War

Here, in this article, we will reply briefly to the idea put forward by the IBRP that the ICC’s supposed ‘idealist’ political method justified such a refusal.

In their reply to our appeal they say:

Wars, like revolutions, are historic events of capital importance in demarcating the bourgeois camp from the revolutionary camp; they provide proof of the class nature of political forces. This was the case with the First World War which provoked the betrayal of Social-Democracy at the international level, the death of the Second International and the emergence of a minority which formed the new Communist Parties and the Third International.

The IBRP has responded, in the International Communist Review no 13, to our polemical article “The IBRP’s Conception of Decadent Capitalism” which appeared in no. 79 of our International Review.tc "The IBRP has responded, in the International Communist Review no 13, to our polemical article TheIBRP’sConceptionofDecadentCapitalism which appeared in no 79 of our International Review." The IBRP clearly expound their positions. Thus the article is a contribution to the necessary debate that must exist between the organisations of the Communist Left, which have a decisive responsibility in the struggle for the formation of the proletariat’s communist party.

Up until the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, the alternative posed by the workers’ movement since the beginning of the century - war or revolution - clearly summarised what was at stake in the situation: through a dizzying aims race, the two rival blocs were preparing for a third world war, the only response that capitalism can have to its economic crisis. Today, humanity is confronted, not with a ‘new world order’ as they claimed in 1989, but with a world disorder in which chaos and barbarism has been developing everywhere...

With the violent massacres of the Persian Gulf, world capi­talism has revealed its true face and what its 'new world or­der' is all about: chaos, barbarism and war. The reality of imperialist war - which has in­volved, al­though not in a direct fashion, the whole of the proletariat in the imperialist metropoles - has stimulated a healthy decanta­tion in the proletarian political camp...

The fantastic violence of the Gulf War has served as a reminder that capitalism means war. The historic responsibility of the working class, as the only force capable of opposing capital, has been highlighted all the more. But to take up this responsibility, the revolutionary class must reappropriate the theoretical and practical experience of its own struggle against war. It must draw from this experience confidence in its revolutionary capacities and the means to fight successfully.