The 6th Congress of the ICC: What is at stake

Introduction

At the beginning of November, the International Communist Current held its 6th Congress. A Congress is the highest authority of a communist organization. It's at the congress that the whole organization draws up a balance-sheet of its activities over the entire period since its previous congress that it pronounces upon the validity of the orientations defined by the latter, at the level both of the analysis of the international situation and of the perspectives     for the organization's activities that derive from this. This balance-sheet in turn makes it possible to draw up perspectives at both these levels for the period up until the next congress. It's clear that it's not only at the congress that the organization is concerned with and discusses the evolution of the international situation and of its own activities. This work has to be done on a permanent basis, so that it is capable at each moment of assuming its res­ponsibilities in the class struggle. But what distinguishes the work of the congress from any other regular meetings within the organization is on this occasion it's the entire organization which pronounces in a collective and directly unified manner on the general and essential orientations which constitute the framework within which all its activities can be developed and articulated. In other words, what distinguishes the congress is that it must confront what is primordially at stake for the whole life of the organization.

What is at stake in this Congress      

The revolutionary organization doesn't exist by itself or for itself. As a secretion of the revolutionary class, it can only exist as an active factor in the development of the struggle and the consciousness of that class. In this sense, what was at stake for the ICC in this Congress was directly linked to what is at stake in the present evolution of the class struggle? And what is at stake at this level is a great deal indeed. Faced with a capitalist system which is inexorably sinking more and more into its mortal crisis, a crisis whose only outcome on the terrain of the system can be a third world war which will destroy humanity, the struggle of the proletariat, its capacity to mobilize on its own class terrain, constitutes the only obstacle to such an outcome, as we have often pointed out and as we reiterate in the editorial of this issue of the IR. If the crisis of capitalism has not led today to a generalized holocaust, this is due fundamentally to the historic resurgence of class struggle since the end of the 1960s, a resurgence which, despite all the moments of retreat and of provisional disorientation in the class, has not let up. Thus, while one of the major tasks of the 5th Congress of the ICC was to understand and analyze the world-wide reflux which permitted and followed on from the proletariat's defeat in Poland in 1981, the 6th congress by contrast was held two years after the beginning of a new wave of struggles which has hit most of the industrialized countries, and particularly those of western Europe. This wave of struggles (the third since ‘68) is taking place at a crucial moment in the life of society.

It is taking place in the middle of a decade whose gravity our organization has frequently demonstrated, a decade in which "the reality of the present world will be revealed in all its nakedness", in which "to a great extent the future of humanity will be decided" (International Review 20, ‘The 1980s, Years of Truth'). This shows the whole importance of the central question which our 6th Congress had to deal with: how to arm our organization in the face of the third wave of struggles since the historic resurgence of 1968, which is taking place in the middle of such a decisive decade; how to ensure that the ICC is not just an observer, even a well-informed one, or even just an enthusiastic 'supporter' of the combats waged by the class, but, as its responsibilities demand, an actor in the historic drama which is taking place, an integral part of these combats?

While they were in the first place determined by the world situation and in particular by the evo­lution of the class struggle, the stakes of the 6th Congress of the ICC were also a result of the particular situation which our organization has been in these last few years. The communist organization is a historical product of the movement of the revolutionary class towards self-consciousness; it is not a mechanical or immediate product of the class movement. The class provides itself with communist organizations in order to respond to a need: to participate actively in the elabor­ation and deepening of revolutionary theory and positions, and in their dissemination throughout the class, to put forward in a clear manner the ultimate goals of the movement and the means to attain them; to wage a permanent and uncompromis­ing combat against all facets of the ruling ideol­ogy, which weighs constantly on the whole of the class and which has the effect of paralyzing its struggles. This is the mandate which the class confers on its revolutionary organizations, but it is not an a priori given that they will be able to carry out this mandate in the best possib­le way and at each moment of their existence. Just like the class of which they are a part, revolutionary organizations, and their militants, are subjected to the permanent pressure of the ideology of the ruling class, and although they are better armed to resist it than the rest of the proletariat, there is always the danger that this resistance will weaken and that in the end they will be unable to carry out the tasks for which the class has engendered them. Thus, the gravity of what's at stake in the 1980s represents a considerable challenge for all the organizations of the revolutionary milieu - a challenge which this milieu has shown great difficulties in taking up. The ‘years of truth' apply both to society as a whole and to the revolutionary organizations, and the convulsions which have marked the world situation since the beginning of the decade, at the level both of imperialist conflicts (such as Afghanistan) and of the class struggle (as in Poland) have had their echo in major convulsions in the revolutionary milieu which developed out of the historic resurgence of class struggle at the end of the ‘60s . This crisis of the revolut­ionary milieu, which we have pointed to and analyzed in this Review (see especially nos.28, 32 and 36) did not spare the ICC itself, as we have shown. The ICC's extraordinary conference in January ‘82 was an important moment in the redressment of our organization, and its 5th Congress (in July ‘83) could correctly draw "a positive balance-sheet of the way the ICC faced up to this crisis" (presentation of the 5th Con­gress, in IR 35). But, as we noted later on (see in particular the article in IR 42 ‘Centrist Slidings Towards Councilism'), while this redressment was a "real" one, it was still "incomplete". This is noted in the balance-sheet section of the activities resolution adopted by the 6th Congress:

"1. The 5th Congress of the ICC in July ‘83... correctly reaffirmed the validity of the general framework of organizational and political redressment assumed by the extraordinary conference in 1982 in response to the crisis which shook the ICC at the beginning of the 1980's, along with the whole revolutionary movement, faced with the stakes of the ‘years of truth'.

However, the 5th Congress allowed a lack of clar­ity to remain in our understanding of the inter­national situation, in particular the immediate perspectives for the, class struggle (the long proletarian reflux, waiting for the qualitative leap) and did not, in the activities resolution, give an orientation for our intervention in the workers' struggles that could be anticipated in the face of the sharpening attacks of the bourg­eoisie.

The slogan ‘less but better'[1], instead of being clearly posed and understood as the consolidation and preparation of the organization for the inevitable explosion of class struggle in the two years following the Congress, was conceived of and understood as a continuation of the same 'orderly retreat' of the 1982 Extraordinary Con­ference. The ICC thus remained, in part, turned towards the period of the disorientation of the proletariat, when, in fact, a grasp of the general characteristics of the class struggle in decadence, of the analysis of the current conditions, implied a recognition of the emergence from this disorientation and the recovery in workers' struggles. This was confirmed scarcely three months after the 5th Congress with the eruption of the strikes in Belgium in September ‘85.

2. During the last two years, the ICC has had to overcome this weakness, readjusting the orientat­ion of the 5th Congress, to raise its activity to "the level demanded of revolutionaries by the movement of the acceleration of history at every level, which conditions society's evolution towards decisive class confrontations" (activities resolution for the 5th Congress of RI , July 1984), and in particular, to ensure a consistent intervention in the general resurgence of class combats. Faced with the delay in understanding of, or wrong positions about, the events after the Congress..., the ICC... began to readjust its orientations, emphasizing the more rapid rhythm of the evolution of the international situation, drawing out the idea of the acceleration of history and explaining the meaning of events in the face of the delays in our analyses, and rejecting the incorrect con­ceptions that tended to diminish the origination's responsibilities."

The 6th Congress of the ICC, in order to raise the organization to the level of the responsibilities posed by the present moment, thus had to consolidate all the acquisitions that we had made in the previous years on the various levels evoked in the activities resolution. In particular it had to turn its back resolutely on all the hesit­ations, evasions and conservative tendencies which have appeared in response to the organization's efforts to arrive at these acquisitions, and which found their most acute, not to say caricatural expression in the minority which formed itself into a tendency in January ‘85. In this sense it had to pronounce clearly not only on the perspectives for the international situation, for the class struggle and for the intervention that we have to make within it, but also on the essential questions which have been debated at length in the organization throughout this effort, a debate which we have made public in the columns of the IR (cf. nos.40, 41, 42 and 43), and which was focused mainly on:

-- the recognition of centrist slidings towards councilism within the ICC

-- the importance of the danger of councilism for the class and its revolutionary organizations in the present period and the period ahead

-- the threat posed to revolutionary organizations, both today and in the past, by opportunism and particularly its centrist variety.

These were the stakes, the exigencies, of the 6th Congress of the ICC. To what extent did it manage to respond to them?

The discussions and texts of the 6th Congress

The analysis of the international situation

The readers of our Review will know that the ICC examines the international situation in a perman­ent manner. Thus the task of the 6th Congress was not to deal with all aspects of the internat­ional situation but to concentrate on those which are the most important, the most recent, and which determine most directly the tasks of our organization. In particular it had to point out the essential issues of the period, notably in the face of a whole series of ideological camp­aigns through which the bourgeoisie is trying to ‘prove':

-- that the capitalist economy is getting better, that it is ‘convalescing'

-- that thanks to the wisdom of the leaders of the great powers, the tensions between these powers are lessening

-- that the working class is struggling less and less, that it has ‘understood' the necessity to be ‘reasonable' so that the crisis can be overcome.

The resolution adopted by the congress, and which we're publishing in this issue, like the reports presented to the congress on which it's based, refutes these different lies. Recognizing what's         at stake in the present period means, in particular, pointing out:

-- the total impasse in which the capitalist economy finds itself, the barbarism into which it is plunging the whole of society (points 2-5)

-- the ineluctable aggravation of imperialist tensions and the lying character of all the speeches about peace (points 6-8)

-- that "the key to the whole historical situation is in the hands of the working class" (point 9); that "the present situation has an enormous potential for giving rise to proletarian movements" and that "revolutionaries have to be particularly vigilant about the potentialities of the present period and take great care not to underestimate this potential" (point 15) .

Pointing out what's at stake in the class struggle requires, in the first place, a capacity to refute all the lies about the "passivity" of the working (points 9, 10 and above all 11 are devoted to this), but it also requires an ability to analyze the present characteristics of the development of this struggle (see points 10 and 13 in particular) and of the many traps laid by the bourgeoisie, especially its unions, in order to paralyze it (points 13 and 13). Finally, it demands a clear analysis of the phenomenon of unemployment which is acting as an important spur to the class struggle.                             

Examining the development of the class struggle took up a major part of the discussions on the international situation (half of the resolution is devoted to it). This translated the whole importance which the ICC accords to this question, with the aim of intervening in the struggle as effectively as possible, despite our very limited resources, and thus of drawing out all the potential contained within it.

The intervention of the ICC

The necessity for the intervention of revolutionaries impregnates the resolution on the international situation which terminates on this point:         

"It's through intervention in particular, by putting forward proposals for action that correspond to the needs of the class, that revolutionar­ies will be able to prove concretely to the work­ers the necessity for a revolutionary organization, thus laying the foundations for the future party of the communist revolution." (point 15)

But above all it's at the centre of the activities resolution adopted by the Congress:

"Intervention in the class struggle, based on class demands, must be the ICC's priority. The organization's political presence through its intervention on a class terrain, that, is to say on the terrain of the defense of the workers' immediate interests in the face of capital's attacks, using the working class' own method of struggle (strikes, demonstrations, meetings, assemblies, workers' groups, unemployed committ­ees), is not only possible but necessary, and has an influence amongst the workers, whether or not it is the unions that call formally for the move­ment, whether the workers be present in small or large numbers. This is the precondition for the organization fulfilling the task for which it exists in the working class, for it being capable of denouncing the union caricatures of struggle and their strategy of demobilization (media operations, commando ‘actions', union delegations and petitions, corporatist and nationalist demands), for it being capable of putting concrete propositions for action, to encourage the class' reflection, unity and collective action, wherever and whenever the workers' interests are defended...

This mastery (of the organizational framework for intervention) presupposes the conviction that the two years to come will see upsurges and explosions of class struggle, laid down in today's conditions. We know that these will happen, just as the astronomers were able to determine the existence of Pluto without being able to see it. We also know that we do not have all the answers ready-made for the new problems that will arise, but that firmness on what we have already gained is a precondition for living up to the situation. The organization must be prepared at all times for a possible flare-up in the class struggle, which implies participating in every moment that class heralds, prepares and takes the class towards the large-scale movements that it needs to fulfill its historic mission."

Thus the Congress was particularly determined in reaffirming and strengthening the organization's commitment to an increasingly active intervention in workers' struggles, an intervention appropriate to the importance of these struggles. It confirmed this orientation by adopting a special resolution on the ICC press which insisted that:

"The press remains the main instrument for the intervention of the organization and is thus at the centre of our efforts to develop the mean to participate actively in the combats of the class. Even though intervention through leaflets and public speaking have become an integral part of the regular work of the organization, this in no way diminishes the importance of the press ‑ on the contrary. The press embodies the continuity of our intervention and represents an indispensable tool for placing each intervention in a broader framework, for showing the world historic dimension of each combat."

Finally, like the 5th Congress which adopted an ‘Address to Proletarian Political Groups' (IR 35), the 6th Congress again dealt with this question, emphasizing in particular that:          

"the present orientation towards accelerating and strengthening the ICC's intervention in the class struggle is also valid for, and must, be applied rigorously to, our intervention towards the milieu."

The resolution adopted on this question affirms that:           

"The ICC, for its part, must make the fullest use of the present class struggle's positive dynamic in order to push the milieu forward, to insist on the need for a clear and determined intervention of revolutionaries in these struggles. In order to make the most of this potential, which in turn is simply a concretization of the fact that the period of the fight for the formation of the class party is open, it is necessary to mobilize the forces of the whole ICC in defense of the political milieu, which involves... a determined attitude in taking part in the regroupment and unity of revolutionaries."

If the importance and the modalities of the ICC's intervention in workers' struggles mobilized a great deal of attention and effort at the 6th Congress, the political capacities of the organization, which precondition this intervention, were       also a central preoccupation. Thus the danger represented by councilism for the whole of the class and for its political organizations was clearly put forward, both in the resolution on the international situation (point 15) and in the resolution on activities which states that:

"This danger, which calls into question the capacity of the organization to be an active factor in the daily struggles of the class, can only be fought if the organization constantly develops and strengthens its political clarity and militant will."

But this concern to arm the organization politic­ally did not stop there. It gave rise to a discussion of a particular resolution on ‘Opportunism and Centrism in the Period of Decadence' and of a counter-resolution presented by a minority of the ICC on ‘Centrism and the Political Organizations of the Proletariat', both of which are published in this IR.

Opportunism and Centrism

The recognition of the permanence of the historic phenomenon of opportunism in the decadent period of capitalism is an integral part of the heritage of the communist left which fought against the degeneration of the Communist International, pre­cisely under the banner of the struggle against opportunism and centrism.

At its inception the ICC had some difficulties in reappropriating this acquisition. But things were already made clearer at its 2nd Congress, which adopted a ‘Resolution on Proletarian Polit­ical Groups' (IR 11). The calling into question of this acquisition by certain comrades of the minority which went on to form a ‘tendency' thus represented a clear regression, which the ICC combated in a long discussion which has found its echo in this Review, especially nos. 42 and 43. The richness of these debates, the deepening of our acquisitions which they made possible and which have strengthened our organization against the permanent danger of opportunism and centrism, had their logical conclusion at the Congress in the adoption of the ‘Resolution on Opportunism and Centrism in the Period of Decadence' and the rejection of the counter-resolution. This latter text essentially repeats the arguments contained in the article ‘The Concept of Centrism: the Road to the Abandonment of Class Positions' published in IR 43 and to which the ICC has already replied in the same issue (‘The Rejection of the Concept of Centrism: The Open Door to the Abandonment of Class Positions'). This is why it's not necessary to return here to the critique of these arguments except to underline that the conceptions put forward by this resolution lead both to a total sectarianism (‘outside organizations defending an intransigent marxism on all points, there is only the bourgeoisie') and at the same time, even if it denies it to weakening the organization's vigilance against the main forms of the penetration of bourgeois ideology.

The adoption of the resolution by the Congress was accompanied by the adoption of a short resol­ution indicating the necessity for the ICC to rectify its platform. The clarity which emerged out of these debates, and which is summarized in the resolution, had shown the need for a rectification on the question of the conditions in which the former workers' parties (SPs and CPs) passed into the bourgeois camp. Such a rectification was on the agenda of the Congress and amendments had been prepared some months before. But while the debates at the Congress showed a considerable degree of clarity on the issue of the resolution itself, they also showed that there was an incomplete maturity on the formulations that were to be inserted in the platform. Recognizing this, and conscious of the fact that on the primordial question of opportunism and centrism - which has immediate implications for the life of the organization - the ICC had solidly armed itself with the resolution, the Congress decided to put off the rectification of the platform until the next Congress.

On the other hand, the Congress adopted several amendments to the statutes, in the same spirit as the statutes as a whole and as expressed in the ‘Report on the Structure and Functioning of the Organization of Revolutionaries' (IR 33), which made it possible to be more precise on certain points and, in particular, to close the door to any idea that the organization can function on the basis of ‘working groups' as was the case in the Dutch Left. This precision was made necessary because, led astray by their councilist slidings, the minority comrades were moving towards such a conception, without recognizing it.

These comrades' disorientation over organizational questions was also expressed at the Congress by their departure from the Congress and from the organization.

The desertion of the ‘tendency'

In the article in IR 43 in response to the art­icle by the ‘tendency', we warned the comrades of the danger of being "crushed under the wheels of the centrist approach they have adopted." Their attitude at the Congress showed that this was no idle warning. Faced with affirmations by certain members of the ‘tendency' that they were about to leave the organization, the Congress straight-away asked the comrades of the ‘tendency' about their militant commitment to the organization. It is perfectly conceivable that a minority (or a majority) of an organization can present itself at a Congress announcing the necessity for a split and demanding that the crucial issues be immediately put to the vote: this is how the majority of the SFIO acted at the Tours Congress in1920 and the minority of the PSI at the Livorno Congress of 1921, vis-a-vis the question of joining the Communist International. But this wasn't  the attitude of the ‘tendency', which, in order to cover up the disagreements within it between those who wanted to retire and those who wanted to remain militants of the ICC, preferred to evade the question posed to it. This is how, in a resolution unanimously adopted by the delegates present, the Congress took up a position on the attitude of the ‘tendency':

"Considering that:

-- the tendency presented itself to the 6th Congress posing an unacceptable ultimatum, according to which it would put into question its adherence to the organization if the Congress adopted the orientations presented by the retiring central organ                          

-- the tendency refused to answer the question posed by the Congress that it clearly pronounce on its militant commitment to the organization after the Congress, the Congress asked the tendency to withdraw in order to think, prepare and provide a response at the following session.                                                      

Instead, the tendency and two comrades of the organization, while sending a declaration to the presidium claiming that they had been excluded from the Congress but affirming that they continue to be part of the organization, definitively left the Congress without even informing the organization of this departure.

Despite the fact that the Congress adopted a  resolution requiring their return and communicated this resolution to them on the telephone, the tendency and the two comrades refused to come back and explain themselves to the Congress, contenting themselves with a false declaration presenting their attitude as an "exclusion of the tendency from the works of the Congress".                                                                  

Facing this, the Congress considers that the attitude of the tendency and of the two comrades:      

-- firstly, expresses a contempt vis-a-vis the Congress and its character as a moment, of militant action of the organization,             

-- secondly, constitutes a real desertion from the responsibilities which are those of any militant in the organization."          

After the Congress, the ICC received from the comrades of the ‘tendency' a declaration in which it repeats the lie that it was excluded from the Congress. In the terms of the declaration, this so-called "exclusion" marked "the degeneration of the internal life of the ICC in an irrevocable manner," and consequently the ‘tendency' had decided to "constitute itself into a fraction outside the organizational framework of the ICC" in order to "represent the programmatic and organic continuity with the pole of regroupment which the ICC used to be, with its platform and statutes which it has ceased to defend."

Thus, the proletarian political milieu, already heavily marked by sectarianism and dispersion, is going to be ‘enriched' by a new group based on the same platform as that of the ICC. The lamentable trajectory of this ‘tendency', which has achieved a ‘historical first' by constituting itself into a ‘fraction' (which means ‘a part of') after leaving the organization from which it or­iginated, which has to resort to the most bare­faced lies to justify its contortions, clearly demonstrates the danger of constituting a ‘tendency' on an inconsistent basis, as we pointed out in IR 42:

"For its part, the ICC does not consider that this is a true tendency presenting a positive alternative orientation to the organization, but an agglomeration of comrades whose real cement is neither the coherence of their positions, nor a profound conviction in these positions, but an attitude of being ‘agains' the orientations of the ICC in its combat against councilism."

The real dedication, the sincere militant commitment of a certain number of the comrades of the ‘tendency' was to no avail: as soon as they allowed themselves to get caught up in the aberrant dynamic of the ‘tendency', they ended up trailing behind those elements who were tired of militant life and were looking for the slightest pretext, even the most fallacious, to disengage from it while at the same time ‘saving face.'

For as long as communist organizations have existed, they have had to face losing militants. At certain moments of history, as in the most terrible years of the counter-revolution, from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, this loss represented a tragic phenomenon which threatened the very life of the organizations themselves. Today the situation is very different and the departure of the com­rades of the ‘tendency' will not compromise the capacity of the ICC to take up its responsibilities, any more than it prevented our Sixth Cong­ress from carrying out its tasks.

In conclusion...

After several days of intense debates, in which the delegations from all the territorial sections of the ICC expressed themselves, in which the different reports, resolutions and amendments were examined, discussed, and voted on, we thus consider that overall the 6th Congress of the ICC attained the objectives it had fixed for itself, that it has valuably armed the organization to face up to what is at stake in the present period. The years to come will judge the validity of this appreciation. In particular they will show whether the ICC's analysis of the international situation, and especially of the evolution of the class struggle, is in accordance with reality - something contested by most other revolutionary groups. But right now, the resolutions which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review prove that the ICC is going in a very precise direction, leaving as little as possible room for ambiguity (as is not unfortunately the case for many of these groups); a direction which, on the basis of the analyses of the enormous potential for struggle maturing and developing in the class, expresses the firm will to be equal to the demands of these struggles, to be an integral part of them and to contribute actively to orienting them towards a revolutionary outcome.

FM

 

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[1] ‘Less better but better' was a term figuring in the activities resolution of the 5th Congress of ICC (cf IR 35).