The Internationalist Communist Tendency have recently published a statement on their experience with the No War But the Class War committees (NWBCW) which they launched at the beginning of the war in Ukraine[1]. As they say, “There is nothing like an imperialist war for revealing the real class basis of a political framework, and the invasion of Ukraine has certainly done that”, explaining that the Stalinists, Trotskyists have once again shown that they belong to the camp of capital – whether by supporting the independence of Ukraine, or rallying to Russian propaganda about the ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, the leftists are openly calling on the working class to support one side or the other in a capitalist war which expresses the deepening rivalries between the biggest imperialist sharks on the planet and thus threatens catastrophic consequences of the whole of humanity. The ICT also notes that the anarchist movement has been profoundly divided between those who call for the defence of Ukraine and those who have maintained an internationalist position of rejecting both camps. In contrast to this, the ICT say that “the Communist Left across the world has remained solidly behind the international interests of the working class and denounced this war for what it is”.

So far so good. But we differ profoundly when they then argue that “For our part, the ICT has taken the internationalist position a stage further by trying to work with other internationalists who can see the dangers for the world working class if it does not get organised. This is why we have joined in with the initiative to develop committees at a local level across the world to organise a response to what capitalism is preparing for workers everywhere”

The necessity for polemics

In our view, the ICT’s call for the formation of the No War But the Class War committees is anything but a “stage further” in internationalism or a step towards a solid regroupment of internationalist communist forces. We have already written a number of articles explaining our point of view on this, but the ICT has responded to none of them, an attitude justified in the ICT statement which insists that they don’t want to engage in “the same old polemics” with those who they think have misunderstood their positions. But the tradition of the communist left, inherited from Marx and Lenin and carried on in the pages of Bilan, is the recognition that polemic between proletarian elements is indispensable to any process of political clarification. And in fact, the ICT statement is really a hidden polemic, mainly with the ICC – But by their very nature such hidden polemics, which evade referring to specific organisations and their written statements, can never lead to a real and honest confrontation of positions.

In their statement on NWBCW, the ICT claims that its initiative is in continuity with the approach of the left-wing current in the process initiated by the Zimmerwald conference of 1915, having already made a similar claim in the article “NWBCW and the ‘Real International Bureau’ of 1915: “we believe that the NWBCW initiative conforms to the principles of the Zimmerwald Left”.[2] 

But the activities of the Zimmerwald Left, and above all of Lenin, was characterised by a relentless polemic aimed at a decantation of revolutionary forces. Zimmerwald brought together different tendencies in the workers’ movement in opposition to the war, and there were considerable divergences on a number of questions; the Left was fully aware that a common position against the war, as expressed in the Zimmerwald Manifesto, was not enough. For this reason, the Zimmerwald Left did not hide its divergences with the other currents at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, but openly criticised these currents for not being consistent in their fight against the imperialist war. In and through this debate Lenin and those around him forged a nucleus that would become the embryo of the Communist International.

Our previous criticisms of the NWBCW initiative

As readers can see from the publication of our correspondence with the ICT regarding the ICC’s call for a joint declaration of the communist left in response to the war in Ukraine, the ICT’s refusal to sign and their promotion of NWBCW as a kind of “rival” project severely weakened the capacity of the communist left to act together at this crucial moment. It scuppered the possibility of a coming together of its forces for the first time since the break-up of the international conferences of the communist left at the beginning of the 1980s. The ICT chose to discontinue this correspondence[3].

We have also published an article tracing the actual history of NWBCW in the anarchist milieu in the 1990s[4]. This meant that these groups contained all kinds of confusions, but in our view they did express something real - the response of a small minority critical of the massive mobilisations against the wars in the Middle East and the Balkans, mobilisations that were on a clearly leftist and pacifist terrain. For this reason, we felt it was important for the communist left to intervene towards these formations in order to defend clear internationalist positions within them. By contrast, there are very few such pacifist mobilisations in response to the Ukraine war and the anarchist milieu, as we have already noted, is profoundly divided on the question. Thus we see very little in the various NWBCW groups that has made us question our conclusion to the article: “The impression we get from the groups which we know something about is that they are mainly ‘duplicates’ of the ICT or its affiliates”. In our opinion, this duplication reveals some serious disagreements about both the function and mode of operation of the revolutionary political organisation and its relationship with minorities who situate themselves on a proletarian terrain, and indeed with the class as whole. This disagreement  goes back to the whole debate about factory groups and struggle groups, but we don’t intend to develop it in this article[5].

More important – but also connected to the question of the difference between a product of the real movement and the artificial inventions of political minorities - is our article’s insistence that the NWBCW initiative is based on a wrong assessment of the dynamics of the class struggle today. In present conditions, we cannot expect the class movement to develop directly against war but against the impact of the economic crisis – an analysis which we think has been amply verified by the international revival of struggles which was sparked off by the strike movement in Britain in the summer of 2022 and which, with inevitable ups and downs, has still not exhausted itself.  This movement has been a direct response to the “cost of living crisis” and while it contains the seeds of a deeper and more widespread questioning of the impasse of the system and its drive towards war, we are still a long way from that point. The idea that the NWBCW committees could in some sense be the starting point for a direct class response to the war can only lead to a misreading of the dynamics of the present struggles. It opens to the door to an activist policy which, in turn, will not be able to distinguish itself from the “do something now” positions of the left of capital. The ICT statement insists that its initiative is above all political and that it is opposed to activism and immediatism, and they claim that the openly activist direction taken by the NWBCW groups in Portland and Rome is based on a misunderstanding of the real nature of the initiative. According to the statement, “those who signed up to NWBCW without understanding what it really was about, or rather, who saw it as the extension of their previous radical reformist activity. This happened in both Portland and Rome where certain elements saw NWBCW as something to immediately mobilise a class which was still recovering from four decades of retreat, and which was only just beginning to find its feet in the fight against inflation. Their immediatist and ultra-activist perspective only led to the demise of those committees”.  For us, on the contrary, these local groups grasped better than the ICT that an initiative which has been launched in the absence of any real movement against the war – even among small minorities - can only fall into attempts to create a movement out of nothing.

 A new “United Front”?

We have mentioned that the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which published Bilan, insisted on the need for rigorous public debate between proletarian political organisations. This was a central aspect of their principled approach towards regroupment, opposing in particular the opportunist efforts of the Trotskyists and ex-Trotskyists of the day to resort to fusions and regroupments which were not based on a serious debate around fundamental principles. In our view, the NWBCW initiative is based on a kind of “frontist” logic which can only lead to unprincipled and even destructive alliances.

The statement admits that some openly leftist groups have hijacked the “No War But the Class War” slogan to hide their essential support for one side or the other in the conflict. The ICT insist that they can’t prevent such “false flag” operations. But if you read our article on the opening meeting of the Paris NWBCW committee[6], you will find not only that a considerable part of the participants were advocating openly leftist “actions” under the NWBCW banner, but also that a Trotskyist group which defends the right of Ukraine to self-determination, Matière et Révolution, had actually been invited to the meeting.  Similarly, the Rome NWBCW group seems to have been based on an alliance between the ICT’s affiliate in Italy (which publishes Battaglia Comunista) and a purely leftist group[7].

We should add that the presidium of the Paris meeting was made up of two elements who were expelled from the ICC in the early 2000s for publishing material which exposes our comrades to state repression – an activity we have denounced as snitching. One of these elements is a member of the International Group of the Communist Left, a group which is not only a typical expression of political parasitism, but which was founded on the basis of this police-like behaviour and thus should have no place within the internationalist communist camp.  The other element is now actually the representative of the ICT in France. When the ICT declined to sign the joint declaration, they argued that its definition of the communist left was too narrow, mainly because it excluded groups defined by the ICC as parasitic. In fact, it has been shown very clearly that the ICT would prefer to be publicly associated with parasitic groups like the IGCL than with the ICC, and its current policy, via the NWBCW committees, can have no other result than to give such groups a certificate of respectability and to strengthen their long-standing effort to make the ICC a pariah – precisely because of its defence of the clear principles of behaviour which they have repeatedly breached. 

In some cases, such as in Glasgow, the NWBCW groups seem to have been based on temporary alliances with anarchist groups like the Anarchist Communist Group who have taken up internationalist positions on the Ukraine war but who are linked to groups who are on a bourgeois terrain (eg Plan C in the UK). And recently the ACG has shown that it would rather associate with such leftists than discuss with an internationalist organisation like the ICC, which it excluded from a recent meeting in London without eliciting any protest from the CWO[8]. This does not mean we don’t aim to discuss with genuinely internationalist anarchists, and in the case of KRAS in Russia, who have a proven record of opposing imperialist wars, we asked them to support the joint declaration in whatever way they could. But the ACG affair is yet another example of how the NWBCW initiative recalls the opportunist policy of the United Front, in which the Communist International expressed its willingness to work with the traitors of social democracy. This was a tactic to strengthen communist influence in the working class but its real result was to accelerate the degeneration of the CI and its parties.

The Italian Communist Left was, in the early 20s, a harsh critic of this opportunist policy of the CI. It continued to adhere to the original position of the CI, which was that the social democratic parties, through supporting the imperialist war and actively opposing the proletarian revolution, had become parties of capital. It’s true that their critique of the United Front tactic retained an ambiguity – the idea of the “United Front from Below”, based on the assumption that the trade unions were still proletarian organisations and that it was at this level that Communist and social democratic workers could struggle together.

In their conclusion to the NWBCW statement, the ICT makes the claim that there is a historical precedent for the NWBCW committees in the revolutionary movement: the appeal for a United Proletarian Front launched by the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt) in Italy 1944. This appeal is fundamentally internationalist in content, but why does it talk about a “United Proletarian Front”? And what is meant by the following demand: “The present time calls for the formation of a united proletarian front, i.e., the unity of all those who are against war, whether fascist or democratic.

Workers of all proletarian political formations and without party! Join our workers, discuss class problems in the light of the events of the war and form together in every factory, in every centre, committees of the united front capable of bringing the struggle of the proletariat back to its true class terrain”.

Who were these “proletarian political formations”? Was this in fact an appeal to the rank and file of the former workers’ parties to engage in joint political activity with the militants of the PCInt?

This was not a mere inaccuracy in the 1944 appeal, as demonstrated only a year later when the PCInt's Agitation Committee's published a new 'Appeal', explicitly addressed to the Agitation Committees of the Italian Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party and other organisations of the bourgeois left, calling for their joint action in the factories. We published an account of this in International Review 32. In International Review 34 we published a letter from the PCInt responding to our criticisms of the Appeal. In this letter they wrote:

“was it in fact an error? Yes, it was; we admit it. It was the last attempt of the Italian Left to apply the tactic of the ‘united front at the base' defended by the CP of Italy in 1921-23 against the Third International. As such, we categorize this as a ‘venial sin' because our comrades later eliminated it both politically and theoretically with such clarity that today we are well armed against anyone on this point”.

To which we replied:

“If a proposal for a united front with the Stalinist and social democratic butchers is just a ‘minor' sin what else could the PC Int have done in 1945 for it to fall into a really serious mistake ... join the government? But Battaglia Comunista reassures us: it has corrected these errors quite a while ago without waiting for the ICC and it has never tried to hide them. Possibly, but in 1977 when we just brought up the errors of the PC Int in the war period in our press, Battaglia answered with an indignant letter admitting that there had been mistakes but claiming that they were the fault of comrades who left in 1952 to found Programma Comunista”.

The ICT's continuing defence of the 1944 call for a United Proletarian Front shows that this profound error has not been “eliminated both politically and theoretically”. And the  ‘United Front from Below’ tactic from 1921-23 is still the inspiration for the ICT’s opportunist  No War but the Class War ‘movement’.

The ICT is therefore right on one point about No War But the Class War: it is in continuity with the opportunist call for a ‘United Proletarian Front’ by the PCint in 1944. But it is not a continuity to be proud of since this tactic actively obscures the class line that exists between the internationalism of the Communist Left and the pretend internationalism of leftism, parasitism and the anarchist swamp.  Moreover the NWBCW was intended to be an exclusive alternative to the intransigent internationalism of the Common Statement of the Communist Left, thus weakening revolutionary forces not only by opportunism toward leftism etc, but also by sectarianism toward other authentic groups of the Communist Left .

Amos

Bakunin set up a secret organisation within the International Workingmen’s Association aimed either at taking it under his control or, if that was not possible, at destroying it. The IWA responded to this colossal piece of intrigue by devoting the Hague Congress (1872) to the defence of the organisation against this parasitic attempt to destroy it.

We must remember that this congress took place one year after the Paris Commune, the first time in history that the proletariat had tried to take power; but the crucial importance of defending the revolutionary organisation against the attempts to destroy it was consciously addressed by the IWA by giving it absolute priority and making its work public.

The lessons of this combat are vital. However, they have been totally buried for various reasons. The first is that they were quickly forgotten in the later workers' movement with the sole exception of the Bolsheviks. Franz Mehring - Rosa Luxemburg's sparring partner in the left of Social Democracy - in his biography of Marx presents his fight against Bakunin's conspiracy as a "personal confrontation".

Of course, the numerous authors (historians, Marxologists, political scientists) who have spoken of the Hague Congress have repeated ad nauseam the same refrain: it all came down to a "clash of personalities" or a "struggle between authoritarians and libertarians".

No scientific rigour can be expected from them. However, what is outrageous is that a group like the Internationalist Communist Tendency, which claims to be part of the Communist Left, which claims to fight for the World Party of the proletariat, has published an article on the Hague Congress[1] which repeats the same falsifying clichés that for 150 years have been propagated about that Congress.

Bakunin's trajectory and his entry into the IWA [2]

Who was Bakunin? According to the ICT article a true revolutionary who championed misguided ideas such as pan-Slavism, but "When the 1863 uprising in partitioned Poland broke out, Bakunin volunteered his services, only to be rebuffed. He then tried to make his own way to join the uprising, but the expedition failed, as did the uprising itself - the Polish insurgents were isolated and crushed. These events delivered a blow to Bakunin's pan-Slavist hopes and finally made him reconsider his political ideas". According to the article, this reconsideration led Bakunin to "formulate a new doctrine, characterised by political abstentionism, anti-statism and federalism, which variously went under the names of revolutionary socialism, collectivism and anarchism. He initially looked for supporters among the radicalised followers of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Freemasons, eventually founding a secret society, the International Revolutionary Association. The ‘catechisms’ of that secret society sum up the ideas around which Bakunin attempted to reorganise revolutionaries in an international network".

The General Council of the IWA did not share this assessment: "The denunciations in the bourgeois press, like the lamentations of the international police, found a sympathetic echo even in our Association. Some intrigues, directed ostensibly against the General Council but in reality against the Association, were hatched in its midst. At the bottom of these intrigues was the inevitable International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, fathered by the Russian Michael Bakunin. On his return from Siberia, the latter began to write in Herzen's Kolokol, preaching the idea of Pan-Slavism and racial war, conceived out of his long experience. Later, during his stay in Switzerland, he was nominated to head the steering committee of the League of Peace and Freedom, founded in opposition to the International. When this bourgeois society's affairs went from bad to worse, its president, Mr. G. Vogt, acting on Bakunin's advice, proposed to the International's Congress which met at Brussels in September 1868, that it make an alliance with the League. The Congress unanimously proposed two alternatives: either the League should follow the same goal as the International, in which case it would have no reason for existing; or else its goal should be different, in which case an alliance would be impossible. At the League's congress, held in Bern a few days later, Bakunin made an about-face. He proposed a makeshift programme whose scientific value may be judged by this single phrase: ‘economic and social equalisation of classes’. Backed by an insignificant minority, he broke with the League in order to join the International, determined to replace the International's General Rules by the makeshift programme, which had been rejected by the League, and to replace the General Council by his personal dictatorship. To this end, he created a special instrument, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, intended to become an International within the International."[3] .

Thus, contrary to what the ICT says, Bakunin was not a revolutionary who "evolved his ideas". His changes of position were not based on considerations of lived experience. Much of his career was spent with clearly bourgeois and even reactionary positions (Pan-Slavism, the League for Peace and Freedom), but, sniffing out that the International could fall into his hands, he quickly changed his hat, threw the League for Peace and Freedom into the dustbin and rushed to join the International, inventing for the occasion a "back-up programme" following the criteria of "Groucho Marxism" (Groucho Marx joked "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others"). He was not a sincere revolutionary who “evolved”; he was a political adventurer[4]. Such figures are very destructive for the workers' movement because what drives them is not the struggle for the interests of the class, but their personal ambition to be a "political player" who uses workers' organisations for their spurious ends. Lassalle wanted to make the German labour movement a pawn in his game with Bismark, with whom he even made a secret pact[5]. Bakunin wanted to put the IWA at his own service.

Moreover, it is false that Bakunin adopted an "abstentionist, federalist and anti-statist" programme; his "principles" varied according to circumstances. As we shall see later, he was ultra-centralist when he thought he had the conquest of the IWA within his grasp, but, when he failed, he abandoned this self-interested centralism to wrap himself in the banner of federalism as this proved to be the best instrument to harass an IWA General Council which refused to surrender at his feet.

We are faced with two antagonistic visions. That of the ICT article which paints Bakunin as "a romantic revolutionary with wrong ideas" and that of the IWA General Council which saw him as a scheming and unscrupulous political adventurer. We resolutely choose the second view as it provides a political weapon to defend and build the organisation. The revolutionary organisation is a vital instrument of the proletariat which must not only intervene in its struggles, but also build itself consciously and defend its existence against bourgeois repression and all the instruments at its disposal, such as adventurers, political parasitism, etc.

How did Bakunin join the IWA?

Bakunin finally succeeded in joining the IWA. The article completely ignores the danger that this membership entailed and ignores the fact that Bakunin pretended to adhere to the IWA while smuggling his International Alliance of Socialist Democracy in under his cloak. The General Council rejected this trap: "Whereas: that the existence of a second international body functioning inside and outside the International Workingmen's Association would be the most infallible means of disorganising it; that any other group of individuals resident in any locality would have the right to imitate the Geneva Initiating Group and to introduce, under more or less ostensible pretexts, within the International Workingmen's Association, other international Associations with other special missions; that, in this way, the International Workingmen's Association would very soon become the plaything of intriguers of any nationality and of any party".

Faced with this refusal, Bakunin began to manoeuvre. He pretended to accept the principles of the International and pretended to dissolve the Alliance. He resorted to another deception: he gave the impression to the central organ of the IWA that he had been endorsed by the Swiss Romance Federal Council (which turned out to be false). Armed with these credentials Bakunin set out to conquer the International and went to the Basle congress (1869) with the aim of imposing his programme of the day, based on "the abolition of the right of inheritance", and above all on obtaining the transfer of the General Council to Geneva.

To this end Bakunin showed himself to be the most ultra-centralist. This manoeuvre is not grasped by the ICT article which is "surprised" by it: "more surprisingly, Bakunin also supported a motion to extend the powers of the General Council so that it could suspend any section which acted against the principles of the International".

Nor does the ICT see the instrumentalising manoeuvre behind Bakunin's "programme": "For Bakunin, the abolition of the right of inheritance formed a key point of his programme for the Alliance, a prerequisite for social equality in the society of the future. For Marx, the whole question of the right of inheritance was a juridical distraction which would be resolved with the abolition of private property in the means of production (already approved by the International)".

According to the article there was a "debate" between Marx's position and Bakunin's. This assessment is erroneous: what there was in reality was a rabbit that Bakunin had pulled out of the hat, which the IWA denounced: "the programme of the Alliance, in the tow of a ‘Mohammed without the Koran’, is nothing but a heap of pompously worded ideas long since dead and capable only of frightening bourgeois idiots or serving as evidence to be used by the Bonapartist or other prosecutors against members of the International".

Bakunin did not seek "debate"; his star proposal for the "abolition of the right of inheritance" was a means, combined with ultra-centralism, to take control of the IWA.

Similarly, for the ICT, there was nothing untoward in the attempt to move the General Council to Geneva where it could be "welcomed" by Bakunin. On the contrary, their version is: "the attacks on his person did not stop, as Moses Hess then published a hit piece in October 1869, claiming Bakunin intended to undermine the International and transfer the General Council from London to Geneva. Bakunin responded with an – unpublished – anti-Semitic tirade against ‘German Jews’ who allegedly conspired against him (which even Herzen and Ogarev found excessive). Both out of respect and tactical consideration Bakunin spared Marx, though he incorrectly assumed him to be the mastermind behind all these attacks ".

Here we see that the ICT article clearly takes Bakunin's side and even praises his "personal magnanimity" in "forgiving" Marx. The ICT does not see - or does not want to see - what was at stake, which was Bakunin's manoeuvre to take over the central organ of the IWA by proposing to move the General Council to Geneva. What is a central organ in a proletarian organisation - an instrument for an individual or group to control the organisation? Or an expression of the organisation as a whole which must be defended against the intrigues and ambitions of individuals or groups? The IWA clearly had the latter position, which is the one we revolutionaries must defend, contrary to that of the ICT which only sees "conflicts between individuals".

Bakunin's war against the IWA

The Basel Congress rejected Bakunin's "proposals", which made him change his strategy: since he could not take over the IWA, he now conspired to destroy it.

In the service of this strategy, the extreme centralist from Basel was fast becoming the most ultra-federalist and his new Groucho Marx-style programme was "abstention in politics", but all this was "the sign of the open and unceasing war that the Alliance is waging; not only against the General Council, but again against all the sections of the International, which refuse to adopt the programme of this sectarian and above all the doctrine of absolute abstention in political matters.”[6]

Let us look at the nightmare that Bakunin and his Alliance brought about in the life of the International after 1869. We will highlight some of the most salient episodes.

The Nechayev affair

"Just before the Basle Congress, when Nechayev came to Geneva, Bakunin got in touch with him and founded a secret society among the students in Russia. (...) The great means of propagandising this society consisted in compromising innocent people vis-à-vis the Russian police, by sending them communications from Geneva, under blue envelopes, covered outside, in Russian, with the stamp of the ‘Secret Revolutionary Committee’"[7].

Bakunin had no scruples about joining up with a shady informer who was handing over to the Tsarist torturers people interested in the International. This "bad company" is seen by the ICT as a "mistake" on Bakunin's part, ignoring the fact that as the International's document shows it was he who was using Nechayev. According to the ICT, “Bakunin's fondness for conspiracies blinded him to the scale of the deception and when he finally distanced himself from Nechayev, it was already too late. The likes of Borkheim and Utin now had further ammunition to feed Marx's suspicions”.

In other words, Bakunin was "fond of conspiracies" (sic) and this "blinded" him to Nechayev’s (sic) manoeuvres and by the time he realised it was "too late", which ended up giving "ammunition" to Marx, ill-advised by Berkheim and Utin.

The ICT trivialises the fact that within a communist organisation there are "conspiracy buffs"; this means that for this organisation, which claims to be part of the Communist Left, being a "conspiracy buff" would be an "innocent pastime", a "small defect" of a "great revolutionary" like Bakunin...

This position of the ICT is simply monstrous. That within a bourgeois organisation there are "conspiracy buffs" is standard practice, but that within a communist organisation there are "conspiracy buffs" is something radically incompatible with its principles of functioning and militancy and immediately endangers it.

“Poor Bakunin" did not see the extent of Nechayev’s deceptions according to the ICT. No! The lesson to be learned is that Bakunin had used and encouraged Nechayev, was aware of his disgusting actions, and when the whole affair began to be discovered, it was too late to cover it up. In a communist organisation such "alliances" with shady elements are intolerable, and those who practise them are equally incompatible with communist organisations. This does not appear in the ICT's field of vision and that is why it has no qualms about collaborating with informers and thieves, such as the IGCL riff-raff, to set up the NWBCW committees[8] .

The attack on the General Council using a Romance Federation newspaper

Let us see what version the ICT gives us of this affair which took place in 1870: “The next controversy revolved around the Romance Federation, the Geneva section of the First International, where L’Egalité, edited by followers of Bakunin such as Paul Robin and Charles Perron, had made a number of complaints regarding the work of the General Council. In March 1870 the General Council circulated a response by Marx, which addressed the criticisms. However, Marx seemed to be under the incorrect impression that Bakunin was personally behind this, that having failed to influence the Basel Congress, he was now trying to discredit the General Council. Nikolai Utin, another Russian émigré with a vendetta against Bakunin, now sensed his chance and made a move to take over L’Egalité in the name of Marx. The section split, those in Geneva declaring themselves followers of Marx, those in Jura followers of Bakunin, and both claiming the Romance Federation name”.

According to this explanation, Bakunin's followers, without his knowledge, had attacked the General Council. In his reply, on behalf of the latter, Marx had been "misinformed" and, in addition, a follower of Marx, Utin, wanting a vendetta against Bakunin, provoked a split in the Romance Federation.

The IWA has another, radically different version: "The Alliance commenced at this time a public polemic directed against the General Council, first in the Locle Progres, then in the Geneva Egalité, the official newspaper of the Romance Federation, where several members of the Alliance had followed Bakunin. The General Council, which had scorned the attacks published in Progres, Bakunin's personal organ, could not ignore those from Egalité, which it was bound to believe were approved by the Romance Federal Committee "[9]. In the controversy, the organ L'Egalité accused the General Council of not fulfilling its functions. The latter in a circular clarified that criticism of the functioning of the IWA should not be made in the organisation's public press but should be channelled through the statutory bodies. Otherwise, these "criticisms" would give ammunition to the incessant attacks of the bourgeois press against the International: "When the Romance Federal Committee addresses requests of reprimands to us through the only legitmiate channel, that is to say through its secretary, the General Council will always be ready to reply. But the Romance Federal Committee has no right either to abdicate its functions in favour of l’Egalité and Progres, or to let these newspapers usurp its functions. Generally speaking, the General Council's administrative correspondence with national and local committees cannot be published without greatly prejudicing the Association's general interests. Consequently, if the other organs of the International were to follow the example of Progres and the l’Egalité, the General Council would be faced with the alternative of either discrediting itself publicly by its silence or violating its obligations by replying publicly. l’Egalité joins Progres in inviting Travail (Paris paper) to denounce, on its part, the General Council. That is almost a League of Public Welfare"[10].

To begin with, Bakunin had used his lackeys to launch a public attack on the General Council by fraudulently using L'Egalité, the press organ of the Romance Federation.

The General Council's response, insisting on respect for organisational principles, was that criticism of the General Council should be made through the central body of the Romance Federation and not by publicly airing this criticism behind the organisation's back.

This attack on the General Council had spread to another body in Paris. As the General Council pointed out, a "league" of public attack against it was being forged. The aim was clear: to discredit the central body elected by the Basel Congress, thus destroying the centralisation of the IWA.

Thus the issue at stake was not Utin's personal vendettas against Bakunin, nor an "ill-informed" Marx, but the defence of a method of centralised debate where criticism is not used to discredit the central organs, but to strengthen the whole organisation and the central organ. Where the IWA sees vicious attacks on its central body, the ICT sees "personal vendettas" against Bakunin.

The ICT article is very striking: at every step we see that their main concern is the defence of "poor Bakunin" and that everything concerning the defence of revolutionary organisation, of its centralisation, of the method of criticism and debate, has completely disappeared from their radar.

The sabotage of the Romance Federation Congress

Another episode in Bakunin's conspiracy against the International was the attempt at the congress of La Chaux-des-Fonds to take over the Romance Federation in April 1870.

Let us look at the manoeuvres and intrigues that Bakunin and his altar boys employed: "Although, on their own calculation, the Alliance supporters represented no more than a fifth of the Federation members, they succeeded, thanks to repetition of the Basel manoeuvres, in procuring a fictitious majority of one or two votes, a majority which, in the words of their own organ (see Solidarité of May 7, 1870), represented no more than 15 sections, while in Geneva alone there were 30! On this vote, the French-Switzerland Congress split into two groups which continued their meetings independently. The Alliance supporters, considering themselves the legal representatives of the whole of the Federation, transferred the Federal Committee's seat to Chaux-de-Fonds and founded at Neuchatel their official organ, Solidarité, edited by Citizen Guillaume. This young writer had the special job of decrying the Geneva ‘factory workers’, those odious ‘bourgeois’, of waging war on L'Egalité, the Federation newspaper, and of preaching total abstention from politics. The authors of the most important articles on this theme were Bastelica in Marseilles and Albert Richard and Gaspard Blanc in Lyon, the two big pillars of the Alliance"[11].

So we have here :

• Tricks to gain a fictitious majority in the Congress by repeating the manoeuvre that had allowed Bakunin to carry weight at the Congress of Basel.
• Split in the Romance Federation between Bakunin's followers and the majority loyal to the working principles of the International.
• Intrigue to destroy the Romance Federation by creating an improvised "central organ" totally submissive to Bakunin in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
• Attack on the comrades faithful to the functioning of the International by presenting them as "odious bourgeois", the point at which Bakunin's lieutenant, Guillaume, enters the scene.
• The two pillars of the Alliance in Lyon were police officers, Richard and Blanc.

This episode and the clear lessons it provides are ignored by the ICT article which says in passing, referring to the London Conference (1871): "During the conference, Marx delivered a speech in which he criticised the Alliance for not actually having dissolved back in 1869 when it was asked to, and alleged that it existed as a secret society within the First International. He also argued that the Jura section should not use the name of the Romance Federation (though it could go under the name Jura Federation instead), and he singled out Guillaume for having published an appeal in violation of the International’s statutes ".

The Alliance did not make "mistakes" as the ICT claims, but engaged in repugnant attacks against the organisation. The ICT article ignores the precise reason for Marx's denunciation: "On August 10, the Alliance, hardly eager to see its activities looked into by a Conference, declared itself dissolved as from August 6. But, on September 15, it reappeared and requested admission to the Council under the name of the Atheist Socialist Section. According to Administrative Resolution No. V. of the Basel Congress, the Council could not admit it without consulting the Geneva Federal Committee, which was exhausted after its two years of struggle against the sectarian sections. Moreover, the Council had already told the Young Men’s Christian Association that the International did not recognize theological sections"[12].

In other words, the Alliance had pretended to dissolve and then appeared under the guise of the "Section of Atheist Socialists" (!).

Bakunin's conspiracy continued and had taken as its axis the Romance Federation where he had (along with Spain and Italy) a string of followers. From its base of operations at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Bakunin's Alliance was ceaselessly mounting one scandal after another to disorganise the International and paralyse its General Council with constant demands. One of these was that an Alliance delegate, Robin, relentlessly insisted that the General Council convene a private Conference to finally give the "Federation of the Jura" (Bakunin's stronghold around La Chaux-de-Fonds) the upper hand against the Romance Federation.

The proliferation of sectarian sections

As the Basel Congress had marked the impossibility of taking over the IWA "from above", Bakunin now undertook politics "from below" by using his followers as promoters of all kinds of "sections" with an "autonomous" functioning and advocating the most fanciful alternatives as a remedy for the evils of the world. The General Council saw two fundamental political dangers in all this turmoil:

1. The disorganisation of the IWA

The IWA was being dislocated by a chaotic proliferation of groupings, each flying a different banner. Moreover, these groupings, in the hands of Bakunin and the Alliance, devoted themselves from the beginning to the harassment of the General Council by resorting to the most absurd "arguments". For example, the alleged "pan-Germanism" of the General Council. Thus, a press organ was created in a hurry by Bakunin's friends in Switzerland, The Social Revolution, “thought the moment opportune to fan the flames of national hatred, even within the International. It called the General Council a German Committee led by a Bismarckian brain”.

The anti-German agitation continued with a disgraceful action. An "émigré section of the Commune" set up in London with police provocateurs like Pyat, engaged in the denigration of German workers' militants who had opposed the Franco-Prussian war: "The London Conference approved the conduct of the German workers during the [Franco-Prussian] war… Nonetheless, eight days later, on November 23, 1871, 15 members of the ‘French Section of 1871’ inserted in Qui Vive! a ‘protest’ full of abuse against the German workers and denouncing the Conference resolution as irrefutable proof of the General Council’s ‘pan-Germanic idea’. On the other hand, the entire feudal, liberal, and police press of Germany seized avidly upon this incident to demonstrate to the German workers how their international dreams had come to naught "[13].

It is important to note that all the calumnies and intrigue circulated by the followers of the Alliance were immediately echoed in the bourgeois press organs: "Let us note in passing that the Times, that Leviathan of the capitalist press, Progres (of Lyon), a publication of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the Journal de Geneve, an ultra-reactionary paper, have brought the same charges against the Conference and used virtually the same terms as Citizens Malon and Lefrancais"[14].

        2. The resurrection of sects

All the Bakuninist agitation for the creation of sectarian sections within the IWA took the workers' movement back to the epoch of its first steps (1800-1848), dominated by sects. "The first phase of the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeoisie is marked by a sectarian movement. That is logical at a time when the proletariat has not yet developed sufficiently to act as a class. Certain thinkers criticise social antagonisms and suggest fantastic solutions thereof, which the mass of workers is left to accept, preach, and put into practice. The sects formed by these initiators are abstentionist by their very nature — i.e., alien to all real action, politics, strikes, coalitions, or, in a word, to any united movement. The mass of the proletariat always remains indifferent or even hostile to their propaganda. The Paris and Lyon workers did not want the St. Simonists, the Fourierists, the Icarians, any more than the Chartists and the English trade unionists wanted the Owenites. These sects act as levers of the movement in the beginning, but become an obstruction as soon as the movement outgrows them; after which they became reactionary. Witness the sects in France and England, and lately the Lassalleans in Germany, who after having hindered the proletariat’s organisation for several years ended up becoming simple instruments of the police. To sum up, we have here the infancy of the proletarian movement, just as astrology and alchemy are the infancy of science. If the International were to be founded, it was necessary that the proletariat go through this phase.”

Against this setback, encouraged by Bakunin and his multiplication of sectarian sections, the IWA is "the genuine and militant organization of the proletarian class of all countries, united in their common struggle against the capitalists and the landowners, against their class power organized in the state. The International’s Rules, therefore, speak of only simple ‘workers’ societies’, all aiming for the same goal and accepting the same programme, which presents a general outline of the proletarian movement, while having its theoretical elaboration to be guided by the needs of the practical struggle and the exchange of ideas in the sections, unrestrictedly admitting all shades of socialist convictions in their organs and Congresses "[15].

The conclusions of the Hague Congress

We have recalled who Bakunin was, his trajectory and the sabotage and disorganisation he had carried out within the IWA. This work of destruction undermined the International from within. The International had to organise its defence and this defence was to:

• denounce the parasitic conspiracy of Bakunin and his Alliance
• affirm the organisational principles of the IWA
• take the necessary measures to defend it against the assault organised by Bakunin.

This was the work of the Hague Congress in September 1872: the whole IWA united against three years of incessant intrigue which prevented it from achieving its aims and led it to paralysis and destruction. The ICT article sees things in a very different, opposite way:

1. It takes the view that there were "political divergences" between Marx and Bakunin: "Marx accepted that the First International, as an organisation, might become obsolete with the development of the class struggle, whereas for Bakunin the First International was the embryo of the future society. Bakunin, although initially approving of the increase in powers of the General Council, came to the conclusion that it should be reduced to a simple correspondence and statistics bureau between autonomous sections. Marx, who saw the General Council as a means to centralise action towards a common goal, responded that he would rather vote for the abolition of the General Council than for a General Council which would only be a letter-box. These were their different basic approaches and they were incompatible. They were soon vulgarised into a conflict between ‘centralists’ and ‘federalists’ (a distinction that Engels publicly rejected) ".

We have already shown that this "debate" was a manoeuvre to destroy the International. That within the International there were different views on centralisation, on the function of the organisation, on the measures to achieve communism; that was obvious. But for this the International had statutes which encouraged debate, as Engels said, "Marx, who drew up this programme to the satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual development of the working class, which was sure to result from combined action and mutual discussion. The very events and vicissitudes in the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’ s minds the insufficiency of their various favourite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions for working-class emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it found them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were dying out, and even the conservative English trade unions, though most of them had long since severed their connection with the International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which, last year at Swansea, their president [W. Bevan] could say in their name: ‘Continental socialism has lost its terror for us’. In fact, the principles of the Manifesto had made considerable headway among the working men of all countries".[16]

The intrigues, the sudden and unexplained changes of position, the slander, the secret organisations, the entire practice since 1868 of Bakunin and his followers, did nothing but prevent debate, for they exploited these differences for their own unsavoury ends, mixed them with personal tensions and spurious interests, festered them and made it impossible to clarify them. It was not debate they sought, but disorganisation, division and confrontation within the IWA.

​ 2. The ICT implies that Marx and "his supporters" used underhand methods and alliances in their struggle against Bakunin: “For a number of reasons, it was an ugly finale to the proceedings. At least one of those on the committee investigating the Alliance later turned out to be a Bonapartist spy. And to strengthen the case against Bakunin, the special committee also accused him of theft and intimidation. This was in regard to Bakunin having received the advance to translate Capital but neither completing the project nor returning the money. It was however Nechayev, likely without Bakunin’s knowledge, who then threatened the publisher with violence”

Thus, the "supporters of Marx" did "ugly" things and were carried away by antipathy towards Bakunin and levelled unjust accusations against him. This is not so; it was the whole congress that adopted as the main item on the agenda the investigation into the activities of the Alliance. This decision was actively supported by Proudhonians and other anarchist-oriented tendencies. The Hague Congress was not a struggle between "Marxist authoritarians" and "Bakuninist libertarians", but a fight for the defence of the organisation. As our article on the Hague Congress puts it: "The Congress - with the exception of the Bakuninist minority - resoundingly supported the conclusions of the Commission. In fact, the Commission called for only three expulsions: those of Bakunin, Guillaume and Schwitzguebel, and only the first two were accepted by the Congress, thus disproving the fallacy that the International intended to eliminate, by disciplinary means, an uncomfortable minority. The revolutionary organisations, contrary to the accusations levelled by anarchists and councilists, have no need of such measures, and do not fear, but, on the contrary, have the greatest interest in the most complete clarification through debate. In fact, they only resort to expulsions in very exceptional cases of serious indiscipline and disloyalty. As Johannard pointed out in The Hague: ‘expulsion from the IWA is the most serious and dishonourable condemnation that can befall a man; those expelled can never again belong to an honourable association’" (p. 171) [17].

The target was not the person of Bakunin, but his politics and above all the denunciation of the secret organisation he had set up, "an International within the International"; it was his methods that were to be denounced and eradicated. What was at stake at the Hague congress was not to see whether the supporters of Marx or the supporters of Bakunin would win, but to affirm the organisational principles of the International. A communist organisation cannot function without clear principles of organisation and militancy. This is the crux of the matter which the ICT article scandalously ignores.

With the crushing of the Paris Commune, the IWA found itself in a very dangerous situation: "Jules Favre was demanding from all governments, even the British, the extradition of refugees as common criminals; when Dufaure was proposing to the Rural Assembly a law banning the International, a hypocritical counterfeit of which was later presented by Malou to the Belgians; when in Switzerland a Commune refugee was put under preventive arrest while awaiting the federal government's decision on the extradition order; when hunting down members of the International was the ostensible basis for an alliance between Beust and Bismarck, whose anti-International clause Victor Emmanuel was quite eager to adopt; when the Spanish Government, putting itself entirely at the disposal of the butchers of Versailles, was forcing the Madrid Federal Council to seek refuge in Portugal; at a time, lastly, when the International's prime duty was to strengthen its organisation and to accept the gauntlet thrown down by the governments"[18].

The generalised attack by the European governments was supported within the IWA by the Bakuninist fifth column, "the support which European reaction finds in the scandals provoked by that society at a time when the International is undergoing the most serious trial since its foundation obliges it to present a historical review of all these intrigues "[19]. The Alliance and its machinations were an absolute threat to the IWA; one of the members of the Alliance, Bakunin's lieutenant, Guillaume, went so far as to say with impudence that: "Any member of the International has every right to join any secret society, even Freemasonry. Any investigation of a secret society would simply amount to a denunciation to the police"[20].

From the dawn of the workers' movement the bourgeoisie has waged a war to the death against its communist organisations, both when they are large and influential, and when they are tiny and have little or no influence in the class. The Communist League, once dissolved, was not forgotten by the bourgeoisie who mounted against its militants the monstrous Cologne Trial (1852) Similarly, Marx himself was the object of a campaign of slander orchestrated by Herr Vogt, which forced him to spend a year of work to refute it [21].

The experience of the IWA and that of the last 40 years of the Communist Left sheds light on another means of the bourgeoisie's war against revolutionary organisations: using forces which are not directly created by it, but which by their blind hatred of the communist organisations and what they represent, act admirably in favour of the bourgeoisie. This is the case of the parasites: "The Hague Congress showed that the Bakuninist Alliance was not acting on its own, but as a real coordinating centre of the whole parasitic opposition, which, supported by the bourgeoisie, was acting against the workers' movement.”[22]

In the United States, the Alliance received the support of a sinister, spiritualist-oriented group, that of Victoria Woodhull who, according to an intervention by Marx at the Hague Congress: "West's mandate is signed by Victoria Woodhull who, for years, has been scheming for the presidency of the United States, is the president of the spiritualists, preaches free love, has a banking business, etc. (...) She published the famous appeal to the English-speaking citizens of the United States, in which the IWA was accused of a host of atrocities, and which led to the creation in that country of several sections on a similar basis. It (the appeal) speaks, among many other things, of personal freedom, social freedom (free love), fashion in dress, women's suffrage, universal language, etc. (...) It considers that the women's question should take precedence over the workers' question, and refuses to recognise the IWA as a workers' organisation" [23].

German parasitism, i.e. the Lassalleans who had been expelled from the Association for the Education of German Workers in London, joined this international network of parasitism, through the above-mentioned Universal Federalist Council in London, in which they participated together with other enemies of the workers' movement such as the French radical Freemasons, and the Mazzinists of Italy (...) In Italy, for example, the bourgeoisie set up the Societa universalei razionalisti, which, under the leadership of Stefanoni, devoted itself to attacking the International in that country. Its press published the slanders of Vogt and the German Lassalleans against Marx, and ardently defended Bakunin's Alliance.

"The aim of this whole network of fake revolutionaries was none other than to slander the members of the International, as does the bourgeois press, which they themselves inspire. And, to their shame, they do it by appealing to the unity of the workers"[24] (Duval's Intervention, p. 99).

The lessons of the Hague Congress are compelling:

1. Bakunin and the Alliance were a means of division, disorganisation and confrontation within the IWA.
2. It served as a centre of regroupment of all the forces that, while pretending to "oppose capitalist society" had as their main objective to destroy the organisation that was fighting in the most consistent way against capitalism: the IWA.
3. The bourgeoisie used the fifth column which was the Alliance for its repressive aims to smash the IWA. The crushing of the Commune with more than 30,000 dead was joined by the attempt to crush the proletarian International.
4. The IWA defended itself by affirming proletarian principles of organisation and functioning, appointing a commission of enquiry to expose the conspiracy of Bakunin and his alliance.

These lessons are thrown into the dustbin by the ICT article which concludes: "After a tumultuous session, Bakunin was expelled by a majority vote and from then on, the red and black tendencies of the workers’ movement went their separate ways".

There was no split between the "red tendency" and the "black tendency"! There was no quarrel between Marx and Bakunin, nor were differences of political or organisational conception the cause of the split in the IWA. The real problem was Bakunin's parasitic conspiracy against the International and what the momentous Congress of The Hague in 1872 did was to defend the organisation against this destructive plot.

Why has the ICT published the Hague Congress article?

So we see that the ICT has not written the article on the Hague Congress in order to recover and nourish the historical memory of the proletariat. If that had been its aim, it should have based itself on the documents of the Congress itself, which it does not quote at any point. According to the article itself the aim is: "At this crucial historical juncture, when every day that capitalism continues to survive is a threat to the very existence of humanity, we call on all who see themselves as anarchists devoted to the class struggle to reconsider how things have changed on that long road towards the self-emancipation of the working class since 150 years ago".

There is a trap here; anarchism is a swamp where many political tendencies coexist. The majority are clearly bourgeois, support the war in Ukraine and hold positions such as the national liberation of the Kurdish people of Rojava. Only a minority defends positions situated in the camp of the proletariat. The article does not address this minority, but with obvious opportunism it addresses "anarchists in general" and to keep them happy it whitewashes Bakunin, hides his anti-organisational conspiracy, denigrates Marx and hides the lessons the IWA drew. 

There are two blatant manifestations of opportunism in this behaviour. The first is that of advocating a "discussion" with anarchism while concealing the fact that the majority of this milieu is clearly made up of bourgeois organisations. The second, even more serious, is the whitewashing of characters like Bakunin and his methods which, as the IWA made clear, are incompatible with communist organisations.

Of course, it should be up to the ICT itself to explain the motives behind its article, but another motive is not hidden from us, namely its ongoing collaboration through the NWBCW committees with the parasites, and worse, the police-like snitches of the IGCL. It is evident that, in addition to the blatant flirtation with anarchism, the article on Bakunin also serves to whitewash the IGCL’s behaviour, to give it a "legitimacy", and this is simply scandalous.

C.Mir 24-08-23

As clearly shown in the correspondence that follows - and in our previous articles on the question[1] - the individual Gaizka is demonstrably an adventurer. His websites: Communia, (also known as Emancipación and Nuevo Corso) are part of an attempt to create a bogus ‘communist left' to usurp those existing organisations which are authentic descendants of the Communist Left political lineage, including the International Communist Current and the Internationalist Communist Tendency[2].

We publish below a correspondence between the latter two organisations on the question of how to - or whether to - expose such an individual and those political parasites who defend them. Should the Communist Left as a whole - irrespectively of the political differences among them – publicly warn all revolutionaries, particularly the younger and less experienced ones, of the dangerous trap represented by the actions of such an adventurer? Or should it maintain a public silence about the latter?

The ICC’s intention in opening this exchange with the ICT was to share and verify the information we had already collected on this individual; warn of the danger he represented; and make a common front to defend the authentic Communist Left.

The differences that emerged between our two organisations was not about the fact of the danger of the adventurism of Gaizka - the ICT completely agrees with the ICC on his falsity and the fraudulence of his project - but on whether to publicise this fact and make common cause with the ICC.

The publication of this correspondence thus serves several purposes.

First, it confirms from another genuinely communist source the adventurist nature of Gaizka that we have already described on our site.

The correspondence also illuminates the political differences of approach to this question between our two organisations, which is of general interest for communists today. In the history of the marxist movement, political correspondence between groups has always been seen as a potential means of clarification in front of the working class. One only has to consult the correspondence of Marx and Engels to better understand their fight, which preceded that of Lenin and Luxemburg against the opportunist degeneration of the German Social Democratic Party during the latter part of the 19th Century.[3] It’s worth pointing out that it was the opportunists of the SPD who tried to keep secret the correspondence by Marx and Engels that was critical of them.

Finally, it allows us to continue the debate. The final letter of the ICT abruptly terminates the correspondence. But as far as the ICC is concerned the problem hasn’t disappeared and it will never be resolved without the conscious intervention of the communist vanguard. It would be completely illusory to think that the problem of adventurism would not interfere dangerously with the fight for the constitution of the future world political party of the proletariat. We therefor invite the ICT, and all those who are sincerely interested in the defence of the Communist Left, to continue the debate in the press.

Following the full publication of this correspondence, with the exception of personal details which ae not pertinent, internet links which don’t function and aspects linked to the international situation, we will add some concluding remarks.

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26.9.19  ICC > ICT

Dear Comrades,

We are writing to you to request your opinion on the information we shared with your CWO comrade concerning the individual Gaizka who animates the Emancipación/Nuevo Corso tendency.

We met with your comrade nearly six months ago on two occasions in London to present the facts that we had gleaned about Gaizka’s trajectory and to discover your opinion about the harm that this trajectory represents for the Communist Left as a whole. We understood from these meetings that your organisation would in due course give us a definite position from your central organ concerning the significance of the information on Gaizka that we supplied. So far, we haven’t received such a communication from you on this subject. Perhaps it was not clear from our last meeting that we expected a subsequent response from you. So please take this letter as a respectful reminder that we would indeed like to know your opinion on the facts about Gaizka that we gave you.

Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org [19][4] we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

• that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.
• that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.
• that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.

The information on Gaizka that you have from us confirms, in our view, that this false and harmful objective is not the result of naivety, or a genuine political error, but is deliberately designed.

Consequently, we would appreciate receiving, in the near future, your own conclusions about the information on Gaizka that we presented to you.

Fraternally

PS. Your article on Emancipación is misinformed when it states that the ICC has “collapsed” or “disintegrated”. We would like to reassure the comrades of the ICT that, as Mark Twain said, “rumours of our death are greatly exaggerated.”

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01.10.19  ICT > ICC

The ICT IB is meeting next weekend and I will relay this message to them. My worry is that to turn a political critique into an attack on an individual (on whom we have even more evidence) may be counterproductive. We have seen those who argue that the “ICC is a cult” line but even the youngest of our sympathisers can see that with Emancipacion we are here dealing with a real cult with a guru who tolerates no contradiction and will not confront political positions honestly and directly. However, the young ones we hoped to save still remain true believers. We note also the totally opportunist line pursued by the IGCL[5] in this regard. Sometimes to chase these people only gives them a publicity they don’t deserve and undermines the entire CL.

This is my personal opinion but will argue for it in our deliberations,

Internationalist greetings

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11.10.19 ICC > ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for J’s prompt reply to the ICC letter of 26.09.19 which gives his opinion concerning Gaizka and NC/Emancipación and mentions that the ICT central organ would soon be meeting where this question would be discussed. We look forward to hearing from the ICT after your central organ has reached its decision on the information we supplied to you about this individual.

We were interested to read in J’s reply that you have evidence about Gaizka that wasn’t in the information we supplied to you. We would be glad to know about this additional evidence as we would like to have a complete as possible picture of the activity of this individual. We would also like to know if your evidence complements or modifies our own information in any respect. This additional evidence could be passed onto us in London.

We look forward to hearing from you about both these questions at your earliest convenience.

Fraternally

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Received from the ICT [between 11-18 October 2019]

An official response is being prepared (summarising our discussions last week) but I have cut and pasted a message from someone re further information on Gaizka and his two female accomplices.

I read your recent text on Nuevo Curso in the web. And I would like to share with you some information that I discovered recently.

I knew some members of Nuevo Curso 2 years ago, when they were starting out. The founding group are members of the cooperative Las Indias. And the soul of the group is a man named Gaizka. He is not a complete unknown.

The group started two years ago by searching for "internationalists" in the social network Twitter, with bots, that is, fake accounts programmed to locate specific people. If we read the statements of its leader in 2014, we can assume that it is a case of recent conversion to communism. And with his creation of a "new Trotskyite-Munisist tradition", which I think is a direct offspring of Gaizka, we can assume that he is a political adventurer. But it is true that he is an adventurer who can do a lot of harm to our cause, because he can attract a lot of young people, thanks to his good use of internet and social networks.

I don't think it adds substantially to what you know (except more colours to the chameleon) - he is a punk, anarchist, communiser etc etc. 

IG 

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18.10.19  ICT > ICC

Comrades

As promised we discussed your letter in our IB and are entirely in agreement with the substantive passage

“Having read your recent article concerning Emancipación on leftcom.org [19]. we ourselves were reminded of the urgency of the need to determine the nature of Gaizka, noting several salient points from the article:

-    that Emancipación pretends to be a new pole of regroupment of the Communist Left for the future world party based on internationalist principles while it has failed to produce a political platform that defends these principles.

-    that Emancipación bases its perspective not on the positions and tradition of the Communist Left but on the Transitional Programme of Trotsky that Munis attempted to revitalise in a revolutionary sense in the post-war period without success.

-    that the approach of Emancipación is not the clarification of political differences with the existing currents of the Communist Left but instead follows the ‘path of ambiguity’.”

These points tend to confirm for us that the project of Emancipación is now to create a false international communist left ‘movement’ that excludes the authentic tradition of the existing Communist Left camp and its political positions (without confronting them openly and fraternally) and therefore acts as a dangerous trap for the new elements, particularly in the US, who are coming to class positions.”

We can confirm that in the course of our early discussions with them they denied they were aiming to create a separate political organization, but were rather aiming to more broadly educate youngsters in working class history so that they could best decide for themselves what course to take. When some of their young supporters became more inclined towards political organisation, they did ask us not to engage in discussion of serious political issues, instead offering practical cooperation on a “no-questions asked” basis. This was rejected by us and after that they began a series of manoeuvres both to frame their “new tendency” and to break up the discussion between our sympathisers and members in the USA and the groups of Workers’ Offensive and the Gulf Coast Communist Fraction. When we openly stated what their manoeuvres were they abruptly cut off all communication with us. In fact Gaizka (as we shall continue to call him) cannot tolerate any kind of contradiction and automatically freezes out even the most innocent of interlocutors who question any of his assumptions.

However, the question is how to deal with this threat and we think our attack on this dangerous individual has to come through a critique of the organisation he has given birth to both in its political framework and its modus operandi. In this regard we intend to prepare more critiques of the Emancipación project as such, avoiding argumentum ad hominem in the most direct sense but revealing clearly the weak organisational basis on which it operates. We, as always, will go about this in our own way and expect you will do the same. It is probably the best way to deal with the situation since powerful and separate critiques are more likely to reach a wider audience, and of course, we do have a different approach to dealing with those sectarian elements which from time to time appear on the fringes of the Communist Left.

Internationalist greetings

The International Bureau of the ICT

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26.3.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

We hope none of your comrades have succumbed to the corona virus and are taking all necessary measures of precaution against it. The few militants of the Communist Left in the world are precious for the future of the working class.

It is now two months since we published the article on Gaizka[6] which gave sufficient facts to indicate the suspicious nature of this element and his danger to the authentic Communist Left and the new elements coming toward it.

As you remember we already presented these facts about him to you and we both reached agreement on the serious nature of his threat to the Communist Left, as outlined by you in an email of 18th October 2019.

NC/Gaizka’s response to the article has been a deafening silence; a cowardly approach which is actually symptomatic of his doubtful nature. It would be difficult to believe that he has not noticed the article: if our website metrics are right nearly two thousand people read this article in the first weeks of its appearance.

In fact there has only been one public response to the article – that of the IGCL (also reproduced on Philipe Bourrinet’s Pantopolis Blog). In this response entitled ‘New ICC Attack against the International Proletarian Camp’ the IGCL staunchly defends Nuevo Corso for having “played an active role in the emergence and international regrouping of new revolutionary and communist forces, particularly on the American continent”. Without contesting any of the facts presented in our article, the IGCL alleges that the article is on the “rotten terrain of the personalisation of political issues” and is part of an ICC campaign of “provocation, manoeuvring, denigration, slander or rumour” against revolutionary groups or militants and that “it is aimed at rotting and undermining the international process of political emergence, development, regrouping and clarification that is currently underway”. It concludes that the ICC’s main purpose in the article is “weakening and if possible destroying any attempt, any process of regrouping and fighting for the party””.

We would be interested to know your opinion of these allegations by the IGCL and their support for the dubious Gaizka and Nuevo Corso.

In the email mentioned above you said that you were preparing more critiques of the Emancipación project. Will they be appearing in the near future?

Fraternally

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12.4.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your mail and we reciprocate your sentiments re safety of all comrades in this period.

The EC of the CWO met on Thursday and discussed your letter but we are confident we speak for the rest of the ICT (which meets next week).

The lack of response to your criticism is probably a good thing. As far as we know only the IGCL supported him. We had already sent them our criticisms of their refusal to recognise what Emancipación has become but they continue to ignore us. We in turn don’t intend to give either of them the oxygen of publicity. We think most people already know what the IGCL is. We have also had an enquiry from the Workers’ Group in the USA (which previously supported Gaizka) asking us if we can confirm the broad outlines of your critique of Gaizka and we have done so at some length. Again we have received no reply but in their enquiry they have become very suspicious of the fact that Gaizka makes no attempt to defend himself from any of the charges.

We are agreed that Gaizka is a political chameleon who operates on his own subjective level and he is in fact the guru of a cult (in this case a real one!). However, our position remains the same as the last time we wrote that we think we should stick to political critiques rather than get involved in argumentum ad hominem (which will always be interpreted as sectarian slander). At some point the organisational issue and the political one will make further comment both necessary and possible, but for now we remain with our political critique of the fantasy that is Emancipación.  We already detect that some of his US followers have fallen away and those that remain are increasingly seen as incoherent.

For now we can see that a whole new generation is coming to communist politics but this is not the time to be diverted by something which could disappear as fast as it appeared. We have a more important task in building the Communist Left response in the face of far more serious diversions which affect many younger people who learn of us only via the distorted prism that is social media, and this is what we will be concentrating on until a new occasion arises which demands a telling political response.

Internationalist greetings

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4.5.2020  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email from the EC of the CWO (12.04.20). We were pleased to hear that your comrades and family are unscathed from the virus…

The fact that you replied to a request from the Workers Group in the US confirming the facts about the suspect nature of Gaizka revealed in our article ‘Who’s who in Nuevo Corso’ is a positive step. A pity no reply from them has so far been received.

We know that your position, in distinction from ours, continues to be that making public this information would invite accusations of sectarianism, and that you therefore prefer to criticise the Emancipacíon project from a general political angle at some time in the future. Within this limited approach we think it would be logical to publicly set the record straight in relation to an article the ICT wrote in 2018 welcoming Emancipación as an authentic new group of the Communist Left[7], particularly as in your critical article of the group in 2019 you said that your break with the group “occurred in a way that was not sufficiently public and clear”.[8] In this context, since you have written to the IGCL putting your position on Emancipación, it would be appropriate to publish this letter of clarification.

However, the main reason for our previous letter was to ask for your position on the noxious response of the IGCL to the ICC article on Gaizka. Their denunciation of us goes completely beyond any accusation of sectarianism and alleges that the ICC is slandering Gaizka with gossip in order to destroy the other groups of the Communist Left. You say that “everyone knows what the IGCL is” - presumably that means it is a source of lies and thuggery - in your letter. But you don’t actually tell us what your view is of their support for Gaizka/NC and their denunciation of the ICC in their response. Given the public silence in relation to the IGCL’s denunciation we were hoping - and still are - for a message of solidarity with us against their attack even if only in an email to us.

We think the generally silent reaction to the publication of our article on Gaizka and to the denunciation of us by the IGCL is not a positive sign, even if it confirms, in the case of Gaizka himself, the truth of the facts we have presented on him. Silence allows him to play the hurt victim of a ‘personal attack’ and invite, if not sympathy then neutrality from other groups of the proletarian political milieu and elements coming toward it concerning the dangerous pretence that NC and Emancipación are part of the Communist Left. The IGCL has exploited this silent neutrality to completely invert the truth and present the ICC, instead of the bogus Emancipación project, as attacking the existing Communist Left. 

Making public the nature of such fake communist groups is in our opinion vital for this reason, and silence and neutrality on this question harms the unity and integrity of the real Communist Left and helps the divisive goals of Gaizka, IGCL and co.

You see a danger in giving them the “oxygen of publicity” but the leftcom.org [19] ICT forum recently oxygenated a post of the IGCL on the pandemic without comment[9]. In our opinion the public identification of this political virus, represented by such groups, and making it better known and understood, is the precondition for its eradication. Though very small in size this political virus is designed to attach itself and destroy healthy political organisations. It thrives on the absence of a vaccine and on the passivity of the host toward it, and the illusion that it is only the annual flu to which there is supposedly ‘herd immunity’.

Looking forward to receiving a further response from you to the attack of the IGCL on us.

Fraternally

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17.5.2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

Thanks for your letter of 4 May. We hope your comrades recover without after effects. Since we last wrote one comrade has also been hit by Covid-19 but is young and strong enough to see it off. Thanks for pointing out to us that the IGCL had once again spammed our forum. We had not noticed and it has now been removed as per our standard policy. As to Emancipación, and our previous welcome to it, we think our political response makes it clear already where we now stand. We have an extended correspondence with them which clearly shows their slippery evolution which we will publish if and when appropriate.

We will not agree on our approach to this issue of these small groups claiming to be part of the Communist Left. Annoying though they are, they are not worth our attention. They may be more annoying for you in that they began in or close to the ICC. For us there are far more serious political things which demand our attention. … 

We are quite willing to discuss this issue with anyone including yourselves but we don’t want the CL to be noted for its internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left.

Internationalist greetings

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I.6.2020  ICC >ICT

Dear comrades

Thank you for your letter of 17 May. The Covid pandemic is indeed a catastrophic event for world capitalism accelerating at ‘warp speed’ the existing economic crisis and bringing with it mass unemployment, destitution and premature death to the working class on a scale not seen since the Second World War.

The Communist Left must provide an updated revolutionary perspective for the proletariat that takes the particularities of the present situation into account…

The historical significance of the present situation has to be fully explained to the working class. Only the Communist Left has the programmatic and organisational integrity to reveal, in the current conditions, the immensity of the historic mission of the communist revolution that lies behind the increasing pauperisation of the working class.

Clearly only the Communist Left can fulfil this task both today, to the extent of its limited capacities, and in the future when the world communist party must be created.

We are therefore continuing to devote many articles and leaflets on our website to the situation, in multiple languages. We are increasing the number of virtual meetings to bring the communist perspective to a wider audience for discussion and reflection. There are many aspects for the current situation that remain to be clarified and we are equally preoccupied with analysing them in detail.

Communists must be able to multi-task; a one-dimensional approach to intervention is not adequate. 

Today and in the future, the protection of the integrity of the Communist Left must be incorporated into its intervention. If genuine organisations of the Communist Left can be discredited today by fake groups trying to usurp its traditions like Nuevo Corso, or defamed by thugs and slanderers like the IGCL without any collective public defence of its honour and authenticity, then the credibility of its present intervention and of the future party will be compromised. It’s true that the IGCL is openly defamatory toward the ICC while it is presently stalking the ICT with false flattery. So on the surface it appears that the whole Communist Left is not under attack by the IGCL. But whether filth is thrown in your face or you find it sticking to the bottom of your shoe the net result is ultimately the same: reputational damage. Taking down the posts of the IGCL from your site is welcome, but a more explicit distancing is required.

The task of the defence of the Communist Left is certainly not posed at the same level as the task of orienting the class as a whole with a global perspective. But that doesn’t mean that the latter renders the former unnecessary or unimportant. It is perfectly possible to combine both the necessary work of defending the integrity of the Communist Left camp and provide a class-wide revolutionary perspective, as our website testifies.

The history of the marxist movement shows that the importance of the defence of its own probity can even take precedence on certain occasions over questions of general policy and analysis. Even Engels became impatient when Marx took a year out of the preparation of Capital (1859/60) in order to comprehensively refute the slanders of Karl Vogt[10], but he was later obliged to recognise that the change of priorities was correct. Vogt’s slander that Marx was a blackmailer and in league with the secret police had to be openly and thoroughly condemned. It was necessary, in Marx’s words, to “fight fire with fire”.

The more famous example is the Hague Congress of the IWA which took place just over a year after the defeat of the Paris Commune but was not devoted to this major event in the life of the working class but to the exposure of the secret Alliance and the expulsion of its leader Bakunin. In a period of defeat it was vital to preserve the honour of the 1st International and prevent it from falling into the hands of a cabal led by an adventurer who had accused the legitimate General Council to be a clique of “German Jews”.

Our denunciation of the descendants of Vogt, Lassalle, Bakunin etc today is precisely not an internal battle within the Communist Left, but an external demarcation of the latter from usurpers and serial abusers. The class delineation from them is all the more necessary because the only purpose of their existence is to discredit the authentic Communist Left on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

Of course, for the capitalist left the Communist Left has always been sectarian because we denounce the bourgeoisie as a whole. We have no need to try and cater to their deliberate distortions by remaining neutral about the fake communist left. On the contrary we must make the distinction of the Communist Left all the more intransigent and thereby strike two enemies who use similar malign methods against the communist camp.

The obvious counter-part of the clear separation of the Communist Left camp from the capitalist left and the parasitic milieu is its own greater public solidarity and cohesion. The most effective way this camp can prevent its differences appearing as petty squabbles is by affirming its common class basis and by commonly organising discussion of their differences. We remain committed to the perspective behind the Conferences of the Communist Left of the late 1970s even though they were nipped in the bud. The absence of this project in the intervening decades have not improved the standing of the Communist Left camp as a whole; instead, hostile forces around it have been given more political room to operate.

We realise we diverge on this question and we will both continue to urge our different positions. But even though it is clear that you don’t accord the mutual solidarity of the Communist Left the same importance as we do, we still don’t understand why even a minimal statement of solidarity with the ICC against the recent revolting slanders of the IGCL is beyond you, since we can’t believe that such a declaration would break a principle for you.

Let’s hope our precious few militants of the Communist Left continue to remain (relatively) free of the virus.

fraternally

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June 2020  ICT >ICC

Dear Comrades

Thank you for your letter of 1 June which we discussed in the International Bureau of the ICT.   

Your first paragraph is an expansion of what we briefly said to you in our previous letter but you will find that we are at least agreed on the current situation if you read Reflections on the Coronavirus and Economic Crises [20] and the opening paragraph of The Global Pandemic and Imperialist Competition [21]. However we have once again to emphasise that the current crisis began in the early 1970s (when the post-war boom came to an end) and not in 1989 when you suddenly woke up to the fact that the working class had been in retreat for over a decade (and which we told you repeatedly throughout the 1980s). The postmodernist “solution” that all is chaos and decomposition only has a material basis in the fact that the crisis is getting deeper and the palliatives the capitalists produce only kicks the day of reckoning further down the road and do not solve it. 

We have no doubt the Communist Left has the analysis to understand this – our collective problem is that the wider working class does not and, as yet, is not universally responding to the slow creep towards disaster the system is carrying out. For us this remains the main focus. For us “multi-tasking” means developing the analytical framework of the evolving social reality in front of us, and searching for more and more ways to reach the wider class.

And here we can only repeat that it is counter-productive to engage in what are seen as personalised denunciations of cultish grouplets which have no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class. “Reputational damage” can be self-inflicted and to speak the absolute truth we think that the ICC’s continual defence of petty attacks on such groups has cost not only the ICC but also the entire Communist Left tradition as the mud sticks all around. We do not want to be associated with this method and we have constantly advised you not to go in for argumentum ad hominem. You have ignored our advice and now ask us to support a step we disagreed with before you took it.

These people will expose themselves politically. In fact they are already doing so. You are also obviously not paying attention. The IGCL ceased its “flattery” of the ICT some time ago. They have substituted it for blackmail about the ICT having to live up “to its responsibilities” (i.e. talk to the IGCL). It is a responsibility we have singularly failed to take on. Their utterly opportunist tie up with Nuevo Curso is political reason enough for exposing them as charlatans after all the criticism they have heaped on the various groups of the CL over time. If you had been paying attention you will have also noticed that the Workers’ Group of Detroit (without any contact with us since we wrote to confirm that the ICC’s attack on Gaizka was factually correct) have now broken with the IGCL/NC/WO/GCCF coterie but for political reasons (their non-proletarian denunciation of the demonstrations and riots in the US). But whilst we are at it these are not the only people indulging in slander. Apparently young sympathisers tell us there is a group of ICC sympathisers who slander the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. As they often express opinions which the ICC would not share we do not know how close they are to you but we have not responded for the same reason as always.  They can make their empty comments in a vacuum – our response would be to dignify their youthful games. There is more serious work to be done.

Internationalist greetings

ICT

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10.07.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Thank you for your email of 17th June. We would like to reply to some of your points in a further letter.

Here we would just like to express our concern when we read in your email that a group of ICC sympathisers has been slandering the ICT on a regular basis on Instagram and other social media. We cannot find anything about this and would like to have more information from you about it, as we intend to put a stop to any such behaviour.

We were saddened to hear of the tragic death of an ex-sympathiser of the ICT.

Fraternally,

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July 2020  ICT > ICC

Comrades

We have discussed the question of your sympathisers but think that this is an issue for you and will leave you to make your own enquiries with people who are known to you. We have also written to the IGCL to state that whilst we disagree with your decision to ignore our advice over the murky past of comrade Gaizka we also consider their decision to come to his defence as an indication of their failure to defend the CL and have closed all correspondence with them. We also wish to make it quite clear to you that this is our final communication on the IGCL and Emancipación (but we should say we regard both these organisations, and their acolytes, as the product of your methodology). We have nothing to gain from anything other than making a political defence of the CL as and when appropriate. Any future correspondence from you on this issue will be ignored.

Internationalist greetings

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12.08.20  ICC > ICT

Dear comrades,

Here are some responses to your email of 23.07.20.

As we mentioned in our last letter our own investigations into the apparent slanders of the ICT by ICC sympathisers hadn’t turned up any evidence. If you do not want to specify your sources for this can you please help us by telling us the nature of the slanders in order that we can get to the heart of the problem?

Regarding your letter to the IGCL we of course agree with you that their defence of Nuevo Corso is an attack on the Communist Left. Your private letter to the IGCL about the falsity of NC however still leaves the public to take the latter as an authentic communist left group. A public exposure of this pretence is essential. 

Furthermore while you are cutting off relations with the IGCL in private, this still leaves the public to consider the IGCL as a real revolutionary group.

We also note from your description of your letter to the IGCL that, while you criticised the ICC to them for making the nature of these groups publicly known, you do not seem to have expressed your solidarity with the ICC against the slanders of the IGCL - a declaration we have been asking from you throughout our recent correspondence, to no avail.

We are puzzled by your idea that the ICC shares the same “methodology” as n and the IGCL. Our methodology is diametrically opposed on class lines to that of these two bogus groups. Our goal and method is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the international working class; theirs is to overthrow the existing revolutionary organisations on behalf of the bourgeoisie. We fail to see any convergence between these two basic methods.

You say you will ignore any further correspondence from us on this topic. However, ignoring the problem of these groups won’t make it go away. They will continue on their destructive course, and the genuine Communist Left will continue to be confronted with the need to publicly close ranks against them in order to defend the integrity of the Communist Left camp.

Fraternally

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Commentary

By trying to justify their refusal to denounce the pernicious role of adventurers, the ICT justifies the unjustifiable!

The argument of the ICT presented in its letters is, in essence, that the ICC exposure of adventurers like Gaizka, and the unmasking of their clearly anti-proletarian project, is creating more damage to the Communist Left than the adventurer himself. The exposure of the crime is supposedly worse than the crime itself. This is clearly absurd, implying:

• That we can’t expose adventurers like Gaizka, or even be associated with such an exposure, because it would be to argue ad hominem, ie personally. Yet the ICT has accepted that the nature of his political project or ‘cult’ as they call it, is precisely constructed around his personal ambition as a ‘guru’. To denounce him is to make a political denunciation, which in no way implies a purely personal attack on Gaizka, unconnected to the political project in question. In any case the ICT’s promise, announced in its message of 4.5.20, to make its own political critique of Communia/NC/Emancipación has not yet been fulfilled.
• That the offence is not very serious, and will disappear over time. This is not coherent with the fact that the ICT argues elsewhere that Gaizka constitutes a “dangerous trap” for new communist militants. Two years after this correspondence began his well-resourced project is still running.
• Refusing to see that it is a vital activity for communist organisations to warn other communists against enemies who appear in their midst, as if they didn’t exist, in the desperate hope that they will disappear by themselves.

Such an approach by the ICT, which is already an aberration, leads to other aberrations:

• There is still no public statement of position by the ICT on Communia/Nuevo Corso/Emancipación despite promising to do so in a message of 18.10. 2019.
• The ICT’s argumentation, or lack of it, necessarily ends up publicly excusing the attacks of adventurers and parasites on the Communist Left while damning the ICC for bringing its attention to such enemies.

The ICT is to a large extent aware of the threat posed by adventurers and parasites, as clearly shown by their own letters. But the ICT prefers to do this ‘privately’ while preserving a discreet public silence on the existence of this dangerous phenomenon due to the illusion of achieving a “significant influence” in the life of the working class, and to preserve its fishing permit in the murky pools of adventurism and parasitism.

Furthermore, the ICT harbours a misunderstanding of the specific function of Gaizka: to undermine the ground for the constitution of the future party. The target of Gaizka’s group and its parasitic defenders is not the working class as a whole - it has no political programme for example – but to prevent the germination of the future party and the evolution of new militants in particular. Thus, the Gaizka fraud has had a “significant impact” at the level of the political minorities of the working class, in the USA in particular.

This dual, contradictory approach, inevitably creates the illusion on the one hand that adventurers and parasites are genuine communists, while on the other hand a real organisation of the Communist Left, the ICC, by exposing the fraud, is only “throwing mud”. According to the twisted logic of the ICT, the real enemy is the ICC!

A false vison of the tasks of revolutionaries in the present period

To better understand why the ICT has ended up in this contradictory and harmful conclusion, look at their idea that Gaizka’s “cultish grouplet” has “no significant bearing on, or life in, the working class.” This is true, but the lack of widespread influence in the working class is unfortunately also true of the authentic Communist Left. This is because the general level of the class struggle is still a long way from making such a level of activity possible. In this context, imagining that it is possible to obtain “a significant influence on the life of the class” can only have pernicious consequences. In particular, it can lead to search for such influence by ‘adapting’ the organisation’s political positions and form of intervention to the level of consciousness in the working class at a given moment – in other words making concessions to the illusions and mystifications that weigh on the class, adopting an opportunist approach whose basic characteristic lies in the search for immediate ‘success’ at the expense of the future struggle of the proletariat. And this opportunism can also impact on organisational questions, as shown by the combat of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party. In sum, withdrawing from the defence of political organisational principles by considering them to be “internal squabbles which diminish us all and give ammunition to the capitalist left”, is a disengagment from the public defence of the authentic communist organisations that really do exist.

Thus, by maintaining the illusion (for itself and a milieu around it) in the possibility of gaining a significant influence on the proletariat today, the ICT is creating an obstacle to the solid political and organisational preparation for the real future party which will indeed have a “significant influence” on the life of the working class. This illusion is accompanied by the pretension that it is currently in direct competition with the left of capital for winning an influence over the class[11]. This false idea tends to reinforce its opportunist battle to gain “influence”.

The questions and disagreements raised about the attitude needed towards parasitism and adventurism calls for a discussion about the systematic defence of revolutionary organisational principles in the preparation of the future communist party. For the ICC, without the common action of revolutionary organisations for such a principled approach, without a constant combat against opportunism, there is no basis for the successful formation of future generations of communist militants and of the future communist party.

Wars are proliferating and plunging more and more regions of the world into the most appalling barbarity: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Ukraine, Gaza... behind this growing list of countries at war, millions of people are falling, going hungry or trying to flee. Tomorrow, it could be the turn of Kosovo or Taiwan.

Gangsterism also strikes and ravages. In northern Mexico, Venezuela and Haiti, the drugs and prostitution trade is flourishing, leaving a sinister trail of mass murder and rape in its wake.

Poverty is growing everywhere. In a country like the UK, a large proportion of the population no longer has access to dental care. A terrible expression has appeared in the press to describe these people, who number in their millions: "the toothless".

To put it in a nutshell: capitalism threatens the survival of humanity. If the working class does not succeed in overthrowing capitalism, this decadent system will descend into barbarism and death. The only alternative is world proletarian revolution. To achieve this, our class must develop its struggles, its organisation and its consciousness on an international scale.

Since the summer of 2022, under the blows of the economic crisis, the working class has begun to react. The strikes that broke out in the United Kingdom heralded the return of the proletariat to the terrain of struggle. In two years, strikes described by the media as "historic" have taken place in France, the United States, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Iceland, Bangladesh... But this is only the beginning, the first step. The proletariat faces a very long road to revolution. It will have to learn through struggle how to unite and organise, how to spot the traps set by the bourgeoisie, how to identify its "false friends": the trade unions and the organisations of the left of capital, which will do everything they can to sabotage the revolutionary process from the "inside". The bourgeoisie is a Machiavellian class; it is even the most intelligent ruling class in history. To preserve its privileges, it will be prepared to commit any crime, any manipulation, any lie. The working class will have to raise its level of consciousness and organisation to match this adversary. What's more, it will have to raise its level of consciousness and organisation to the level of the new society to be established, a world society which, in time, will be classless and borderless, without exploitation or competition, without a state. The proletarian revolution is undoubtedly the highest step humanity has ever taken.

The role of revolutionary organisations

"The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves" (Karl Marx, Statutes of the International Workingmen's Association, 1864).

"In its struggle against the united power of the possessing classes, the proletariat can only act as a class by constituting itself into a political party [...]. This constitution of the proletariat as a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and its supreme end: the abolition of classes". (Idem).

Since then, this formulation has been made more precise through the historic experience of the proletariat which has shown that the political party will take the form of a minority, the party of the vanguard of the class.

The fundamental difficulty of the socialist revolution lies in this complex and contradictory situation: on the one hand, the revolution can only be realised as the conscious action of the great majority of the working class; on the other hand, this realisation comes up against the conditions imposed on the workers in capitalist society, conditions which constantly prevent and destroy the workers' realisation of their historic revolutionary mission. Left to their own internal development, workers' struggles against the conditions of capitalist exploitation can lead at most to explosions of revolt, reactions which are absolutely insufficient for social transformation. To go beyond the experiences of particular struggles, to accumulate the historical experience of the proletariat, to defend and propagate awareness of the aims of the movement, is the crucial political role of the revolutionary party. The party draws its theoretical substance, not from the contingencies and particularism of the economic position of the workers, but from the movement of historical possibilities and necessities. Only the intervention of this factor enables the class to move from revolt to revolution. The party is the indispensable weapon of the proletariat for the final victory, for the success of its revolution.

For the moment, this party cannot exist: the working class is too far from a revolutionary process, its consciousness and its capacity to organise are too weak. The most determined and clearest fraction of the proletariat, that which is conscious of its general and historical aims, can only be grouped together in the form of small revolutionary organisations.

These small revolutionary organisations nevertheless have an immense and crucial role to play in the future. They must organise themselves on the basis of the historical interests of the proletariat in order to give a clear political orientation to the movement and actively promote the development of class consciousness. They must also work now to prepare the foundation of the future party. To do this, they must constantly check the truth of their analyses in the face of changing events, debate and develop their positions, draw essential lessons from the history of the workers' movement, fight against the penetration of the dominant ideology, and defend the forces and positions around which the future party will be built.

The responsibility of the Communist Left

History has shown how difficult it is to build a party that lives up to its responsibilities, a task that requires many and varied efforts. Above all, it requires the greatest possible clarity on programmatic issues and on the principles of organisational functioning, a clarity that is necessarily based on all the past experience of the workers' movement and its political organisations.

At every stage in the history of the workers' movement, the Left has distinguished itself as the best representative of this clarity, making a decisive contribution to the future of the struggle. "It was the Left that ensured continuity between the First and Second Internationals through the Marxist current, in opposition to the Proudhonian, Bakuninist, Blanquist and other corporatist currents. Between the Second and Third Internationals, it was again the Left, which led the fight first against reformist tendencies and then against the 'social-patriots', which ensured continuity during the First World War by forming the Communist International. From the Third International, it was still the Left, and in particular the Italian and German Lefts, which took up and developed the revolutionary gains trampled underfoot by the social-democratic and Stalinist counter-revolution". ("The continuity of the political organisations of the proletariat: the class nature of social democracy", International Review No. 50).

The world communist party, which will be in the vanguard of tomorrow's proletarian revolution, will have to draw on the experience and thinking of all these left currents, of all this historical parentage. It is precisely by being rooted in this tradition, by always striving to respect the essential principles of these currents that, faced with the litmus test of the Second World War, the Communist Left was the only one to remain faithful to internationalism.

Groups of the Communist Left sprang up as early as 1920 in various countries (Russia, Germany, Italy, Holland, Great Britain, Belgium, etc.). They did not all reach the same level of clarity and coherence, and the majority of them were unable to resist the terrible capitalist counter-revolution. They disappeared as victims of the combined action of Stalinist and fascist repression, demoralisation and confusion. In the 1930s, only the most coherent groups managed to survive, and among them the Italian Communist Left was the clearest and most consistent. The Internationalisme group (publication of the Gauche Communiste de France, 1945-52), which grew out of the latter, achieved a critical and coherent synthesis of the widely dispersed work of the various groups of the Communist Left:

• The nature of the USSR: there was nothing proletarian or "socialist" about the Russian state, which expressed no continuity with the October Revolution of 1917, but was, on the contrary, its executioner. The USSR was as capitalist as the United States or Great Britain, a caricature of the universal trend towards state capitalism (total nationalisation of the economy).
• The decadence of capitalism: the system instituted in the USSR was in no way a new mode of production or a more "progressive" form of capitalism but, on the contrary, an expression of the historical decadence of capitalism marked by an infernal chain of two world wars, in between which there was with the most profound economic recession in history and followed by the return of the world economic crisis at the end of the 1960s which has only deepened ever since. Thus, for Internationalisme, the "liberal" capitalism of the West and the extreme state-controlled capitalism of the East constitute the two facets of the same decadent system which the proletariat will have to destroy on both sides.
• "Democracy" and "liberal" capitalism: Internationalisme was clear that the alternative was not between "democracy" and fascism, or between "democracy" and Stalinist totalitarianism, but between capitalist barbarism and world communist revolution, i.e. between the capitalist state, whether totalitarian or "democratic", and the world dictatorship of workers' councils establishing the direct and collective power of the working masses. Internationalisme clarified the fact that "liberal" capitalism in the West was a more efficient and subtle form of state capitalism. Most production was channelled into the war economy but with greater flexibility, using the "free" market through all sorts of manipulations (fiscal, monetary, through credit...).
• The autonomy of the proletariat, the struggle for communist revolution: from all these positions, Internationalisme deduced that capitalism could no longer offer real and lasting improvements in the living conditions of the proletariat. The proletariat's task was to fight for communist revolution. The necessary struggles of resistance against exploitation could no longer be situated in the context of obtaining political and economic reforms within capitalism (as was the case at the time of the Second International, when such objectives were valid insofar as they were conceived as a necessary historical stage and not as the ultimate end of the working class struggle), but in the perspective of a revolutionary offensive for the destruction of capitalism in all countries and the establishment of communism on a world scale. To be able to assert its own perspective, the proletariat had to maintain at all times its class autonomy, without which it would be used as a plaything of the various capitalist gangs in conflict and subjected to the most ferocious exploitation and the most brutal repression. In the same way, the trade union and parliamentary channels, by chaining it to capitalism, reduced it again and again to impotence, division and defeat. The proletariat had to assert itself, including in its immediate struggles, on the terrain of direct mass struggle, of its solidarity and class unity, of the intransigent defence of its demands against the interests of national capital.

These positions of the Communist Left are the necessary starting point for the whole revolutionary process to come. As an expression of the historic struggle of the proletariat, its reappropriation by the working masses is the indispensable condition for its struggle to bring about a revolutionary solution to the hopeless crisis of world capitalism. The future world party, if it wants to make a real contribution to the communist revolution, will have to base its programme and its methods of action on the experience and heritage of the Communist Left.

We thus take up the words of our predecessors: "The historical continuity between the old and the new class party can only be achieved through the channel of the Fraction, whose historical function consists of taking political stock of experience, sifting through Marxist criticism the errors and inadequacies of yesterday's programme, extracting from experience the political principles which complete the old programme and are the condition for a progressive position of the new programme, an indispensable condition for the formation of the new party. At the same time as the Fraction is a place of ideological fermentation, the laboratory of the revolutionary programme in the period of retreat, it is also the camp where the cadres are forged, where the human material is formed, the militants of the future party". (L'Etincelle, paper of the GCF, n° 10, January 1946). 

That's why, in response to the war in Ukraine, the ICC, together with Internationalist Voice and the Istituto Onorato Damen, launched a joint appeal to all the organisations of the Communist Left. Drawing on the legacy of the Zimmerwald conference, the ICC's aim with this appeal was not only to raise the internationalist banner but also, more generally, to defend the historical lineage, principles and functioning of the Communist Left. This Appeal was intended to be, and is, a milestone on the road to revolution and the Party. A milestone to prepare for the future.

The necessary fight against opportunism

This Common Appeal was rejected by the rest of the Communist Left. The various "International Communist Parties" (Programma Comunista, Il Partito Comunsita, Le Prolétaire/Il Comunista) ignored it out of claimed sectarianism. As for the second most important organisation of the Communist Left, the Internationalist Communist Tendency, it preferred the adventure of the No war but the class war committees to this call because, in its view, it was "necessary to look beyond the 'Communist Left'".

The refusal to work together with other groups of the Communist Left defending the historic principles of this current in favour of collaboration with the forces of the "marsh" (the confused zone between proletarian positions and those of the left of the bourgeoisie) has a name: opportunism. This policy is particularly dangerous because it entails the liquidation of all the organisational lessons of which the Communist Left claims to be the fruit. It turns its back on the main responsibility that falls to us, that of preparing the construction of a future party armed with the best of the tradition of the workers' movement, of the struggle of all its successive lefts.

This opportunist dynamic of the ICT leads it today to sweep aside the vital lessons of the struggle of the marxist current within the First international, against the deadly poison of political parasitism represented by the Bakunin tendency, in order to justify its opening up to the current parasitical groups. Worse still, it no longer hesitates to openly collude with an organisation that pursues a systematic policy of snitching, such as the International Group of the Communist Left (IGCL, ex-FICCI).

Opportunism, which has historically constituted the most serious danger for proletarian organisations, is an expression of the penetration of foreign, bourgeois and above all petty-bourgeois ideologies. It is distinguished by the fact that it tends to sacrifice the general and historical interests of the proletariat for the benefit of illusory immediate and circumstantial "successes". One of the driving forces of opportunism is impatience, which expresses the vision of a stratum of society condemned to impotence within itself and which has no future on the scale of history. "Opportunism wants to take account of social conditions that have not yet reached maturity. It wants 'immediate success'. Opportunism does not know how to wait, and that is why great events always seem unexpected to it", wrote Trotsky in 1905.

Opportunism is a deadly poison that constantly tries to infiltrate the ranks of revolutionary organisations. To resist it, therefore, we have to fight an equally permanent and determined battle, constantly sharpening the weapon of theory:

• After the Paris Commune of 1871, the revolutionary left wing rose up against the growing forces of opportunism embodied by the Lassalian current, by defending the working class’s organisational principles, notably through Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring. After the Erfurt Congress in 1891, Engels wrote: "Things must be pushed forward. Just how necessary this is shown today by the opportunism that is beginning to spread through a large part of the social-democratic press. [...] This forgetfulness of the great essential considerations before the passing interests of the day, this race for ephemeral successes and the struggle that is waged all around, without any concern for the later consequences, this abandonment of the future of the movement which is sacrificed to the present, all this may have honest motives. But it is and remains opportunism. And ‘honest’ opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all".
• Around 1900, the revolutionary left wing stood up against the opportunism that continued to plague the Second International through Bernstein's current or that of the Mensheviks, by means of an uncompromising and profound struggle, as can be seen in Rosa Luxemburg's Social Reform or Revolution, or Lenin's What is to be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. It was during this struggle that Lenin wrote his famous phrase "Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement", the rest of which is less well known: “This idea cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity.” It was this opportunism that largely explained the future betrayal of the Social Democratic parties when the First World War broke out!
• From the 1920s onwards, the Bolshevik party gradually fell victim to the opportunism it had initially fought so vigorously against. The isolation of the Russian revolution and the rise of counter-revolutionary forces from within were to manifest themselves first and foremost in this opportunism, which spread throughout the Third International. But there too, a revolutionary left wing would lead the fight. This is precisely where our current, the Communist Left, has its roots. Bordiga was at that time the highest representative of this struggle for proletarian organisational principles. This is what he had to say in 1926 to the Executive of the Communist International: "Experience shows that opportunism always enters our ranks under the mask of unity. It is in its interest to influence the largest possible mass, so it always makes its dangerous proposals under the mask of unity"[1].

By shamelessly wallowing in opportunism today, by turning its back on the successive struggles of the revolutionary left wing since Marx and Engels, the ICT is following in a long tradition, one that has always led to disaster. It has pursued this calamitous policy because, until now, it has refused to criticise its original errors, thereby condemning itself to repeating the same opportunist approach over and over again, only worse. When it was founded in 1943, its ancestor, the Internationalist Communist Party (ICP), uncritically accepted into its ranks:

• elements of the minority of the Italian faction that had gone to fight alongside the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War;
• Vercesi and all those who, during the Second World War, had taken part in the Brussels Anti-Fascist Coalition Committee.

To prepare for the construction of the future party, an indispensable weapon for the success of the revolution, the fight against opportunism by the left wing must continue. This is what the publication of this set of articles introduced by the ICC proposes to do. This is an uncompromising political struggle taking place within the revolutionary camp. We therefore call on all our readers to connect with the historical roots of this struggle, to make this tradition and this defence of proletarian organisational principles their own, and to participate in this preparation for the future. We also call on the ICT to make its own this proletarian principle so well expounded by Rosa Luxemburg: "Marxism is a revolutionary world outlook which must always strive for new discoveries, which completely despises rigidity in once-valid theses, and whose living force is best preserved in the intellectual clash of self-criticism and the rough and tumble of history” Luxemburg The Accumulation of Capital, an Anti-Critique, 1915.

Let's recall how, in 1903, Lenin humorously pointed out the ridiculous wounded pride of the future Mensheviks: "The circle spirit and the striking lack of political maturity, which cannot bear the fresh wind of a public debate, appears here in all clarity [...]. Imagine for a moment that such absurdity, that a quarrel such as the complaint of a ‘false accusation of opportunism’ could have arisen in the German party! The organisation and discipline of the proletariat have long since made it possible to forget this vexatious intellectualism [...]. Only the spirit of the most routine circle, with its logic: a punch in the jaw, or a hand to kiss, if you please, could have raised this crisis of hysteria, this vain quarrel and this split in the Party around a 'false accusation of opportunism'. (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Chapter "Innocent victims of a False Accusation of Opportunism").

International Communist Current, March 2024