International Communist Current

We publish below a position paper by one of our sympathisers on the No War But The Class War committee meeting in Paris on 2 December. We welcome this contribution and generally support the political content of this text

A response to a thread on the anarchist forum libcom, which highlights the deep divisions within the anarchist milieu over the war in Ukraine.

A series of articles explaining that the campaign to defend the NHS is a campaign to defend the capitalist state, not the working class.

It's not just French workers who are "disgruntled" with the state of this system.

A statement from the ICC about the perspectives of capitalist society in the 2020s.

On February 1st around half a million workers from different sectors in Britain were on strike – rail and some bus networks, civil servants, and in particular workers in education, both schools and universities. This was the biggest number of workers out on one day since the strike wave in Britain began last summer.

130 years ago, when tensions between capitalist powers were growing in Europe, Frederick Engels posed the dilemma for humanity: Communism or Barbarism. This alternative was concretised in the First World War which broke out in 1914 and caused 20 million deaths, another 20 million invalids, and in the chaos of war there was the Spanish flu pandemic with more than 50 million deaths. The revolution in Russia in 1917 and the revolutionary attempts in other countries put an end to the carnage and showed the other side of the historical dilemma posed by Engels: the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale by the revolutionary class, the proletariat, opening up the possibility of a communist society.

Leaflet given out by the ICC at the recent massive demonstrations in France

An article showing that the current revival of workers’ militancy has spread to other European countries.

Blank sheets of paper symbolise the demand for "free speech" and other democratic illusions

An article looking at a very real danger facing the workers of China.

On Friday 2 December, the first meeting in France of the 'No War But The Class War' committee took place in Paris. In this article, we explain our criticisms of this project.

For once, we thank the “International Group of the Communist Left” (IGCL) for giving us the opportunity to remind ourselves of what it really is. To this end, we reproduce below (in full, including footnotes) their little article that is supposed to point out our impasse and contradictions on the issue of parasitism, if the title is to be believed. And for the benefit of our readers, we respond to it right after.

A new series which develops our critique of the so-called “communisation” tendency and its claims to have gone beyond marxism and the communist left.

An article recounting the first major confrontation between the precursors of the ICC and an early expression of the “communisation” tendency.

Alongside the article on the history of the “Bérard tendency” in International Review 169, we are republishing a developed response by the organisation, first published in Révolution Internationale no 9 (first series), May-June 1974. Its principal arguments against the embryonic “communisation” tendency – their rejection of the economic struggles of the working class, and of the political dimension of the proletarian revolution, etc – remain entirely valid today.

High energy bills are weighing on everyone's mind. How could it be otherwise when almost a quarter of your income has to be spent on energy? This is one of the major components of the “cost of living” crisis which has provoked a wave of strikes in the UK, and which is echoing in other European countries. But there are other forms of protest taking place, directly targeting energy bills but based on the idea of “popular protest”. This article looks at some of the dangers contained in these kinds of campaigns, focusing on “Don’t Pay UK”. 

Despite their radical rhetoric, the trade unions are an obstacle to real workers' unity

All the reporters and commentators are referring to the current strikes as the biggest working class action in Britain for decades; only the huge strikes of 1979 produced a bigger and more widespread movement. Action on this scale in a country as large as Britain is not only significant locally, it is an event of international importance, a message to the exploited of every country. This international leaflet in pdf form is available here. We encourage our readers to print out copies and distribute them wherever possible. 

The 2022 football World Cup has expressed the irrationality and rottenness of the capitalist world to the highest degree.

The "refugee problem" is a product of the global disintegration of capitalism, and the ruling class has no solution to it. 

The strikes in Britain signify a real break from the years of retreat which began in the 1980s

The reader’s contribution published here is about the global tendencies and tensions underlying a recent, unprecedented event in the history of British politics: the resignation of Truss after only 44 days and after several tumultuous weeks, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom.

We publish here an article by the Internationalist Voice group, which argues forcefully against the attempts of the international bourgeoisie to steer the mounting anger of the population in Iran towards the illusion of an “emancipation of women” inside the confines of capitalist society. 

Because of the number of sectors affected, the combativity of the workers involved in the struggle and the widespread support for action among the working population, the wave of strikes which has spread throughout Britain this summer is an event of undeniable importance on the domestic level. But we also need to understand that the historical significance of these struggles goes far beyond their local dimension or even their one-off occurrence.

Storm damage from 150mph winds in Florida

In the first half of 2022, as in so many of the previous years, the planet was plagued by numerous wildfires, catastrophic flooding, tropical storms and unprecedented heat waves. The increase of temperature has considerably exacerbated the risk of extreme weather disasters. The scale of destruction it implies is terrifying: it reveals the acceleration of the decomposition of capitalism.