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"Free Palestine" - a bourgeois nationalist slogan
The recent demonstrations "in solidarity with Palestine" have given vent to real indignation about the barbarism being unleashed in Gaza. But they are manipulated in the most shameless way by the bourgeoisie. These are demonstrations which call for a false solidarity on a terrain which is not internationalist and proletarian. On the contrary, this is the terrain of bourgeois nationalism which feeds all imperialist confrontations.
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.
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.
Mass cremations of Covid victims in India
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.
Labour’s election losses help us understand what’s going on in the ruling class, but they are not a defeat for the working class, because the Labour Party has long been a party of capital.
Unlike the current Black Lives Matter protests, which channel anger against racism into the mire of bourgeois politics, the strike of February 1941 in occupied Holland shows that the working class can fight on its own ground against the persecution of minorities.
Bristol "Kill the Bill" protests: the left spreads democratic illusions
The UK government is without doubt sharpening its tools of repression. But workers need to fight against state violence and repression as part of their own class struggle, not as part of a popular front for “democratic rights”.
The Communards destroy a symbol of France's "colonial glory"
The 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune - above all in France - has seen a concerted campaign by the bourgeoisie to distort the real meaning of this seminal event in working class history.
Suppression of the Kronstadt revolt by the Red Army: a tragic error
After the Russian revolution in 1917, the revolution in Germany in 1918, the creation of the Communist International in 1919, we mark the hundredth anniversary of the tragic crushing of the revolt by the workers, soldiers and sailors of Kronstadt in March 1921 with a document “The lessons of Kronstadt” from International Review, in order to indeed draw the key lessons of this event for the struggles of the future.
The article below was recently published by the ICC's French section. If the details of violence among young people relate to that country, they are not a French specificity, as is clear from many recent examples in the UK.
Aung San Suu Kyi - democratic face of military rule
With the recent military coup in Myanmar, the army officially took back power. But had it really
ever left?
For more than a year now the ruling class everywhere has been gripped by the Corona virus epidemic without any end to it really coming into sight. Up until now it was the poorest and least developed countries which paid the heaviest tribute to sicknesses, epidemics or endemic illnesses. Today it's the most developed countries which are being rocked to their foundations by the Covid-19 outbreak.
The number of people infected with the Covid-19 virus has been rising sharply in recent weeks in many parts of the world, especially in Europe, which has once more become one of the epicentres of the pandemic. The “possibility of a second wave” announced several months ago by epidemiologists is now a reality and it is highly likely that it will be much more virulent than the previous one.
After a year in which the African continent seemed to escape the worst of the pandemic, the diagnosis for 2021 is less rosy....
The present article follows on from the ones we have already published which denounce an attempt to falsify the real origins of the communist left, emanating from a blog called Nuevo Curso (recently rebaptised Communia). This attempt is orchestrated by an adventurer, Gaizka whose aim is in no way to contribute to the defence and clarification of the positions of this current but to “make a name for himself” in the proletarian political milieu. Following our exposure, Gaizka remained totally silent. Furthermore, he received very little support; virtually the only one, and the most explicit, coming from the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL), which before changing its name in 2014, called itself the Internal Fraction of the International Communist Current (IFICC). This is a group whose prime vocation, for the last 20 years, is to slander the ICC...
Every major country has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the crisis has not had a uniform impact. The UK, with more than 100,000 deaths, has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the world and, throughout 2020, the shadow of Brexit hung over the economy, with negotiations continuing for months until the British bourgeoisie finally broke the “shackles” of the EU at the start of 2021. The combination of pandemic and Brexit is hitting an economy that already had one of the weakest recoveries from the 2008 financial crisis.
Late last year the ICC held two ‘virtual’ discussion meetings with invited contacts and sympathisers in Europe and America on the theme of ‘The Pandemic and the Working Class’, examining issues in their historic and current aspects.
The following article was written before the current "vaccine nationalism" row between Britain and the EU over supplies of the Oxford-AstraZeneca inoculation. But it shows “vaccine nationalism” is precisely the way that nations and companies are going because they cannot escape the laws of profitability and the sharpening tendency of “every man for himself” in international relations.
In the last year, the world has been shaken by two unprecedented events of extreme importance in the life of capitalism: the Covid-19 pandemic and, most recently, the assault on the Capitol in Washington after the American elections that sanctioned the defeat of Donald Trump. These two events are neither insignificant nor separate from each other. They can only be understood in a historical framework that we present in this text, originally penned as an introduction to two 'virtual' public meetings held in February 2021.
We are publishing this article written by a close sympathiser, of the ICC in the US, which defends our general analysis of the significance of the events of January 6 in Washington, and points out the role of those ardent apologists of bourgeois democracy – the Trotskyists, “Democratic Socialists” etc - in helping to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state.
Unlike the recent citizen mobilisation in Lima, this strike of the workers of the agro-industrial enterprises in Peru had a clear class basis. The proletariat shows its strength and capabilities when it struggles directly against exploitation.
The International media always try to depict Sweden as a “paradise on earth”, a Welfare State with almost total equality among the citizens. Nothing could be further from the truth. For more than three decades, privatisations and outsourcing of schools, hospitals, GP surgeries, as well as other sectors, like care for the elderly, has created a situation where the health sector has suffered from increased cuts. The corona crisis has clearly shown the cracks in this illusion. Today, the number of hospital beds in Sweden has decreased to one of the lowest levels in Europe.
The fragile cease-fire coming from the "accords" between Armenia and Azerbaijan permits no illusions about a "peaceful settlement" of the conflict. It is the product of a situation which can only sanction a precarious "order" and a relation of forces imposed by both Russia and Turkey. It settles nothing. On the contrary it represents another stage in the exacerbation of military tensions and feeds the chaos in this imperialist fault-line which risks reigniting the flames of war later on.
It is astonishing how countries with the most advanced technologies are unable to control and contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Supporters of conspiracy theories say that there must be something behind this and indeed there is something behind it, but not a conspiracy. It's the decline of the capitalist method of production that's the cause and it is increasingly hindering not only the development of the forces of social production but also threatening the very survival of mankind.
Bus station chaos during India's first lockdown
Despite India becoming a global "economic giant", its response to the Covid crisis exposes a totally inadequate public health system. The health crisis has been further exacerbated by the irresponsible policies of the populist Modi regime.
We are publishing a letter from a sympathiser who took part in a recent online discussion meeting and raises some questions about our approach towards ant-racism and “identity politics”. Our response follows.
This report was written for a recent congress of our section in France and will be followed by other reports on the world situation.
When the world is facing the trial of the Covid-19 pandemic, we in the ICC have also been through the painful experience of the passing away of our comrade Kishan on 26th March, 2020. This is a great loss for the ICC and its section in India, and we will miss him greatly. Kishan made an important contribution to the life of the ICC and was a comrade with a great fighting spirit till his last breath.
The discussion texts we are publishing here are the product of an internal debate within the ICC regarding the significance and direction of the historical phase in the life of decadent capitalism which was definitively opened up by the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989: the phase of decomposition, the terminal phase of capitalist decadence.
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.
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.
In December last year the ICC wrote to the Internationalist Communist Tendency, asking them to publish a letter of correction of serious falsifications made about our organisation that appeared on the ICT website in an article entitled ‘On the forty-fifth anniversary of the Founding of the CWO’. The ICC does not request such rectifications from the bourgeois camp. We expect lies coming from this direction and simply denounce any such defamations as the trademark of the enemy class.
We republish here a letter we addressed to the IBRP in December 2004 following the appearance on its website of a declaration emanating from a mysterious “Circle of Internationalist Communists”, containing extremely grave accusations against the ICC. Despite the protests of our organisation, which it did not take into account, the IBRP did not make any attempt to verify the reality of this group or the content of the accusations in question.
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.
Baku Congress, 1920: "support for colonial revolutions" really meant grave concessions to nationalism by the Comintern
While the founding Congress of the Communist International was a real step forward in the unification of the world proletariat, the evolution of the CI in the years that followed was marked essentially by regressions which disarmed the revolution in the face of the counter-revolutionary forces which were more and more gaining ground. The rampant opportunism within the ranks of the party was not eliminated as Lenin and the Bolsheviks envisaged. On the contrary, with the degeneration of the revolution, it ended up taking a preponderant place and hastened the end of the CI as a class party. This opportunist dynamic, already visible by the Second Congress, only deepened after that, both on the programmatic and organisational levels, as we will try to show in this article.
Inauguration
Washington under military occupation
The narrow Biden election in the US will not heal the divisions in US society or overcome the increasingly fragmented state of the "world order".
“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic”. This declaration by ex-president George W Bush followed the January 6 invasion of the Capitol by several hundred Donald Trump partisans, who had come to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. It tells us a lot about the gravity of what happened in Washington that day.
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.
St Louis USA, 1918: The 'Spanish Flu' was the first pandemic of decadent capitalism.
The link between the development of an infection on one hand, and the organisation and state of society on the other, doesn't only concern the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-20. This article explores how the decadence of capitalism - like that of class societies preceding it - fosters plague and poses the necessity of a revolution in social relations.
As 2020 drew to a close, the health crisis deteriorated inexorably and our organisation continued its intervention towards the proletariat and its most politicised minorities. It's indeed necessary to fight against the isolation and atomisation imposed on us by the bourgeoisie with its lockdown measures and curfews. We therefore held an online meeting on 21 November 2020, following on from an earlier one that took place on 17 October. The discussions revealed a maturation and deepening of the various political points raised, as well as questions that remain to be addressed...
We publish here the third of the reports on the world situation written for the Congress of our section in France. This one focuses on the situation of the international working class prior to and during the global pandemic.
This dossier contains all the articles on the present COVID19 health crisis.
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.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit at the beginning of 2020, the tendency towards increasingly chaotic imperialist tensions and conflicts was already underway. All the indications are that the pandemic will accelerate these tendencies.
We are publishing this article because of the paramount importance of gaining a deeper understanding of the rise of Chinese capitalism in the last three decades, and more specifically of the aims of its “New Silk Road” project. It should be noted that it was written some time before the current Covid-19 pandemic, which will certainly have a significant impact on the global imperialist pecking order. It also puts forward a number of elements – such as the sections on the “Mackinder Doctrine” and on the development of the “credit economy” in Stalinist regimes – which are currently under discussion in the ICC. We therefore offer it as the contribution of an individual comrade.
Idlib, Syria, 2020
This text does not aim to develop a history of recent conflicts in the Middle East but to show how the understanding of the decadence and decomposition of capitalism is an essential framework for understanding the explosion of contradictions which plunge this region of the world today into warlike bestiality and chaos. This barbarism has a history, and it reflects the rotting of the system.
