The "International Group of the Communist Left" (IGCL) has been snitching again.

In its latest bulletin, under the title "Against individualism and the 2.0 circle spirit of the 2020s", we read: "... the practice of video meetings is unfortunately tending to replace physical meetings. We have nothing against the organisation of video meetings between isolated comrades, especially at international level, who cannot meet in the same place. On the other hand, the fact that militants tend to no longer make the effort, or even consider it superfluous, to travel and take part in physical meetings, or ‘face-to-face’ meetings as managers in companies call them, is a step backwards in relation to an achievement and an organising principle of the workers' movement."
And this passage refers to a footnote: "We know, for example, that the ICC no longer holds local meetings, even when it has several members in the same town. It holds ‘transversal’ meetings, ‘bringing together’ members from different places, thus isolated from their comrades with whom they are supposed to intervene in the event of workers’ or other struggles, but remaining comfortably at home. The criteria for assigning members to particular video networks can only be arbitrary and personalised. A modern remake of the Zinovievist Bolshevisation of Communist Parties in the early 1920s, which replaced meetings by territorial or local sections with the creation of factory cells, and which the Italian Left strongly denounced."
So here we have the IGCL publicly informing the state and all the world's police forces about how the ICC organises its internal meetings! That's the group's raison d'être: to monitor the CCI in order to divulge on its website as much information as possible about our organisation and its militants. As a reminder, the IGCL or its ancestor the so-called "Internal Fraction of the ICC" (IFICC)[1] have already publicly disclosed :
- the date of a conference to be held by our section in Mexico in the presence of militants from other countries. This repugnant act of facilitating the repressive work of the bourgeois state is all the more despicable in that its members knew full well that some of our comrades in Mexico had already, in the past, been victims of repression and that some had been forced to flee their countries of origin.
- the real initials of one of our comrades with the precision that he was the author of this or that text given his "style" (which is an interesting indication for the police services).
- and even, on a regular basis, extracts from our internal bulletins!

But the attentive reader may have noticed two little words from the IGCL’s pen that are in fact directly inspired by cop techniques: "We know" .

"We know, for example, that the ICC...". They want to show us that they know, that they know what's going on in the ICC, that they know because they have an informer, a mole. By doing so, they want to sow suspicion in our ranks, to distil the poison of mistrust.
Since its inception, every time the IGCL manages to glean from the sewers a 'scoop' on the internal life of the ICC, it shouts it out it at the top of its lungs. In 2014, in its second issue, the IGCL published extracts from our bulletins, boasting that they were exploiting a "leak " (as they put it). To add insult to injury, in a footnote it even pointed out: "We have undertaken not to disclose publicly how and by whom we received the ICC's internal newsletters. Nevertheless, we can assure you that the 'source' is free from any suspicion of police or other affiliation ".
In its latest newsletter, the IGCL continues its work, again in a footnote: "... the ICC’s internal bulletins contain many contributions on the subject. It would certainly be useful to gather them together and publish them one day ".
Victor Serge, in his book What every revolutionary must know about repression, clearly shows that the spread of suspicion and slander is the bourgeois state's weapon of choice for destroying revolutionary organisations: "Confidence in the party is the cement of any revolutionary force (...) The enemies of action, the cowards, the well-installed, the opportunists willingly pick up their weapons in the sewers! They use suspicion and slander to discredit revolutionaries (...) This evil - the suspicion between us - can only be contained by a great effort of will".
The IGCL used exactly the same methods as did the GPU, Stalin's political police, to destroy the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s from within.

The ICC will not fall into this trap.

But in doing so, the IGCL is not only attacking our organisation. It encourages the development of the habits of thugs and snitches, it has broken the taboo on denunciation, and it has gangrened the entire proletarian milieu. Worse still, the IGCL commits all these crimes in the name of the Communist Left!
That's why we call on all revolutionary organisations, all minorities, all individuals who sincerely want to defend the proletarian revolution and its principles, to publicly denounce these acts of snitching.
Only the greatest political firmness on principles, the strongest solidarity between revolutionaries, can build a dam in the face of this filth.


 

Having re-established the facts about our platform, slandered by the “International Group of the Communist Left”[1], we must now defend the content of our intervention dealing with the war, faced with defamatory statements from the IGCL that attribute the following political approaches and analyses to the ICC: "concealing the danger of war", "abstract and timeless internationalism, based simply on sentiment and morality" and "the introduction of bourgeois idealism into the revolutionary doctrine of the proletariat" ...

The ICC ‘disarms the proletariat when faced with the danger of war’!

According to the IGCL, the ICC adopts an approach to war which "can only pave the way to some kind of moral pacifism since it does not root internationalism in the very material ground of the dialectical relation between the very process of imperialist war and that of the class struggle, which is synthesised in the alternative of ‘international proletarian revolution or generalised imperialist war, revolution or war’".[2]

So, how does it apply this to our intervention? Not a word! It's a bluff, an untruth wrapped up in a fancy phrase to dazzle IGCL followers, if there is such a thing.

Contrary to what the IGCL wants to convey, the ICC's policy on war is perfectly anchored in the context of the current world situation and oriented by the perspective of the need for the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat:

- In the present period, the main factor in the development of the class struggle has become and will increasingly be the irreversible deepening of the crisis of capitalism, involving increasingly unbearable economic attacks on the working class. Such a perspective is already illustrated by the global dynamic of class struggle revealed by the renewal of struggles in the United Kingdom in the spring of 2022, which then spread to the main industrialised countries of Europe and to the United States, and has since been confirmed regularly by new struggles.[3] The aim of the ICC's intervention is to strengthen both the capacity of the class to develop its struggles resisting these attacks and its awareness of the need to overthrow capitalism.

- The multiplication and worsening of imperialist conflicts throughout the world constitute a growing threat to humanity and play a role in the proletariat's becoming conscious of the need to overthrow capitalism; clearly the ICC did not wait for the IGCL's posturing and bluster to develop this aspect of its intervention.

As for the IGCL's "red alerts" such as "In the name of decomposition, didn’t the ICC definitively rule out any prospect of a third world war?"[4], this is only designed to sow doubts about our organisation's determination to assume its responsibilities faced with the danger posed by war.

The IGCL's attempt to "kill off" the Joint Declaration adopted by groups of the Communist Left on the war in Ukraine

For the ICC, this declaration testifies to the fact that, "in the face of the accelerating imperialist conflict in Europe, political organisations based on the heritage of the Communist Left continue to brandish the banner of a coherent proletarian internationalism and to provide a point of reference for those who defend the principles of the working class." [5]

This initiative, which manifestly annoys the IGCL, leads it to utter whatever comes into its head, without even the slightest concern for plausibility, in order to denigrate it. Blinded by its hatred of the ICC and ignoring the real content of the declaration, it "aims its fire" in the direction of the various signatory groups, without even bothering about the real positions of each group, all of which it sees as guilty of having signed a joint position with the ICC. Thus, for the IGCL, "The initiative from the revolutionary groups that we would characterise as opportunist, namely the ICC, Internationalist Voice, which the Instituto Onorato Damen joined, puts forward the permanence of imperialist war under capitalism and denies the unfolding reality of a consolidation of imperialist blocs..." [6]

The big lie of the IGCL is that the “Joint statement of groups of the international communist left about the war in Ukraine [1]” mentions neither imperialist blocs nor the idea of any "permanence of imperialist war under capitalism". We invite our readers to check this out for themselves.

The IGCL builds on its own lie, stirring up opposition to "the theory of the decomposition of capitalism", defended only by the ICC which could constitute, in the words of the IGCL, "the ICC’s Trojan horse by which it introduces bourgeois idealism into the proletariat’s revolutionary doctrine"[7]. It then backs this up with the claim that the ICC's conceptions lead to "a situation in which history is at a standstill", insofar as "the determining factor of historical development is no longer the struggle between the contending classes in society but rather the effect of decomposition on society as a whole".

In responding to these arguments, our aim is not to convince a member of the proletarian camp, since the IGCL doesn’t belong to it, but we owe it to ourselves to re-establish the truth in the face of the distortions that these parasites inflict on our analysis of decomposition, just as they have done with the contents of our political platform. What does the ICC really say and what dangers does it warn against? “In this situation, where society’s two basic and antagonistic classes confront each other without either being able to impose its own definitive response [world war for the bourgeoisie and revolution for the working class] history nonetheless does not just come to a stop. Still less for capitalism than for other preceding modes of production is a “freeze” or a “stagnation” of social life possible. As a crisis-ridden capitalism’s contradictions can only get more severe, the bourgeoisie’s inability to offer the least perspective for society as a whole, and the proletariat’s inability, for the moment, to openly affirm its own, can only lead to a situation of generalised decomposition, of society rotting on its feet."[8]  When the ICC writes that "history cannot come to a stop" and that "there can be no 'freezing' or 'stagnation' of social life under capitalism", the IGCL presents us with the notion that "history has come to a standstill"! We all know the expression "he who wants to kill his dog claims it has rabies” It would fit this situation perfectly, except that the rabid party here is not the ICC, but the IGCL!

Contrary to the hallucinations of the rabid IGCL, we insist that history cannot come to a standstill. Indeed, as long as the working class constitutes a force in society, communist revolution remains a possibility on the agenda; the other alternative being the destruction of humanity, as a consequence of either world war or irreversible decomposition. For a world war to take place, two imperialist blocs would have to be formed, which is not currently on the agenda and probably never will be. On the other hand, irreversible decomposition is a much more tangible and developing threat and will be just as catastrophic and probably even more devastating than a world war.

By discrediting the ICC and stirring up opposition to "its dubious theory of decomposition", the IGCL's aim was to drive a wedge between our organisation and the other groups participating in the appeal, and thus to hinder the possibility that such a common approach could be repeated at a higher level.

The IGCL speaks of an imaginary call by the ICC for a new Zimmerwald and presents it as a manoeuvre!

Thus, for the IGCL: "it is curious, even ironic, to see the ICC, that rejects any danger of generalised imperialist war, calling for a new Zimmerwald"[9].

The ICC has never called for a new Zimmerwald as such. For us "the real and lasting significance of Zimmerwald lies in the development of an uncompromising internationalist line within a small minority called the Zimmerwald Left. The latter recognised that the First World War was only the beginning of an entire historical period dominated by imperialist war which would require a maximum programme for the working class: civil war, overthrow of the bourgeois regimes, dictatorship of the proletariat with a new Communist International to replace the bankrupt chauvinist 2nd International.”[10] In and through this debate, Lenin and those around him forged a nucleus which was to become the embryo of the Communist International.

The present situation and its prospects - even if they are not expressed in terms of a Third World War between two established imperialist blocs - are sufficiently dramatic to justify a mobilisation of the political vanguard of the proletariat to prepare the conditions for the emergence of the future party of the communist revolution.

This is not how the IGCL sees it. Its logic as a parasitic and police-like group[11] leads it to make its small contribution to sabotaging such a project by demonstrating its trademark pettiness, using the fabrications that are part of its political toolkit. In this way, it reveals the so-called "hidden face" of our approach to a common position of the Communist Left on the war in Ukraine:

a) "Apart the fact it would serve it [the ICC] in its attempt to exclude the so-called parasites from such an initiative, first and above all our group, to accept its basis would allow it to impose its rejection of the perspective and danger of imperialist war in the name of an artificial unity of the conference. Isn’t this precisely what the Istituto O. Damen had to accept?" [12]

Our response: The content of the joint declaration, no more than our own positions, has no mention of any rejection by the ICC of the reality and aggravation of imperialist tensions. The opposite is true.

b) "Thus, in such a conference today, the ICC would play the role the centrist Kautskyists played within the Zimmerwald-Kienthal conferences and would block the consequent internationalists of today, those who set their actions in response to the dynamics and steps towards generalised imperialist war." [13]

Our response: It goes without saying that the IGCL places itself in the category of "today's leading internationalists". In view of the above, and if the question were not so serious, we would have placed the IGCL in the category of "inveterate comedians".

Nevertheless, we retain this characterisation of the group in our article “The fight against imperialist war can only be waged with the positions of the communist left [2]”, in the section "A reminder of the track record of the IFICC / IGCL group".

"The parasitic network, a chaotic mix of groups and personalities, uses an unpalatable rehashing of the positions of the Communist Left to attack the real Communist Left, to falsify and denigrate it." [14]

ICC, June 2024

 

In the Russia of the Tsars, as in western Europe in the Middle Ages, it could often start with a wild rumour: the Jews have sacrificed one of our children in their evil rituals. Sinister political groups, the “Black Hundreds”, urged the most miserable layers of the population to attack another poverty-stricken group – the Jews of the ghettoes - to rape, loot and kill. The official police usually stood by and did nothing. This was the pogrom.

Things have changed a lot since then…but not altogether. In the Britain of 2024, wild rumours about the identity of the disturbed young man who carried out a real mass murder of children in Southport are circulated online, and there are attacks by raging mobs, many of them made up of people from the most socially deprived layers of the population, on other, sometimes even more desperate, groups. This time, however, the main target is not the Jews but Muslims and asylum-seekers. Among those political forces fuelling the violence are traditional Nazi worshippers who still see the hand of World Jewry behind every social and political problem. But many of them, like the far right “Celeb” Tommy Robinson, have realised that Islamophobia pays much better dividends today, and even claim to be the best defenders of the Jews against the Islamist threat. But through all this, the spirit of the pogrom lives on. 

Above all, what lives on is the attempt to “divide and rule”: to keep all the exploited and the oppressed weak because divided, to prevent them seeing that the real cause of their misery is not a particular part of the exploited and the oppressed but the social system of their exploiters and oppressors. It is that system – world capitalism - which is responsible both for the wars and ecological destruction which is generating an unprecedented refugee problem all over the world, and for the economic crisis and austerity which is everywhere reducing living standards and access to basic necessities.

Another major difference with Russia at the end of the 19th century: these “race riots” are the product of a capitalism which has been obsolete for over a century and is which is now heading towards chaotic breakdown. The recent violence in Britain is an expression of this chaos, of a mounting loss of control by the ruling class. The more responsible factions of the ruling class don’t want this disorder on the streets. One of the main reasons the Labour Party came to power was to “restore order” on the political level after the mess created by a Tory party that had become profoundly infected by the vandal-like policies of populism[1]. Hence the very tough response by the government, threatening rioters with the “full force of the law” and planning to form a “standing army” of police trained to deal with disorder. The police today are not standing idly by faced with the looting and destruction carried out by the far right. On the contrary, they are presented as resolute defenders of mosques and hotels housing asylum-seekers, and they are arresting far right rioters en masse, while the courts convict them within days of their arrest.  

Capitalism uses its own decomposition against us

Does this mean that the Labour Party and the police are true friends of the working class now? Not at all. Capitalism may be falling apart, but the capitalist class knows that the greatest danger it faces is that the working class around the world becomes aware of itself as a class which has the capacity not only to resist capitalist exploitation but to overturn the entire system. That is why our rulers are perfectly willing to use the disintegration of their own society to obstruct the development of a real class consciousness:

- by intensifying a political campaign around the “defence of democracy against fascism” which is already a theme in the elections in the EU, France and the US, and which aims to drag workers into the dead-end of electoral politics and the idea that they should support one faction of the ruling class against the other;

 - by reinforcing the state’s apparatus of repression while “democratising” the image of the police. Today this apparatus may be directed against “far right thuggery” but tomorrow it can and will be used against the struggles of the working class. Let’s not forget how the police were employed as a “standing army” against the struggle of the miners in 1984-5. It’s the same police with the same function: protecting capitalist order.

 - by distracting attention away from the policy of austerity that the Labour government is already beginning to push through. Since its first days in power, the Labour government, which conveniently discovered a concealed “black hole” in government finances, has announced measures which indicate future attacks on working class living standards: refusal to scrap the policy that limits child benefits to two children, and getting rid of heating allowances for pensioners except for the poorest layers. 

In addition, we should not forget that it’s not only the far right or the populists who target immigrants. The “One Nation Tory” Theresa May was in charge of creating the “hostile atmosphere for illegal immigrants” under the Cameron government, while Labour’s main criticism of Tory gimmicks like the Rwanda scheme has been that it is not cost effective. In the US, despite all of Trump’s bombast against the “foreign invasion”, Democratic administrations under Obama and Biden have been no less ruthless in carrying out massive deportations. All wings of the bourgeoisie defend the national economy and national borders, which, in the brutal struggle of each against all on the world market, are more and more organised around a kind of fortress state to keep out “foreign” imports and labour.

The class struggle is our only defence

In response to the destruction unleashed in the riots, there has been a considerable amount of real indignation and outrage within the working class and the population as a whole. The attempt of the far right to use the Southport murders as a pretext for attacking ethnic minorities and migrants was greeted with the disgust it deserved by those most directly affected by the murders; and there were a number of gestures of support towards the main targets of the violence, as in Southport itself where local residents came together to repair the damage done to the mosque hit by the rioters. On 7 August, responding to the threat of further attacks on immigrant advice centres throughout the countries, thousands of people came out onto the streets in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol, Brighton and elsewhere to surround these centres and prevent them being ransacked (in most cases, the threats came to nothing and the far right didn’t show up).

But we should not have any illusions. These understandable responses were immediately “embraced” by capitalism’s propaganda machine to present the image of “a real Britain” which is law-abiding, tolerant and multicultural. Following the mobilisations of August 7, this line was shared by nearly all the press from left to right. Most telling perhaps was the August 8 headline of the Daily Mail, a right-wing newspaper which has played a central role in the campaign of fear-mongering about illegal immigrants. Its front page had a photo of the demonstration in Walthamstow (perhaps the biggest in the country) and its headline was “Night anti-hate marchers faced down the thugs”.

Outside the mainstream media, the extreme left of capital, the Trotskyists in particular, have been a key factor in calling for these mobilisations and trying to create new versions of the popular front. In short, providing a left cover for the campaign to defend democracy against fascism.

The working class can only defend itself – and stand up to attacks on any of its fractions, whether “native” or “immigrant” – by fighting on its own terrain. That is, the terrain of struggle against the inevitable assault on its living standards demanded by capitalism in crisis - a struggle which has the same aims and interests in all countries and across all national divisions. The working class in Britain has many burdens of the past to throw off, above all the weight inherited from Britain’s imperial hey-day. But we should not forget that Britain was the birthplace of the first independent workers’ party, the Chartists, and - in conjunction with the French workers – of the First International. And in 2022, it was the workers of Britain who played a central role in the revival of class movements after decades of resignation. Their slogan was “enough is enough” - a slogan the far right has tried to steal. But in 2022 the slogan, which was taken up by the workers in France and elsewhere, did not mean “enough foreigners” but enough austerity, enough inflation, enough attacks on our living standards, and that remains the real situation facing the working class today, whatever the colours of the government in office.

In 1905, faced with mass strikes across the Russian Empire, the Tsarist regime responded with its usual trick: stir up the pogroms in order to break the unity of the workers or set the peasants against them. At that moment, the workers had created their own independent organisations, the soviets, and one of their functions was to organise the armed defence of Jewish quarters threatened by pogromists. Today the workers don’t have such independent organisations. But the future development of the class struggle will have to create them anew – organs of mass self-organisation which can not only defend the class from all the attacks of capital, but lead a political offensive aimed at overthrowing the whole system.

Amos, 9.8.24

 

 

 

We are publishing this contribution by a close sympathiser who was moved to write it in response to the barrage of bourgeois propaganda about the racist riots in Britain and the response by the main factions of the ruling class. We fully endorse its clear denunciation of this ideological attack, as well as the article's exposure of the true "record" of capitalism when it comes to the mass killing of children.

ICC

 

The race riots breaking out across the UK (except Scotland), showing a frenzy of hatred aimed at migrants and Muslims to the point of calling them to be burnt alive, are taking place within a framework of extensive poverty and deprivation that’s been increasing over the last decades in Britain. The scapegoating of migrants and Muslims has been whipped up by openly fascist elements and spread on social media platforms such as Elon Musk’s “X”, where he pursues his Trumpian agenda assisted by other platforms including those set up in the interests of Russian imperialism.

Pitting worker against worker or worker against oppressed is a trick of the ruling class that long predates social media, existing since the beginning of capitalism itself. The major parties of the British state, including the Labour Party, have been stoking up racial tensions for decades and particularly during the life of the last Conservative government where migrant victims of capitalism, mostly destined to join the workforce on levels of greater exploitation or of joining the black economy – which the bourgeoisie is well aware of – are further victimised and terrorised by all levels of unrelenting racist bourgeois propaganda promoted by the right wing press. All this is effectively taken up by the BBC which becomes a major component of capitalist division.

During strikes, the “race riots” or incidents of racial tensions during the second half of the twentieth century, the “independent” BBC news would go for comment on these issues to

cab drivers, market stallholders and shopkeepers with predictable results, but its role in dividing and attacking the working class has become much more sophisticated since. Under the guise of “balance”, the BBC has promoted conspiracy theories and climate change denial, and promoted such despicable individuals as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, as well as keeping up a permanent propaganda barrage against “illegal immigrants” and “boat people” which matched the Conservative governments trawl for “illegals” under Prime Minister May, its “Rwanda” policy under Sunak, and the blatant whipping up of xenophobic fears by Home Secretary Braverman and other senior politicians.

But the BBC’s “balance” also promotes anti-fascism, anti-racism, identity politics, multiculturalism and the specifics of this or that group which also undermines solidarity and weakens the working class. These are other forms of nationalism or the defence of nationalism in disguise, and the only “anti-nationalism” that exists is the internationalism and solidarity of the working class and its own struggle.

The terrible killings of three young children at a social event in Southport at the end of July turned into – and were deliberately turned into – a firestorm of hatred against brown, black and Asians – any old scapegoat. The young man arrested for the murders, the son of a migrant with Rwandan heritage who has been working in Britain for years, appears to be mentally distressed but the colour of his skin was more relevant to the agenda of the forces of populism, racism and division.

Decomposing capitalism and the killing of children

In this context, the killing of children in capitalist society bears some examination. The random or planned killing of children is not a new phenomenon but one that belongs to class society which has been greatly expanded and “perfected” by capitalism. In Dunblane, Scotland, 1996, a middle-aged man entered a primary school and shot 16 children and one teacher dead while wounding 15 others. Doctors and nurses have been involved in mass infanticides (Beverly Allit, Lucy Letby, etc). Mass killings of children in nurseries seem to be happening frequently in China and Russia also. At an elementary school in Sandy Hook, USA, 2012, 26 people were shot dead, including 20 children aged between six and seven years old. An event outrageously denied by conspiracy theorists and some populists. “USAFacts” reports that in the USA “From the 2000–01 to 2021–22 school years, there were 1,375 school shootings at public and private elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries.” In 2000-1 there were 30 shootings (stabbings not included). These figures steadily increased as capitalist decomposition took its toll, rising dramatically from 2017/18, to reach 327 separate attacks in 2021-22. It’s difficult to find correct figures for infanticides in Britain from the Home Office but it’s clear that most children are killed by their parents or someone that they knew.

The lives of the children of the working class and the oppressed are nothing to capitalism and – as has always happened – this precious commodity is wasted with abandon. Throughout the wars of the 20th century, the wholesale slaughter of civilians through bombing, shelling or mass executions have become the norm, and thus all the great capitalist nations have been totally complicit in the mass extermination of children.

Today, Netanyahu’s Zionist regime is carrying out wholesale acts of terrorism and murder against children, aided and abetted by its Western allies. And in Sudan today, where all the major imperialisms (US, UK, Russia, France, as well Middle Eastern Emirates and local powers) are fomenting war, the fate and plight of children is probably much worse than Gaza. Capitalism is the killer of children.

Turning a particular murder of 3 children into a battle of hatred and xenophobia on such a scale is a reminder of the dangers of decomposition and populism to the working class. Defence of nationalism, the nation state, “our country”, whether from the right, but particularly from the left, is indefensible from a communist perspective and a trap for the working class. The only way to effectively confront the effects of the decomposition of capitalism is for the workers, as workers, to fight on their own terrain of the class struggle.

B. 7.8.24