Note on the EFICC: When Stupidity Hits Its Peak

The incomprehensions affecting the proletarian milieu are nothing compared to the utter stupidity revealed by the leaflet published on 28 September 1990 on the Gulf crisis by the 'External fraction of the ICC' (EFICC). The title of the leaflet, 'Don't Take Sides in the Gulf War' is itself indicative of the EFICC's councilist leanings. This group hasn't managed to grasp the fact that, in the face of war, the role of revolutionaries isn't to place themselves 'outside of the melee' like the pacifist Romain Rolland during world war one, but to call on the proletariat to defend its own side, its own class interests against all bourgeois camps. This incapacity to see the organization of revolutionaries as an active, integral part of the workers' combat is also shown, in an even crazier manner, in the content of the leaflet itself. Whereas the aim of such a leaflet today ought to be to disseminate the communist position on war as widely as possible within the working class, in particular against all the lies of the bourgeoisie, this document appears mainly as a polemic ... against the ICC. A fine aim!

But the real stupidity of the EFICC comes out when it tries to produce an 'analysis' of the current world situation. This little circle claims that it took up the torch of 'theoretical deepening' which the ICC has allegedly abandoned. And so very 'deeply', the EFICC explains the Gulf war by plunging into ... oil. A wonderful theoretical effort! But this isn't all. What's blindingly obvious to everyone, especially with this war - the disappearance of the former eastern bloc - escapes the profundity of the EFICC:

"Neither does this crisis prove that Moscow is no longer a factor on the inter-imperialist chessboard. The Kremlin, which had thousands of military advisers in Iraq, must have known about the Iraqi plans weeks in advance. The fact that it did nothing to prevent the invasion of Kuwait and that it didn't seek to play a ma­jor role in 'solving' the crisis that followed, does not betray impotence, but rather the fact that the crisis and its prolongation serves Russia's capitalist interests. The increase in oil prices gives its economy a desperately needed shot in the arm (80% of its hard currency earnings come from oil and gas) and make Eastern Europe more dependent on trade relations with Moscow."

Reading these meanderings, you'd think that you sere dreaming.

It's not even necessary to refute them just reproducing them makes the EFICC look completely ridiculous. In fact it's been clear for a long time (since its origins, actually) that the EFICC's only reason for existing is to 'annoy the Martians', in this case, the ICC. Its very name proves it. Thus, as with two-year old children, in order to affirm their personality, the members of the EFICC have to be against everything the ICC has said since they left it. And since nearly a year and a half ago we announced the collapse of the eastern bloc - something that has since become evident - the EFICC has had to maintain the opposite against us and against reality itself, which has shown quite clearly that Gorbachev's policies had nothing to do with (don't laugh!) a Machiavellian plan "aimed at detaching western Europe from the American bloc".

It's true that, before that, the EFICC had blessed us with another analysis (which was thrown in the bin as soon as it had been ex­hibited), according to which 'perestroika' was the USSR's transition "from the formal to the real domination of capital" (a phenomenon which the EFICC discovered 140 years after Marx and 20 years after Canatte, a defrocked Bordigist).

This same stupid rancor against the ICC, this propensity for combining lies and foolery can also be found in JA's article 'Making Sense of Events in eastern Europe' published in International Perspectives no 17. By peremptorily affirming that "the theory of state capitalism is based on the existence of military blocs", JA (and the whole EFICC, which finds nothing objectionable here) prove their ignorance and mental confusions: marxists have never said that state capitalism derives from the formation of blocs. The two phenomena indeed have a common origin: imperialism, and, more generally, capitalist decadence, but this doesn't mean that they have a cause and effect relationship to each other. With JA's logic, from the observation that measles causes both spots and fever, you'd have to conclude that the spots cause the fever.

But JA really gives the game away when she has the ICC saying that "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll have finally been the death of Western civilization". One wonders how much this is bad faith and how much plain stupidity. Probably the latter most of all, because any reader of our press can recognize the absurdity of such an accusation. Unless it's more a matter of pathology: such behavior can only be seen as the product of delirium brought on by extreme rancor.

Today the EFICC is at a dead-end: either it recognizes that it was wrong all down the line about the 'theoretical degeneration' of the ICC (which would mean recognizing that it never had any reason for existing) or it will go on with its absurdities. What will then happen to it is what has probably happened to the FOR with its obstinate refusal to recognize the existence of the capitali.st crisis: unable to recognize an obvious reality, it will go down to its death. That would anyway be for the best all round: it would be its first intelligent act since its creation.

FM