Workers in Argentina are suffering an acute degradation in their living conditions. President Milei has imposed measures that constantly increase unemployment and reduce wages, driving the broad proletarian masses into poverty, with the official figure rising in a few months from 45% to 57% of the population. The shock measures, agreed with most of the provincial governors, known as the ‘Ley de bases’ (basic laws), imposed severe austerity by eliminating social assistance, particularly in the health and education sectors, and making swingeing cuts in social budgets. These include massive redundancies in the public sector - between 50,000 and 60,000 have been made so far, with plans to cut a further 200,000 jobs - wage and pension freezes, all with the pretext of controlling inflation, and an increase and reinforcement of the state's repressive arsenal. In the first days of the present government, when it launched a new escalation of aggressive measures against workers and worsened the already deteriorating conditions of the exploited, large spontaneous demonstrations were held, but the trade union apparatus and left-wing factions of capital trapped workers' anger and the will to fight, preventing discontent from being transformed into a conscious and organised force.

The manoeuvres used today by the bourgeoisie generally appear whenever workers’ combativity threatens to explode on to the streets, which is why a vital and crucial task for the exploited is to look back at their past struggles, in order to learn from them, by recognising the positive experiences of these struggles, but also by reflecting on the mistakes and negative experiences, because this allows workers to identify and evade the traps set by the bourgeoisie so that they can prepare for future struggles.

The need to reappropriate the Cordobazo experience of 1969...

The tradition of workers' struggle in Argentina was affirmed in the period between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth century, with the rapid industrialisation of the country and the growth of the proletariat; however, the impact of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave of 1917-23 plunged the entire working class worldwide into a long period of counter-revolution. In Argentina, this period of counter-revolution took the particular form of a government ‘democratically’ elected but, in reality, led by the army, strongly marked as elsewhere by the measures and need for state control both over the national economy and over the whole of social life, which are characteristic of the period of the decadence of capitalism. But in Argentina, Peronism[1] has given it a ‘social’ colouring, with its claim to be based on the trade unions and the ‘popular strata’ of the nation. Peronism came into being in the midst of a succession of coups d'état, sometimes instigated by the military, sometimes by civilians, to tighten the bourgeoisie’s hold on the working class.

It was only with the end of a period of 40 years of counter-revolution, at the end of the 1960s, that the wave of international resurgence of workers' struggles, of which the Cordobazo was one of the most significant expressions, that the Argentine proletariat once again showed its strength and fighting spirit [2]. First and foremost, it is necessary to retrieve the experience of this period of struggle, in which the working class affirmed its ability to mobilise on its class terrain and developed its struggle and solidarity in the face of the attacks of the bourgeoisie, following in the footsteps of workers in France during the massive strikes of May 68 and later, during 1969, in the “hot autumn” in Italy. This movement was in complete opposition to the methods of struggle falsely portrayed as socialist or communist by the leftist organisations, notably the ideas glorifying ‘guerrilla warfare’, the ideological weapon of the Eastern bloc at the time, then spread with the approval of the bourgeoisie not only in Latin America, but hyped by Stalinist and leftist groups throughout the world.

The Cordobazo, on the contrary, was a massive workers' mobilisation which, although called by the big trade unions to prevent workers from taking the initiative themselves, was able to show great determination and assert a strong combativity in the struggle, with the tendency to extend the movement, with assemblies in the streets and on the barricades, disregarding trade union instructions to stop the movement. Instead, workers extended the strikes and demonstrations. Despite the traps set by the bourgeoisie and its trade union apparatus, and the illusions it put forward, this movement was a strong and clear encouragement to the international resurgence of the class struggle, allowing the proletariat to regain confidence in its own strength, based on a powerful feeling of class solidarity in the ranks of the workers in struggle. In particular, workers were able to mount a courageous resistance against the ferocious state repression then led by a military government. Overall, workers showed their capacity to go beyond the corporatist framework in which the unions tried to confine the movement. As a result, demonstrations and strikes continued or were maintained in many sectors throughout 1970.

... but also the need to learn from the failures of the past in order to avoid the traps set by the bourgeoisie...

But it is also necessary to look back at the events that took place in the last decade of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. In particular, we need to develop a critical reflection on the experiences associated with the ‘piqueteros’ [3]  (known at the time as the ‘new social subjects’) and the ‘comedores populares’ (soup kitchens) [4], because these are not expressions of proletarian struggle, although the bourgeoisie, through its trade union structures and its entire left-wing political apparatus, continues to present them as models that workers should follow in their current struggles.

This is why bourgeois ideologists try to hide the fact that, since the Cordobazo, it is the trade union forces and the left wing of the bourgeoisie which have consistently worked to sabotage and drown workers’ fighting spirit and to divert the tremendous proletarian energy which manifested itself during the Cordobazo and frightened the whole of the bourgeoisie. Among other obstacles, the nationalist poison, contained in the anti-imperialist credo exploited above all by the left of capital and the various defenders of Peronism, constantly diverted workers’ anger towards mobilisations against the seizure of capital by companies of ‘foreign origin’ on national soil. The state's main asset, which prevented the development of workers' consciousness from advancing further, was the barrier erected by both its trade union apparatus and the left. At the level of the trade union leadership, this was above all possible thanks to the creation, in the face of the discrediting of the official CGT which was deeply linked to Peronism, of the CGT-A [5] (which had played an important role in the bourgeoisie's recuperation of the massive Cordobazo strikes). The ruse of Perón's return to Argentina, with the complicity of the left, was the product of negotiation between bourgeois factions to subjugate the workers. It was used both by the Peronist-based Justicialist Liberation Front and by the other political parties to lure the workers into the democratic electoral circus of 1973. This created the illusion that the only way out of poverty for workers was through the ballot box and democracy.

During the 1990s, unemployment grew, as did discontent, but all the growing anger was swallowed up by supposedly more radical sectors of Peronism, in the face of unemployment caused by the austerity policies of Carlos Menem (who also came from of Peronism). Pointless initiatives such as roadblocks were initially promoted and encouraged by sectors of the Peronist Justicialist Party, notably Hilda Duhalde [6]. In order to win their sympathy and guarantee their subsequent affiliation to the Justicialist Party, she offered subsidies to the unemployed and food to their families. Various left-wing organisations reactivated the ‘piqueteros’, particularly during the ‘corralito crisis’ which marked the country's economic and financial collapse at the end of 2001, and succeeded in bringing them together and mobilising them, in order to limit, control and divert discontent, The slogans used were totally unrelated to the interests of the exploited, such as the defence of nationalised companies or the promotion of minority actions, ranging from looting shops to putting factories that were due to close under self-management. Even today, various leftist organisations have come together within the Movement of the Unemployed (MTD) to compete and share control of the ‘piquetero movement’, once again using, as the Peronists did, free food distribution and soup kitchens to lure the unemployed into their nets.

These forms of action, although they seemed to express solidarity and decision-making through assemblies, in reality represented the negation of conscious unification, discussion and collective reflection, and were ultimately the means by which the bourgeoisie controlled the mobilisations of the unemployed. The trap was so effective that the entire left and far left apparatus of capital, in all its components, from Peronist factions to leftist groups and ‘alternative’ or radical trade union organisations like the CTA [7], used it to carry out their work of manipulation. In so doing, they exploited the fighting spirit, the material difficulties and growing poverty of the workers, their real material needs for help, to benefit their petty political tricks, but above all they prevent any initiative by workers to wage the struggle on their own class terrain.

In their work of specific control over the proletariat, the left-wing organs of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, like the unions, carry out their ideological manoeuvres by sharing out the work, always trying to divide workers so that they cannot unite their discontent, nor express their solidarity in struggle. In short, the aim is to discourage, prevent or sabotage any attempt or initiative by workers to take their struggle into their own hands, to achieve a form of organisation which breaks down the division imposed by the bourgeoisie and which the unions reproduce by dividing them into corporations, companies or sectors... and this division of labour is founded by the left of capital, which presents itself and the unions as workers’ true representatives.

In Argentina, where the crisis is hitting workers particularly hard, with the national economy on the brink of bankruptcy for years and inflation rates at staggering levels, this is the scenario built around the CGT or CTA unions and the ‘opposition’ parties linked to the left of capital. But in this enterprise, the leftist organisations are also exercising their bourgeois function as touts by pretending to distrust the unions as well as the left-wing parties, or even to fight them, when in reality all they are doing is seeking to undermine their credibility by sowing illusions about the possibility of winning them back to the cause of the proletariat by supposedly ‘putting pressure’ on them. Recently, in the face of escalating attacks by the Milei government, this grotesque choreography has been repeated step by step. The CGT hypocritically feigns indignation and calls for the mobilisation of this or that sector in the face of the measures decreed by the government, and even for massive demonstrations, as on 9 May, to ‘defend the national economy’. The Trotskyists of Izquierda Socialista (IS) and Partido Obrero (PO) called for ‘the CGT to guarantee the success of the strike on 9 May...’. The manoeuvre thus achieved its objective: giving credit back to the CGT, which enables it to divert workers' discontent towards the pure and simple defence of the national economy, by imposing the chauvinist slogan “the fatherland is not for sale”, demonstrating nonetheless clearly that the CGT and the leftist apparatus which promotes it are instruments for the defence of national capital, whose essential function is to sabotage the struggle which was taking place on a class terrain, to weaken the working class in the face of the attacks it is suffering. Another leftist group, the Movimiento de los Trabajadores Socialistas completed the manoeuvre: while claiming to distance the workers from the control of the CGT, it called on them to create and join another trade union structure, which it presented as different by calling it ‘a fighting trade unionism’.

... The need to rediscover our class identity, a decisive issue for the future of struggles

Even during the violent economic and financial crisis of December 2001, when the working class in Argentina was totally trapped by the piqueteros movement, with the unemployed separated from the rest of their class, and with the inter-classist demonstrations, in the days of banging pots and pans, or even on a purely nationalist and bourgeois terrain, the workers nevertheless showed a strong reaction and combativity in the face of the attacks and the brutal deterioration of their living conditions. Just last year, there were major strikes in the docks and port services, in the education sector, among public transport workers and even among doctors. But today, all the work of sabotage and the traps laid by the unions, combined with the strengthening of the government's repressive apparatus (as in the days of the military dictatorship, there are constant references to cases of ‘disappearances’ following arrests during demonstrations), all this has led to a widespread demoralisation in Argentina's working class.

Today, it is fundamental for the development of the struggle in Argentina on its class terrain, and for it to join the struggle which is beginning to develop on an international level, to integrate into the discussions, in the assemblies, the link between the brutal blows dealt to their living conditions by the bourgeoisie in the midst of yet another economic crisis and the whole arsenal of the state which has been put in place to encourage polarisation between support for Milei and opposition to his government. This strategy has worked until now, with workers waiting for the moment when Peronism and the huge union structure, which they still see as being on their side, will respond to the attacks. A fundamental need is to recover their identity as a working class, their autonomy, their confidence in their ability to take the struggle into their own hands. And to do this, as in other countries, they must be wary of the division of labour between the right and the left, where the former openly assumes responsibility for the attacks and the latter pretends to defend the workers in order to prevent them from going their own way. In particular, we need to understand that the left, the trade unions and leftism in all its variants, are not expressions of the workers' struggle but, on the contrary, class enemies and servants of the capitalist state. We must not delude ourselves that they will call for struggle against the bourgeoisie; and, above all, we must be wary when they call for actions because they do so when they know that discontent and combativity are growing in order to derail them into dead ends. Peronism, in particular, remains a bulwark of the bourgeois state because it still enjoys a great deal of sympathy among workers who, for example, complain that they don’t call for enough demos. When they do, it's because they're trying to divert the proletarian struggle towards dead ends.

Workers must take into account the lessons they have learned from past struggles around the world, the traps set by the bourgeoisie to derail their struggles, and the experiences of struggles which must be taken up in the process of politicising the struggle. As in the post-1968 period, but under quite different and more difficult conditions. Today, working-class combativity is forced to find its way in the midst of an irreversible acceleration of the decomposition of bourgeois society on all levels, jeopardising the very future of humanity [8] . It is thus more than ever necessary to make the link with the context of the redevelopment of class struggle at world level. The resumption of struggles in Britain in 2022 marked a break with the period of passivity and resignation which had followed the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns at the end of the 1980s about the bankruptcy of the communist perspective and the end of the class struggle, and the revival of the proletariat's fighting spirit on an international scale was confirmed by major mobilisations in France and other Western European countries such as the United States and Canada. The slogan ‘Enough is enough’ was taken up everywhere, showing the determination to oppose the same increasingly brutal and intolerable attacks on living and working conditions, as well as the wage cuts and redundancy plans that all the national bourgeoisies are trying to impose. It is by reappropriating its past experiences that the working class in Argentina, as elsewhere, will be able to gradually recover its class identity through a process that is admittedly slow, irregular and discontinuous. Nevertheless, the conditions are gradually ripening that will enable it to regain awareness of its class identity and move towards the politicisation of its struggle, developing an awareness of the ultimate objective of its combat: the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of exploitation on a world scale.

Milei's madness and arrogance are in fact those of the bourgeoisie as a whole, which mercilessly attacks workers' living conditions. In order to have the strength to repel the attacks of the bourgeoisie and to develop their struggle, their consciousness and their unity, workers must absolutely dispel all illusions about the left parties, the unions and the leftists and reject the traps that they set.

RR/T-W, 23 September 2024

We are publishing a response from a close sympathiser to our call for an appeal by the groups of the Communist Left in response to the massive international democratic campaign of the bourgeoisie. We fully support its approach and conclusions.

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I want to fully support the ICC’s appeal to the Communist Left to get behind a resolution aimed against the democratic campaign played by the world’s bourgeoisie in order to submerge the working class and distract it away from the continuation of its struggle.

In the discussion at the July public meeting on this issue the question arose about the probable rejection of this position by the CWO/ICT, but that question is entirely secondary to the necessity for a strict focus on the question of democracy as it affects the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and their attacks on the consciousness of the working class. Across the world and leading with the US, Britain and Europe, the democratic campaigns being unleashed and sustained necessitates particular attention from revolutionaries, i.e., the Communist Left, regardless of the possible rejection by this or that group. It is much more important that this basic defence of a revolutionary position (the defence of proletarian internationalism against the capitalist nation state) is put forward for discussion, arguments and/or why it’s rejected.

The campaign of democracy cannot be underestimated: led by the US, whose own electoral process is unfolding on an unprecedented global scale, being followed by Europe and globally, is the considered response by the bourgeoisie to the dangers of workers’ struggles while attempting to rein in the forces of populism, which itself has made good use of the openings provided by the democratic terrain and the electoral circuses. In the last couple of years the Biden administration has demonstrated its strong concern for any development of the class struggle, particularly in the US and Western Europe. But even here, faced with the imperative necessity to find a candidate to face Trump given Biden’s increasing unsuitability, the Democratic Party was riven by in-fighting by cliques and other factors relating to the loss of control by the bourgeoisie. Beyond the US, the democratic campaign of the bourgeoisie is a global phenomenon reflecting the international response of the working shown during recent struggles. This is why the international appeal is an entirely appropriate response to the manoeuvres of the ruling class: it marks an important point that will only develop in the coming period.

On the CWO/ICT: It’s not the responsibility of the ICC to “save” the CWO by bringing it “into line” by signing a resolution; it is the responsibility of the ICC to make an appeal around the question of democracy as far and as wide as it can. Although the CWO has made one written response to the ICC regarding other appeals we can get a flavour of its response looking at the latest editorial on its website: “An ‘age of chaos’ or of deepening capitalist crisis?” Apart from trying to pose “chaos” against “economic crisis” when the two are intimately connected, the CWO quotes the UN Secretary General’s recent remarks about the world’s “dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all” (unlike the relative stability of the Cold War he went on to say). Underhandedly, the CWO is using a surrogate here (not for the first time) to “polemicise” with the ICC. It of course doesn’t mention the prescience of the ICC whose 1990 analysis gave a much more profound explanation of the decomposition of imperialism three decades earlier than the UN Secretary General’s pointed out the obvious.

The editorial continues with the blatant lie that it wants to work with other revolutionary forces and goes on to say that it wants to continue with its fraud of working for the “wider movement” of the NWBCW set-up. Nothing of this is new in the world of the CWO/ICT, but it is becoming increasingly likely that it will be completely unable to continue to secure its place as an effect representative of the working class and its struggle. The path that it has taken, i.e., “building a widespread movement enough to reach the rest of the working class” is littered with pitfalls and traps that it is ill-designed and unequipped to deal with. As the years have rolled by this “widespread movement” is exposed as the widespread fraud it has always been. And alongside this activism – a fraud presented to the working class as its salvation - we see the crass opportunism of the CWO with its dealings with dubious elements and parasitic forces. Activism and opportunism are nothing new to the CWO but have been constant features of the CWO/ICT’s activities, and taken to the stage they have done lately it presents a compounded double threat to it as a revolutionary force that, on past experience, it is incapable of correcting. It is in a hole of its own making and all the indications are that it will be unable to stop digging.

 

Baboon. 25.9.24

As we wrote in our second article on the “Prague Action Week”[1], various groups have tried to draw a balance sheet of what happened at the Prague event, an attempt to bring together opponents of imperialist war from many different countries. In this article we will examine the contribution of the Communist Workers Organisation[2] (in a subsequent article we will deal with the perspectives after the Prague Action Week).

The CWO article presents their view that the crisis is forcing capitalism towards a new World War aimed at the devaluation of capital. We will not develop here our disagreements with this approach to the current world situation and the current dynamic of imperialist wars. But we do want to respond to the way that the CWO deal with a key experience of the historic workers’ movement – the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915, which was the first major attempt of internationalists from across the warring camps to come together and issue an appeal against the imperialist war. The CWO seem to downplay the significance of this event by insisting it was part of a general failure of the revolutionary left in the Second International to break in time from Social Democracy: “even the example of the Zimmerwald Left who came together well after the war had started”, they say, is not an example to be emulated. Yes, it’s true that the international left waited too long to begin organised fractional work against the growing opportunism of the Second International in the period leading up to the war, and this delay made it difficult to make an international response to the outbreak of the war and the betrayal of the whole opportunist wing of Social Democracy after 1914. But this does not mean that we cannot learn from the experience of the Zimmerwald Left. On the contrary, the attitude of the Bolsheviks and others at Zimmerwald – both of recognising the importance of participating at the Conference and of intransigently opposing the centrist and pacifist errors of the majority of its participants – provide us with a clear example of how to respond to events like the Prague Acton Week. In other words, the necessity to be present at such an event, on the one hand and, on the other, to intervene with a clear critique of all its confusions and inadequacies. This is especially true when we consider that some of the key forces behind the Action Week, in particular the Tridni Valka group, simply reject the whole Zimmerwald experience as nothing but a pacifist carnival[3]. And at the same time, the lesson the CWO draws from Zimmerwald – the need to regroup as soon and as broadly as possible, before the war is upon us - is leading them towards a wholly uncritical approach to the elements it is trying to regroup with. We will come back to this.

A partial explanation for the chaos in Prague

Along with most of the other accounts, the CWO article begins by pointing out that “From an organisational point of view, it was a disaster (our emphasis).  Participants may disagree about who’s to blame but the fact is some events didn’t take place at all, others were poorly attended, people were promised accommodation and weren’t provided any, and ultimately on Friday the congress venue pulled out. In the absence of any communication from the organisers, around 50 participants met up and self-organised their own congress. The discussions carried on for many hours, and though eventually the original organisers found some other venue, the self-organised congress had already made plans for the next day. So on Saturday two separate events took place: the official congress and the self-organised congress (though some participants visited both throughout the day).”[4]

We can only agree that it was a disaster at the organisational level, but the CWO account doesn’t go any deeper into the reasons for the disaster. It’s not a question of blame here, but of investigating the political reasons for the failure. As we aimed to show in our first article on Prague[5], such an investigation cannot avoid a critique of the activist, anti-organisational approach of the majority of the participants - a problem rooted in anarchist conceptions and exacerbated by the various efforts to exclude the communist left from the proceedings. 

The organisational question is a political question in its own right, but the CWO account seems to restrict the “political point of view” to the more general conceptions held by the various participants. Nevertheless, they are quite right when they point out that, at this level, “the real divide that emerged was between the activists who were looking for immediate solutions on how to stop the war, and those with a class struggle orientation who had a more long-term perspective and understood wars, as a product of the capitalist system, can only be ended by the mass struggle of workers”.

This is precisely what we have said in our own articles on Prague. However, again there is something missing in the CWO account. As we pointed out in our first article, in putting forward this general approach “it was noticeable that there was a convergence between the interventions of the ICC and the ICT, who met more than once to compare notes on the evolution of the discussion”.

The CWO article asserts that one positive thing about the Prague event were the many informal contacts and discussions that took place on the margins of the main meetings, and we agree with this. But what they avoid saying is that, within the “self-organised” assembly itself, their delegation was able, for the first time in many years, to work constructively with the ICC, and that this was in no small measure due to the fact that, despite many disagreements, we share the tradition of marxism and the communist left, which enabled both organisations to offer a real alternative to the sterile activism which dominate the majority of this milieu. Thus, in the interventions of both organisations in Prague there was an emphasis on the primacy of serious debate about the world situation over an immediatist fixation on “what can we do today”; an insistence on the central role of the workers’ struggle in the development any real opposition to imperialist war; and an affirmation that only the overthrow of capitalism by the working class can put an end to the deadly spiral of war and destruction built into decadent capitalism.

A long history of opportunism and sectarianism

We don’t think that the CWO is suffering from a simple lapse in memory here. Rather, it is consistent with a practice that has been embraced by the CWO/ICT and its forerunners for a long time: a policy of “anyone but the ICC”. This attitude could already be seen in the approach of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista in 1943-5 – the organisation to which the ICT traces its roots. As we have shown in a number of articles, the PCInt was, from its inception, opportunist in its intervention towards the partisan groups in Italy and towards a number of elements who it let into the Party without demanding any account of their past deviations and even betrayals: such was the case with Vercesi, a former militant of the Italian Fraction who had engaged in anti-fascist frontism during the war, or the elements who had split from the Fraction to fight in the POUM militias in Spain. And this opportunism was accompanied by a sectarian approach to those who criticised the PCInt from the left – namely, the Gauche Communiste de France, with whom it refused all discussion. We saw the same approach by Battaglia Comunista (the ICT’s Italian affiliate) and the CWO in the sabotage of the conferences of the communist left at the end of the 1970s – in the sad aftermath of which Battaglia and the CWO, having effectively got rid of the ICC, held  a “new” conference along with a group of Iranian Stalinists[6]. A clear example of opportunism towards the right, even towards the left wing of capitalism, and sectarianism towards the left of the proletarian camp, the ICC.

Today, this policy is continued in the systematic refusal of joint work between the main groups of the communist left in favour of seeking alliances with all kinds of elements – from anarchists with ambiguous positions on internationalism to what, in our view, are fake left communists who can only play a destructive role towards the authentic proletarian milieu. The most obvious example of the latter is the “International Group of the Communist Left”, a group which is not only a parasitic formation, whose very reason for existence is to slander the ICC, but which has actively engaged in snitching about the ICC’s internal life[7]; and yet this is the group with which the ICT formed its No War But the Class War group in France. The ICT’s choice of rejecting the proposals of the ICC for a joint appeal of the communist left against the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and instead going for a kind of “broad front” via the No War But the Class War groups, is only the latest iteration of this approach[8].

Prior to the Prague meeting, the CWO wrote to the organisers suggesting that the eight criteria proposed by the organisers for participation in the conference and for common internationalist work in the future could easily be merged with the five basic points that define the No War But the Class War committees[9]. It would be useful if the CWO, in their balance sheet of the conference, could have made an assessment of what has become of this proposal.

For our part, we think that what happened in Prague provided a practical refutation of the whole method behind the NWBCW initiative. First, it didn’t persuade the organisers to overcome their refusal to invite the communist left to the “official” conference, as initially argued in a radio interview with the organising committee[10] and fully confirmed in the account of the event written by the Tridni Valka group (which certainly had a key influence on the official organising committee, even if they claim that they themselves were not part of it)[11]. As TV’s  article shows, the hostility towards the communist left in certain parts of the anarchist movement runs very deep. This is not something that can be overcome by forming amorphous fronts with the anarchists. On the contrary, that is a guaranteed means of avoiding a real, searching debate, which will necessarily take the form of a patient and unrelenting political struggle that aims to go to the roots of the divergence between marxism and anarchism. There is no sign that the ICT is engaging in such a confrontation with the groups it has paired up with in the NWBCW committees.

Second, the unfolding of the events in Prague was a real demonstration, on the one hand, that it cannot be the task of the communist left to “organise” the fragmented, politically heterogenous and often chaotic anarchist movement. Yes, we must be present at its gatherings to argue for both political and organisational coherence, but the attempt to encompass such a milieu in permanent groups or committees can only end up sabotaging  the work of the communist left. On the other hand, the modest beginnings of joint work between the ICT and the ICC in Prague confirms the ICC’s view that the best starting point for the communist left to have an impact on a wider but still very confused search for internationalist positions is a united effort based on very clearly agreed principles.

Amos

 

 

 

 

We learned of the death, of Michel Olivier on Thursday July 3rd. From 1969 he was a militant of the group Révolution Internationale (which became the French section of the ICC in January 1975) and he remained a member of our organisation until he was expelled in 2003. For three decades he was an esteemed and valued comrade, a militant renowned for his dedication and loyalty. His knowledge of the history of the international workers' movement and of the history of France and many other countries provided a stimulus to debate and reflection. Even more striking was his total commitment to defending the organisation, fighting against individualism, and opposing the circle spirit and the existence of clans.

It wasn't until the early 2000s that he would begin to take a completely different course. Olivier took a wrong turn down a blind alley and was unable to find his way back. Along with other militants, and partly driven by them, he waged a campaign against an ICC militant, Louise, who he accused of being "unworthy" and even of being a "cop". A special commission that conducted a very thorough investigation found the charges were totally unfounded and absurd. Refusing to accept this verdict, this comrade's defenders, who had never really accepted the political criticism she had levelled against the positions of some of them, set themselves on a destructive course of action against the ICC. This approach was driven by wounded pride, hatred and the "iron solidarity" of close friends. It firstly consisted of secret meetings[1] aimed at "taking back control of the organisation", then of repeated violations of the statutes and systematic provocations designed to force the ICC to adopt sanctions which were immediately denounced as a "stifling of debate".

Among the activities of this group of militants, which took the name "Internal Fraction of the ICC" (IFICC), we should also mention the malicious slanders against our organisation conveyed to Left Communist groups and then made public, along with the theft of our organisation's material (financial resources, addresses of subscribers, archives)[2]. It should be remembered that these militants, and Olivier in particular, who constantly accused the ICC of gagging them and of "stifling debate", refused to take part in the meetings (extraordinary conference, congress) to which they were invited to present and defend their positions in front of all the members of our organisation.

But if Olivier and his friends were finally expelled from the ICC, it wasn't because of all these organisational failings, but because they behaved like snitches by publishing information on their website that supported the work of the police[3]. In taking this decision, the ICC was simply putting into practice the fundamental, vital principle of the workers' movement: no snitching within the ranks of the working class, no snitching within its revolutionary organisations![4]

How can we explain such a tragic and dishonourable political trajectory on the part of Olivier? How could it be that a dedicated and sincere militant over the decades was able to drift so far off course and end up wallowing in the most crass and undignified behaviour? What happened to Olivier was what happened to many other revolutionaries before him: through affinitarianism and out of loyalty to his friends, he chose to follow their slide rather than remain faithful to proletarian principles. The most famous example of such a trajectory is that of Martov. An esteemed militant of the RSDLP (the Russian revolutionary organisation at the beginning of the last century), he could not bear to see his friends Axelrod, Potressov and Zassoulitch criticised at the 1903 congress for their total lack of involvement in the life of the party newspaper, Iskra (which they had been mandated to work on) and even less so Lenin's proposal to change the composition of the editorial committee accordingly (that is, to drop them from it). "In solidarity” with his "victimised" friends, Martov chose to defend the interests of his circle rather than those of the Party. This fork in the road would see him go much further in slandering Lenin and the Bolsheviks. That said, Martov would never have committed the same acts of snitching as the IFICC!

In 2001, during one of our last discussions with him, when he was still a militant, Olivier was convinced by our arguments showing him the error of his ways (concerning the slander he was helping to spread about our comrade Louise). But when it was time to leave, he concluded by saying: "You're right, but when I go back with the others, I won't be able to resist, I'll follow them, I know I will". The die was cast...

In the last few years, he had at times made half-admissions to certain elements gravitating around him and the ICC, acknowledging his "mistakes", which he considered “go back a long way". But in the end he was unable to maintain these statements in public, perhaps out of pride, perhaps still out of loyalty to his main accomplice, Juan, who today continues this same systematic policy of snitching through the IGCL (International Group of the Communist Left, the name the IFICC came to adopt).

But, more than anything else, what explains how far Olivier was able to drift, and then be unable to turn back, is the lack of firmness in the proletarian political milieu.

Far from denouncing all these actions, the Left Communist groups ignored them. Worse still, some even adopted a most complacent attitude towards them. So there was nothing to hold him back.

The snitches, the parasites and their "tribute" to Olivier

Clearly, on the IGCL (ex-IFICC) site, Juan used Oliver's death to continue his work, his attempt to destroy the ICC, which he had eventually dragged him into. His text repeats once again the lie that Olivier and the whole gang were the victims of "behind the scenes manoeuvres and psychological manipulation [...] by those who, in the shadows, wanted to eliminate the 'old guard' of the ICC". And to play on the heartstrings, to avoid any real reflection on the facts, Juan's article ends with a vibrant tirade: "We were all struck and affected by our exclusions and, above all, by the scandalous conditions under which they were carried out, as well as by our public denunciations by the ICC. Michel, without doubt, more than any other." Here, under Juan's deliberately sentimentalist pen, what becomes scandalous is not the snitching but the denunciation of it![5]. Unsurprisingly, this text was relayed by other groups and elements whose main purpose is to throw mud at the ICC. Juan's text can be found on the Pantopolis blog run by 'doctor' Philippe Bourrinet, whose lies and deception are driven by his obsessive hatred of the ICC[6].

A stab in the back from the ICT

Much more surprising, and much more serious, is the fact that an authentic group of the Communist Left, from our historic current, was also able to take part in this campaign of slander.

The ICT (Internationalist Communist Tendency) has in fact published an article in all its languages in "Memory of our comrade Olivier", which shamelessly dares to state: "At the age of twenty, he discovered the positions of the International Communist Left that was formed in the 1920s, and participated in the foundation of the International Communist Current (ICC).Thanks to his talent and dedication, he played an active and leading role until, in the early 2000s, he and other comrades were expelled or forced to leave, suffering slanderous and unfounded accusations. In reality, as always in such cases, the slander against Olivier and other comrades, was aimed at discrediting those politically troublesome critics who disagreed with and opposed the new direction taken by the organisation they had helped to create. Other comrades would have been so deeply demoralised and disappointed by these attacks that they would have abandoned revolutionary militancy. But Olivier, among a handful of others, conserved his energy. After participating for a short time in the activities of the Internal Fraction of the ICC (IFICC), he joined the Internationalist Communist Tendency". A footnote reinforces the point: "For a more detailed history and other aspects of Olivier's life, we refer readers to the article written by comrade Juan for the IGCL, which shares with him part of his political journey as well as a friendly relationship".

A brief reminder is in order here. As early as 2002, faced with the actions of Juan and Olivier, and the whole gang, we kept asking the IBRP (the forerunner of the ICT) to look into the matter and take a stand, providing it with all the evidence of the real actions of this IFICC. For years, the IBRP (then the ICT) systematically refused our request, arguing: "that's your business, we won't take a position". Then, as the years went by, and faced with an accumulation of clear evidence, the ICT changed its tune to justify seeing nothing, hearing nothing and saying nothing: "It's old history".

When the ICT collaborated with Juan and the IGCL to form a NWBCW (No War But the Class War) "committee" in Paris and we publicly denounced the presence of this snitch in its ranks, the ICT repeated "that's old history".

When the ICT integrated Olivier as a militant and, at one of its public meetings, we publicly called it to account for the presence of these snitches in its ranks, the ICT came up with the same refrain: "that's old history".

And now, at the worst of times, where the sadness and emotion of a death is involved, the ICT (always deaf and blind to evidence) suddenly takes the opportunity to speak up and join the chorus of slander from the IGCL and Juan!

The ICT has a short memory. Its predecessor, the IBRP, behaved in a similar way in 2004, when an individual living in Argentina, Citizen B, created a website to fabricate a story out of nothing with the sole aim of smearing the reputation of the ICC. At the time, the IBRP gave publicity to this shady individual and all his crude lies, not hesitating to republish in several languages the man's wildest and most preposterous accusations. When we had provided irrefutable proof of the deception, the IBRP discreetly removed any trace of his misdeeds from its website, so as not to make itself look ridiculous for too long[7]. But unfortunately, its militants learned nothing from this shameful business. Worse still, the ICT has added another layer to the IGCL's slander. When will the ICT understand that cronyism with elements like Juan, whose reason for living is to spew their hatred against the ICC, is an insult to the principles of the Communist Left, that slander and lies can in no way serve the cause of the communist revolution?[8]

The extreme left of capital joins the campaign

One point in particular should give the ICT pause for thought. Its article and that of the IGCL have both been republished by the extreme left of capital, for example in France on the Matière et revolution, website of the Trotskyist group La Voix des Travailleurs.

Why are leftist organisations relaying the tribute to Olivier and the slander against the ICC by the IGCL and the ICT? Because the defenders of the bourgeoisie are always interested in slandering revolutionary organisations and spreading the lies that smear them. Any denigration of a group of the Communist Left is a gift for them.

The same thing happened during the struggle of the First International (the IWA) against the manoeuvres of Bakunin's Alliance in 1872. All the slanders and insinuations spread by the supporters of the Alliance were immediately picked up by the bourgeois press:

- "Let us note, in passing, that The Times, that Leviathan of the capitalist press, the Progrès (of Lyons), a publication of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the Journal de Genève, an ultra-reactionary paper, have brought the same charges against the Conference and used virtually the same terms as Citizens Malon and Lefrançais." (The Alleged Splits in the International, Marx and Engels, 1872).

"The whole liberal press and that of the police was openly on its [the Alliance's] side; in its personal defamation of the General Council, it was supported by the so-called reformers of all countries." (Appendix to the Report published by order of the International Congress at The Hague, 1872).

The bourgeois press and politicians declared that the struggle against Bakuninism was not a struggle for principles but a sordid struggle for power within the International. Thus Marx was supposed to have eliminated his rival Bakunin through a campaign of lies. Exactly the same words used by the ICT! "As always happens in these cases, the slander against Olivier and other comrades was aimed at discrediting the criticisms of politically inconvenient elements who did not share, and opposed, the new political direction taken by the organisation". No, comrades! The fight that the ICC has waged, is waging and will continue to wage is that of defending the principles of the workers' movement against unworthy behaviour: against theft, against slander, against snitching. As Marx, Engels and the IWA did before us. As did Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacists. All our predecessors!

Let the snitches continue their work, let the parasites join them, let the left of the bourgeoisie profit from it... all that is in the order of things. They are all profiting from Olivier's sad story, a sincere militant who became a player in a disastrous and hateful politics. But that a group like the ICT, a representative of the Communist Left and normally expected to uphold the historic principles of the workers' movement, should sink so low into the gutter is an outrage, a stab in the back for the ICC and the entire Communist Left.

 

ICC, 21 September 2024

The working class has nothing to chose between Trump and Harris, Republicans or Democrats. Whoever wins, the working class will be subjected to the brutal attacks on its living standards demanded by the economic crisis and the build-up of the war economy. Whoever wins, workers will be faced with the need to defend themselves as a class against these attacks

But this does not mean that we can ignore the election campaign and its consequences. They are revealing that the divisions in the US bourgeoisie, the ruling class of what is still the most powerful country in the world, are growing sharper and more violent. The US has become the epicentre of the decomposition of the world capitalist system, and whoever emerges as President after November 5, the election will serve to exacerbate these divisions even more, with serious consequences both within the US itself and on the global stage.

Revolutionaries thus have the task not only of denouncing the fraud of bourgeois democracy, but of analysing the world-wide implications of the US election, of placing them in a coherent framework that will enable us to understand how the fragmentation of the US ruling class is an active factor in the only perspective that the bourgeoisie can offer humanity: an accelerating dive into destruction and chaos. We invite all those who want to fight for a different future to come to this meeting and discuss with us.

The main language of the meeting will be English, but we will have facilities to translate on the spot into other languages as well. If you want to take part, write to us at [email protected] [25], indicating if you are happy following and contributing in English, or specifying what other language you would need to use.

Date and Time: 16 November 2024, 2pm-5pm UK time