Gaizka: Should an adventurer be publicly exposed?

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As clearly shown in the correspondence that follows - and in our previous articles on the question[1] - the individual Gaizka is demonstrably an adventurer. His websites: Communia, (also known as Emancipación and Nuevo Corso) are part of an attempt to create a bogus ‘communist left' to usurp those existing organisations which are authentic descendants of the Communist Left political lineage, including the International Communist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency[2].

We publish below a correspondence between the latter two organisations on the question of how to - or whether to - expose such an individual and those political parasites who defend them. Should the Communist Left as a whole - irrespectively of the political differences among them – publicly warn all revolutionaries, particularly the younger and less experienced ones, of the dangerous trap represented by the actions of such an adventurer? Or should it maintain a public silence about the latter?

The ICC’s intention in opening this exchange with the ICT was to share and verify the information we had already collected on this individual; warn of the danger he represented; and make a common front to defend the authentic Communist Left.

The differences that emerged between our two organisations was not about the fact of the danger of the adventurism of Gaizka - the ICT completely agrees with the ICC on his falsity and the fraudulence of his project - but on whether to publicise this fact and make common cause with the ICC.

The publication of this correspondence thus serves several purposes.

First, it confirms from another genuinely communist source the adventurist nature of Gaizka that we have already described on our site.

The correspondence also illuminates the political differences of approach to this question between our two organisations, which is of general interest for communists today. In the history of the marxist movement, political correspondence between groups has always been seen as a potential means of clarification in front of the working class. One only has to consult the correspondence of Marx and Engels to better understand their fight, which preceded that of Lenin and Luxemburg against the opportunist degeneration of the German Social Democratic Party during the latter part of the 19th Century.[3] It’s worth pointing out that it was the opportunists of the SPD who tried to keep secret the correspondence by Marx and Engels that was critical of them.

Finally, it allows us to continue the debate. The final letter of the ICT abruptly terminates the correspondence. But as far as the ICC is concerned the problem hasn’t disappeared and it will never be resolved without the conscious intervention of the communist vanguard. It would be completely illusory to think that the problem of adventurism would not interfere dangerously with the fight for the constitution of the future world political party of the proletariat. We therefor invite the ICT, and all those who are sincerely interested in the defence of the Communist Left, to continue the debate in the press.

Following the full publication of this correspondence, with the exception of personal details which ae not pertinent, internet links which don’t function and aspects linked to the international situation, we will add some concluding remarks.

 

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26.9.19  ICC > ICT

Dear Comrades,

We are writing to you to request your opinion on the information we shared with your CWO comrade concerning the individual Gaizka who animates the Emancipación/Nuevo Corso tendency.

We met with your comrade nearly six months ago on two occasions in London to present the facts that we had gleaned about Gaizka’s trajectory and to discover your opinion about the harm that this trajectory represents for the Communist Left as a whole. We understood from these meetings that your organisation would in due course give us a definite position from your central organ concerning the significance of the information on Gaizka that we supplied. So far, we haven’t received such a communication from you on this subject. Perhaps it was not clear from our last meeting that we expected a subsequent response from you. So please take this letter as a respectful reminder that we would indeed like to know your opinion on the facts about Gaizka that we gave you.

Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org[4] we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

  • that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.
  • that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.
  • that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.

The information on Gaizka that you have from us confirms, in our view, that this false and harmful objective is not the result of naivety, or a genuine political error, but is deliberately designed.

Consequently, we would appreciate receiving, in the near future, your own conclusions about the information on Gaizka that we presented to you.

Fraternally

PS. Your article on Emancipación is misinformed when it states that the ICC has “collapsed” or “disintegrated”. We would like to reassure the comrades of the ICT that, as Mark Twain said, “rumours of our death are greatly exaggerated.”

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01.10.19  ICT > ICC

The ICT IB is meeting next weekend and I will relay this message to them. My worry is that to turn a political critique into an attack on an individual (on whom we have even more evidence) may be counterproductive. We have seen those who argue that the “ICC is a cult” line but even the youngest of our sympathisers can see that with Emancipacion we are here dealing with a real cult with a guru who tolerates no contradiction and will not confront political positions honestly and directly. However, the young ones we hoped to save still remain true believers. We note also the totally opportunist line pursued by the IGCL[5] in this regard. Sometimes to chase these people only gives them a publicity they don’t deserve and undermines the entire CL.

This is my personal opinion but will argue for it in our deliberations,

Internationalist greetings

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11.10.19 ICC > ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for J’s prompt reply to the ICC letter of 26.09.19 which gives his opinion concerning Gaizka and NC/Emancipación and mentions that the ICT central organ would soon be meeting where this question would be discussed. We look forward to hearing from the ICT after your central organ has reached its decision on the information we supplied to you about this individual.

We were interested to read in J’s reply that you have evidence about Gaizka that wasn’t in the information we supplied to you. We would be glad to know about this additional evidence as we would like to have a complete as possible picture of the activity of this individual. We would also like to know if your evidence complements or modifies our own information in any respect. This additional evidence could be passed onto us in London.

We look forward to hearing from you about both these questions at your earliest convenience.

Fraternally

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Received from the ICT [between 11-18 October 2019]

An official response is being prepared (summarising our discussions last week) but I have cut and pasted a message from someone re further information on Gaizka and his two female accomplices.

I read your recent text on Nuevo Curso in the web. And I would like to share with you some information that I discovered recently.

I knew some members of Nuevo Curso 2 years ago, when they were starting out. The founding group are members of the cooperative Las Indias. And the soul of the group is a man named Gaizka. He is not a complete unknown.

The group started two years ago by searching for "internationalists" in the social network Twitter, with bots, that is, fake accounts programmed to locate specific people. If we read the statements of its leader in 2014, we can assume that it is a case of recent conversion to communism. And with his creation of a "new Trotskyite-Munisist tradition", which I think is a direct offspring of Gaizka, we can assume that he is a political adventurer. But it is true that he is an adventurer who can do a lot of harm to our cause, because he can attract a lot of young people, thanks to his good use of internet and social networks.

I don't think it adds substantially to what you know (except more colours to the chameleon) - he is a punk, anarchist, communiser etc etc. 

IG 

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18.10.19  ICT > ICC

Comrades

As promised we discussed your letter in our IB and are entirely in agreement with the substantive passage

“Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org. we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

-    that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.

-    that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.

-    that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.”

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is now to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.”

We can confirm that in the course of our early discussions with them they denied they were aiming to create a separate political organization, but were rather aiming to more broadly educate youngsters in working class history so that they could best decide for themselves what course to take. When some of their young supporters became more inclined towards political organisation, they did ask us not to engage in discussion of serious political issues, instead offering practical cooperation on a “no-questions asked” basis. This was rejected by us and after that they began a series of manoeuvres both to frame their “new tendency” and to break up the discussion between our sympathisers and members in the USA and the groups of Workers’ Offensive and the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction. When we openly stated what their manoeuvres were they abruptly cut off all communication with us. In fact Gaizka (as we shall continue to call him) cannot tolerate any kind of contradiction and automatically freezes out even the most innocent of interlocutors who question any of his assumptions.

However, the question is how to deal with this threat and we think our attack on this dangerous individual has to come through a critique of the organisation he has given birth to both in its political framework and its modus operandi. In this regard we intend to prepare more critiques of the Emancipación project as such, avoiding argumentum ad hominem in the most direct sense but revealing clearly the weak organisational basis on which it operates. We, as always, will go about this in our own way and expect you will do the same. It is probably the best way to deal with the situation since powerful and separate critiques are more likely to reach a wider audience, and of course, we do have a different approach to dealing with those sectarian elements which from time to time appear on the fringes of the Communist Left.

Internationalist greetings

The International Bureau of the ICT

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26.3.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

We hope none of your comrades have succumbed to the corona virus and are taking all necessary measures of precaution against it. The few militants of the Communist Left in the world are precious for the future of the working class.

It is now two months since we published the article on Gaizka[6] which gave sufficient facts to indicate the suspicious nature of this element and his danger to the authentic Communist Left and the new elements coming toward it.

As you remember we already presented these facts about him to you and we both reached agreement on the serious nature of his threat to the Communist Left, as outlined by you in an email of 18th October 2019.

NC/Gaizka’s response to the article has been a deafening silence; a cowardly approach which is actually symptomatic of his doubtful nature. It would be difficult to believe that he has not noticed the article: if our website metrics are right nearly two thousand people read this article in the first weeks of its appearance.

In fact there has only been one public response to the article – that of the IGCL (also reproduced on Philipe Bourrinet’s Pantopolis Blog). In this response entitled ‘New ICC Attack against the International Proletarian Camp’ the IGCL staunchly defends Nuevo Corso for having “played an active role in the emergence and international regrouping of new revolutionary and communist forces, particularly on the American continent”. Without contesting any of the facts presented in our article, the IGCL alleges that the article is on the “rotten terrain of the personalisation of political issues” and is part of an ICC campaign of “provocation, manoeuvring, denigration, slander or rumour” against revolutionary groups or militants and that “it is aimed at rotting and undermining the international process of political emergence, development, regrouping and clarification that is currently underway”. It concludes that the ICC’s main purpose in the article is “weakening and if possible destroying any attempt, any process of regrouping and fighting for the party””.

We would be interested to know your opinion of these allegations by the IGCL and their support for the dubious Gaizka and Nuevo Corso.

In the email mentioned above you said that you were preparing more critiques of the Emancipación project. Will they be appearing in the near future?

Fraternally

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12.4.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your mail and we reciprocate your sentiments re safety of all comrades in this period.

The EC of the CWO met on Thursday and discussed your letter but we are confident we speak for the rest of the ICT (which meets next week).

The lack of response to your criticism is probably a good thing. As far as we know only the IGCL supported him. We had already sent them our criticisms of their refusal to recognise what Emancipación has become but they continue to ignore us. We in turn don’t intend to give either of them the oxygen of publicity. We think most people already know what the IGCL is. We have also had an enquiry from the Workers’ Group in the USA (which previously supported Gaizka) asking us if we can confirm the broad outlines of your critique of Gaizka and we have done so at some length. Again we have received no reply but in their enquiry they have become very suspicious of the fact that Gaizka makes no attempt to defend himself from any of the charges.

We are agreed that Gaizka is a political chameleon who operates on his own subjective level and he is in fact the guru of a cult (in this case a real one!). However, our position remains the same as the last time we wrote that we think we should stick to political critiques rather than get involved in argumentum ad hominem (which will always be interpreted as sectarian slander). At some point the organisational issue and the political one will make further comment both necessary and possible, but for now we remain with our political critique of the fantasy that is Emancipación.  We already detect that some of his US followers have fallen away and those that remain are increasingly seen as incoherent.

For now we can see that a whole new generation is coming to communist politics but this is not the time to be diverted by something which could disappear as fast as it appeared. We have a more important task in building the Communist Left response in the face of far more serious diversions which affect many younger people who learn of us only via the distorted prism that is social media, and this is what we will be concentrating on until a new occasion arises which demands a telling political response.

Internationalist greetings

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4.5.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email from the EC of the CWO (12.04.20). We were pleased to hear that your comrades and family are unscathed from the virus…

The fact that you replied to a request from the Workers Group in the US confirming the facts about the suspect nature of Gaizka revealed in our article ‘Who’s who in Nuevo Corso’ is a positive step. A pity no reply from them has so far been received.

We know that your position, in distinction from ours, continues to be that making public this information would invite accusations of sectarianism, and that you therefore prefer to criticise the Emancipacíon project from a general political angle at some time in the future. Within this limited approach we think it would be logical to publicly set the record straight in relation to an article the ICT wrote in 2018 welcoming Emancipación as an authentic new group of the Communist Left[7], particularly as in your critical article of the group in 2019 you said that your break with the group “occurred in a way that was not sufficiently public and clear”.[8] In this context, since you have written to the IGCL putting your position on Emancipación, it would be appropriate to publish this letter of clarification.

However, the main reason for our previous letter was to ask for your position on the noxious response of the IGCL to the ICC article on Gaizka. Their denunciation of us goes completely beyond any accusation of sectarianism and alleges that the ICC is slandering Gaizka with gossip in order to destroy the other groups of the Communist Left. You say that “everyone knows what the IGCL is” - presumably that means it is a source of lies and thuggery - in your letter. But you don’t actually tell us what your view is of their support for Gaizka/NC and their denunciation of the ICC in their response. Given the public silence in relation to the IGCL’s denunciation we were hoping - and still are - for a message of solidarity with us against their attack even if only in an email to us.

We think the generally silent reaction to the publication of our article on Gaizka and to the denunciation of us by the IGCL is not a positive sign, even if it confirms, in the case of Gaizka himself, the truth of the facts we have presented on him. Silence allows him to play the hurt victim of a ‘personal attack’ and invite, if not sympathy then neutrality from other groups of the proletarian political milieu and elements coming toward it concerning the dangerous pretence that NC and Emancipación are part of the Communist Left. The IGCL has exploited this silent neutrality to completely invert the truth and present the ICC, instead of the bogus Emancipación project, as attacking the existing Communist Left. 

Making public the nature of such fake communist groups is in our opinion vital for this reason, and silence and neutrality on this question harms the unity and integrity of the real Communist Left and helps the divisive goals of Gaizka, IGCL and co.

You see a danger in giving them the “oxygen of publicity” but the leftcom.org ICT forum recently oxygenated a post of the IGCL on the pandemic without comment[9]. In our opinion the public identification of this political virus, represented by such groups, and making it better known and understood, is the precondition for its eradication. Though very small in size this political virus is designed to attach itself and destroy healthy political organisations. It thrives on the absence of a vaccine and on the passivity of the host toward it, and the illusion that it is only the annual flu to which there is supposedly ‘herd immunity’.

Looking forward to receiving a further response from you to the attack of the IGCL on us.

Fraternally

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17.5.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your letter of 4 May. We hope your comrades recover without after effects. Since we last wrote one comrade has also been hit by Covid-19 but is young and strong enough to see it off. Thanks for pointing out to us that the IGCL had once again spammed our forum. We had not noticed and it has now been removed as per our standard policy. As to Emancipación, and our previous welcome to it, we think our political response makes it clear already where we now stand. We have an extended correspondence with them which clearly shows their slippery evolution which we will publish if and when appropriate.

We will not agree on our approach to this issue of these small groups claiming to be part of the Communist Left. Annoying though they are, they are not worth our attention. They may be more annoying for you in that they began in or close to the ICC. For us there are far more serious political things which demand our attention. … 

We are quite willing to discuss this issue with anyone including yourselves but we don’t want the CL to be noted for its internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left.

Internationalist greetings

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I.6.2020  ICC >ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for your letter of 17 May. The Covid pandemic is indeed a catastrophic event for world capitalism accelerating at ‘warp speed’ the existing economic crisis and bringing with it mass unemployment, destitution and premature death to the working class on a scale not seen since the Second World War.

The Communist Left must provide an updated revolutionary perspective for the proletariat that takes the particularities of the present situation into account…

The historical significance of the present situation has to be fully explained to the working class. Only the Communist Left has the programmatic and organisational integrity to reveal, in the current conditions, the immensity of the historic mission of the communist revolution that lies behind the increasing pauperisation of the working class.

Clearly only the Communist Left can fulfil this task both today, to the extent of its limited capacities, and in the future when the world communist party must be created.

We are therefore continuing to devote many articles and leaflets on our website to the situation, in multiple languages. We are increasing the number of virtual meetings to bring the communist perspective to a wider audience for discussion and reflection. There are many aspects for the current situation that remain to be clarified and we are equally preoccupied with analysing them in detail.

Communists must be able to multi-task; a one-dimensional approach to intervention is not adequate. 

Today and in the future, the protection of the integrity of the Communist Left must be incorporated into its intervention. If genuine organisations of the Communist Left can be discredited today by fake groups trying to usurp its traditions like Nuevo Corso, or defamed by thugs and slanderers like the IGCL without any collective public defence of its honour and authenticity, then the credibility of its present intervention and of the future party will be compromised. It’s true that the IGCL is openly defamatory toward the ICC while it is presently stalking the ICT with false flattery. So on the surface it appears that the whole Communist Left is not under attack by the IGCL. But whether filth is thrown in your face or you find it sticking to the bottom of your shoe the net result is ultimately the same: reputational damage. Taking down the posts of the IGCL from your site is welcome, but a more explicit distancing is required.

The task of the defence of the Communist Left is certainly not posed at the same level as the task of orienting the class as a whole with a global perspective. But that doesn’t mean that the latter renders the former unnecessary or unimportant. It is perfectly possible to combine both the necessary work of defending the integrity of the Communist Left camp and provide a class-wide revolutionary perspective, as our website testifies.

The history of the marxist movement shows that the importance of the defence of its own probity can even take precedence on certain occasions over questions of general policy and analysis. Even Engels became impatient when Marx took a year out of the preparation of Capital (1859/60) in order to comprehensively refute the slanders of Karl Vogt[10], but he was later obliged to recognise that the change of priorities was correct. Vogt’s slander that Marx was a blackmailer and in league with the secret police had to be openly and thoroughly condemned. It was necessary, in Marx’s words, to “fight fire with fire”.

The more famous example is the Hague Congress of the IWA which took place just over a year after the defeat of the Paris Commune but was not devoted to this major event in the life of the working class but to the exposure of the secret Alliance and the expulsion of its leader Bakunin. In a period of defeat it was vital to preserve the honour of the 1st International and prevent it from falling into the hands of a cabal led by an adventurer who had accused the legitimate General Council to be a clique of “German Jews”.

Our denunciation of the descendants of Vogt, Lassalle, Bakunin etc today is precisely not an internal battle within the Communist Left, but an external demarcation of the latter from usurpers and serial abusers. The class delineation from them is all the more necessary because the only purpose of their existence is to discredit the authentic Communist Left on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Of course, for the capitalist left the Communist Left has always been sectarian because we denounce the bourgeoisie as a whole. We have no need to try and cater to their deliberate distortions by remaining neutral about the fake communist left. On the contrary we must make the distinction of the Communist Left all the more intransigent and thereby strike two enemies who use similar malign methods against the communist camp.

The obvious counter-part of the clear separation of the Communist Left camp from the capitalist left and the parasitic milieu is its own greater public solidarity and cohesion. The most effective way this camp can prevent its differences appearing as petty squabbles is by affirming its common class basis and by commonly organising discussion of their differences. We remain committed to the perspective behind the Conferences of the Communist Left of the late 1970s even though they were nipped in the bud. The absence of this project in the intervening decades have not improved the standing of the Communist Left camp as a whole; instead, hostile forces around it have been given more political room to operate.

We realise we diverge on this question and we will both continue to urge our different positions. But even though it is clear that you don’t accord the mutual solidarity of the Communist Left the same importance as we do, we still don’t understand why even a minimal statement of solidarity with the ICC against the recent revolting slanders of the IGCL is beyond you, since we can’t believe that such a declaration would break a principle for you.

Let’s hope our precious few militants of the Communist Left continue to remain (relatively) free of the virus.

fraternally

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June 2020  ICT >ICC

Dear Comrades

Thank you for your letter of 1 June which we discussed in the International Bureau of the ICT.   

Your first paragraph is an expansion of what we briefly said to you in our previous letter but you will find that we are at least agreed on the current situation if you read Reflections on the Coronavirus and Economic Crises and the opening paragraph of The Global Pandemic and Imperialist Competition. However we have once again to emphasise that the current crisis began in the early 1970s (when the post-war boom came to an end) and not in 1989 when you suddenly woke up to the fact that the working class had been in retreat for over a decade (and which we told you repeatedly throughout the 1980s). The postmodernist “solution” that all is chaos and decomposition only has a material basis in the fact that the crisis is getting deeper and the palliatives the capitalists produce only kicks the day of reckoning further down the road and do not solve it. 

We have no doubt the Communist Left has the analysis to understand this – our collective problem is that the wider working class does not and, as yet, is not universally responding to the slow creep towards disaster the system is carrying out. For us this remains the main focus. For us “multi-tasking” means developing the analytical framework of the evolving social reality in front of us, and searching for more and more ways to reach the wider class.

And here we can only repeat that it is counter-productive to engage in what are seen as personalised denunciations of cultish grouplets which have no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class. “Reputational damage” can be self-inflicted and to speak the absolute truth we think that the ICC’s continual defence of petty attacks on such groups has cost not only the ICC but also the entire Communist Left tradition as the mud sticks all around. We do not want to be associated with this method and we have constantly advised you not to go in for argumentum ad hominem. You have ignored our advice and now ask us to support a step we disagreed with before you took it.

These people will expose themselves politically. In fact they are already doing so. You are also obviously not paying attention. The IGCL ceased its “flattery” of the ICT some time ago. They have substituted it for blackmail about the ICT having to live up “to its responsibilities” (i.e. talk to the IGCL). It is a responsibility we have singularly failed to take on. Their utterly opportunist tie up with Nuevo Curso is political reason enough for exposing them as charlatans after all the criticism they have heaped on the various groups of the CL over time. If you had been paying attention you will have also noticed that the Workers’ Group of Detroit (without any contact with us since we wrote to confirm that the ICC’s attack on Gaizka was factually correct) have now broken with the IGCL/NC/WO/GCCF coterie but for political reasons (their non-proletarian denunciation of the demonstrations and riots in the US). But whilst we are at it these are not the only people indulging in slander. Apparently young sympathisers tell us there is a group of ICC sympathisers who slander the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. As they often express opinions which the ICC would not share we do not know how close they are to you but we have not responded for the same reason as always.  They can make their empty comments in a vacuum – our response would be to dignify their youthful games. There is more serious work to be done.

Internationalist greetings

ICT

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10.07.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email of 17th June. We would like to reply to some of your points in a further letter.

Here we would just like to express our concern when we read in your email that a group of ICC sympathisers has been slandering the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. We cannot find anything about this and would like to have more information from you about it, as we intend to put a stop to any such behaviour.

We were saddened to hear of the tragic death of an ex-sympathiser of the ICT.

Fraternally,

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July 2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

We have discussed the question of your sympathisers but think that this is an issue for you and will leave you to make your own enquiries with people who are known to you. We have also written to the IGCL to state that whilst we disagree with your decision to ignore our advice over the murky past of comrade Gaizka we also consider their decision to come to his defence as an indication of their failure to defend the CL and have closed all correspondence with them. We also wish to make it quite clear to you that this is our final communication on the IGCL and Emancipación (but we should say we regard both these organisations, and their acolytes, as the product of your methodology). We have nothing to gain from anything other than making a political defence of the CL as and when appropriate. Any future correspondence from you on this issue will be ignored.

Internationalist greetings

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12.08.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Here are some responses to your email of 23.07.20.

As we mentioned in our last letter our own investigations into the apparent slanders of the ICT by ICC sympathisers hadn’t turned up any evidence. If you do not want to specify your sources for this can you please help us by telling us the nature of the slanders in order that we can get to the heart of the problem?

Regarding your letter to the IGCL we of course agree with you that their defence of Nuevo Corso is an attack on the Communist Left. Your private letter to the IGCL about the falsity of NC however still leaves the public to take the latter as an authentic communist left group. A public exposure of this pretence is essential. 

Furthermore while you are cutting off relations with the IGCL in private, this still leaves the public to consider the IGCL as a real revolutionary group.

We also note from your description of your letter to the IGCL that, while you criticised the ICC to them for making the nature of these groups publicly known, you do not seem to have expressed your solidarity with the ICC against the slanders of the IGCL - a declaration we have been asking from you throughout our recent correspondence, to no avail.

We are puzzled by your idea that the ICC shares the same “methodology” as n and the IGCL. Our methodology is diametrically opposed on class lines to that of these two bogus groups. Our goal and method is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the international working class; theirs is to overthrow the existing revolutionary organisations on behalf of the bourgeoisie. We fail to see any convergence between these two basic methods.

You say you will ignore any further correspondence from us on this topic. However, ignoring the problem of these groups won’t make it go away. They will continue on their destructive course, and the genuine Communist Left will continue to be confronted with the need to publicly close ranks against them in order to defend the integrity of the Communist Left camp.

Fraternally

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Commentary

By trying to justify their refusal to denounce the pernicious role of adventurers, the ICT justifies the unjustifiable!

The argument of the ICT presented in its letters is, in essence, that the ICC exposure of adventurers like Gaizka, and the unmasking of their clearly anti-proletarian project, is creating more damage to the Communist Left than the adventurer himself. The exposure of the crime is supposedly worse than the crime itself. This is clearly absurd, implying:

  • That we can’t expose adventurers like Gaizka, or even be associated with such an exposure, because it would be to argue ad hominem, ie personally. Yet the ICT has accepted that the nature of his political project or ‘cult’ as they call it, is precisely constructed around his personal ambition as a ‘guru’. To denounce him is to make a political denunciation, which in no way implies a purely personal attack on Gaizka, unconnected to the political project in question. In any case the ICT’s promise, announced in its message of 4.5.20, to make its own political critique of Communia/NC/Emancipación has not yet been fulfilled.
  • That the offence is not very serious, and will disappear over time. This is not coherent with the fact that the ICT argues elsewhere that Gaizka constitutes a “dangerous trap” for new communist militants. Two years after this correspondence began his well-resourced project is still running.
  • Refusing to see that it is a vital activity for communist organisations to warn other communists against enemies who appear in their midst, as if they didn’t exist, in the desperate hope that they will disappear by themselves.

Such an approach by the ICT, which is already an aberration, leads to other aberrations:

  • There is still no public statement of position by the ICT on Communia/Nuevo Corso/Emancipación despite promising to do so in a message of 18.10. 2019.
  • The ICT’s argumentation, or lack of it, necessarily ends up publicly excusing the attacks of adventurers and parasites on the Communist Left while damning the ICC for bringing its attention to such enemies.

The ICT is to a large extent aware of the threat posed by adventurers and parasites, as clearly shown by their own letters. But the ICT prefers to do this ‘privately’ while preserving a discreet public silence on the existence of this dangerous phenomenon due to the illusion of achieving a “significant influence” in the life of the working class, and to preserve its fishing permit in the murky pools of adventurism and parasitism.

Furthermore, the ICT harbours a misunderstanding of the specific function of Gaizka: to undermine the ground for the constitution of the future party. The target of Gaizka’s group and its parasitic defenders is not the working class as a whole - it has no political programme for example – but to prevent the germination of the future party and the evolution of new militants in particular. Thus, the Gaizka fraud has had a “significant impact” at the level of the political minorities of the working class, in the USA in particular.

This dual, contradictory approach, inevitably creates the illusion on the one hand that adventurers and parasites are genuine communists, while on the other hand a real organisation of the Communist Left, the ICC, by exposing the fraud, is only “throwing mud”. According to the twisted logic of the ICT, the real enemy is the ICC!

A false vison of the tasks of revolutionaries in the present period

To better understand why the ICT has ended up in this contradictory and harmful conclusion, look at their idea that Gaizka’s “cultish grouplet” has “no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class.” This is true, but the lack of widespread influence in the working class is unfortunately also true of the authentic Communist Left. This is because the general level of the class struggle is still a long way from making such a level of activity possible. In this context, imagining that it is possible to obtain “a significant influence on the life of the class” can only have pernicious consequences. In particular, it can lead to search for such influence by ‘adapting’ the organisation’s political positions and form of intervention to the level of consciousness in the working class at a given moment – in other words making concessions to the illusions and mystifications that weigh on the class, adopting an opportunist approach whose basic characteristic lies in the search for immediate ‘success’ at the expense of the future struggle of the proletariat. And this opportunism can also impact on organisational questions, as shown by the combat of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party. In sum, withdrawing from the defence of political organisational principles by considering them to be “internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left”, is a disengagment from the public defence of the authentic communist organisations that really do exist.

Thus, by maintaining the illusion (for itself and a milieu around it) in the possibility of gaining a significant influence on the proletariat today, the ICT is creating an obstacle to the solid political and organisational preparation for the real future party which will indeed have a “significant influence” on the life of the working class. This illusion is accompanied by the pretension that it is currently in direct competition with the left of capital for winning an influence over the class[11]. This false idea tends to reinforce its opportunist battle to gain “influence”.

The questions and disagreements raised about the attitude needed towards parasitism and adventurism calls for a discussion about the systematic defence of revolutionary organisational principles in the preparation of the future communist party. For the ICC, without the common action of revolutionary organisations for such a principled approach, without a constant combat against opportunism, there is no basis for the successful formation of future generations of communist militants and of the future communist party.

 

[4] Welcome to “Emancipación” (Spain)

[5] ICC note: International Group of the Communist Left, a parasitic group.

10] ICC note: El caso Vogt: el combate de los revolucionarios contra la calumnia (I); El caso Vogt: el combate de los revolucionarios contra la calumnia (II)

[11] “we don’t want the CL to be noted for its internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left”, ICT to the ICC, 17.5.2020

 

Rubric: 

ICC/ICT correspondence on Gaizka