On 23 November, the Internationalist Communist tendency (ICT) held a public meeting in Paris on the theme: ‘Faced with the rise of nationalist wars and confrontations, the only perspective is the internationalist class struggle’.

In addition to the ICT, the meeting was attended by militants from the International Communist Party - Le Prolétaire (ICP), the International Communist Current (ICC), a representative of the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL), and several sympathisers from these different organisations.

The ICT has already published a report on this meeting on its website[1]. We do not claim to be exhaustive, but simply wish to briefly underline the crucial points which, for us, emerged from the discussion.

The emergence of a new generation

The presence of a relatively large audience at this public meeting, characterised in part by its youth, is a very significant fact about the current dynamics of our class. The ‘summer of anger’ in 2022 in the United Kingdom, the series of strikes which affected almost every sector for several months, was a sign that the proletariat was returning to the path of struggle after more than twenty years of passivity. Faced with the blows of the economic crisis and the relentless attacks by capital and its governments, workers are once again ready to strike, demonstrate and fight.

This dynamic is also marked by a near-invisible global process: the considerable effort of reflection that our class is in the process of producing. Faced with the impasse in the system, a whole range of questions is germinating in the minds of the workers. This is why minorities are appearing in the four corners of the globe, seeking out revolutionary positions and coming into contact with groups in the proletarian camp, those who defend the autonomy of the class and internationalism. Apart from the greater participation in meetings of the organisations of the Communist Left, there are many other signs, such as the emergence of conferences on internationalism (in Arezzo, Prague, Brussels, etc.). But the most significant is surely the attitude of the bourgeoisie itself. Its extreme left is becoming increasingly radical in its language, no longer hesitating to emphasise the need for revolution, and its trade unions are increasingly militant and united in advocating ‘class trade unionism’. For the left wing of capital, it's a question of playing its part in attracting the growing numbers of young people who want to fight.

The historical responsibility of the groups of the Communist Left

The Communist Left has a historical responsibility to pass on to the new generation that is slowly emerging the positions, methods and principles that it inherited from the workers' movement. These lessons, acquired through long struggles over two centuries, are absolutely vital for the future; there can be no victorious international proletarian revolution if they are forgotten.

The ICT meeting held in Paris must be evaluated in the light of this requirement, which is binding on all groups of the Communist Left.

1. Debate with the aim of clarification

The presentation made by the ICT to launch the discussion clearly set out the following points:

• In the 19th century, certain national liberation struggles could be supported by revolutionaries, when they made it possible to sweep away the last feudal fetters and thus accelerate the development of capitalism. But since the beginning of the 20th century, in this system in decline, it is no longer the formation of capitalist nations that is on the order of the day, but international proletarian revolution.
• The current development of war and chaos in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere is the product of the capitalist system.

• Faced with this situation, only the working class is in a position to oppose the system which is generating this increasingly barbaric situation: capitalism.

• Against the nationalist campaigns in which the bourgeoisie tries to mobilise the working class in defence of one side against another, revolutionaries must defend proletarian internationalism within the class.

The ICC intervened from the outset to support the broad lines of the presentation. In particular, we underlined the effort made to adopt a historical approach in order to understand these different questions, which are so crucial for the development of class consciousness and the future of the proletarian struggle. This is why we felt it necessary to stress the profound changes brought about by the entry of capitalism into its phase of decadence. As the Communist International proclaimed at its foundation in March 1919: the experience of the carnage of the 1914 war and the international revolutionary wave that followed proved that the world had entered ‘the era of wars and revolutions’: capitalism, now decadent, had nothing more to offer humanity, and the only alternative was its destruction by world proletarian revolution. From then on, war became capitalism's way of life; every nation, every bourgeoisie, big or small, was imperialist and contributed to the war and nationalist fever. In this new configuration, national liberation struggles and the call for self-determination, supported by revolutionaries in certain circumstances during the ascendant period, became obsolete and reactionary orientations and watchwords.

The ICP, for its part, defended an entirely different approach: faithful to its theory of invariance, the idea that the communist programme had been established once and for all in 1848 and that nothing could be added or modified since then, it maintained that national liberation struggles were still possible today. Consistent with this approach, the ICP and its sympathiser therefore defended the legitimacy of the Palestinian people's struggle against Israeli oppression (without, of course, at any time supporting Hamas or any local bourgeois faction). The ICP supporter even said that for him not to support the Palestinian people when they were being massacred, tortured and subjected to the most appalling barbarity was a form of indifferentism towards all this suffering.

In response, several speakers tried to show that national liberation struggles are a trap that chains part of the working class to the domination of its own bourgeoisie. In the face of this, we must brandish the slogan already contained in the Manifesto: Proletarians have no country!

If, during this first part of the debate, the ICT and the ICC together defended the same general political position, two nuances also emerged:

• Unlike the ICC, ICT militants never uttered the words ‘ascendance’ and ‘decadence’ to define the two great phases in the life of capitalism. In our view, these terms reflect the most accurate and precise vision of the profound and historical evolution of the system.
• The ICT said that it recognises the existence of oppressed nations and oppressing nations, which for the ICC is a mistake because it maintains an ambiguity when it comes to firmly insisting that all nations, large or small, well or poorly armed, are imperialist.

The second part of the discussion was devoted to the historical issues at stake today: war and class struggle.

In many of the interventions, in particular those of the ICT and the ICP, the vision defended was that of a course towards the Third World War (or towards the ‘generalisation of war’, we confess that we did not necessarily understand whether there was a difference between these two terms). There is in this position a pessimistic assessment of the state of the working class and its struggles.

The ICC then developed another assessment of the situation: capitalism is not heading for a third world war in the foreseeable future, but is in the process of decomposition. In concrete terms, this means a proliferation of warlike conflicts (as in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, etc.), a disintegration of the social fabric (atomisation, a rise in violence, racism and identitarian isolationism, the gangrene of drugs and trafficking, etc.), an erosion of coherent and rational thought... This is no less a danger than the possibility of a third world war, both of which lead to the disappearance of human civilisation. On the other hand, this latter approach makes it possible to understand the reality unfolding before our eyes in all its complexity and chaos, to link together phenomena that may appear independent of one another, or even contradictory[2].

As for the class struggle, for the ICC, the proletariat is not defeated today. It is this strength of the proletariat, particularly in Europe and North America, which for 40 years prevented the Cold War from turning into the Third World War. Today, the proletariat has even begun to take up the struggle again and is trying to develop its reflection, its consciousness. As we said in the introduction, since 2022 and the series of strikes known as the ‘Summer of Anger’ in the UK, the ICC has been highlighting the return of workers' combativity[3].

All these disagreements within the meeting were expressed in a very warm and open atmosphere, where everyone was keen to understand and respond to each other's positions in an argued manner.

This positive moment must serve as a benchmark: the groups of the Communist Left must develop the debate between them much more - the confrontation of their political positions, the participation in the public meetings of each other. Our newspapers and magazines must also participate in this process of clarification; there are far too few public polemics between our groups. While the ICP and the ICC write articles in response to each other, an effort that we must pursue and amplify together, the ICT almost systematically refuses this public debate, and our letters and articles remain dead letters.

2. Uniting around the fundamental positions of the proletarian camp

There was one moment at the ICT meeting which should particularly attract our attention: although all the interventions all clearly underlined the points of disagreement, some young participants intervened to say that they did not really understand what distinguished the positions of the different organisations present.

These remarks reveal an essential point: the organisations of the Communist Left, however important their differences may be, have in common a history, a heritage and fundamental positions.

The title of the meeting itself summed up this unity: ‘Faced with the rise of nationalist wars and confrontations, the only perspective is the internationalist class struggle’. All the speakers at this debate were keen to stand up against imperialist wars, to defend proletarian internationalism and to reflect on the development of workers' struggle and consciousness.

The dynamic of this meeting is further concrete proof that the different groups of the Communist Left have a twofold responsibility: to confront their differences in a collective process of clarification and to come together to defend, with a stronger voice, what they have essentially in common.

This is why, in each of its interventions, the ICC has systematically issued a joint appeal insisting that we should be able to defend with one voice the internationalist position of the Communist Left in the face of the military conflicts that are developing across the planet. We also pointed out that this joint appeal could enable new generations to draw on this experience, just as we ourselves can draw on the Zimmerwald experience. It would be a milestone for the future.

And once again, both the ICT and the ICP have rejected this joint appeal.

The new generation will therefore have an important role to play here, to push the groups of the Communist Left both to polemicise amongst themselves and to unite on the cardinal points they have in common, to push the groups of the Communist Left to live up to their historical responsibility.

3. Defending the principles of the workers' movement and proletarian solidarity

Attentive readers will have noticed that we mentioned in our introduction the participation in this meeting of a representative of the IGCL, the individual Juan, without ever saying anything about his role in the debates.

Certainly, in the eyes of the participants, Juan appeared to have a fraternal attitude throughout the meeting; he took part in the debate in a clear and dynamic way, and he made some very good interventions that enabled the collective reflection to move forward.

It's true that Juan was eloquent, that his speeches were even brilliant, and that he always wore a smile and a sense of humour.

In the first part of the debate, he defended the same positions as the ICC on the trap of national liberation struggles in the period of decadence, and therefore against the invariance of the ICP. In the second part, he took up the ICP's position that the Third World War was approaching. Above all, he insisted on his agreement with the struggle being waged by the ICC to get the groups of the Communist Left to produce a joint appeal in defence of internationalism, saying that he was ready to sign it. But appearances are often deceptive.

We must therefore recall a few facts here to unmask the level of hypocrisy and manoeuvring of this individual.

Juan hit one of our comrades in the street, forcing him to go to hospital with a swelling on his face. One of his acolytes, in Juan's presence, threatened to slit the throat of another ICC militant – with our comrade quite aware that this gentleman always has a knife in his pocket. At a Lutte Ouvrière meeting where we were speaking, Juan started laughing at a comrade because he knew that the latter had just nearly died of a heart attack, rejoicing in his misfortune. So much for the reality of fraternity when there are no witnesses!

Obviously, the support shown at this meeting for the ICC's positions suffers from the same duplicity. You only have to read the IGCL’s articles to see that the backbone of this group is its hatred for our organisation. In its founding text, the IGCL states that “the International Communist Current is disintegrating before our very eyes, both theoretically, politically and organisationally, liquidating its regular press, abandoning its public meetings, having abandoned most of its principles...”. Its newsletters are peppered with gossip against the ICC. For example, under its former name of the “Internal fraction of the ICC”, it said back in 2014 in an article headlined “A new (final?) internal crisis in the ICC!, it wrote “‘The ICC is once again - according to recent internal documents - experiencing a new internal crisis (...). The militant energies wasted on psychological introspection and self-criticism cover dozens of pages of bulletins at the same time as the sections of this organisation are reducing the frequency of their publications - if not stopping them altogether - or deciding not to hold any more public meetings or to intervene in the street and in struggles. If this were not a deliberate attempt to destroy an organisation which has become a veritable sect and which is attacking the Communist Left from every angle, (...) we would not have intervened publicly on this matter, which has not yet been revealed by the organisation in crisis. But this is a matter of urgency! (...) For us, it is clear that there is a will and a conscious undertaking to destroy the militants of the ICC, their communist conviction and their communist commitment, which has been underway - it's true - for a good twenty years now. This crisis is undoubtedly the latest stage in this process”.

We are now at the end of 2024, 10 years after this somewhat premature funeral oration[4]. But let's linger for a moment over certain words: “according to recent internal documents”; “we would not have intervened publicly on this matter not yet revealed by the organisation in crisis”.

Here we come to the very essence of the IGCL, Juan's true nature, when the mask is off: snitching! Since its inception, this group (whether it calls itself IFICC or IGCL) has never ceased to publish on the internet information that affects the internal life and security of the ICC and its militants: quotes from internal bulletins, revealing militants' real initials, revealing who writes this or that article[5], dates of our internal meetings[6]... everything is covered[7].

As for Juan's statement that he agrees with a number of the ICC’s political positions, this is a deception designed to fool the participants in the ICT's public meeting, as evidenced by the numerous texts he has written distorting our positions so as to be able to slander them[8].

At the ICT meeting, we very briefly reminded everyone who Juan really is, saying: “We don't debate with snitches”. Juan's reaction was to mock our accusation, adding: ‘Yes, I'm the informer, the cop’, to which the audience laughed.

The weapon of mockery is effective and clever, it diverts and distracts, but it is also an admission that Juan cannot contradict our accusation, because he knows that all the evidence is accessible, all his acts of snitching are on the Internet.

To all those who believe that proletarian behaviour is a crucial issue, that revolutionaries cannot accept theft, blackmail, lies and manipulation, death threats and snitching, we advise them not to be fooled by Juan's derision, nor by his sycophancy towards the ICC at this meeting. The reality of his policies, his actions, his anti-ICC hatred, his snitching, you'll find it spelled out in column after column on his own website. Revolutionaries have always been extremely serious and uncompromising in their defence of principles and revolutionary organisations, starting with Marx’s struggle against Bakunin and Vogt[9].

This is why we regret that the other organisations remained silent on this question when Juan ridiculed it, just as we regret that the ICT continues to accept in its meetings an individual who is the bearer of such destructive behaviour. This tolerance turns its back on the whole tradition of the workers' movement and sullies the Communist Left. It is also a breach of the most elementary solidarity that revolutionaries owe each other.

The ICT public meeting: a positive moment, but marked by profound weaknesses that must be overcome!

This acceptance of snitching is a terrible weakness, but it must not overshadow the positive aspect of this meeting held by the ICT: the confirmation of the emergence of a new generation in search of revolutionary positions and a necessary confrontation of the positions of three organisations of the Communist Left!

It remains for our organisations to live up to their responsibilities, to around the issue of proletarian principles.

We will end this assessment in the same way as we ended the ICT meeting: by saluting the TCI and all the participants for holding this debate, and by inviting the ICT, the ICP and all those present to come and take part in our next public meetings[10].

Pawel (09/12/2024)

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that all the information about these meetings is available on our website, in the agenda section. You can also email us at france@internationalisme.fr [1]

 

  We publish here a letter from a close sympathiser, which we think is a very lucid denunciation of the current campaign about the 'good news' coming from Syria with the fall of the Assad regime - a denunciation based on the ICC's position on the decomposition of capitalism and the slide into military chaos.

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….Peace and goodwill on earth may have to wait a little longer.

In Syria, the lying talk of a ‘peaceful transition’ following the abrupt downfall of the Assad regime is just desert dust thrown up to confuse and disorient.

Similarly, the pleas to ‘maintain the territorial integrity’ of the Syrian nation state which has seen 12 million of its citizens forcibly displaced since 2011, are belied by the frenzy of competing imperialist sharks and their proxies attempting to feed off the decaying corpse of the country or salvaging what they can of their prior possessions there.

Every man for himself!

Chaos, war, famine, disease, mass movements of refugees destabilising the status quo across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and beyond. This is how the first quarter of the 21st century ends as it began … only much worse!

The partial takeover of Syria by the forces of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – the Sunni ‘rebel alliance’ who were yesterday’s outlawed Jihadist Terrorists rebranded and resurrected as today’s saviours of Syria and role model for Islamists and moderates of all stripes – has brought no relief for the population inside Syria or anywhere else.

Before the vapour trails of the plane carrying the fleeing rat Assad from Damascus to his nest in Moscow had melted in the sky and while some began to celebrate the ‘liberation’ of the country:

• “The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Sunday [December 8] that it had struck more than 75 targets, including ISIL (ISIS) leaders, operatives and camps, to ensure that the armed group does not take advantage of the end of al-Assad’s rule.” (Aljazeera website). This ‘action’, this rain of fire and steel from the sky, claimed “no civilian casualties”, the US military said.
• “The Israeli military on Tuesday [December 10] said it had carried out about 480 strikes across the country over the past two days, hitting most of Syria’s strategic weapon stockpiles, while Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli navy had destroyed the Syrian fleet (my emphasis) overnight... Of the 480 strikes carried out by the Israeli Air Force, about 350 were manned aircraft strikes targeting airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks and weapon production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia and Palmyra, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. The rest of the strikes were in support of ground operations that targeted weapons depots, military structures, launchers and firing positions.” (CNN website, December 11). The ‘ground operations’ mentioned here include an extension of the so-called buffer zone between Israel and Syria and a further Israeli incursion into Syria to create a “security zone free of heavy strategic weapons and terrorist infrastructures” in southern Syria, “beyond the buffer zone.” A land-grab, in other words. Some reports (unverified at the time of writing) claimed Israeli tanks were within 15.5 miles of Damascus.
• “Fighters with the Syrian National Army (SNA), a rebel group supported by Turkey, crossed the Euphrates in the direction of Kobane under the protection of Turkish jets. Turkey’s military intelligence agency also said it had destroyed 12 military trucks, two tanks and ammunition stores after they fell into the hands of the YPG, a Kurdish militia. Under president Recep Tayyip Erdogan [12], Turkey has sought to dismantle Kurdish footholds in Syria. Mr Erdogan views Rojava, the autonomous region carved out of the Assad regime’s control in 2012, as a safe haven for anti-Turkish terrorists. [13]” (Daily Telegraph, December 10). These ‘Kurdish footholds’ are supported by the US, Israel and the UK and police thousands of captured ISIS (Islamic State) fighters and their families in virtual concentration camps. Thus, Turkey’s action pits it against its NATO allies. In October, Turkey launched airstrikes against suspected Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq after blaming the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) for a deadly attack on the headquarters of the Turkish national aerospace company that killed five people. In fact, “Turkey carried out more than 100 attacks between October 2019 and January 2024 on oil fields, gas facilities and power stations in the Kurdish-held Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES)”, according to data collated by the BBC World Service. These Turkish air strikes in drought-struck north-east Syria “have cut off access to electricity and water for more than a million people, in what experts say may be a violation of international law… The attacks have added to the humanitarian crisis in a region reeling from a years-long civil war and four years of extreme drought exacerbated by climate change.” (BBC News website, 19 November 2024).

Everyone participates in the picking of the decomposing corpse. None planned it. No one will benefit from it. The working class will pay for it.

If Iran (whose now-weakened Hezbollah forces in Lebanon had supported Assad) and Russia (without whose arms and air strikes Assad would have fallen after his brutal suppression of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprising in 2011 and the subsequent civil war) are the obvious losers in recent events (Russia fears for the security of its naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast - it anchored its fleet offshore following Assad’s fall and flight - and its Khmeimim Air Base near the port city of Latakia; Iran will find it harder to filter supplies through Syria to the Hezbollah rump in Lebanon), no one nation state can claim ‘victory’.

Just as the US didn’t want to see – yet failed to prevent – the escalation and spread of war in the Mideast after October 7, 2023, the fall of Assad and the rise of the ‘Terrorist’, ex-Al Qaeda, HTS provides little solace, threatening further instability. Israel was relatively content with a weakened Assad in place, and while it has taken the opportunity to destroy weaponry and bases of use to present and future adversaries, it too will not regard the either the HTS’s extension (The Taliban was the first to congratulate it, followed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas) nor Turkey’s attacks on the Kurds, with any kind of glee. And for Turkey, its actions have as we’ve seen, brought it into conflict with those of its erstwhile allies, including the US, which has issued dark ‘warnings’ to Ankara…

It's another fine mess. A gangsters’ paradise. A free-for-all, not a bloc-building exercise regrouping allies and foes for a titanic third world war clash – the final countdown - as so much of the proletarian milieu appears to think (as far as it thinks).

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s speech in Brussels on Thursday December 12 highlighted the “critical need” to ramp up defence spending and defence production in ‘an increasingly turbulent security environment’, calling on NATO members and allies to “shift to a wartime mindset and turbo charge our defence production and defence spending.” In GB, ex-military chiefs have raised the spectre of conscription. But there’s no guarantee that this weaponry, these armies, won’t in future be turned against each other or their proxies, as in northern Syria today. And the arrival of the Trump administration threatens only to add to the chaos of what passes for international relations and solidarity.

No: today Syria demonstrates in sad spades, in bodies and broken dreams, a further step in the decomposition of the capitalist social order under the irreparable pressure of the global economic crisis, of human-enabled climate catastrophe, both expressed through the irrational and unbridled growth of militarism. Capitalism is war!

While the media toured Assad’s notorious torture prisons, feeding off grief and the hunt for the thousands of ‘disappeared’, on the sidelines of a closed-door UN security council meeting on Monday, Syria’s UN ambassador, Koussay Aldahhak, said: “Syria now is witnessing a new era of change, a new historical phase of its history and Syrians are looking forward for establishing a state of freedom, equality, rule of law, democracy.” (The Guardian, Tuesday December 10). More desert dust and pious hopes. “The security council appeared united on the need to preserve Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and will work on a joint statement in the coming days, US and Russian diplomats said after the meeting,” the report continued. But here’s the nub of the situation: “‘No one expected the Syrian forces to fall like a house of cards, and it took a lot of people by surprise,’ US ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said. ‘It’s a very fluid situation’”. For ‘fluid’ read chaotic, uncontrollable, unpredictable… Only more conflict is certain.

Conflict as in Gaza, on the West Bank, in Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen, Nigeria, Libya, Ukraine: all this war, all these arms, all this production of the means of destruction; everywhere increases in military budgets as the infrastructure in nation after nation falls into disrepair, and production is interrupted by flood and fire; as millions are forced at the point of a gun or starvation to uproot in search of sustenance... of life.

And the global producer class, the proletariat, the exploited class of capitalism whose collective labour provides the surplus value on which the whole system feeds, also remains the only true “revolutionary” sector in this society, the real “rebels” in this mix, the only historic force with a past of struggle and a vision and programme for the future. One way or another, the modern, international proletariat still holds humanity’s future in its collective hands. It’s struggles against this decaying social order haven’t been extinguished.

So, season’s greetings, comrades: as products of and active factors in the proletarian struggle, your clarity and determination to uphold the principles of the Communist Left are more necessary than ever.

Fraternally, KT
December 12, 2024

 

 

 

 

Today's media are lavishing images of the horrors of Bashar al Assad's regime (such as those of the sinister Saydnaya prison), while rejoicing at the population's celebrations for the ‘end of the nightmare’. But the relief at the end of this regime of terror is nothing but a vain illusion. The truth is that the population (both in Syria and in the rest of the world) is the victim of a new and criminal deception, a new demonstration of the fraudulent hypocrisy of the ruling class: to make people believe that the terror, war and misery were the sole responsibility of Assad, a ‘madman’ who had to be stopped in order to restore peace and stability.

In reality, all the imperialists, from the smallest powers in the region to the major world powers, have been shamelessly involved in the regime's atrocities: Let's not forget how Obama, the ‘Nobel Peace Prize winner’, looked the other way in 2013 when Bashar Al Assad was bombing or using poison gas against his population; or how many of the ‘democratic’ powers, who are now congratulating themselves on the ‘fall of the tyrant’, have accommodated themselves to the Assad family for decades, or even been their patented accomplices, in order to defend their sordid interests in the region. These same major ‘democracies’ are once again shamelessly lying when they seek to whitewash the country's new leaders, who were described as ‘terrorists’ just a few years ago: these ‘moderates’, who are capable of finding a ‘peaceful’ way out, are nothing more than a collection of Islamists and cutthroats from the ranks of Al Qaeda or Daesh!

The inexorable chaos that awaits us

A year ago, when the conflict broke out in Gaza, we distributed a leaflet in which we denounced the extension of the barbarity that these massacres were already preparing:

“The Hamas attack and Israel's response have one thing in common: the scorched earth policy. Yesterday's terrorist massacre and today's carpet bombing can lead to no real and lasting victory. This war is plunging the Middle East into an era of destabilisation and confrontation. If Israel continues to raze Gaza to the ground and bury its inhabitants under the rubble, there is a risk that the West Bank will also catch fire, that Hezbollah will drag Lebanon into the war, and that Iran will end up getting involved….While the economic and warlike competition between China and the United States is increasingly brutal and oppressive, the other nations are not bowing to the orders of one or other of these two behemoths; they are playing their own game, in disorder, unpredictability and cacophony. Russia attacked Ukraine against Chinese advice. Israel is crushing Gaza against American advice. These two conflicts epitomise the danger that threatens all humanity with death: the multiplication of wars whose sole aim is to destabilise or destroy the adversary; an endless chain of irrational and nihilistic exactions; every man for himself, synonymous with uncontrollable chaos”[1].

The jihadists' lightning offensive took advantage of the growing chaos in the region: Assad and his corrupt regime were hanging on by a thread since the Russian army, bogged down in Ukraine, was no longer in a position to support him, and Hezbollah, embroiled in its war with Israel, had abandoned its positions in Syria. In the chaos of the ongoing barbarism in Syria, this coalition of disparate militias was able to rush into Damascus without encountering much resistance. What we are witnessing today in Syria, as yesterday in Lebanon and Ukraine, is the spread and amplification of these scorched-earth wars in which none of the adversaries gains a solid position, lasting influence or a stable alliance, but instead fuels an inexorable headlong rush into chaos.

Who can claim to have won a solid victory? The new Syrian regime is already facing a situation of fragmentation and dislocation reminiscent of post-Gaddafi Libya. The fall of the Assad regime is also a major setback for Iran, which is losing a precious ally at a time when Hamas and Hezbollah are drained. Meanwhile Russia could see its precious military bases in the Mediterranean disappear at the same time as its credibility in defending its allies... Even those who, like Israel or the United States, might be delighted to see the arrival of new, more conciliatory masters in Damascus, have no more than a relative confidence in them, as shown by the Israeli bombardments to destroy the arsenals and prevent them from falling into the hands of the new regime. Turkey, which appears to be the main beneficiary of the fall of Assad, also knows that it will have to contend with increased US support for the Kurds and an even more chaotic situation on its borders. The ‘fall of the tyrant’ promises nothing but more war and chaos!

Capitalist decomposition is leading humanity towards barbarism and destruction.

If the chaos, terror and massacres are indeed the work of the rulers of this world, of the bourgeoisie, both authoritarian and democratic, they are above all the result of the logic of decadent capitalism. Capitalism is all-out competition, plunder and war. The fact that this war is now spreading to more and more parts of the world, causing senseless devastation and mass slaughter, is an expression of the historical impasse in which the capitalist system finds itself. On the occasion of the war in Gaza we wrote: ”Whatever action is taken, the dynamic towards destabilisation is inescapable. Basically, then, this is a significant new stage in the acceleration of global chaos. This conflict shows the extent to which each state is increasingly applying a "scorched earth" policy to defend its interests, seeking not to gain influence or conquer interests, but to sow chaos and destruction among its rivals. This tendency towards strategic irrationality, short-sightedness, unstable alliances and "every man for himself" is not an arbitrary policy of this or that state, nor the product of the sheer stupidity of this or that bourgeois faction in power. It is the consequence of the historical conditions, those of the decomposition of capitalism, in which all states confront each other. With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, this historical tendency and the weight of militarism on society have been profoundly aggravated. The war in Gaza confirms the extent to which imperialist war is now the main destabilising factor in capitalist society. The product of the contradictions of capitalism, the breath of war in turn feeds the fire of these same contradictions, increasing, through the weight of militarism, the economic crisis, the environmental disaster and the dismemberment of society”[2]. This dynamic tends to rot every part of society, to weaken every nation, starting with the foremost among them: the United States.

As a consequence of this decomposition of capitalist society, we have seen the emergence of phenomena such as massive exoduses of refugees, like the one triggered by the war in Syria in 2015, with almost 15 million displaced people (7 million in Syria itself, 3 million in Turkey, and around 1 million between Germany and Sweden). At the time, we denounced the hypocritical ‘refugees are welcome’ of the bourgeoisie[3], which did not mean that the exploiters were now advocates of solidarity, but rather was an attempt to contain the explosion of chaos by taking advantage of cheap labour. These same benefactors are now pushing refugees to return to the hell that is Syria, because ‘the oppressive regime no longer exists’ and ‘the country is moving towards the restoration of democratic normality’. This is the disgusting cynicism of these ‘democracies’, which are putting into practice the policies advocated by the populist parties and the far right from which they claim to distance themselves. The alternative to the destruction of humanity that the survival of capitalism implies is international class solidarity, a solidarity of struggle against global capitalism.

Valerio, 13 December

Modified 24.12.24. thanks to Internationalist Voice for suggesting some more precise formuations. 

The toll of ongoing wars is terrible. In Ukraine, the number of dead and wounded already exceeds one million, with territories and towns completely razed to the ground, as in the town of Mariopol, which has been wiped off the map! In the Middle East, the headlong rush into Gaza has been leading to a veritable genocide. Here too, everything has been razed to the ground, and the devastated territories will lie fallow for decades to come. Then there are the related confrontations, with their deadly consequences, as in Lebanon, the Red Sea, Yemen and, more recently, Syria. And other more serious threats are accumulating and threatening to erupt, notably between China and Taiwan.

A real escalation of diplomatic and warlike tensions

Since last summer, we have witnessed a real escalation of military conflicts, with fighting and massacres intensifying everywhere. Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine and almost three years of extremely violent warfare, the Ukrainian army has finally made an incursion onto Russian soil, in the Kursk region. In eastern Ukraine, the Russian army still seems to be making progress, at the cost of very heavy losses. Children are being slaughtered shamelessly. With the support of North Korean soldiers, but also Sri Lankan, Houthi, etc., the conflict is taking on another, more perilous dimension, dragging in its wake more states or military groups, even if the reinforcements reflect the difficulties and shortages from which Russia is suffering.

In the Middle East, after two years of war, the conflict has also intensified, with more than 44,000 people already killed in Gaza, the majority of them civilians; 1,700 Israelis, along with a few foreign nationals and hostages, and the opening of a new front that has spread brutally to Lebanon, where the centre of Beirut quickly came under fire (more than 3,000 civilian deaths). To this macabre toll must be added a host of wounded and displaced people.

Even more recently, in Syria, Islamist groups, taking advantage of the powerlessness of Russia (allied to Bashar al-Assad) and Israel's regular bombing of the country, launched an offensive on the city of Aleppo. This new outbreak of violence, opportunely taking advantage of the disorder in the Middle East, not only represents a further expansion of the chaos but could in turn have even more deadly consequences.

These conflicts have therefore escalated even further, particularly since the American elections, when Biden was, embarrassingly, forced to support Netanyahu's unbridled extremism; he was also recently pressured to authorise Ukraine's use of longer-range missiles, capable of reaching targets within a 300-kilometre radius on Russian soil. Since then, the first Ukrainian firings of American ATACMS missiles have rapidly been followed by more intense use of drones and cluster missiles by Russia (resulting in numerous civilian casualties), as well as numerous bombardments aimed at depriving the country of electricity for the winter. Above all, the symbolic sending of an intermediate-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads demonstrates the Kremlin's growing desire to provoke and intimidate the Western powers. Putin, the sorcerer's apprentice, has just amended the Russian doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, paradoxically, the Middle East has just opened up to negotiations following a ceasefire agreed by Netanyahu over Lebanon. And while the situation in Ukraine has not reached that point at the time of writing, and Putin “does not seem ready to negotiate”’, there are voices pointing out that it may now be “possible to envisage a just peace”[1]’.

‘Peace’ in capitalism is a delusion and a lie

Have the great imperialist powers and the belligerents become ‘reasonable’, more inclined to ‘restore peace’? Absolutely not! Marxism has always maintained, particularly since the First World War, that capitalism is war. A time of ‘peace’ is simply a time of preparation for imperialist war, the product of a political and military balance of power. As Lenin pointed out, ‘”the more the capitalists talk about peace, the more they prepare for war”’. If Netanyahu has today signed a fragile ceasefire in the north, it is above all in the hope of gaining Trump's support in order to capitalise politically on his atrocities in Palestinian territory and better position himself in the face of Iran's regional claims.

The appointment of former veteran Pete Hegseth to the post of US Secretary of Defence is also in line with Netanyahu's hopes. A star presenter on the conservative Fox News television channel, Hegseth, a hard-line evangelical conservative, presents himself as a ‘defender of Israel’, a supporter of Zionism who loudly applauded the decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem as the capital of the Hebrew state. This future minister naturally supports Netanyahu in the face of pressure from international justice, all the more so as he had already pleaded in favour of American soldiers accused of war crimes! He was also the spokesman for those who wanted to bomb Iran on the pretext of its ‘arms caches ’...

In Ukraine, each side is also trying to anticipate Washington's reaction and is doing its utmost to score points on the ground, so as to be able to negotiate from a position of strength. On the one hand, there is the desperate pressure exerted by the Kremlin through indiscriminate bombing and the nuclear threat; on the other, in Ukraine, there is the determination to use the fragile conquest of the Russian region of Kursk as a ‘bargaining chip’. One thing is certain: whatever policy Trump decides to pursue, it is bound to fuel the same appetites for revenge.

The same applies to the European powers, caught up in the dynamic of every man for himself and confronted by the initiatives of increasingly audacious partners, such as the meeting between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin, but also by the revival of Franco-British discourse on the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine ‘to keep the peace’, whereas Germany is not in favour of this at the moment. A whole range of issues are poisoning relations in the EU, both over Russia and the war in Ukraine (Hungary, for example, is overtly pro-Russian) and in the Middle East (the question of the Palestinian state), as well as relations with NATO, the role of European defence, the development of the war economy, etc. The uncertainty of the results of the American elections, followed by the victory of Trump, who had pledged to “resolve the Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours”’, could only lead to further embers of war. Between now and 20 January, the date of Donald Trump's inauguration, no one knows what the new American President is likely to do, given his capricious, volatile and unpredictable nature.

The growing tensions will therefore continue, perhaps also in the form of ‘peace’ speeches. This dynamic of imperialist chaos, marked by major tensions between all the world's powers, first and foremost China and the United States, can only grow and spread, even if it is possible that a truce will momentarily mark the tempo. But war will not go away: “capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different compo­nents, than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging”.[2] In order to defend its strategic interests, each imperialist state now increasingly applies a scorched earth policy, sowing chaos and destruction, even in the areas of influence of its closest ‘allies’ and, a fortiori, of its rivals. Left to its own devices, the capitalist system threatens the very survival of humanity.

Only the proletariat can offer an alternative to capitalist barbarity.

Acknowledging the obsolescence of capitalism does not mean giving in to fatalism. On the contrary! Within bourgeois society, there is an antagonistic force capable of bringing down this system: the massive international struggle of the proletariat. Even if the proletariat is still weakened and unable to take direct action against the war, its potential remains intact. Even if it is only gradually beginning to express itself through a slow process of awareness, fragile and uneven, still molecular and subterranean, it represents, for the future, a social force of radical transformation. Revolutionaries owe need to highlight the future potential contained in the class struggle: “The working class has no side to choose in all these wars, whether current or in the making, and must staunchly defend the banner of proletarian internationalism everywhere. For a whole period, the working class will not be able to stand up directly against war. On the other hand, the class struggle against exploitation will take on greater importance because it pushes the proletariat to politicise its struggle, with a view to overthrowing capitalism.”[3]

WH, 30 November 2024.

 

On 16 November, the ICC held an online public meeting on the theme "The global implications of the US elections", in which several dozen people from across four continents and fifteen countries took part in addition to ICC militants. There was a simultaneous translation into English, Spanish and French so everyone could follow the discussions, which took place in just over three hours. We have published an initial report on the meeting on our website: An international debate to understand the global situation and prepare for the future [19]

Since then, we've received a large number of letters, some to welcome the meeting, others to continue the debate or to ask new questions, an indication of the momentum generated by this energising meeting.

One of these letters, signed by Blake, gave a more negative assessment of this international meeting and suggested that we should do things differently, that we should hold other types of meeting. This criticism is both fraternal and well-argued and we publish this letter and our response below.

 

Letter from a reader

Hello, a few comments on the public meeting last Saturday.

I don't have too much to say on the actual content, I agree with the position put forward by the organisation, essentially that the Trump election is a sign and an aggravating factor in the continuation of decomposition.

I want to mainly comment on the organisation of the meeting. It's very difficult to deal with a huge number of people on line. All the meetings I have participated in online with large numbers are not designed for discussion. Generally they are for giving information, discussion happens in much smaller forums/groups. 

First of all, there are constant technical issues (the threat of the pad being deleted(!), people not turning off microphones, connectivity issues etc)

Also, in relation to the discussion, I feel there's very little actual 'discussion' when you have so many people. Mostly comrades intervene once, to give a statement of their views, and so there's little dialogue and development of a depth (that was my feeling, and why I didn't intervene in the meeting). A few comrades posed questions (e.g. JC about 'rationality') but there's no discussion from others, and instead you have the 'response of the organisation' (which is obviously important to have, but it then feels like a student-teacher relationship).

Another negative (for me) was having comrades speaking other languages. If you can't speak/understand then what happens is you tend to switch off and wait until that person has stopped speaking, this breaks concentration. It was a good idea to translate those non-English interventions and quickly put them back into the pad, but: 

(a) some of the translations were poor (unsurprisingly, Google translate hasn't caught up with our somewhat specialised vocabulary) and 

(b) as I was reading the last intervention the next intervention was going ahead, so again it's difficult to follow and keep up. 

Despite the advantages of having different voices, and giving a sense of internationalism, I think it does not really work for a public meeting online (which is very different from, say, a public meeting face to face where you can have live translation…

A proposed idea how to organise the meeting: 

- 1 presentation to everyone (20 mins),

- Then the meeting is split into the language groups, who can then discuss freely (say 1 hour),

- A break - during which the discussions / questions / main themes etc are collated (10 mins)

- Followed by a plenum with a whole group discussion - (1 hour).

There are several advantages to this; 

1. Smaller groups generally = easier management. 
2. You still have an international meeting (in the Presentation and plenum discussion), but reduce some of the limitations of meeting online.
3. Some comrades are intimidated by larger numbers/language ability (e.g. Japanese comrades) and thus may be more encouraged to speak. (On a related side note; do you think constantly saying that you want 'new comrades/attendees' to speak actually does the job you want it to do? Constantly 'haranguing' people to speak (just how it came across to me), generally does not produce much response, personally I have not noticed any more people participating. You have a greater array of communicative means online, so you should consider using them. For example, why not ask attendees, if they don't want to speak, to write a short paragraph of what they think into the chat box, which can then be read out..? I can virtually guarantee you will get more responses that way..) 
4. Smaller groups, generally can mean a little longer for each person to contribute (You can emphasise the '5 min limit' during the main plenum). 
5. Finally, you can get out much of the repetition and basic ideas in the smaller group and therefore should be able to have a 'higher' level discussion in the whole group session.....If you wanted to discuss this further, please get in contact.

regards

Blake

Our response

Firstly, we warmly welcome this letter. Through his criticisms and proposals, the comrade is contributing to our collective reflection with the aim of improving the organisation of debates, promoting the confrontation of positions and aiding the process of clarification.

Also, Blake is correct in regard to the number and we did make it clear in the report of this international meeting published on our website that there really were a lot of people there “several dozen people from across four continents and some fifteen countries took part”.  Given the large number of participants, not everyone was able to take part in the debates and it was not possible for the same person to speak several times. As Blake says, these constraints partly prevented the questions raised from being deepened and it restricted the time for contributors to respond to each other.

And Blake is also right when he points to the technical difficulties involved in holding an online international meeting in several languages which requires live translations to be recorded on different computer pads, and for comrades to adhere to the necessity of switching off their microphones when it's not their turn to speak, and so on.

These are the reasons why the ICC also organises other types of meetings:  online meetings in a set language with fewer numbers, public meetings in towns and cities where people can be together ‘physically’, and meetings where there is no set subject announced in advance and where the participants are able to propose topics for discussion (current affairs, history, theory, etc.). There's no denying that these meetings give rise to lively exchanges of views, allowing arguments and counter-arguments to develop and positions to evolve, and we announce all these planned discussions in advance on our website in the ‘ agenda [20] ’ section.

In this spectrum, the international online meetings have a special, indeed crucial, role to play. Let's start with the most obvious. Comrades are isolated, sometimes alone, and they joining a meeting where comrades from different countries, speaking in different languages, share the same passion for revolution and a desire to deepen their understanding of the evolving world events and the need to participate in the development of working class consciousness, an exhilarating and uplifting experience.

This international dimension is not only good for morale, it is also, and above all, good for reflection. In this phase of capitalist decomposition, with the tendency to withdraw, the fear of the outsider and thoughts being fixated on immediate and local events, it is absolutely vital for the world's searching minorities to break this isolation, to link up, to join and work together in all languages, to develop the broadest and clearest vision.

At the meeting on 16 November, in which we came together to understand better “The Global Implications of the American Elections”, the various contributions made by participants from the four corners of the globe enabled us to cross-reference information and analyses and to draw on different sensibilities and experiences. Blake may have noticed himself that the speeches by French-speaking comrades bore a more assertive confidence in the proletariat and its future struggles which is probably partly linked to the fighting spirit and experience of the working class in France.

It's true that not all participants were able to speak but is having one's own say really the most important thing? On the contrary we believe that understanding how to listen and learn from the thoughts of others is also a crucial element in the dynamics of a debate and the process of collective clarification. During this three-hour meeting, the militants of the ICC spoke only three times, in order to leave the maximum of time to all the other comrades but also to listen and better understand the different positions, the nuances and the disagreements at stake[1]

Underlying this is something even more profound: the feeling we share that 'proletarians have no country!' The struggle of our class is on a global scale, the communist revolution is international and this internationalism is not just a feeling or an impulse, it is also a concrete, real and significant social and political force.

As regards the practical organisation of this international meeting, the comrade refers to the problems with the microphones and the pads and the difficulty in keeping concentration when the debate is taking place in several languages... All this is true, and it means we are still learning. We've received a lot of letters from participants asking us how they can better master their computer on this or that technical aspect for the next time. Here again, this small concrete example reveals something much deeper: this meeting in several languages like future ones is where we can learn and get used to meeting together in large numbers, so we can organise the management of our debates and strengthen our ties internationally. The focus of these meetings is on the future!

Because how will the future of capitalism look if we are to overthrow capitalism through a world revolution? With the development of combativity, consciousness and its revolutionary minorities, our meetings will have to bring together more and more people, from more and more countries. Today, bringing together several dozen participants, in three languages, is just a foretaste of what we will have to manage in the future. Both technically and in the organisation of debates, all participants must gain experience so that the revolutionary minorities from across the globe can carry out their responsibilities in the class and for the class.

We should be enthusiastic about being part of such militant activity! So, we look forward to seeing you at the next meeting!

ICC, 8 December