World revolution is the only realistic solution!

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Our public meeting in December 2025[1] aimed to present the Manifesto published by the ICC on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its foundation.[2] It is mainly devoted to a global analysis of the last fifty years of capitalist convulsions and class struggle

The stakes

As both the Manifesto and the introduction to the meeting emphasised the profound responsibilities of the revolutionary minority in the current and future world situation, the first point of discussion focused on evaluating the ICC's analysis of the main developments in the world situation over the last five decades:

  • The re-emergence of the proletarian struggle in the wake of the massive strikes in France in May-June 1968, a wave of movements which spanned most regions of the globe and led by a new generation of workers who had not been crushed by the deep counter-revolution which descended on the class following the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave.
  • This movement saw many advances in consciousness (which took a very concrete form in the revival of the international communist left and in the formation of the ICC itself) and in the extension and self-organisation of struggles, the high point of which was reached in the mass strike in Poland in 1980.
  • These struggles acted as a barrier to the bourgeoisie’s ‘solution’ to the deepening world economic crisis - mobilisation of society for a new world war – but at the same time they did not attain the level of politicisation required to present society with the alternative of proletarian revolution. By the end of the 1980s we had thus reached a kind of social stalemate which gave rise to a new and terminal phase in the decline of the capitalist system: the phase of decomposition
  • Even though this new phase brought the old division of the world into military blocs to a close, adding another element to the reasons why a Third World War was not on the historical agenda, the very advance of decomposition could lead to the destruction of humanity through a horrible combination of regional wars, ecological disasters, pandemics and other scourges.
  • The 2020s are seeing a clear acceleration of the disintegration of capitalist society and this combination of its various crises in a vortex or whirlwind which is making the perspective of barbarism more tangible than ever. And yet while this is the most visible pole in the world situation, there is a counter-pole: a world proletariat, and above all its most concentrated battalions in western Europe and North America, which has not been through the same level of defeat as in the period 1923-68 and which, from 2022, has inaugurated a new phase in the class struggle, a “rupture” with several decades of retreat in class combativity and consciousness.

The gravity of the world situation emphasises the gravity of the tasks facing those who stand for the communist revolution against capitalism, above all in pushing forward the politicisation of the class movement and in constructing a bridge towards the future communist party, without which any revolutionary upsurge will be doomed to defeat.

What was striking about the first round of interventions at the meeting was the degree to which comrades understood that the alternative of socialism or barbarism is being demonstrated in a very concrete way by the acceleration of wars and ecological collapse across the planet. As a sympathiser wrote to us in response to our request for feedback on the meeting, this growth in understanding is evidence that there is process of subterranean maturation going on in the proletariat, “the growing awareness in the class that we are facing an existential crisis of the present civilization/order. This realisation is unclearly formulated among the class but it is clearly growing in weight and becoming increasingly obvious to many, even if in a semi-conscious way”.

A new phase in the class struggle

The main focus or questions and disagreements at the meeting was the question of the “rupture” in the class struggle. The disagreement was put forward in particular by MH, a member of the Old Moles Collective. MH agreed with us on the importance of what happened in May 68 and after, but argues that the ICC has not heeded its own warnings – formulated in particular at its 21st International Congress[3] - against overestimating the class struggle, while at the same time underestimating the capacity of the bourgeoisie to respond to it. In his view, the class movement of the 1970s and early 80s was defeated by a counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie which also enabled the latter to introduce economic changes which gave the system a breathing space. He recognises a “limited revival” of the class struggle after 2022 but with its concept of the “rupture” the ICC is underestimating the long-lasting impact of the defeat of the 80s and making the same error of overestimation of the class struggle which lay behind its idea of a “turning point” in the struggle in 2003.

In fact, the ICC does not at all underestimate the depth of the set-back in the class struggle over the last three decades, which certainly included a number of important defeats, such as that of the miners in Britain in 1984-5. Nor do we deny the reality of a bourgeois counter-offensive from the late 1970s onwards – an offensive which expressed itself both at the political level (the re-alignment of bourgeois political forces and massive ideological campaigns) and in the economic level, although the “breathing space” allowed by so-called globalisation was largely the result of the collapse of the old bloc system and the consequent rise of China as a “locomotive” for the world economy[4]. The downfall of the USSR and its bloc was simultaneously the basis for the massive ideological onslaught about the “death of communism”, which was a major factor in the disorientation of the working class from the beginning of the 1990s. Neither of these latter developments can be separated from the process of capitalist decomposition, marked by the growing atomisation of social relations and the rise of all kinds of irrational ideas, which has greatly exacerbated the proletariat’s loss of confidence and its capacity to see itself as a distinct social class.

The gradual recovery of class identity (without which there can be no prospect of proletarian politicisation of the struggle) is linked to the worsening economic crisis, which can only lead to direct and massive attacks on the exploited and force them to react on their own class terrain, unlike specific phenomena of decomposition, such as the ecological crisis, which, in the absence of sufficient politicisation, tend to give rise to fragmented reactions on bourgeois terrain, particularly that of so-called democratic ‘reforms’. Alongside this danger, that of interclassism, mixing workers' demands with those of small business owners or other intermediate social strata, as was the case with the Yellow Vests, presents the danger of diluting a still fragile proletariat into other strata of society, when it is still only at the very beginning of the process of regaining its own class identity.

Although fraught with difficulties, this struggle is well and truly underway. This is precisely what we believe has been happening since 2022, where workers have gone on strike and taken to the streets on the basis of resisting attacks (on wages, pensions, etc) that have been building up over a long period, together with a mounting feeling in the class that “enough is enough” and that the promised consolations for years of austerity have not materialised.

These class movements have therefore also been the product of a long period of subterranean maturation which gives them a depth far more significant than the “limited revival” which MH refers to. As we have already noted, this underground process is already giving rise to real expressions of class consciousness at various levels: in a very small minority searching for marxist clarity and considering an organisational involvement; in a slightly wider minority looking for an internationalist response to capitalist wars; and in the more outward and massive manifestations of the struggle, for example in France, with young demonstrating workers reclaiming their continuity with May-June 68, or making a clear link between the build-up of the war economy and their declining living standards.

Building the bridge to the future party

In our conclusion to the meeting, we summed up the responsibilities facing revolutionaries in the present world situation. Because we are not living in a period of counter-revolution, of historical defeat, the road to the formation of the future party remains open, even if we are talking about a very long road with numerous obstacles to surmount on the way. The task we face today is not that of proclaiming ourselves to be the party already, in the Bordigist manner, but of building the bridge which leads to the party, an organisation capable of having a real impact on the course of the class struggle.

In our view, this work, similar to that of a fraction, can only be accomplished by a political organisation with a clear programme, centralised on an international scale, and able to pass on a wealth of experience at the organisational and political level. Evidently, we think that the ICC is uniquely qualified to carry out this role, not least because of the prevailing opportunism and sectarianism within the existing proletarian political camp. But the majority of the militants of the ICC come from the “1968” generation and our organisation needs to transmit the lessons of its 50 years of existence to new generations of comrades willing to join its ranks.

The Bolshevik tradition on the question of adherence to the revolutionary organisation, which is our tradition as well, is that the organisation has to be based on the profound militant commitment of all its members. But if the organisation must assume the role of a vanguard in the development of the revolutionary movement, its influence must also radiate outwards and draw towards it a whole network of sympathisers and fellow travellers who are ready to support and defend it. We gave two concrete examples of how comrades can assist the ICC in the short term: help us to distribute the Manifesto (and our press in general) as widely as possible, and send us their reflections on the debates at this public meeting in order to take the discussion forward.

Amos, December 2025

 

[1] These online meetings have two main objectives: to present our positions and analyses to as wide an audience as possible and, at the same time, to create a space for public discussion between the ICC and other proletarian political groups and, more broadly, all those around the world who are seeking a way to oppose decaying capitalist society. Admittedly, the development of such a space for discussion faces various obstacles, notably, as we pointed out in our introduction to the meeting, the fact that the current proletarian political milieu “is riven by sectarianism, a refusal to engage in polemics and debate, opportunist practices of ‘recruitment’ and profound concessions to bourgeois ideology on such crucial issues as the internationalist response to capitalist war or the role of the trade unions”. However, while very few of these groups responded positively to our invitations to participate, many comrades, long-time supporters of the ICC but also more recent contacts in search of revolutionary positions, took part in these meetings and contributed to the discussion of the topics on the agenda.

[3] See Report on the class struggle (2015), International Review 156

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International public meeting on the Manifesto on 50 years of the ICC