that of Bukharin, Lenin, and latter-day people like Paul Mattick, who, despite his council communist view, seemed to hold a position on the basis of capitalist crisis closer to that of Bukharin and Lenin than to Luxemburg. But I'm an older person, and so, move somewhat slower than I used to, and have to think through some of these things after decades of defense of Trotskyist or, perhaps, left Trotskyist, positions.

Anyway, again, hearty congratulations on the 150th issue of Internationalism, and I wish the ICC well.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
a/k/a "Al Greene" in SDS in the 1960s
a/k/a "Greg Alden" in the International Socialists in 1960s
a/k/a "Al Garfield" in the Spartacist League in 1973-1976

PS: My one claim to immortality is my mention in Kirkpatrick Sale's good book on SDS on page 333. I was not, however, as he there seemed to imply or deduce, connected with the Progressive Labor Party-Worker-Student Alliance faction, but with the Independent Socialist Clubs of America, who later became the International Socialists. Again, congratulations to the ICC on publication of the 150th issue of Internationalism.

Al's comments and his evident efforts to clarify his position are very welcome. We are in favour of reflection in depth and if necessary over a long period rather than sudden conversions, so we encourage you to carry on discussing all the questions you still have regarding Trotskyism and left communism. Certainly the question of the different approaches to class consciousness is a very crucial one -internationalism would be another.

Just one point to clarify: it wasn't Internationalist Perspective who physically ripped us off when they split, but a previous split, the so-called 'Chenier tendency' in 1981. Of course, we still consider the IP split (in 1985) to have been unnecessary (they falsely claimed that they had been expelled)and a source of considerable confusion.

You may be mixing up IP with the Communist Bulletin Group, who also came out of the 1981 split, apologising for the thefts, denouncing the ICC's attempts to get back the stolen material and threatening to call the cops if we tried to recuperate any material from their own homes.

At the time some of the future members of IP actually took part in the actions to recover stolen material. When they left the ICC, they were very scrupulous about returning any material held by them. However, some years later IP revised their views on this affair and concluded that the ICC's actions to defend itself was a violation of the principle of non-violence within the proletarian camp. This coincided with efforts to reconcile themselves with the former members of the CBG. Perhaps these twists and turns are the source of your mix-up.

Anyway, these are secondary questions and the most important issue is the discussion about the broader problem of left communism versus Trotskyism.

Thank you for your reply to my post. It is clarifying, and I appreciate it.

Comradely,
Allan Greene a/k/a "Al Greene"
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com

June 18, 2009

Dear Alf:

I've had more time to think.

I've been reading this book published by the Trotskyists, entitled, "James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism: Selected Writings and Speeches." The years covered are 1920-1928, the early years of the Communist Party in the U.S. Cannon was a long-time militant in the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, and he re-joined the Socialist Party after having been out of it a long time when a left-wing formed up in the Socialist Party sympathetic with the Bolshevik Revolution in, if my memory serves me right, around 1918. That left-wing became the core basis for what became the formation of 2 Communist Parties in 1919 in the U.S.

In 1920, Cannon authored an article entitled, "The Story of Alex Howat." Howat was a mineworkers' union leader in the state of Kansas. He'd been repeatedly re-elected leader of that local union over a long period of time. Every time there was a problem, workers struck, and it was the local who organized strike action. This compelled the Kansas government and bosses to make an industrial court. They tried to get the cooperation in joining this court of a socialist named Titus, but Titus refused. But the international leadership of the United Mineworkers' Union repeatedly stabbed the local in the back. Howat had a history of being hated by the international leadership, who were cozy with the bosses and government and didn't like the fact the local in Kansas conducted direct labor strike action whenever workers there faced any problems.

I thought over the ordeal they put this fellow, Howat, through. He was put through this ordeal for no reason save that he was a good soldier in the proletarian army, and honorably did his service for the proletariat. He was incorruptible and never sold out the workers. They knew that and that's why they constantly re-elected him. But he was perpetually and repeatedly stabbed in the back by the misleadership of the mineworkers union.

This was in 1920.

I thought of that in light of your position on unions.

I think I have some Marxist theoretical problems with your conception. Let me see if I can make an analogy with your position that the Soviet Union after its degeneration was not a degenerated workers' state (the Trotskyist view), but was a state capitalist state.

Even though Howat was a fighter for the proletariat, he was stabbed in the back by the international leaders of the mineworkers union. In the same way, for decades, the Soviet Union's leadership acted as traitors to the working class and aiders and abettors of international capitalism in massacring workers' revolutions and workers' uprisings all over the world. I have no theoretical problem here.

But I guess my problem comes in looking, say, at the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This was a workers' revolution against Stalinism. But the entire Communist Party of Hungary shattered, and most of them went over to the side of the Revolution. One of the most persuasive Trotskyist arguments to me that what was involved in Stalinism was a brittle ruling caste, and not a ruling class, is the argument that in situations of workers' revolution, ruling classes don't shatter with most of them going over to the side of the insurgent workers, but, on the other hand, they consolidate and present a united front of the ruling classes against the insurgent workers. That didn't happen in Hungary in 1956. That's why the Trotskyist argument that the Stalinist bureaucracy -- the ruling Communist Party -- was a caste, not a ruling class, still is powerful to me.

But I do find powerful your argument that in the epoch of the past, say, one hundred years, which Lenin and Trotsky called the epoch of imperialism, and which you comrades call the epoch of capitalist decadence (and in my view, at least for the moment, there's no real difference between calling the past century or so the epoch of imperialism or calling it the epoch of capitalist decadence internationally), the objective role of unions has been particularly since around 1914 to betray and stab in the back the proletariat in the interests objectively of global capital.

One could, I suppose, make the same argument with regard to a government that arises out of a previous workers' revolution in counter-revolution against that previous workers' revolution which is anything less than a revolutionary proletarian communist sort of government. In that sense, of course, the government that replaced the 1917-1923 government of Lenin and Trotsky in Russia became that sort of counter-revolutionary government objectively aiding and abetting the international capitalist ruling class of capitalist bosses in smashing workers' revolutions all over the world, and in smashing even attempts at workers' revolutions all over the world.

But from a Marxist theoretical standpoint, at least from the standpoint of a kind of Marxist sociology, calling the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union a ruling class, and simply equating the ruling bureaucracies in the unions with the unions proper still gives me theoretically a problem.

I think there's millions of workers in unions and millions of workers in what Trotskyists call deformed workers' states and what you call state capitalist states who in some sense want to defend their respective organizations from private capitalist-ruled states militarily on a proletarian basis, but at the same time, the ruling elements in both sorts of organizations embody objectively counter-revolutionary agents against the class interests of the proletariats.

But calling the rulers of, say, the Soviet Union or of today's Vietnam, say, a ruling class, or equating the entire union with the bureaucracy, still theoretically gives me a problem -- although I'm increasingly drawn to your perspective that in the epoch of imperialist decay (decadence as you put it), anything less than purely communist revolutionary organizations of any kind can do nothing but objectively destroy the class interests of the working class.

I think this view of yours makes sense because in my 63 years of life, I've seen so many treasons and betrayals.

Anyway, gotta run.

Comradely,
Allan Greene
Email: tompaine1917@yahoo.com