Attacking the ICC: the raison d'être of the IGCL

Introduction

For once, we thank the “International Group of the Communist Left” (IGCL) for giving us the opportunity to remind ourselves of what it really is.

To this end, we reproduce below (in full, including footnotes) their little article that is supposed to point out our impasse and contradictions on the issue of parasitism, if the title is to be believed.

And for the benefit of our readers, we respond to it right after.

The IGCL text

Impasse and contradictions of the ICC in the face of "parasitism", the ICC and the IGCL

The politically responsible and fraternal attitude of the ICC delegation at the meeting of the "No to war except class war" committee in Paris - which we welcome - may have been surprising. Wasn't the meeting organised on the initiative of the IGCL, which it denounces as a "parasitic group" and "an agency of the bourgeois state" (Révolution internationale 446), and of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, which it criticises for its opportunistic concessions to parasitism? Didn't the presidium of this meeting, composed of three comrades, include two former ICC members, Olivier and Juan, who were expelled and publicly denounced in its international press and called "Nazis, Stalinists, thieves, blackmailers, thugs, lumpen, slanderers, provocateurs, cops" in 2002? Yet at the public meeting, no denunciation of the supposed parasites and cops. No warning to the other participants that they were going to attend a meeting held by an "agency of the police". [1] No ultimatum demanding the exclusion of the meeting... of its own organisers.

Either the active members and sympathizers comprising the ICC delegation do not believe a word of the resolutions and other public articles denouncing the IGCL and its members - otherwise banned from attending ICC public meetings; or it has demonstrated a particularly serious opportunistic concession to not only so-called parasitism, but even to so-called "agents provocateurs of the state."

We leave the ICC to face its ever more gaping and glaring contradictions.

The IGCL, December 2022

The ICC to its readers

The IGCL is right, the ICC intervened at the first meeting of the No War But The Class War committee with a "politically responsible attitude". And indeed, we did not denounce the two individuals who were in the presidium, Olivier and Juan, even though they are snitches.

Why not?

The IGCL is gloating, believing that this is proof either of our alleged doubts or of our alleged opportunism.

The cause of our "politically responsible attitude" can only escape the IGCL completely: our raison d'être is not the IGCL but the working class.

This meeting was officially convened by a "committee" and not by political groups. So we were speaking at a meeting of a committee called No War But The Class War, a committee that has announced its formation in response to an imperialist war, a committee whose appeal is based on genuinely internationalist positions, a committee that should represent the rare, difficult and valuable efforts of our class to organise itself to debate, and to stand up against the barbarism of this decadent system.

Today, the workers in search of class positions are few, even fewer are those who make the effort to get together. This is what, for us, a committee should be, a precious place of clarification of our class, to be defended and kept alive. In this sense, we had encouraged all our contacts to come and participate in the meeting.

Our fear was that this committee would lead its participants into a dead end. Because today the struggles of the working class are not against the war but against the economic crisis; therefore this committee risked being an empty shell, void of the real life of the class, an artificial formation pushing its few participants to carry out actions that do not correspond to the reality of the dynamics of our class, a committee, finally, that weakens the defence of internationalism, sows confusion and ends up wasting the meagre forces that emerge. [2]

This is why the ICC consciously chose to intervene in a determined way to defend internationalism, the cardinal position of the Communist Left, and to warn the participants about what for us constitutes from the start the fragility of the NWBCW committees, the artificial dimension of these "struggle" committees. This was the position we defended in two interventions, which is indeed a "politically responsible attitude".

Instead of "struggle committees", discussion and reflection circles of politicised minorities could be envisaged today on the subject of the war. As for the formation of struggle committees, it could indeed play a role if motivated by the need for clarification and intervention in the class struggle against economic attacks.

This is what seemed to us to be the priority, the central issue of this meeting and of our intervention.

To intervene on the fact that two individuals present in the room are indeed ready to do anything to destroy the ICC, that this is basically their raison d'être, that they have already committed an incredible list of misdeeds, even to the point of snitching (!) all this would have focused the debate on this question and thus diverted the discussion.

But since the IGCL is asking for it, we wouldn't want to disappoint them. Here is a small reminder of the pedigree of these two gentlemen.

These two individuals come from the so-called "Internal Faction of the ICC" (IFICC) which was a mini-grouping of former members of the ICC expelled for snitching, in 2003 at our 15th International Congress. This was not the only infamy for which these elements were responsible since, denying the fundamental principles of communist behaviour, they also distinguished themselves by typical thuggish attitudes, such as slander, blackmail and theft. For these other behaviours, although they were very serious, the ICC had not pronounced an exclusion against them, but a simple suspension. That is to say, it was still possible for these elements to return to the organisation one day, provided of course that they returned the material and money they had stolen from it and that they undertook to renounce behaviour that had no place in a communist organisation. The reason why the ICC finally decided to exclude them was that they had published on their website (i.e. in full view of all the police forces in the world) internal information that facilitated the work of the police: [3]

• the date of our section's conference in Mexico, which was to be attended by militants from other countries. This disgusting act of the IFICC in facilitating the repressive work of the bourgeois state is all the more despicable as its members knew full well that some of our comrades in Mexico had already been victims of repression in the past and that some had been forced to flee their home countries;
• the real initials of one of our comrades was also published and presented by them as "the head of the ICC", with the precision that he was the author of such and such a text given his "style" (which is an interesting indication for the police services).
• the regular reporting in their bulletin of the results of spying on our organisation, including information that is directly related to the work of a police informer.

It should be noted that before proceeding with their expulsion, the ICC had sent an individual letter to each of the IFICC members asking them if they were in solidarity with these snitches. IFICC finally responded to this letter by collectively claiming responsibility for this infamous behaviour. It should also be noted that each of these elements was given the opportunity to present their defence before the ICC Congress or before a commission of 5 members of our organisation, 3 of whom could be designated by the IFICC members themselves. These courageous individuals, aware that their behaviour was indefensible, had rejected these final proposals of the ICC.

Instead, this "IFICC" then sent a "Communist Bulletin" to the subscribers of our publication in France (whose address file had been stolen by the IFICC members long before they left our organisation) to tell them over and over again that the ICC was in the grip of an opportunist and Stalinist degeneration.

And that’s not all!

In 2005, before one of our public meetings, one of the IFICC members threatened to kill one of our militants. Carrying a knife on his belt, he obnoxiously whispered in his ear that he would slit his throat.

In fact, we could go on and on with this list, as each "Communist Bulletin" contained its share of slander.

In 2013, the IFICC took on the new name "International Group of the Communist Left" (IGCL). More precisely, this new group is the result of the merger between part of the Montreal Klasbatalo group and the IFICC.

But it was the thuggish ways and hatred of  IFICC members for the ICC that immediately coloured the politics and activity of this group.

Thus, as soon as it was born, this IGCL began to sound the alarm and shout at the top of its voice that it was in possession of the ICC's internal bulletins. By displaying their war trophy and making such a fuss, the message that these patent snitches were trying to get across was very clear: there is a "mole" in the ICC working hand in hand with the ex-IFICC! This was clearly a police-type work with no other objective than to sow widespread suspicion, unrest and discord within our organisation. These are the same methods used by Stalin's political police, the GPU, to destroy the Trotskyist movement from within in the 1930s. These are the same methods used by members of the ex-IFICC when they made "special" trips to several sections of the ICC in 2001 to organise secret meetings and spread rumours that one of our comrades (the "wife of the head of the ICC", as they put it) was a "cop". The same process to try to spread panic and destroy the ICC from the inside in 2013 was even more despicable: under the hypocritical pretext of wanting to "reach out" to ICC militants and save them from "demoralisation", these professional informers were actually sending the following message to all ICC militants: "There is a traitor (or several) among you who is giving us your internal Bulletins, but we won't give you their name because it's up to you to look for them yourselves!" This is the real and ongoing objective of this "International Group": to try to introduce the poison of suspicion and distrust into the ICC in order to seek to destroy it from within. It is a real enterprise of destruction whose degree of perversion has nothing to envy in the methods of the political police of Stalin or the Stasi.

On several occasions, we have already publicly questioned the IGCL about the way in which our internal newsletters got into their hands. Was there an accomplice inside our organisation? Did the police themselves obtain them by hacking into our computers and then passing them on to the IGCL by some means? If the IGCL had been a responsible organisation instead of a rogue gang, it would have been keen to solve this mystery and inform the political milieu of the results of its investigations. Instead, it has consistently avoided this question, which we will continue to ask publicly.

Their latest article, which we have reproduced in full above, is no exception to these nauseating methods. What we can give the IGCL credit for, at least, is its consistency.

Only, through this article, it is not within the ICC that the IGCL is trying to sow division, suspicion and mistrust, but within the whole of the Communist Left. By writing "Wasn't the meeting organised on the initiative of the IGCL, which it [the ICC] denounces as a ‘parasitic group’ and ‘agency of the bourgeois state" (Révolution internationale 446 ), and of the Internationaist Communist Tendency, which it criticises for its opportunist concessions to parasitism?", the IGCL deliberately lumps together our denunciation of the thuggish morals of this parasitic group and our struggle against the opportunism of the ICT.

The IGCL, worthy heir of the IFICC, has the function of destroying the principles of the Communist Left, of spreading mistrust and division. The hatred of the members of the ex-IFICC towards the ICC prevails and colours all the politics of this group, whatever the level of consciousness of its various members integrated afterwards. It is therefore a fight against a group which, under the guise of defending the positions of the Communist Left, objectively defends the interests of the bourgeois camp [4] by taking on board its worst morals and attitudes.

The struggle against opportunism takes place within the proletarian camp itself. The whole history of the workers' movement shows that this is a constant weakness that gangrenes the proletarian camp. It is therefore a question of combating opportunism by the firmest and most fraternal polemic possible, within the proletarian political milieu. This struggle is waged not only between revolutionary organisations but also within them. The history of the ICC shows that it has been fighting against such drifts for 50 years.

These methods of assimilation, of deliberate confusion by the IGCL in order to sow confusion and mistrust, are abject.

To paraphrase Rosa Luxemburg: lying, snitching, wading in slander, covered in filth: this is what parasitism looks like, this is what it is. It is not when its protagonists give themselves the appearance of respectability and philosophy, morality and openness, debate and fraternity on the presidium of a committee, it is when parasitism resembles a wild beast, when it dances in the sabbath of thuggery, when it pours suspicion on the Communist Left and its principles, that it shows itself for what it really is.

ICC, 15 January 2023

[1] Doctor Bourrinet, fraud and self-proclaimed historian

[2] We cannot develop our position here; we refer our readers to our article “A committee that leads its participants into a dead end” 

[3] The IGCL openly parades its police-like approach. Since 2005, documents relating to internal discussions within the ICC can be found on its website www.igcl.org

[4] This defence does not operate through the advocacy of a bourgeois programme. Indeed, as our Theses on parasitism highlight: "Marx and Engels [...]already characterised the parasites as politicised elements who, while claiming to adhere to the programme and organisations of the proletariat, concentrated their efforts on the combat not against the ruling class but against the organisations of the revolutionary class".