International Communist Current

This article is a response to two letters published recently on the phenomenon of "uberisation” Are “uberised” employees part of the working class? It endeavours to place the issues in a historical framework by drawing on the foundations of marxism and the experience of the workers' movement.

We reply to a reader’s question: “How can the ICC maintain that capitalism is a decadent system since 1914 when there has been such enormous growth in the capitalist system since then?”

This dossier contains many of the ICC's articles on the present COVID19 health crisis.

Mass cremations of Covid victims in India

Uber Eats workers on strike

We are publishing below two letters from ICC sympathisers aimed at continuing the reflection that arose in a meeting in France on 15 May 2020 on the subject of the nature and composition of the working class. During this discussion some participants questioned what affect “uberisation” of work had on the composition of the working class. In other words, do the “uberised” employees belong to the working class? We welcome the comrades’ efforts of reflection and their willingness to express their concerns. The letters from the comrades make two contributions to this debate which will be continued at other ICC meetings.

There is an immortal line from the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, whose scenario is an international flying tournament in the year 1910. Robert Morley, playing the pompous newspaper magnate Lord Rawnsley, tells us that “the problem with these international affairs is that they attract foreigners”. As communists, who reject any idea of loyalty to the nation, we would express it differently: the problem with international competitions is that they promote patriotism.

Aftermath of ethnic clashes in Lod

This is the first time that military conflict between Israel and Hamas has been accompanied by ethnic clashes and pogroms inside Israel, marking the acceleration of capitalism's decomposition. 

Poster of May 68 against state repression

In recent months there have been criticisms and misinterpretations of our positions regarding the state measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have even concluded that the ICC in fact supports these measures. The ICC supports any proletarian struggle against the attacks by the state, but it doesn’t support demands to put an end to the anti-Covid state measures. Such demands have no other perspective than reinforcing illusions in bourgeois rule, whether democratic or openly despotic and only raise obstructions against the development of the class consciousness and the combativity.

Soup kitchen queue, Glasgow, winter 2020/21

From health to housing, education to income, the working class has been hardest hit over the past 12 plague months. The economic crisis and social deprivations, accelerated by Covid-19, have roots deep in the decadence and decomposition of capitalism. However sections of the proletariat in GB, under the most difficult conditions, have nonetheless attempted a defence of basic class interests.

Turkish military incursion into northern Syria, October 2019

Turkey’s ambitions to assert itself as a regional power in the Middle East is a clear illustration of the growing tendency towards every man for himself at the imperialist level; and it is above all the working class of Turkey and beyond which is paying the price in increased exploitation and bloody wars. 

In the first part of the reply to this reader's letter, we responded to the criticisms made by comrade D. to the "Report on the Question of the Historical Course", adopted at the 23rd ICC Congress and published in International Review 164. In this second part, we would like to deal with another question raised by the comrade in his letter: that of the possible prospect of a generalised nuclear war.

Colored National Labor Union Convention, 1869

The campaign around “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) has led many people to look for references in the history of the struggle against the oppression of and violence against black people. Among the most well-known black activist are Marcus Garvey, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King. But communists do not base their political orientation on activists fighting for equal rights within capitalism. 

In the first part of this series we sketched out the first steps of the workers’ movement in dealing with the aftermath of a 350 years history of the enslavement. In this part we will examine how the socialist parties at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century took up the political defence of black workers. Although African Americans were only one of the many “nationalities”, they were subjected to a special regime, where the culture of slavery persisted. Therefore the struggle for the abolition of the system of two classes of workers, the division between white and black workers, was an important point.

Recent protests by students in France and the UK show that the struggle of proletarians around basic class interests has not been entirely buried by a whole series of marches and protests around the themes of "democracy" and "the rights of the individual" faced with the lockdown.

The massive protests by farmers in India against the laws of the Modi government of the past winter were the largest protests in the history of India since its independence in 1947 and gained wide support from all over the world. But unlike many bourgeois organisations want us to believe, the farmers and the agrarian wage labourers were not united behind the demands of the farmers’ unions. The movement was spearheaded by the class of richer farmers-cum-commission agents, and its objectives were above all shaped by the interests of this group.

Marc Chirik passed away 30 years ago, in December 1990. In tribute to the precious contributions of our comrade, of this great revolutionary in the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, we are republishing the two articles from International Review 65 and 66 that were written just after his death. These two articles go over the broad lines of his life and summarise what he brought to the proletarian cause and the defence of marxism.

We are publishing here a three-part series on the question of education that first appeared in the pages of World Revolution in 2001 (numbers 243-245). While it starts with references to the UK general election of 2001, what the series says is still relevant today.

We publish below an article relating to the evolution of the health situation in Soviet Russia in July 1919, one year after the establishment of the Public Hygiene Commissariat. In the most difficult material conditions, including invasion by armies of the Entente and sabotage by the counter-revolutionary White Army, the method implemented by the proletariat - our method, in every way opposed to that of the bourgeoisie today confronted with the coronavirus pandemic - achieved results which, at the time, were a considerable step forward. 

Below we are publishing substantial extracts from a letter from one of our readers, followed by our response. This letter criticises our "Report on the question of the historic course", adopted at the 23rd ICC Congress and published in International Review 164. The comrade also addresses another issue: that of the prospect, still possible, of a generalised nuclear war.

The British Conservative government's disastrously incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, its incoherent undertaking of the Brexit negotiations, its U-turns over the health crisis, the economic crisis and growing conflicts with the EU, have not been met with an oppositional onslaught by the Labour Party. The British bourgeoisie has been losing control of its political apparatus and one of Labour's historic roles is to pose as an alternative to a government that has pursued populist policies that have undermined the effective functioning of British state capitalism. It has largely failed to take up the task.

The Covid-19 pandemic is seriously aggravating the world economic crisis which was already resurfacing after the anaemic post-2008 "recovery". The working class all over the world will feel the impact: unemployment, increased rates of exploitation, poverty and insecurity...This report, written for the recent congress of our section in France, analyses the manner in which a product of social decomposition is rebounding onto the economic sphere.