Presenting the 26th Congress of the ICC

Last spring, the International Communist Current held its 26th Congress.

As our statutes state:

“The International Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC. As such its tasks are:

a)            To elaborate the general analyses and orientations of the organisation, notably with regard to the international situation;

b)            To examine, and draw up a balance sheet for, the activities of the organisation since the previous congress;

c)            To define its perspectives for future work”

We have already published on our website a number of documents adopted by the 26th Congress concerning the development of the international situation [1] and it is not necessary to go into detail about them in this presentation. However, it is important to emphasise the significance of this Congress.

Firstly, our statutes emphasise the place of the congress in the life of the organisation: it is the “sovereign organ of the ICC”. In this respect, our organisation is faithful to the tradition of the workers' movement. Thus, the statutes of the Communist League specify that: “The congress is the legislative power of the entire League.” (Article 17); “A Congress is held every year in the month of August. The Central Authority has the right in important cases to call an extraordinary congress.”[2] (Article 19)

The same pre-eminence of the congress is found in the statutes of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA): “There shall annually meet a General Working Men's Congress, consisting of delegates of the branches of the Association. The Congress will have to proclaim the common aspirations of the working class, take the measures required for the successful working of the International Association, and appoint the General Council of the society.” (Article 3)[3]

And the same principles are found in the statutes of the Communist International (CI): “The World Congress of all parties and organisations forming part of the Communist International is the supreme authority of this International. The World Congress meets regularly once a year. The World Congress alone is empowered to change the programme of the Communist International; it discusses and decides the more important questions of programme and tactics connected to the activity of the Communist International.” (Article 4) [4].

In fact, the regular holding of congresses by a proletarian organisation is both a manifestation and an instrument of its political life, in which all its militants participate through the drafting, discussion and adoption of reports and resolutions[5]. It is this principle that the ICC has adopted and implemented since its foundation, making its congresses, like those of organisations in the past, fundamental moments in its political life. That said, the 26th ICC Congress was of much greater importance than those that preceded it. There were two fundamental reasons for this.

Firstly, this Congress took place fifty years after the founding of the ICC in January 1975. This anniversary obliged us to take stock of this half-century, both from the point of view of the evolution of the international situation and of the activity of our own organisation, not out a merely historian’s approach, but in order to try to identify the perspectives that will present themselves to the world in the next half-century and the responsibilities that communist organisations will have to assume. With this in mind, the Congress decided to publish a Manifesto dealing with the fundamental historical issues of the current period, as well as a series of articles addressing the questions that the political organisations of the proletariat have faced, are facing and will face, which will appear in our press in the coming months. For its part, the ICC's 50th Anniversary Manifesto has begun to be published in different languages on our website. It is entitled “Capitalism threatens humanity: World revolution is the only realistic solution". This title summarises the other fundamental reason that led the 26th Congress of the ICC to decide to publish such a Manifesto, which is presented in its prologue: “The 2020s have seen a brutal acceleration in the deterioration of the world situation, with an accumulation of disasters - floods and fires linked to climate change and an acceleration in the destruction of life, with a pandemic that has killed more than 20 million human beings and the outbreak of new and increasingly deadly wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Africa, particularly in Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia. This global chaos reached a new stage in January 2025 with the return to power of a sinister showman, Donald Trump, whose ambition is to play with the world like Charlie Chaplin playing with an Earth-shaped balloon in his film The Great Dictator. 

Therefore, this Manifesto is justified not only with our organisation having now existed for a half-century, but also because we are facing an extremely serious historical situation: the capitalist system that dominates the planet is inexorably leading human society towards its destruction. Faced with this unthinkable prospect, it is up to those who are fighting for the revolutionary overthrow of this system, the communists, to put forward historical, political and theoretical arguments in order to arm the only force in society capable of carrying out this revolution: the world proletariat.”

The Manifesto concludes with the following passages:

“This brief overview of decades of workers' struggles brings out an essential idea: the historic struggle of our class to overthrow capitalism will still be a long one. Along the way, there will be a succession of pitfalls, traps and defeats. To be ultimately victorious, this revolutionary struggle will require a general increase of consciousness and organisation of the entire working class, on a global level. For this general increase to take place, the proletariat will have to confront all the traps set by the bourgeoisie in the struggle and, at the same time, reclaim its past, its experience accumulated over two centuries.

When the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) was founded in London on 28 September 1864, this organisation became the embodiment of the global nature of the proletarian struggle, a condition for the triumph of the world revolution. It was the source of inspiration for the poem written in 1871 by the communard Eugène Pottier, which became a revolutionary song passed down from generation to generation of proletarians in struggle, in almost every language on the planet. The lyrics of The Internationale emphasise how this solidarity of the global proletariat is not a thing of the past but points to the future: Let us unite, and tomorrow, The Internationale will be the human race.

It is up to organised militant minorities to carry out this international regrouping of revolutionary forces. Indeed, while the masses of the working class engage in this effort of reflection and self-organisation mainly during periods of open struggle, a minority has always been committed, throughout history, to the ongoing struggle for revolution. These minorities embody and defend the perseverance and historical continuity of the revolutionary project of the proletariat, which has produced them for this purpose […]

It is this minority that bears the primary responsibility for organising, debating, clarifying all issues, learning from past failures and bringing accumulated experience to life. Today, this minority, which is extremely small and fragmented into many small organisations, must come together to confront different positions and analyses, reclaim the lessons bequeathed to us by the fractions of the Communist Left, and prepare for the future.”

Thus, the Manifesto issued by the 26th Congress of the ICC is a call to arms for the communist revolution, a call addressed to the entire proletariat but more particularly to those elements and groups who are already conscious of the necessity and possibility of overthrowing this horrible capitalist society and establishing “the reign of freedom”, in the words of Engels. As we have seen, this is a very long and terribly difficult path. As early as the mid-19th century, Marx was aware of this difficulty:

“Proletarian revolutions […] constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task again; with merciless thoroughness they mock the inadequate, weak and wretched aspects of their first attempts; they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever; they shrink back again and again before the indeterminate immensity of their own goals, until the situation is created in which any retreat is impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Here is the rose, dance here!” (Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852).

However, it is clear that Marx did not imagine the scale of this difficulty, a difficulty commensurate with the “infinite immensity of the goals” of the proletarian revolution. As we wrote a quarter of a century ago, on the occasion of the year 2000:

“And indeed, one reason for the great difficulty for the vast majority of workers in turning towards the revolution lies in the vertigo that seizes them when they think that the task is so enormous as to be impossible. The task of overthrowing the most powerful class that history has ever known, the system which has allowed humanity to take gigantic steps forward in its material production and mastery of nature does indeed seem to be impossible. But what makes the working class dizzier still is the immensity of the task of building a radically new society, liberated at last from the woes which have crushed human society ever since it existed, from scarcity, exploitation, oppression, and war.”

When prisoners and slaves constantly wore shackles on their feet, they sometimes became used to the constraint to the point where they felt as if they would be unable to walk without their chains, and sometimes even refused to have them removed. What has happened to the proletariat is not dissimilar. It bears within itself the ability to free humanity, and yet it lacks the self-confidence to march consciously towards that goal.

“But the time is coming when ‘the conditions themselves [will] cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!’. If it remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie, human society will never reach the next century, other than in shreds, nothing human any longer left in it. As long as this extreme has not been reached, as long as a capitalist system survives, there will necessarily be its exploited class, the proletariat. And there will therefore remain the possibility that the proletariat, spurred on by capitalism's total economic bankruptcy, will at last overcome its hesitations and take on the enormous task that history has confided to it: the communist revolution.”[6]

Thus, the immensity and difficulty of the task at hand, as well as the extreme gravity of the stakes for humanity, should not be factors of discouragement. On the contrary, it is important that awareness of these stakes be converted into determination to wage the struggle against capitalism. This was the spirit that animated Marx, as evidenced by a letter to Johann Philipp Becker on 9th April 1860: “I have always noted that all those whose natures have been really tempered, once they have embarked upon the revolutionary path, are always able to draw new strength from defeat, and become more and more resolute as the tide of history carries them forwards”.

This is the spirit that animated the militants who were already present at the founding of the ICC or who joined it later and who, decades later, are still present in our organisation despite the difficulties encountered. This generation will obviously only diminish in number, and it is up to them to pass on their experience to younger militants who will have to take over in order to build the bridge to the future party, somewhat in the image of the fractions of the past highlighted by the Italian Communist Left. And among the heritage to be passed on, alongside the principles, analyses and lessons developed through decades of political activity, this militant spirit figures in first place.

ICC, November 2025

 

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[1] These are the following texts, from International Review 174: “Resolution on the international situation (May 2025)”; “The historical significance of the impasse of the capitalist economy” and “Report on the class struggle (May 2025)”.

[2] Published as an appendix in Collective Works, Vol 6, p 635-6 where they are described as rules rather than statutes

[3] Available on Marxists.org

[4]The Second Congress of the Communist International, vol. 2; “Tenth session, August 4th 1920”, p.146.

[5] This permanence throughout the history of the workers' movement of the fundamental place of congresses in the life of its organisations is unfortunately ‘forgotten’ by most organisations of the Communist Left. Thus, the current linked to the Bordigist tradition rejects the very principle of holding congresses, which it considers to be manifestations of ‘democratic itchiness’ (See, among others, the article “Mythe et réalité dans la Gauche communiste en Italie” in Le Prolétaire no. 512.). As for the current that emerged from the Damen tendency of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista, even if it does not reject the principle of holding congresses, it is important to note the particularly low frequency of these events. Thus, the average interval between two PCInt congresses ranges from 4 to 15 years, with an average of almost 10 years (1948, 1952, 1963, 1970, 1982 and 1997). It is worth noting that when the Communist International was an organ of the proletariat, it held a congress every year between 1919 and 1922. The reduction in the frequency of its congresses coincided with its degeneration and death as a proletarian organisation, since its subsequent congresses were held in 1924, 1928 and 1935 before its abolition by Stalin in 1943, intended to win the favour of the Allies during the Second World War.

[6] “Why the proletariat has not yet overthrown capitalism, Part 2”, International Review 104