The adventurer Gaizka has the defenders he deserves: the gangsters of the IGCL

Submitted by International Review on

Printer-friendly version

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[1] (recently rebaptised Communia). This attempt is orchestrated by an adventurer, Gaizka[2], 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. This attack against the historic current of the communist left seeks to turn it into a vague movement from which the rigorous proletarian principles which presided over its formation have been amputated, creating an obstacle to the transmission, to future generations of revolutionaries, of the acquisitions of the struggle of the left fractions against the opportunism and degeneration of the parties of the Communist International. As for the adventurer Gaizka, we have supplied a sizeable amount of information, which to this day has not been refuted, about this gentleman’s relations with the personalities of the world of bourgeois politics (of the left but above all of the right). This is the kind of behaviour and personality trait which he shares with better known adventurers in history such as Ferdinand Lassalle and Jean Baptiste von Schweitzer who operated within the workers’ movement in Germany in the 19th century[3], even if he is very far from having the same status as these personalities.

Following our exposure, Gaizka remained totally silent: refuting the reality of the turpitudes we proved was a “mission impossible” for him. 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, and their statement of position in favour of Nuevo Curso is accompanied by a new hate-filled attack on our organisation[4].

Having denounced the fraud of this so-called left communist Nuevo Curso and the real nature of its animator Gaizka, we now have to look at the profile of his “friends”. The question is obviously not without importance. The Holy Alliance between Nuevo Curso and the IGCL says a lot about the real nature of each of these groups and their “contribution” to the efforts of young elements searching for class positions. But before examining the pedigree of the IGCL, it’s worth quickly focusing on the way this group positioned itself with regard to Nuevo Curso when it first appeared.

The IGCL’s support for Nuevo Curso and Gaizka

It was with much enthusiasm and flattery that the IGCL saluted the entry of the Nuevo Curso blog onto the political scene:

“Nuevo Curso is a blog of comrades who have begun publishing regularly on the situation and on wider questions, including theoretical issues. Unfortunately, their blog is only in Spanish. The ensemble of positions they defend are class positions which are part of the programmatic framework of the communist left… We are very impressed not only by their affirmation of class positions with no concessions, but also by the ‘marxist quality’ of the comrades’ texts... ”(our emphasis. From Revolution or War no.9, “New communist voices: Nuevo Curso (Spain) and Workers’ Offensive (USA)”)

In the same vein, “the constitution of Emancipacion as a fully-fledged political group (which animates the blog Nuevo Curso) is an important step whose political and historical significance goes well beyond the mere appearance of a new communist group… it expresses the fact that the international proletariat, although subjugated and very far from being able to push back the various attacks of capital, is tending to resist through struggle and to break out of the ideological grip of capital, and that its revolutionary future remains intact. It expresses the (relative) ‘vitality’ of the proletariat”. (Our emphasis, Revolution or War 12, IGCL letter to Emancipacion on its first congress).

The IGCL could not however avoid raising the problem posed by Nuevo Curso’s interpretation of the communist left which includes the “Trotskyist” current before its betrayal during the Second World War. The absence of any criticism by the IGCL on this question would have made it obvious that the group is not at all concerned with the real defence of the communist left, that its proclamation about being part of it and claim to defend it is nothing but a deception serving its sordid manoeuvres aimed at discrediting the ICC. That said,  the “timidity” and “gentleness” of the IGCL’s criticisms of Nuevo Curso hardly hides its benevolent attitude to this attack on the communist left: “We want above all to draw the comrades’ attention to the programmatic, theoretical and political dead-end into which the claim of continuity with the Fourth International is leading Emancipacion… Its passage to becoming a fully-fledged political group is extremely positive in itself, and at the same time raises new questions and responsibilities. These came to light at the congress. And one of them is that this reference to the Fourth International needs to be discussed – and in our view combated – in order to allow Emancipacion and its members to fulfil in the best way possible the historic task that the proletariat has conferred on them” (our emphasis – Revolution or War, IGCL letter to Emancipacion on its first congress). Instead of clearly denouncing an attack on the communist left, the IGCL evades this fundamental problem by trying to pull the wool over our eyes with phrases about the “programmatic, theoretical and political dead-end” into which Emancipacion is being led, and by evoking, no less, “the historic task that the proletariat has conferred on them”. Moral: the IGCL doesn’t give a fig about the defence of the communist left but is very concerned about the future of Emancipacion.

Furthermore, as soon as our organisation had provided sufficient information to characterise Gaizka (the main animator of Nuevo Curso) as an adventurer who, between 1992 and 94 had developed a relationship with the most important bourgeois party in Spain at the time, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), there was no room for doubt regarding the approach of Nuevo Curso – this was an attempt to distort the real history of the communist left. And there was even less room for doubt for the members of the IGCL since they were still militants of the ICC in 1992-94 and had full knowledge of the trajectory and activities of this individual.

However, this information, accessible to anyone (and, we repeat, denied by no one) did not prevent the IGCL from rushing to the assistance of the adventurer Gaizka faced with the denunciation we had made: “We must point out that to this day we have not seen any provocation, manoeuvre, denigration, slander or rumour launched by the members of Nuevo Curso, even on an individual basis, or any policy of destruction against other revolutionary groups or militants”[5]. Evidently, Gaizka doesn’t function in the same way as the IGCL, since the list of repulsive behaviours mentioned here is a very good summary of the IGCL’s own way of acting. And it’s no mean achievement of these gangsters and cheats to tell us that there’s no problem with Gaizka because he doesn’t conduct himself in the same way as they do.

With Gaizka, it’s his political persona which is the issue, the fact that, like other better-known adventurers before him, he is distinguished by the fact that “Contrary to sincere fighters who selflessly join a revolutionary organisation in order to help the working class to fulfil its historical role, adventurers join revolutionary organisations to fulfil their own ‘historical mission’. They want to place the movement at their service and constantly look for recognition with this purpose”[6].  For Gaizka, it’s the rewriting of the history of the communist left, its disfigurement, which is his selling point and which will puff him up if the operation succeeds[7].

Back to the list of misdeeds by the IFICC/IGCL

The IFCC was formed in 2001 on the basis of hatred of the ICC and the will to destroy it. Not succeeding in doing so, it tried to harm it as much as it could. Under the pretext of wanting to "straighten out the ICC", which according to them was threatened with "opportunist degeneration", the small group of ICC militants who founded the IFICC had, from the outset, been characterised by intrigue (holding secret meetings[8]), by thuggish actions such as theft and blackmail, and by the work of provocateurs, in particular through a smear campaign against a comrade publicly accused by them of being a state agent indirectly manipulating our organisation.

Since we cannot here give a detailed account of the misdeeds of the IFICC/IGCL, we refer the reader to the main articles of denunciation that we have written on this subject[9] and we will limit ourselves here to a number of concrete illustrations.

The members of the IFICC deliberately placed themselves outside our organisation as a consequence of the following behaviour:

    - Repeated violations of our statutes (in particular the refusal to pay their dues in full) and their refusal to commit themselves to respecting them in the future;

    - Refusal to come and present the defence of their behaviour within the organisation in the face of our criticism of it, before an extraordinary conference of the organisation which specifically put this issue on its agenda;

    - Theft of ICC’s money and material (address files and internal documents).

The IFICC as a police-like group

In the end, the members of the IFICC were excluded[10] from our organisation, not for these intolerable behaviours but for their activities as spies, with several acts of snitching to their credit. For example, they published on their website the date on which an ICC Conference was to be held in Mexico with the participation of ICC militants from other countries. This repugnant act of the IFICC, which could only facilitate the work of the repressive forces of the bourgeois state against revolutionary militants, is all the more despicable because the IFICC members knew full well that some of our comrades in Mexico had already been directly victims of repression in the past and that some had been forced to flee the countries they were born in.

But the snitching behaviour of IFICC members is not just about this episode. Before and after their exclusion from the ICC, they systematised their spying work on our organisation and regularly reported the results in their newsletters. Some of the "information" thus published, quite worthy of the gutter press (for example, "revelations" about militants who were a couple), is of interest only to the few imbeciles (if any exist outside the IFICC’s own members) who take pleasure in fantasising about a family oligarchy within the ICC. Far from being harmless, these are activities worthy of police agents. Here is a small sample:

    - IFICC Bulletin n° 14 is filled with prose worthy of the most zealous police reports: "This text written by CG[11], alias Peter, which is proved by the style and especially by the (rather fanciful) reference to a lamentable recovery operation carried out under his direction. This same Peter is the one who heads the ICC and who, after having excluded or pushed out most of the founding members of the ICC, claims to be the sole heir of MC[12]. But it is also important to know that if Peter is leading this hateful cabal against our comrade Jonas, it is for the simple reason that Louise (alias Avril), the militant about whom Jonas dared to express clear doubts, is none other than the partner of the leader".

    - In Bulletin n° 18, we are treated to a detailed report (typical of the informers’ reports found in police archives) on a public meeting of the International Communist Party (PCI-Le Prolétaire), where all the deeds and actions of "Peter alias CG" are reported.

    - Bulletin n° 19 returns to the charge about Peter "who was distributing publications on his own” in such and such a demonstration and raises a "highly political" question: "Finally, and you will understand that we also ask this question: where is Louise? Absent from the demonstrations, absent from public meetings, is she 'sick' again?".

The above sample of the sordid gathering of information by IFICC members is quite significant of the way these people conceived their "fractional work" (as gossip, police reports, etc). Indeed, the exhibition of such information is also aimed at the whole ICC, with a view to putting pressure on its militants by making them understand that they are "under surveillance", that nothing they do will escape the vigilance of the "Internal Fraction". This is evidenced by the innocent information published in Bulletin No. 13, which reports that the ICC has rented a "luxury room" for a public meeting, information whose sole function is to contribute to this atmosphere of being under permanent surveillance. It is with the same objective that the members of the ICC, as well as our contacts, regularly received in their mailboxes, even when some of them had changed address, the famous "Bulletin Communiste", despite protests and repeated requests to stop such mailings. It was a way of saying to the recipients: "We are watching you and we won't leave you alone".

It is not because it emanates from the sick brains of obsessive persecutors that such a job of policing our organisation, and especially some of its members, should be taken extremely seriously.

To conclude on the IFICC’s police-like behaviour, it is worth mentioning the publication by the IFICC of a 118-page text in A4 format and in small print (about 150,000 words!) entitled "The History of the International Secretariat of the ICC". This text, according to its subtitle, claims to tell "How opportunism imposed itself in the central organs before contaminating and beginning the destruction of the whole organisation...". It is a tale that can, in many ways, be described as a detective novel.

In the first place, it is a novel, that is to say a fiction and by no means a historical text, even if it refers to real facts and characters. It is a bit like considering Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers as the true story of d'Artagnan (who really existed) and his friends. Obviously, even if there is no possible comparison between Dumas' romantic imagination and the sick and paranoid imagination of the authors of this "story", we are entitled to a "thriller" with highly stereotypical characters, notably Louise and Peter. Louise is the main "villain" in the story, a true Lady Macbeth. She had pushed her husband to assassinate King Duncan so that he could take the throne. For her part, Louise, in conjunction with the state's specialised services, devilishly manipulates her partner Peter, inciting him to commit all kinds of crimes against the ICC and its militants[13]. Peter thus became the "leader", the one "who runs the ICC" (sic) after having eliminated "most of the CCI's founding members" and who "claims to be the sole heir of MC". It is no longer Peter-Macbeth we are dealing with but Peter-Stalin. And it is here, once again, that the police-like character of this text is manifested. Indeed, it explains the so-called "opportunist evolution" of the ICC by the intrigues of a number of evil characters, as if the degeneration and betrayal of the Bolshevik party had been the result of the action of the megalomaniac Stalin and not the consequence of the failure of the world revolution and the isolation of the revolution in Russia. This text comes from the purest police conception of history, which has always been fought by marxism, and its authors must be recognised as having been somewhat in advance of all the "conspiracy theorists" who today abound on the social networks and in the entourage of Donald Trump.

But the most odiously police-like character of this text is indeed the fact that it discloses many details about the internal workings of our organisation, which are blessed bread for the police services. The depths to which the IGCL can sink has no limits.

The IFICC’s efforts to build a "cordon sanitaire" against the ICC

Having failed to convince the militants of the ICC of the need to exclude the "leader" and the "partner of the leader", this parasitic group has set itself the objective of dragging other groups of the communist left behind its slanders, in order to establish a cordon sanitaire around the ICC and discredit it (see below the episodes of the "Circulo" and the "public meeting of the IBRP[14] in Paris). The IFICC thus asked the PCI (Le Prolétaire), in a letter sent on 27 January 2002, at the same time as to other groups of the communist left, to take a stand in its favour against the ICC: "Today we see only one solution: to address you so that you ask our organisation to open its eyes and regain its sense of responsibility. (...) Because we are in disagreement, today the ICC is doing everything it can to marginalise us and demolish us morally and politically "[15]. In spite of this letter, the IFICC had the nerve to write in its Bulletin n° 13: "we want to affirm that, for our part, we have never asked anyone to take sides between the ICC and the Fraction".

The desire to isolate the ICC meant trying to establish a perimeter wider than the organisations of the communist left. It involved building a fence, wherever possible and through different means, between the ICC and all those who, at one time or another, were likely to be interested in the content of our intervention. This is the meaning of its smear campaigns on its website, sometimes even through leaflets dedicated to this purpose, and in all the discussion forums that were accessible to it.

While we could not forbid IFICC members to go to street demonstrations to keep an eye on us, we could, on the other hand, prevent them from doing their dirty work of spying on our public meetings. This is why the ICC finally decided to ban the presence of members of the so-called "Internal Fraction" of the ICC from its public meetings and open contact meetings[16]. On several occasions we had to face threats (including the loud threat to slit the throat of one of our comrades[17]) and physical assaults from these thugs.

The opportunist degeneration of the ICC, proclaimed but never demonstrated by the IFICC!

The IFICC presented itself as "the true continuator of the CCI" which had allegedly gone through an "opportunist" and "Stalinist" degeneration. It declared that it was continuing the work, supposedly abandoned by the ICC, of defending the "true positions of this organisation", now threatened by the development of opportunism in the ICC and affecting in particular the question of its functioning. We have seen in practice the IFICC’s own conception of respect for the statutes and even the most elementary rules of behaviour of the workers' movement.

Moreover, nowhere is there any trace of a "political" argumentation by the IFICC, clearly highlighting its "fundamental divergences" with the ICC, which would have justified the constitution of an "internal fraction" situated in the continuity of all the left fractions of the workers’ movement, from the Spartacus League to the Italian Left Fraction[18]. Having always been incapable of developing the necessary political rigour by drawing inspiration from the experience of the workers' movement, it preferred to set up the scarecrow of popular vindictiveness by repeating endlessly that the ICC is a sect "without hope of recovery, and which has largely marginalised itself from the proletarian camp, or even put itself out of action, because of its opportunist positions". (Activities report of the 2nd General Meeting of the IGCL. Revolution or War n° 12).

Why and how the ICC has put itself "out of the action in the proletarian camp", a concept that we don't find anywhere in our predecessors of Bilan and Internationalisme[19] (descent from which the IFICC-IGCL has the indecency to claim, in particular its alleged continuity with our comrade MC[20]).

The IFICC-IGCL suggests that have betrayed, or are on the way to betraying, proletarian internationalism, which would indeed constitute a valid reason to denounce the opportunism leading in that direction. But, to date, the IFICC-IGCL has in no way demonstrated how our characterisation of the current phase of capitalist decadence, that of its decomposition[21] - which, according to these people, is a masterpiece of the opportunism of the ICC - is an illustration of this betrayal!

The IGCL-IFICC suggests that our sectarianism is expressed through our conception that there are parasitic groups acting in the milieu of the communist left[22]. This, as well as the idea that parasitism poses a danger to the proletarian political milieu, is what they claim marginalises us in relation to this milieu and even constitute a threat to it. In reality, this conception only constitutes a danger for the parasites and we defend its validity in the same way as we reclaim the fight of Marx and Engels against the Alliance of Bakunin within the First International: "It is high time, once and for all, to put an end to the daily internal struggles provoked in our Association by the presence of this parasitic body". (Engels, "The General Council to all members of the International", warning against the Bakunin Alliance).

The method of "suggesting" while avoiding the underlying political problem appeals to vulgar common sense[23], to the methods of witch-hunting practised in the Middle Ages, and which is experiencing a revival in today's decaying society - in particular, the all-out search for scapegoats for all the ills of society.

In reality, the IFICC-IGCL has never explained that, when its members were part of the ICC, they always supported the Theses on Parasitism and the Theses on Decomposition. Their attack on our organisation in 2000 made no reference to disagreements on these issues. It was only later that they "discovered", very conveniently, that they disagreed with these analyses. The challenge for them was to remove obstacles to the justification of their new political project:

    - By becoming in their turn cartoon caricatures of parasites, they obviously could not bear the image that the mirror of our analysis of parasitism reflected back on themselves and their behaviour. They had to break this mirror in order to make the ICC guilty of their own exactions, and to try to deprive the ICC of an adequate method for fighting them;

    - By rejecting the theory of the decomposition of capitalism elaborated by the ICC, which it is the only organisation of the communist left that defends this conception, the IFICC could gently flatter the other groups of the communist left, who are very critical of this analysis.

In addition, the ICC has been the target of many other accusations by the IFICC that we have not mentioned so far. Generally speaking, these are expressed by means of "shock formulas" based on lies and deformations, worthy of the motto of Goebbels, head of Nazi propaganda, according to which: "A huge lie carries with it a force that drives away doubt". Fortunately, medieval obscurantism does not prevent stupidity from being expressed and, with it, the possibility of arousing the incredulity of IGCL supporters. For their attention we reproduce a very small sample of the accusations brought against us by the IFICC: the ICC today is marked by "a progressive distancing from marxism and an increasingly assertive tendency to put forward (and defend) bourgeois and petty bourgeois values in vogue ("the cult of youth", feminism and above all "non-violence")[24] ; the ICC is also accused of playing the game of the forces of repression[25].

The police-like use by the IGCL of the ICC’s internal bulletins

No sooner had the old "IFICC" sign been put away and the news about the "IGCL" been posted than this parasitic group attempted a stunt, again of a police-like nature, against the ICC.

Although the IFICC’s anti-ICC campaigns initially had some impact on the proletarian political milieu, they did not succeed in marginalising our organisation, especially because we vigorously fought against them. The IFICC had had to resign itself to this situation until history seemed to smile on it again thanks to the providential arrival into its hands of some ICC internal bulletins[26].

Thinking that their hour of glory had finally arrived, these parasites, reinvigorated by this new "asset", unleashed some hysterical propaganda against the ICC, as evidenced by the (jubilant) advertising placard posted on their website: "A new (final?) internal crisis in the ICC!", accompanied of course by an "Appeal to the proletarian camp and ICC militants". For several days, they carried out a frenetic activity, addressing letter after letter to the whole "proletarian milieu" as well as to our militants and some of our sympathisers (whose addresses they continued to use after having stolen them from the ICC). This so-called "International Group of the Communist Left" rang the bell and shouted at the top of its voice that it was in possession of the internal bulletins of the ICC. By showing off their war trophy and making such a racket, the message that these experienced snitches were trying to get across was very clear: there was a "mole" in the ICC who was working hand in hand with the ex-IFICC! It was clearly police-type work with no other objective than to sow widespread suspicion, disorder and discord within our organisation. These were the same methods used by the GPU, Stalin's political police, to destroy from within the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s. These are the same methods that members of the former IFICC (including two of them, Juan and Jonas, founding members of the IGCL) had already used when they made "special" trips to several sections of the ICC in 2001 to organise secret meetings and circulate rumours that one of our comrades (the "wife of the head of the CCI", as they called her) was a "cop".

How did the ICGL benefit from such a godsend? An accomplice who had infiltrated our organisation? Could the police themselves have obtained it by hacking into our computers and then passing it on to the ICGL by some means? If, instead of being a gang of thugs, the IGCL had been a responsible organisation, it would have been eager to solve this enigma and to inform the political world of the outcome of its investigations.

Our article denouncing this new attack was enough to suddenly calm the IGCL's ardour, but it is interesting to note its response: "Our group takes note of the ICC’s silence and the absence of denial of the reality of a serious organisational crisis within the ICC and the new questioning within the ICC itself of the behaviour of the 'militant' Avril-Louise-Morgane. The ICGL will not respond to the cascade of grave insults that the ICC is currently pouring on our group (as it did yesterday on the IFICC). We have other things to do. (…)". This answer was revealing in several ways:

    - The ICGL refused to answer the "cascade of insults", so it avoided having to answer the only question of interest and which understandably embarrassed it: how had it obtained our internal bulletins?

    - It accused the ICC of hiding its organisational problems, whereas a reading of all our press reveals that this is a lie and a slander, since, like the Bolsheviks (see in particular Lenin's book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back) we are the only organisation to systematically report on them and learn from them.

    - Being in possession of our internal bulletins, the ICGL knew perfectly well that, once again, our problems would not be hidden. Consequently, publicising the organisational problems affecting the ICC could not be expected before a general meeting of the organisation (a congress or a conference) given the task of dealing with them was held; it could therefore only take place as part of a review of the work of such a meeting. The outcome of our extraordinary conference in May 2014 was published in an article in September 2014 in International Review No. 153, entitled "ICC Extraordinary International Conference: The news of our death is greatly exaggerated".

The IFICC are parasites, but not only on the ICC

We have shown how the IFICC tried to use the PCI to support it against the ICC (by sending them a letter) and we will illustrate how it used the same approach vis-à-vis the IBRP but on a bigger scale. This attempt to corrupt these two organisations, by leading them onto a terrain foreign to the rules that should preside over relations within the communist left, also constitutes a parasitic attack against them.

Thus, the IBRP was the target in particular of an audacious manoeuvre on the part of the IFICC, consisting in organising a public meeting for the IBRP in Paris on 2 October 2004. In fact, as we shall show, it was a public meeting that was aimed at boosting the reputation of the IFICC, to the detriment of that of the IBRP, and with a view to carrying out an attack against the ICC.

The announcement of this meeting by the IBRP indicated that its theme was the war in Iraq. On the other hand, the IFICC’s announcement stressed the importance of its own approach: "At our suggestion and with our political and material support, the IBRP will organise a public meeting in Paris (a public meeting which we hope will not be the last) in which we call on all our readers to participate" (emphasis added). What emerges from this appeal is that, without the IFICC, this organisation of the communist left, which exists internationally and has been known for decades, would not have been able to take the initiative and organise the public meeting!

In fact, this parasitic group used the IBRP as a "straw man" for its own publicity in order to obtain a certificate of respectability, of recognition of its membership of the communist left. And this shameless little thugocracy did not hesitate to use the address book of ICC contacts (which it had stolen before it left the organisation) to broadcast its call for this public meeting.

As we pointed out at the time, the IFICC had not deemed it useful to include in its announcement a single sentence of analysis denouncing the war in Iraq (contrary to the announcement made by the IBRP). Likewise, its announcement was exclusively dedicated to a question: "how to rebuild a pole of revolutionary regroupment in the French capital after the collapse of the ICC, following which its public meetings are now deserted and no longer constitute a place for debate".

In fact, it was quite the opposite that the IBRP's public meeting highlighted. According to the IFICC, this was to be the proof that the IBRP was now the "only serious pole" of discussion and reference for the communist left. However, it would have been a total fiasco if the ICC had not participated and invited its contacts to do the same. In fact, an important delegation of militants of the ICC and about ten sympathisers of our organisation were present.

In reality, the multiplication of compliments paid by the ICGL-IFICC to the IBRP was nothing but pure hypocrisy. From its constitution, the IFICC had sought support within the proletarian political milieu, essentially from the IBRP, in its parasitic crusade against the ICC, in particular by "electing" the IBPR as the only viable pole for the regroupment of revolutionary forces. Like the gadfly in the fable of Jean de La Fontaine, it gave advice, distributed good points to the political milieu, reproduced some of its articles ... At that time, relations between the IBRP and the IFICC were at their high point. The report by the IFICC of a meeting with the IBRP in June 2004 set out the following analysis of the existing dynamics within the proletarian camp: "These different elements reviewed allow us to conclude that there are indeed two dynamics within the present proletarian camp, going in two opposite directions: one towards creating a framework to gather revolutionary energies, to favour and orient debates and collective reflection, to allow the widest possible intervention within the working class. This dynamic, of which our Fraction is a part, is carried, today, essentially by the IBRP. The other, going in the opposite direction, that of maintaining, even increasing dispersion, political confusion, is carried by the ICC, and this what our Fraction is openly struggling against. " (Minutes of a meeting between the IBRP and the Fraction; September 2004 – IFICC Bulletin Communiste 27)

Fifteen years later, the Activities Report of the 2nd General Meeting of the ICGL (April 2019) gives us a much less idyllic picture of its relationship with the ICT (formerly the IBRP). In fact, it informs its readers that "... new communist forces have emerged of which Nuevo Curso is the expression and a factor, thus directly facing the historical groups of the communist left with their historical responsibility towards this new dynamic; but the Internationalist Communist Tendency, the main organisation of this camp, began by locking itself into an attitude, or reflexes, which were relatively sectarian towards us and immediatist as regards these new forces" (underlined by us - Activities Report of the 2nd General Meeting of the IGCL, Revolution or War n°12).

Moreover, "the ICT, although organically linked with the Italian CP and the Communist Left in Italy, suffers the weight of relative informalism, personalism and individualism, and therefore of the circle spirit" (ibid, our emphasis), which, according to the IGCL, hinders the application of a party method by the ICT, especially in the relationship with its contacts.

So what happened that made the IFICC-IGCL, those patented bootlickers of the ICT, rebel in this way? Today they discover that the ICT has been engaging in what looks like an opportunist approach to intervention towards contacts: "The article, written by a member of the CWO, the British ICT group, clearly rejects 'fractions or discussion circles'. Beyond the rejection of an organisational form per se, and more seriously, it underestimates, ignores, and in fact rejects, any process of political confrontation and clarification as a central means and indispensable moment of the struggle for the party" (ibid, underlined by us)

In fact, it is certainly not an approach that it characterises as opportunist (without using the term) that disturbs the ICGL, but rather the fact that the faithful "gadfly" has much less success than the ICT with the new elements approaching the communist left. Above all, the ICGL is having a hard time digesting the fact that its members in Canada have left it to join the ICT.

This criticism of the ICT by the IGCL is revealing, not of the recruitment methods of the ICT, but of the bottomless hypocrisy of the ICGL. In fact, in addition to the political/theoretical compromises that the IFICC had made to be more in tune with the proletarian political milieu (abandoning the theory of decomposition and the theses on parasitism), its members had stifled another divergence with the IBRP, one of great importance, that the IFICC had always had (and that they shared with the ICC when they were in our organisation) about the principles that should govern the formation of the party. Suddenly, IFICC members had "forgotten" the criticisms that they and the ICC had previously made of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (PCInt) and the IFICC on this issue, including the opportunist approach that had presided over the formation of the Partito in 1945. Today, the ICGL is "discovering" that the recruitment methods of the ICT are a little opportunist but it is not, as the ICGL would have you believe, the ICT that has changed its methods but the ICGL that is abandoning its attitude of bootlicker owing to its bitterness at having been double-crossed by the ICT, which has taken some of its members from it.

There are indeed disagreements between the ICT and the ICC over the method of regroupment that can lead to the constitution of the world party, but this disagreement is within the proletarian camp and will give rise to political debate and confrontation between comrades fighting for the same cause. And it is unacceptable that it should be polluted by the Jeremiads of the IGCL.

The lessons of a fight against the IFICC’s alliance with an adventurer (citizen B) in 2004

To conclude on the IGCL-IFICC’s history of valorous deeds, and on their eminently harmful character, it is necessary to come back to an episode which presents similarities with the recent situation where the parasitism of IGCL came to support the shenanigans of an adventurer. An episode in which the alliance between these two elements had destructive effects, particularly in relation to elements approaching class positions.

In 2004, the ICC entered into a political relationship with a small searching group in Argentina, the NCI (Nucleo Comunista Internacional)[27]. Having undertaken a study of the positions of the currents of the communist left, its members were oriented towards the positions of the ICC. The discussions on the question of unacceptable organisational behaviour within the proletariat had convinced these comrades, on the basis of the study of the IFICCs position papers and our own articles on the subject, that the IFICC "had adopted a behaviour alien to the working class and the communist left". This had then given rise to a position paper in this sense written on 22 May 2004 by these comrades[28].

It turned out that a problem was beginning to arise within the NCI because one of its members - who we will call citizen B in the rest of the narrative - had a practice in total opposition to a collective and unified functioning, a fundamental condition of existence for a communist organisation. Having initially pushed for contact with the ICC (he was the only one who was in a position to use the internet), he conducted individual discussions with each of the members of the group, but he manoeuvred to avoid the development of any serious and systematic discussion of the group as a whole, which allowed him to "keep control" of it. This organisational practice, radically foreign to the proletariat, is typical of bourgeois groups, particularly of the left or extreme left of capital. In reality, Mr B intended to use his comrades as a springboard to become a "personality" within the proletarian political milieu. However, the systematic work of discussing political positions with the ICC over time, as well as our insistence on joint meetings of all comrades, increasingly thwarted his immediate plans as an adventurer.

Thus, at the end of July 2004, Mr B attempted a bold manoeuvre: he demanded the immediate integration of the group into the ICC. He imposed this demand in spite of the resistance of the other comrades of the NCI who, even if they had also set themselves the objective of joining the ICC, felt the need to carry out beforehand a whole in-depth work of clarification and assimilation, since communist militancy can only be based on solid convictions. The ICC rejected citizen B’s demand in line with our policy of opposing hasty and immature integrations which contain the risk of destroying militants and are harmful to the organisation.

In parallel to all this, an alliance had been forged between the IFICC and the adventurer B, certainly on B's initiative, with the aim of carrying out a manoeuvre against the ICC, using the NCI without its knowledge.

The manoeuvre consisted in circulating within the proletarian political milieu a denunciation of the ICC and its "nauseating methods", a statement which seemed to emanate indirectly from the NCI, since it was signed by a mysterious and fictitious "Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas" (or "CCI" for short!), led by citizen B and which, according to him, was supposed to constitute the "political supersession" of the NCI. These calumnies were conveyed by means of a leaflet by the "Circulo" and distributed by the IFICC on the occasion of the public meeting in Paris of the IBRP on 2 October 2004.

It was also put online in different languages on the IBRP website. In addition to directly targeting the ICC, the leaflet in question defended the IFICC, totally negating the NCI's position paper of 22 May 2004 which had denounced this group.

When they later discovered the manoeuvres Citizen B had been carrying out behind their backs, in particular the creation of the puppet "Círculo de Comunistas Internacionalistas", as well as his position in support of the IFICC and the denunciation of the ICC, the NCI members analysed the situation as follows: "It is highly probable that he (B.) had already made clandestine contact with the IFICC, while continuing to deceive us to the point of wanting to rush the integration of the NCI into the ICC" (Internationalists in Argentina - Presentation of the NCI Declaration)[29].

The way in which Citizen B elaborated his manoeuvre is typical of an adventurer, of his ambitions and his total lack of scruples and concern for the cause of the proletariat. The recourse to the services of an adventurer, by the IFICC, to satisfy its hatred of the ICC and to try to reinforce, by public denigration, the political isolation of our organisation, is worthy of the pathetic and despicable characters who populate the sordid world of the petty and big bourgeoisie.

At the time, the ICC had fought back, sometimes on a daily basis, against the false and usurping campaign of Citizen B until, unable to refute the public exposure of his manoeuvres, he decided to disappear politically. Unfortunately, the other members of the NCI, deeply demoralised by the way they had been used and manipulated by Citizen B, were unable to recover and continue their efforts to reflect, and eventually abandoned all political activity.

As for the IFICC, which was up to its neck in this affair and which had relied heavily on Citizen B to discredit the ICC, it seems not to have learned its lesson from this misadventure where it made a fool of itself since, recently, it has been relying on the actions of another adventurer.

Today, unlike the episode of Citizen B, it is not the ICC that is specifically targeted by the policy of the adventurer Gaizka but the whole communist left[30], whose reputation will suffer political damage if the latter is not unmasked and put in a position where it is impossible to do any political harm. As the tradition of the workers' movement teaches us, and as the recent experience of the ICC with the manoeuvring and slanders of citizen B shows, there is no other choice than to defend the honour of organisations which are the target of parasitic attacks and the action of adventurers[31] , even if this requires a great deal of energy which could usefully be put at the service of other organisational tasks[32].

At present, in several parts of the world, we are witnessing the emergence of a growing interest in the positions of the communist left on the part of young elements. And this is where the ICGL and Citizen Gaizka have a role to play. Not to contribute to the reflection and the evolution of these elements towards the communist left, but on the contrary to use their inexperience in order to lead them into dead ends, to sterilise and destroy their militant conviction[33]. If the IGCL and Gaizka claim to be part of the communist left, it is above all to trap these young elements for the sole benefit of their sordid interests. In the case of the IGCL, it is to establish a cordon sanitaire around the ICC in order to satisfy its hatred towards our organisation. In the case of Gaizka, it is a matter of realising his megalomaniacal ambitions as an adventurer. The motivations are not identical, but if, as in 2004, with the episode of Citizen B, there is a convergence between parasites and adventurers, it is obviously because they are, each in their own way, mortal enemies of the communist left, its traditions and principles. In the difficult path towards the full understanding of these traditions and principles, it will be necessary, on the basis of all the experience of the workers’ movement, to fight against the manipulations and traps of these out-and-out enemies of the workers’ movement.

ICC

 

[4] See “New attack by the ICC against the international proletarian camp” (February 1 2020). The fact that, out of the groups or blogs that claim to be part of the communist left, only those who specialise in denigrating the ICC attacked our exposure of Mr Gaizka or tried to defend him, clearly illustrates the irrefutable character of the information we have given about him.

[5] “New attack by the ICC against the international proletarian camp” (February 1 2020).

[8] This was a method of political activity in which a grouping of malcontents followed the axiom “we must destabilise them” – “them” being all those who didn’t share their hostility to the ICC and their shameful denigration of certain of its militants

[9] Here is a non-exhaustive list of these articles: ICC Extraordinary Conference | International Communist Current (internationalism.org); The police-like methods of the 'IFICC' | International Communist Current (internationalism.org); Communique to our readers (2002) | International Communist Current (internationalism.org); The ICC doesn't allow snitches into its public meetings | International Communist Current (internationalism.org); "Intervention de la FICCI à la Fête de 'Lutte Ouvrière' : Le parasitisme au service de la bourgeoisie", Révolution Internationale n° 348, July 2004); Défense de l'organisation : Des menaces de mort contre des militants du CCI", Révolution Internationale n° 354, February 2005.

[10] 15th Congress of the ICC, Today the Stakes Are High--Strengthen the Organization to Confront Them | International Communist Current (internationalism.org)

[11] These are the real initials of the comrade obligingly supplied to the police by the IFICC!

[12] MC (Mark Chirik, May 1907 to December 1990) was the main founder of the ICC, to which he brought his whole experience as a revolutionary militant inside the Communist International, the Left Opposition and the communist left (Italian Left Fraction and Gauche Communiste de France). “With Marc’s death, not only has our organisation lost its most experienced militant, and its most fertile mind; the whole world proletariat has lost one of its best fighters”. This is how we introduced the first of two articles written in homage to the comrade’s life as a militant: Marc, Part 1: From the Revolution of October 1917 to World War II | International Communist Current (internationalism.org); Marc, Part 2: From World War II to the present day | International Communist Current (internationalism.org)

[13] A special commission nominated by the ICC, made up of experienced militants, examined all the “proofs” supplied by Louise’s accusers and concluded that they were completely absurd. Louise herself had asked for a confrontation with her main accusers. The one with Olivier showed the brain-fog which had invaded the latter, who completely changed his position at least three times in the space of a few weeks before becoming one of the main founders of the IFICC, which he then left to follow his own path. As for Jonas, undoubtedly the most intelligent of the gang but also the most cowardly, he openly refused such a confrontation.

[14] International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, today the Internationalist Communist Tendency

[17] "Défense de l'organisation : Des menaces de mort contre des militants du CCI", Révolution Internationale n° 354, February 2005.

[18] See our article “The ‘Internal Fraction of the ICC’ – an attempt to swindle the communist left” in International Review 112

[19] For the ICC to put itself outside the proletarian camp, it would have had to betray fundamental principles such as internationalism, the perspective of the communist revolution, the refusal to support any of the institutions of the political apparatus of the ruling class (trade unions, political parties, bourgeois democracy, etc). The IFICC-IGCL obviously has a hard time finding such betrayals in our statements of position and this is why it can’t avoid having to include our organisation in the list of organisations of the proletarian camp on its internet site. This said, belonging to the proletarian camp isn’t restricted to a rejection of bourgeois political positions. It is also based on a determined struggle against behaviour typical of the ruling class and of which Stalinism is one of the purest incarnations: systematic lying, gangsterism, police-like methods, i.e. the activities at the heart of the work of the thugs and snitches of the IFICC-IGCL.

[20] It has the nerve to refer to the organisational combat carried out by our comrade MC throughout his life, and notably when he militated in the Italian fraction in the 1930s. Thus in 29 of Bulletin Communiste it declared “Our conception of organisation is the one that MC always defended”

[21] To give an illustration of the level of the criticisms of our theory of decomposition as the final phase of capitalism by the IFICC and others, readers can refer to the article “The marxist roots of the notion of decomposition” in International Review 117. More specifically on the IFICC, there is the article “On the ICC’s theory of decomposition” in the IFICC’s Bulletin no. 4, February 2011. In this text, the IFICC members give new proof of their dishonesty: rather than recognise that they are calling into question a position which they defended for more than 10 years in the ICC, they pretend that their new “analysis” is a continuation of what they held before. Thus we can read: “how we advanced the question of decomposition (within the ICC): as a stalemate between classes, neither of the two classes being able to impose its perspective. September 11 expressed the fact that the bourgeoisie was obliged to break this ‘equilibrium’ and impose the march towards war…To say, in 2002, that the bourgeoisie is seeking to unblock the situation of ‘equilibrium’ of the 1990s signifies that the ‘decomposing blockage’ was disappearing”. In other words, the phase of decomposition was just a passing and reversible moment which could have been overcome through a new configuration of the imperialist policy of the bourgeoisie. In reality, the ICC analysis shared by the members of the IFICC when they were in our organisation said exactly the contrary: “The course of history cannot be turned back: as its name suggests, decomposition leads to social dislocation and putrefaction, to the void.” Theses on Decomposition, International Review 107

[22] We can only recommend to our readers who haven’t yet read them (or re-read them) our Theses on Parasitism in International Review 94

[30] Gaizka became “interested” in the communist left, and advertised his “benevolence” towards it and certain of the groups that compose it – the better to sabotage it. Thus, in a letter Gaizka sent us some years ago, he told us about the importance of the political existence of the ICC and the ICT and even the positive influence the ICC had had on his own evolution. This has to be taken into account, not to relativise the dangerous nature of his activities, but on the contrary to better understand the approach of the adventurer that he is. This is how he presented his “Nuevo Curso” project: “We don’t see ourselves as a political group, a proto-party or something like that…On the contrary, we see our work as something ‘formative’, in order to aid discussion in the workplaces, among the young, etc, and once we have clarified certain basic elements, serving as a bridge between the new people discovering marxism and the internationalist organisations (essentially the ICT and you, the ICC) who, as we see it, have to be the natural solidifying forces of the future party even though they are very weak today (as, of course, is the entire working class)” 7.11.17, from centro@nuevocurso to [email protected]

[31] The three articles we wrote on Nuevo Curso and Gaizka are all in defence of the communist left.

[32] In a circular to all the members of the International, the General Council of the International declared, as we mentioned above, that it was high time to put an end once and for all to the internal struggles caused by the presence of this “parasitic body”. And it added “By paralysing the activity of the International against the enemies of the working crus, the Alliance magnificently serves the bourgeoisie and its governments". Questions of Organisation, Part 3: The Hague Congress of 1872: The Struggle against Political Parasitism | International Communist Current (internationalism.org) International Review 87

[33] The great combats waged by the proletariat in May 1968 in France and then in many other countries gave rise to a whole generation of elements seeking the perspective of the communist revolution, while rejecting Stalinism. The leftist groups, notably the Maoists and Trotskyists, had the historic function of diverting them towards dead-ends, of sterilising their militant will, of demoralising them and even turning them into open adversaries of the revolutionary perspective (as in the case of Daniel Cohn-Bendit). This is the same role played today, albeit on a different scale, by the parasitic groups and adventurers with regard to the young elements moving towards the communist left.

Rubric: 

Defence of the proletarian political milieu