The so-called "International Group of the Communist Left" has long since been banned from attendance at our public meetings. The same holds good for our forum, and we have consequently blocked the user "Stavros" and will do the same for anyone else posting in the name of the "IGCL".
This ban has nothing to do with the political positions that the "IGCL" pretends to defend. It has everything to do with their behaviour, which is in flagrant contradiction with proletarian morality and worthy only of the bourgeois state.
We have already explained this at some length in previous articles, which we invite comrades to read.
OK, I really do apologise if I was too sanguine.
I should have said explicitly that I felt that - whatever the ICC want to try to discuss with them, that the political process wasn't included in that (i.e. that working with them could reasonably be out of the question)
Sorry, I feel I know the ICC well enough to trust their judgment.
Accusations of "psychologising" are easy to make; intended subversively to suggest that the person being accused is probably a bit of a looney themselves but seem never to come with any elaborated explanation of what is actually meant by the oh-so-devastating word. Yet "psychologising" appears to be regarded in some quarters as an unchallengeable put down like accusations of Stalinism with which it is closely associated, and is a bit like being told you need to shower more often by somebody holding their nose.
What most often appears to trigger the "psychologising" dismissal, is use of emotive words, or, more exactly references to emotions. References to "hate" set off quick responses whereas a reference to "love" which I suppose is its opposite will receive no response. Maybe the bourgeoisie suffer more from hatred than any other emotion though they and their artistic purveyors of emotional expression in popular song and film talk mostly about love. Perhaps the bourgeoisie need to keep their hatred a secret?
The bourgeoisie are competitive. This is a fact isn't it? It isn't psychologising them to say they're competitive. They have to outdo their competitors; they have to win. Capitalism demands this of them. But not everyone can win in capitalism's terms so there's always losers. Winners can become arrogant and cocky, throwing their weight about, but can also become defensive because they have to continue to protect their interests and winnings, and competition doesn't stop just because you happened to win one time. In fact winners are really little different from losers for they are interchangeable in capitalist society. You win some you lose some. That's common sense.
When the economic field of play is fully occupied the struggle against competitors leads inevitably to underhanded deeds, trade restrictions, embargoes, veiled threats, military build-ups and finally to war. War is the final expressions of an unbearable hatred for the other, suitably identified as evil incarnate like nazis or commies, terrorists and religious fanatics, homosexuals and power-hungry dictators. Let loose from its explosive passivity in violence, death and destruction, the capitalist requirement to eliminate the competition in whatever way possible is unleashed and bourgeois rationality is put at the service of an organised hatred of epic proportions, disguised of course as civilised war conducted where possible by remote control. Oh! The beauty of high tec. It removes the emotional sting.
The bourgeois would laugh at this and say that emotion doesn't come into it it's all just a question of good guys having to deal with bad guys as in the 2nd World War and the fact that the economies of the winners of that moral crusade prospered wonderfully for 20 years after it is a mere coincidence.
The working class is different from the bourgeois and isn't competitive at all. True, the bourgeois turns sport into competition even the beautiful game. And turns the education system and just about everything into a competition of each against all where what finally counts may well turn out to be how much money you have in order to buy competitive success like private schooling and welfare.
I hadn't finished writing the above when it suddenly got posted. Never mind. Let it be! I wanted to try and show how on balance the proletariat embodies what you might call the good, the nice emotions, and the bourgeois a lot of the less pleasant ones. But leave it.
further elaboration of why we banned the IFICC (now morphed into the IGCL) from our public meetings can be found here: https://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/705
We think the discussion here should focus on the specific points raised by the two articles we have linked to here.
This is a quote from the article linked to by the webmaster in his opening post.
Certain things stand out for me in the quote above like "confidence in the party". Of course we don't have "the party" as yet but we do have a communist left and we have had the ICC for 40 years and shouldn't forget this or take it for granted. We should express our confidence in it. However there's no shortage of critics to pick holes in the ICC, and some of them appear remorseless in so doing, even maliciously destructive, none more so than ex-members of the ICC itself. If like me you have tended generally to take the easy way out till now, and dismiss these critics as evidencing only the sour grapes syndrome, and thus avoid thinking about what is an unpleasant topic to have to pay attention to perhaps you should reconsider? For we should have confidence in our party, our communist organization, and believe it when it says it is suffering especially when it falls under threatening attacks from ex-members.
This is because ex-militants "wounded by the party" can develop an uncontrollable hatred towards their former colleagues. This statement is easy to understand. I know well that people wounded by what they once thought they loved can quickly turn that love to hate when they feel they've been wounded or rejected. This isn't dismissable as psychologising but an unhappy fact of life in class society today. The "psychologising" is in the suspicion and slander spread so undetectably by the sadly disappointed people, these ex-comrades, these ex-lovers, wounded by the party, who now believe in nothing and are submerged in the shit of an uncontrollable hatred against it and those they once thought they loved. (But how serious was their love and commitment?)
That these unhappy and frustrated individuals, still claiming allegiance to communist theory, should then regress to the point of offering their services to the repressive forces of the bourgeois state and turn informer, is the part I find hard to follow. Victor Serge explains though that it is their falling into a nihilist void, their taking nothing seriously any more except intrigue and conspiracy, and seeing everything as a mere pointless game of fools that has usurped their motivating life force and made of it a mockery. This is monstrous! For not only have they lost the supportive comradeship of the party, the cement that holds revolutionaries together, but in doing so have lost all belief in life!