The difference between the vacuity of a presumptuous blogger and the solidity of an organisation rooted in the tradition of the workers' movement

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A pamphlet full of unfounded accusations against the ICC

In the jungle of internet sites that pride themselves on defending the positions and tradition of marxism, there is one, Controversies,[1] which recently devoted an entire PDF pamphlet of over 60 pages to a 360-degree attack on our organisation.[2] The accusations are extremely varied, covering virtually everything from political positions to internal functioning and behavior towards other groups. One of them, particularly defamatory, puts forward the idea of a “secret conspiracy by the ICC to sabotage the proletarian political milieu and anything that might cast a shadow over it.” In other words, C. Mcl - the pseudonym of the pamphlet's author - presents himself as the defender of the Communist Left and its founding values in the face of alleged attacks by the ICC.

Before responding to the accusations, we feel it necessary to introduce the author, who is none other than a former member of our organisation, C. Mcl. Since leaving in 2008, he has distinguished himself via his blog Controversies by a clearly hostile attitude of systematic denigration of the ICC, notably through the publication in 2010 of the article ‘It’s midnight in the Communist Left’, which presents a “fanciful”, totally negative assessment of the contributions of the historic Communist Left, the proletarian political current formed in reaction to the degeneration of the Communist International and the betrayal of the Communist Parties in the 1930s. According to the same assessment, the Communist Left experience was a complete failure, and the contributions of Bilan and other expressions of this current[3] were useless. So, after fraudulently burying the history and tradition of the Communist Left under a heap of lies in a previous article, C. Mcl, again fraudulently, now presents himself as the defender of the Communist Left, with a tract based, as always, on lies and mystifications. Either C. Mcl is either completely unaware of his contradictions, or, like others before him, he has adopted the motto: “the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to get through!”

In fact, C. Mcl's approach is not original, as others before him have engaged in an enterprise of demolition or distortion of the values and contribution of the Communist Left. Thus, for example, it is reminiscent in content and purpose of the one carried out by another “illustrious” figure, Mr. Gaizka, who invented, in the service of his personal aims, a Spanish Communist Left[4] of which he was the heir and defender. In both cases, there is this shared objective: to gain acceptance in the camp of the Communist Left by means of a Trojan horse, like the fake Spanish Communist Left[5] or through the “political disqualification” of the ICC, within a common project to negate the Communist Left itself.

As we shall also see below, Controversies' aim with this first pamphlet (a second is in progress) goes far beyond a simple polemic, insofar as the ICC's behavior is said to evoke “mafia-like gangsterism,” so that our “conceptions and practices must be denounced and firmly banished,” and that:

  • “it is high time, once and for all, to put an end to the internal struggles provoked daily in the proletarian political milieu by the ICC's actions against it.”
  • “Yes, for the first time within the Communist Left, we are confronted with a secret conspiracy on the part of the ICC designed to sabotage the proletarian political milieu and anything that might overshadow it.”[6]

This conclusion of Controversies takes up one by one, against our organisation, the infamies that the ICC has already denounced in the parasitic milieu, drawing on the political approach of the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association against the practices of Bakunin and his followers.[7]

We cannot - nor do we wish to - respond to all the nonsense in this pamphlet. We will therefore deliberately focus on two themes:

  1. The way in which the ICC's characterisation of the current historical phase of the decomposition of capitalism within the period of decadence is rubbished and discarded;
  2. The accusation that our organisation is discrediting and destroying the Communist Left.

Why is C. Mcl targeting these two issues?

  • - The “decadence of capitalism” constitutes the backbone of our political platform, giving it a unique coherence in the proletarian political milieu. To demolish decadence, or even to relativise its importance, is not only to attack the ICC but the entire tradition of the Communist Left, because it weakens the foundations of primary political positions in this period of capitalist decadence:

- the criticism of trade unions as inevitably serving the state;
- the critique of national liberation as in no way at the service of class struggle, but as a fatal obstacle to it.

To reject the concept of the decadence of capitalism and its worsening in the phase of decomposition is to rob ourselves of an understanding of the present historical period, which is different from the ascendant phase of which Marx was a contemporary.

  • Similarly, when it comes to the party, the conception of its role and its construction cannot be posed without taking into account the specific historical period in question in the life of capitalism. And reference to the Communist Left, cut off from the historical period, becomes a sterile abstraction from which no lessons can be drawn. This fundamental current of the workers' movement thus ceases to be a source of orientation and inspiration, becoming a gimmick in the hands of academicism and blogging sites like Controversies.

For a certain audience and its mentors, discrediting and destroying the Communist Left is such an obvious necessity that there's no need to justify it. This is the philosophy behind C. Mcl's article, with its slanderous attacks and accusations.

Mr. C. Mcl's strange approach to analysing the historical period

The characterisation of the present historical period as one of the decadence of capitalism is not an invention of the ICC, but a conclusion reached by the Third International. As it states in its ‘Manifesto’, the Communist International came into being at a time when capitalism had clearly demonstrated its obsolescence. Humanity was now entering “the era of wars and revolutions”. The Internationalistst Communist Tendency (ICT), another important component of today's Communist Left, also defends the analysis of the decadence of capitalism, but in our view incoherently. As for the Bordigists, if today they are rather unconvinced by this approach due to an erroneous defense of the invariance[8] of Marxism, it should be remembered that Bordiga himself was its defender in 1921.[9]

1. In the face of C. Mcl's “critiques”, what are the arguments in favor of the analysis of decadence?

These appear in a series of articles we produced in the late 1980s, precisely in response to critical positions that denied the analysis of the decadence of capitalism. Here are a few particularly significant passages:

  • “… when revolutionaries have the task of demonstrating the capitalist mode of production’s historical bankruptcy and socialism’s necessity and immediacy, there are political groups picking over the ‘fantastic growth rates of the reconstruction period’, abandoning the marxist conception of succeeding modes of production by rejecting the notion of decadence, and straining themselves to prove that ‘...capitalism grows endlessly, beyond all limits’. It is hardly surprising that with this kind of foundation, and without any coherent analysis of the period, these groups defend a perspective that is unfavourable for the working class, and essentially academic as far as the activity of revolutionary minorities is concerned.”[10]

And to continue:

  • “However, like previous modes of production, capitalism also has its period of decadence which began in this century’s second decade, and which is characterised by the brake imposed on the development of the productive forces by its now outdated fundamental social law of production – wage labour – which is eventually expressed in a lack of solvent markets relative to the needs of accumulation.”[11]

Adding that:

  • “The decadence of a mode of production cannot be measured simply in the light of statistics. The phenomenon can only be grasped through a whole series of quantitative, but also qualitative and superstructural aspects: our critics pretend not to know this, so as to avoid having to say anything about it, being happy enough to brandish the figures whose value we have just demonstrated."[12]

Finally, we recall the arguments developed in response to the EFICC,[13] which at the time challenged the idea that the development of state capitalism was closely linked to the decadence of capitalism:

  • “For EFICC this is no longer true. It is the transition from formal to real domination that explains the development of state capitalism. If this were the case, we should statistically observe a continuous progression of the state's share of the economy, since this shift in domination takes place over an entire period and, what's more, this progression should begin during the ascending phase. This is clearly not the case. The statistics we have published show a clear break in 1914. In the ascendant phase, the state's share of the economy is LOW and CONSTANT (hovering around 12%), whereas it rises during the decadence to reach an average today of around 50% of GNP. This confirms our thesis of the indissoluble link between the development of state capitalism and decadence, and categorically invalidates that of EFICC.” [14]

In these same articles, for example, the assessment was as follows:

  • “At the end of this series of articles, you'd have to be as blind as our critics not to see the break in capitalism's way of life brought about by the First World War. All the long-term statistical series published in the article demonstrate this rupture: world industrial production, world trade, prices, state intervention, terms of trade and armaments. Only the analysis of decadence and its explanation by the global saturation of markets makes it possible to understand this rupture.”[15]

These are just some of the arguments we can provide, taking them from three of our articles written at the time by a staunch defender of the analysis of capitalism's decadence. But, if we look up who the author of these articles is, we have the incredible surprise of discovering that all three are signed by C. Mcl who actually wrote them when he was still a militant in our organisation. It therefore seems to us that Mr. C. Mcl, before lashing out at the organisation in which he was active for 33 years, from 1975 to 2008, without ever questioning either the decadence or the analysis of the new period of decomposition, should first take responsibility for himself and respond to his own contradictions.

2. How is it possible that C. Mcl, in revising his analysis of decadence, could have reached such opposing conclusions?

Why, when he “revises” his earlier conclusions published in the International Review of the ICC, does C. Mcl base himself on a different set of data? And above all, how does he justify such a change in the data in question, when they are supposed to reflect the same reality? C. Mcl doesn't feel the need to justify this. Worse still, he does not cite the source of the new data now used, contenting himself with an insolent and provocative tone to accompany the presentation of his new results and conclusions, remaining as silent as a tomb about his new sources.

Intrigued by the mystery thus maintained by C. Mcl, we carried out a few searches and finally discovered that his latest publications on this theme are based entirely on data from an English website, World in Data,[16] based in Oxford and funded by Bill Gates. This site sets out to highlight the positive aspects of capitalism, which is supposed to solve world poverty. But this company’s findings are far from definitive, since there are numerous sites and blogs on the web pointing out that these statistics are completely distorted. In other words, C. Mcl and Controversies are allying themselves with Bill Gates by using unreliable statistics to “artificially” promote the longevity of capitalism and bury the thesis of its decadence.

3. What method does C. Mcl use to develop his analyses of the historical situation?

In his animated attempt to demonstrate “the total political bankruptcy of our organisation”, C. Mcl and his blog Controversies know no limits and have acquired a certain expertise in the art of confusing our positions by distorting and falsifying them. But, as this apparently isn't enough, C. Mcl does the same to the positions of Marx and Engels.

On page 13 of his booklet, for example, C. Mcl challenges our analysis that the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing bourgeois propaganda about the defeat of communism, the disappearance of the working class and the end of history, have led to a collapse of fighting spirit and a decline in class consciousness. We quote C. Mcl:

  •  “...the ICC's recognition of a post-1989 ebb in struggles is totally erroneous for three good reasons:

a) Firstly, because this decline dates back to 1974-75, i.e. fifteen years earlier.

b) Secondly, it's impossible for the cause of the downturn to lie in the collapse of the Eastern bloc, since the downturn was already at its lowest point in 1989 (graph 4.1).

c) Finally, the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall had no influence on the intensity of social conflict (graph 4.1). At most, we can detect a cyclical micro-crisis ... but this is recovered in the following two years. On the other hand, this collapse has an impact on consciousness as an additional factor in the disorientation and loss of class identity”.

Let's unpack this quote from C. Mcl:

  • - Firstly, it suggests that, for the ICC, the problem of setbacks is characterized in terms of strike days. It can then, by means of an ad-hoc statistic on the number of strikes, invalidate the idea of a decline from the 1990s onwards. This can be misleading for those unfamiliar with our analysis of the decline in working-class consciousness;
  • - Secondly, he pretends that the ICC essentially understands the decline as a question of diminished working-class combativeness, not of consciousness. This is false, as evidenced by this passage from our ‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the eastern countries’ (International Review no 60), written at the beginning of October 1989, i.e. more than a month before the start of the disintegration of the USSR: “An event of this magnitude will reverberate, and has already begun to reverberate, on the consciousness of the working class, and all the more so as it concerns an ideology and a political system presented for more than half a century by all sectors of the bourgeoisie as ‘socialist’ and ‘working-class’ ... We must therefore expect a momentary decline in proletarian consciousness, the manifestations of which can already be seen - particularly with the return in force of the trade unions. While the relentless and increasingly brutal attacks that capitalism will inevitably unleash on the workers will force them to lead the fight, this will not initially result in a greater capacity for the class to advance in its awareness. In particular, reformist ideology will weigh heavily on the struggles of the coming period, greatly favoring the action of the unions.”

Obviously, we can't speak of error, exaggeration or even bias when we see the way C. Mcl.'s attempt to undermine the ICC's credibility by resorting to such easily verifiable untruths, since the ICC was in fact the only organisation in the proletarian milieu to point out that the collapse of the Eastern bloc meant greater difficulties for the proletariat. This was simply a blatant lie.

But nothing stops C. Mcl in his quest for the craziest means to serve his designs of demolition, especially when it comes to the phase of capitalism’s decomposition. Boldly, he calls on the Communist Manifesto to come to his aid by invoking this passage relating (according to him) to the decomposition within the societies of the past, resulting in the destruction of the two classes in struggle: “Free man and slave, patrician and plebeian, baron and serf, sworn master and journeyman, in a word oppressors and oppressed, in constant opposition, waged an uninterrupted war, sometimes open, sometimes concealed, a war which always ended either in a revolutionary transformation of the whole society, or in the mutual ruin of the contending classes.” (Emphasis in the original text).

Since the Manifesto does not mention the possibility of a phase of social decomposition under capitalism, as it does for earlier societies, C. Mcl concedes that such a phenomenon may exist under capitalism, but only to a very limited extent. The explanation is very interesting: “... if such a 'blockage' of the balance of power between classes can exist for a few years in capitalism, it is inconceivable in the medium and long term because the imperatives required by the accumulation of capital leave no room for this possibility under penalty of... economic blockage this time!" (emphasis added)

C. Mcl. shamelessly avoids the legitimate explanation for Marx's failure to speak of the decomposition of capitalism. This rests not, as C. Mcl. says, in the fact that it could only be a temporary phenomenon, but in the obvious fact that this was impossible for him, as it was for every marxist, no matter how profound, for the following two reasons:

  • on the one hand, 140 years separate the writing of the Manifesto of 1848 and the opening of the phase of decomposition;
  • on the other hand, the phase of decomposition was not an obligatory phase within decadence, but the product at a given moment of it, of the inability of the two antagonistic classes to bring their own solution to the crisis.

This anecdote brings us to the subject of C. Mcl's ability to bring reality into his schemes, even when it is too far removed from them. We do not know if he has thus succeeded in fooling his "followers," if indeed he has any.

Is the ICC discrediting and destroying the Communist Left?

This is what C. Mcl defends, developing his indictment along three lines:

  • The internal debate within the ICC;
  • The ICC's anti-war policy;
  • The ICC's policy towards the proletarian political milieu (PPM), accusing our organiszation of a drift into Bordigist-style monolithism.

1. On our internal debates and reporting to the outside world

To support the comical thesis of ICC's bordigo-monolithic drift, C. Mcl begins by attempting to ridicule our method of debate:

“‘The starting point for a debate is first and foremost the framework shared by the organiszation, adopted and specified by the various reports of its international congresses’ ... in other words, the perimeter of a debate in the ICC is strictly limited to being able to quibble over the dots and commas of framework texts and resolutions. Apart from that, any contribution calling this framework into question or posing another framework is rejected, as it can only be ‘An insidious way of casting doubt on the organization's analysis [...] a fallacious mode of argumentation’”.

The problem is that C. Mcl, having abandoned the ICC, has also completely abandoned the marxist scientific method, which dictates that any step towards truth must be accomplished through the most profound critique of the past, of previous positions. This is the meaning of defining, as the starting point for analysis, the common framework formulated by the organisation. Without this approach, any development would end in chaos and be completely unproductive.

C. Mcl also criticises us for not sufficiently developing our internal debate, for publishing very few texts expressing our differences to the outside world, and for postponing the publication of these texts indefinitely. What C. Mcl fails to mention in this respect is that:

  1. since the beginning of its existence, the organisation has been equipped with highly effective tools for internal debate, such as internal bulletins, which C. Mcl has misused to write this misleading pamphlet;
  2. the ICC publishes a political report after each of its congresses, in which all the critical elements developed within the organisation are reported;
  3. the publication of divergent texts outside the organisation is intended, where appropriate, to make known to the working class elements of internal debate which may be of interest to it; this publication does not therefore respond to a right of militants, but to the political need of the organisation to present its elements of debate to the working class with the greatest clarity;
  4. from our birth as an organisation to the present day, contributions to debate have been published externally, including those written by C. Mcl, on the occasion of the debate on the meaning of the “30 Glorious Years”.

Contrary to the accusations levelled against us by C. Mcl, we are an organisation which, with conviction and responsibility, communicates problems, divergences and - when they arise - crisis situations to the outside world, but in a political way that is understandable and capable of stimulating our readers. On the other hand, it's clear that those who follow our internal life for the sole purpose of spying through the keyhole, believing themselves to be watching a reality show, may be disappointed that not everything is reported to the outside world. We don't regret this at all.

2. Is the joint declaration an ICC bluff?

C. Mcl's second anti-ICC indictment concerns our ‘Appeal to the groups of the Communist Left’ for a Joint Declaration (JD)[17] against the war in Ukraine. In addition to complaining about the limited number of groups to which we sent our appeals,[18] C. Mcl elaborates a whole theory according to which our appeal was a complete failure because:

  1. the Korean ICP, after adhering to the Joint Declaration, distanced itself from it by opting for the NWBCW (No War but the Class War) initiative;
  2. the IOD (Istituto Onorato Damen) demonstrated its lack of adherence to the Joint Declaration by not endorsing the Appeal that followed;
  3. IV (Internationalist Voice) itself had no value, being in fact no more than a Swedish sub-section of the ICC.

For C. Mcl, the aim was to show that the JD initiative was nothing but a bluff, and that it had brought together no group other than the ICC itself: “... what a flop! So what's left of the ICC's political milieu? Its only hidden section-bis in Sweden: Internationalist Voice! This is the reason for the ICC's current diatribe: isolated and lonely, all that's left is a scorched-earth policy aimed at destroying everything that's being done outside the ICC in the revolutionary milieu”[19]

Once again, the attitude of Controversies is the opposite of the responsible and militant attitude which should be that of groups of the Communist Left in the face of war: rather than criticising other groups for their refusal to join (Bordigists and Damenists) and the hesitations of those who had initially joined (ICP and IOD), it lambasts the ICC for trying to build a common response to the whole of the Communist Left!!!!

3. Is the ICC pursuing a hidden policy of destroying the PPM?

The latest line of attack against the ICC is the accusation of wanting to destroy the Proletarian Political Milieu (PPM), the grievance against us appearing to be our oft-expressed position, particularly towards the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) (but also towards the Bordigists) that they are not up to the responsibilities required by the current historical situation because of their visceral opportunism (of which sectarianism is an expression, particularly as far as the Bordigists are concerned): “... the ICC's policy towards its dissidents, the ICT and the proletarian political milieu is unprecedented and totally alien to the workers' movement, more akin to that pursued by Bakunin to 'discredit’ and ‘wipe out’ the IWA [International Workingmen’s Association]. It shames the Communist Left and must be denounced and banished."[20]

In support of his accusations, C. Mcl exhibits a series of quotations stolen from our internal documents and presented in a light that completely distorts their context and target, such as:

  • “It is necessary for the organisation [the ICC] to be as clear and homogeneous as possible about the aim of our policy towards the IBRP [ICT]: what is important is to discredit ... the IBRP... so that it disappears politically. If this policy leads to its physical disappearance, so much the better."[21]

This accusation of wanting to destroy other groups of the PPM, of “sabotaging the proletarian political milieu and anything that might overshadow it”, is not new and is very reminiscent of the one we've already had to refute against another Argentine character we've reported in our press under the name of Citizen B, who, in 2004, took the trouble to write an entire ‘Declaracion del Círculo de Comunistas Internacionalistas: contra la nauseabunda metodologia de la Corriente Comunista Internacional’[22] and numerous other articles containing a series of extremely serious accusations against the ICC.

This dishonest slander was unfortunately supported at the time by the group known today as the ICT, then, called the IBRP, (International Bureau International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party). The declaration and all the other articles expressing accusations invented by the self-proclaimed group led by citizen B were regularly published on the IBRP website, and our protests and warnings to the IBRP itself, about the lies contained in these articles and the danger represented by citizen B went unheeded. That is until an ICC delegation went to Argentina and met the group on whose behalf Citizen B had written the various articles of denunciation and which was completely unaware that it had been so ignominiously used. It was only after we had published a statement from this group denying and denouncing Citizen B's actions that the IBRP had to backtrack on the articles against us which it had published and which, one after the other, discreetly disappeared from the site, albeit without any explanation from the IBRP -now ICT.

It was therefore on the basis of this unforgivable behavior that our organization took the responsibility of sending an ‘Open letter to the militants of the IBRP’ (December 2004) in which we stated the following: “… we have always thought that it was in the interests of the working class to preserve an organisation like the IBRP. You do not have the same analysis as regards our own organisation as, having stated in your meeting with the IFICC in March 2002 that ‘if we come to the conclusion that the ICC has become 'invalid’ as an organisation, our aim would be to do all that is possible to push for its disappearance’ (IFICC Bulletin n°9), you have now in fact done all that is possible to attain this end ...

“Comrades, We tell you frankly: if the IBRP persists in its policy of using lies, slander and, worse still, of ‘allowing’ these to be used and abetting them by remaining silent when faced with the intrigues of grouplets, such as the ‘Circulo’ and the IFICC, of which they are the trade mark and raison d'être, then it will have demonstrated that it too has become an obstacle to the development of consciousness in the proletariat. It will have become an obstacle, not so much because of the damage that it can do to our organisation (recent events have shown that we are able to defend ourselves, even if you think that ‘the ICC is in the process of disintegration’), but because of the damage and the dishonour that this kind of behaviour can inflict on the memory of the Italian Communist Left and thus on its invaluable contribution. In fact, in this case it would be preferable if the IBRP disappeared and ‘our aim would be to do all that is possible to push for its disappearance’ as you so excellently put it. It is of course clear that to attain this end, we would use only weapons belonging to the working class and it goes without saying that we would never permit the use of lies or slander.”

This is our true position, which C. Mcl has so maliciously tried to falsify, by obscuring the entire history that underlies it.

What is truly disgraceful is the totally immoral behavior of C. Mcl, steeped in petty-bourgeois ideology, which unleashes the vilest accusations against an organisation like ours that seeks to keep alive the values of the Communist Left and the workers' movement in general, against opportunistic excesses and alliances with the various snitches and parasites circulating in the political milieu. In different circumstances, our organisation has often taken the responsibility of warning other organisations of the numerous pitfalls to which they are prey, but we have never failed to express our revolutionary solidarity with them and our recognition of their belonging to the political lineage we have in common. Our aim is not to destroy other organisations, but to prevent them from destroying themselves by becoming enemies of the working class.

What are Controversies and the individual C. Mcl?

To conclude this article, we might ask: exactly who is this individual who has launched such a virulent attack on our organisation? As previously mentioned, C. Mcl is a former ICC militant who also had the audacity to present himself[23] in the same pamphlet:

  • “As a militant in the International Communist Current since 1975, I owe it my training, but also the legacy of its political and organisational inconsistencies. Outside its ranks in the fall of 2008, it took me several years to make a critical assessment of it, the first elements of which I present here.”

As he reports, C. Mcl had been a member of our organisation for no less than 33 years, during which time he never questioned any of the key points of our platform! Until 2008, i.e. for most of his political life, he endorsed and defended the ICC's positions on decadence, decomposition, policy towards the proletarian political milieu, denunciation of parasitism, etc., and was a member of the ICC's international central organ. But after 2008, why did he change his mind? A brief reminder is in order.

After the first years of the 21st century, the organisation realised that, while the framework for analysing the historical period of capitalism's decline remained valid, certain aspects needed to be clarified. In particular, the economic development of countries like China needed to be explained.[24]

On the other hand, the argument used in our pamphlet on decadence that the global economic recovery of capitalism after the Second World War was due to the reconstruction process, a position shared by all other groups in the political milieu, was no longer convincing, as it contradicted the framework of analysis of the capitalist mode of production that we defend. This led to a debate within the organisation, with the participation of former militant C. Mcl and which saw the production of five articles of debate published to the outside  in the International Review (n°136, 138, 141) under the title “ICC internal debate on economics”. Prior to the opening of this debate in the press, C. Mcl had been appointed to update our pamphlet on decadence, but when in the debate he began to develop positions in contradiction with the foundations of our platform and marxism, while defending the idea that they were perfectly compatible,[25] it was not possible to leave it to this comrade to update a new pamphlet on decadence.

This decision by the organisation was probably never fully accepted by C. Mcl. The man who considered himself the expert on the subject, out of wounded pride, began to protest, making it a personal matter and developing an increasingly hostile attitude. He began to accuse the organisation of all possible evils and no longer even respected its rules of functioning. In the end, C. Mcl left the organisation without continuing to defend his differences. As can be seen once again, it's not the ICC that's obstructing debate, but rather behaviors within it that are totally alien to revolutionary militancy.

Once out of the organisation, C. Mcl went completely off the rails politically. The position he had developed on economics led him to finally reject the marxist position, adopting an economist approach and associating himself with academic elements, such as Jacques Gouverneur, with whom he wrote a book Capitalisme et crises économiques, in which he rejects the catastrophic vision of marxism.

Another example is given by an obituary[26] published in Controversies and signed by Philippe Bourrinet,[27] another element also furiously hostile to the ICC. The obituary is devoted to a certain Lafif Lakhdar, “Arab intellectual, writer, philosopher and rationalist, activist in Algeria, the Middle East and France. Nicknamed the ‘Arab Spinoza’. Died in Paris on July 26, 2013”. Naturally, the expectation of those about to read an obituary on a site subtitled “Forum for the Internationalist Communist Left”, is to learn of the existence of a revolutionary militant who participated in Communist Left organisations, or at least in proletarian and non-counter-revolutionary groups. Instead, we learn from the same obituary that:

  1. “along with other Marxist or Marxist-leaning intellectuals, he was - like Michel Raptis (Pablo) - one of Ben Bella's advisors.”
  2. In October 2004, he and several liberal Arab writers co-directed a Manifesto published on the Internet (www.elaph.com; www.metransparent.com) calling on the UN to create an international tribunal to prosecute terrorists, organizations or institutions inciting terrorism.”
  3. With philosopher Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010), he has been involved since 2009 in UNESCO's Aladin program, an ‘“educational and cultural program’” launched under the patronage of UNESCO, Jacques Chirac and Simone Veil"[28].

In short, who was this obituary for? Someone who served the Algerian president, who sent a letter-manifesto to the UN, that “den of brigands” (as Lenin put it) to put all terrorists on trial, and who was finally stuffed by UNESCO into a programme promoted by Chirac!!!! As we can see, it's easy to understand where the suicidal choice to declare the Communist Left dead actually leads: to absolute nothingness, if not to the enemy camp.

We have no problem with C. Mcl wanting to be an academic. What we cannot tolerate, however, is that someone who likes to play the marxologist, and who has clearly abandoned all reference to the tradition of the Communist Left and even to marxism, should accuse others of destroying the Communist Left when he himself has participated in its destruction by claiming, among other things, that it was “midnight in the Communist Left”; that someone like him, who has knowingly manipulated quotations from the ICC, the Marx-Engels Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg and the Gauche Communiste de France (cf. § 2. 3) can allow himself to turn the same accusation against the ICC[29]; that an individual who is only a blogger should try to present himself as something serious and solid, with an organisation called “Controversies” which is only a front site, and be able to challenge the history, structure and militant activity of an organisation like ours, but also of all the other groups of the Communist Left which, however weak and guilty of opportunism they may be, are nonetheless a reality in the proletarian camp, and not a buffoonery like Controversies.

 

Ezechiele, 20 November, 2024

 

[5] ‘Who is who in “Nuevo Curso”?’, ICConline, January 2020.

[6] ‘The idealist pole…’, ibid, page.61 and 63. It is important to note that in these last two passages, C. Mcl repeats, almost word for word, quotations from Engels' text ‘The General Council to all members of the International’, a warning against Bakunin's Alliance. C. Mcl, who has renounced the concept of parasitism, who has publicly apologised to all the other denigrators of the Communist Left and the ICC for having himself shared the ICC's analysis of the danger of parasitism, now takes the liberty of repeating Engels' words of accusation against the first expressions of parasitism in the workers' movement represented by Bakunin and the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy.

[8] We speak of a mistaken defense because there are indeed principles that remain invariant in marxism, but the “second Bordiga”, the one who returned to politics at the end of the Second World War by taking part in the founding of the Internationalist Communist Party in 1943-45, made invariance a rule for every position, pushing the party towards the positions of the time of the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

[9] ‘Rejecting the notion of Decadence, Part 1’, International Review n°77

[10] ‘Part 4: Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism’, International Review n°54

[11] ibid

[12] ibid

[13] External Fraction of the ICC

[14] ‘Part 6: Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism’, International Review n°56, footnote 5.

[18] C. Mcl would certainly claim (no kidding!) to be - like other parasites - an expression of the Communist Left.

[22] Declaration by the Circle of Internationalist Communists: ‘Against the nauseating methodology of the International Communist Current’.

[24] The question of China seems to be a subject of particular interest to C. Mcl, on which he dwells at length in his pamphlet. But contrary to what C. Mcl. would have us believe, the ICC has not hesitated, once again, to criticise its own delays and errors in previous analyses. In updating the ‘Theses on decomposition’ at the 22nd Congress, we begin by reiterating the importance, after 20 years, of reviewing what we have written, and have made a correction concerning China, about which we have admitted we were mistaken.

[25] Indeed, they represented a challenge to the marxist analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, overproduction in particular. Indeed, for this comrade, Keynesian measures such as wage increases were a means of relieving overproduction, which is true in itself, but he deliberately failed to mention that such measures were at the same time a waste of accumulated surplus value, and therefore a brake on accumulation, intolerable in the medium and long term for the bourgeoisie.

[26] Controversies. Lafif Lakhdar

[27] To find out more about this element, we recommend reading the article ‘Doctor Bourrinet, fraud and self-proclaimed historian’ ICConline, February 2015.

[28] Extract from the obituary.

[29] “That the ICC should come to the point of having to falsify its own texts, and even those of Rosa Luxemburg, to mask the inconsistencies of its analyses, speaks volumes about its theoretical and moral decay.” ‘ICC: The idealist pole of the Communist Left’ page 17).

 

 

 

 

Rubric: 

In defence our organisation and the real tradition of the Communist Left