Various comrades and groups have sent us information and comments on this struggle that took place recently. We are deeply grateful to them for their collaboration and encourage them to continue. We all know that the media is not neutral and shamelessly serves its masters, the state and capital, sometimes implementing a total black-out on workers' struggles - particularly those that show clear tendencies towards solidarity, self –organisation and militancy ..., and sometimes organising scandalous campaigns of slander as was seen recently during the Metro strike in Madrid. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the advanced minorities of the class rapidly communicate valuable information about workers' struggles to each other[1].

We are not talking about cheering ourselves up by only publicising the positive bits of struggle. The working class does not need pats on the back. We need truthful information and shouldn't be afraid of highlighting weaknesses, obstacles and problems.
Referring back to the struggles in Panama, we want to underline that despite the weaknesses and limitations that the workers' struggles still suffer from today, we are nonetheless seeing one very positive aspect: struggles are developing simultaneously in the so-called "rich" countries (Great Britain, Greece, France, China, Spain ...) and in the "poor" countries (Rumania, Panama, Bangladesh, India …). This is despite the fact that there are still huge obstacles to overcome for the unity of the international proletariat to be fully achieved in breaking down the barriers between workers in the “rich” and “poor” countries that the ruling class fully utilises for its own ends.

The strike erupted on July 1st in the banana growing province of Bocas de Toro, bordering Costa Rica. Workers were demanding unpaid wages on the one hand and, expressing their opposition to the problems posed to it by the new law proposed by the Martinelli government, Statute 30, which "limits the right to strike and collective bargaining, legalises the hiring of 'scabs' and grants the police immunity by giving it rights outside the Panamanian Constitution "[2]. This Statute 30 also has articles that cancel the automatic payment of union contributions by the bosses. It also includes repressive measures such as the legalisation of spying, with a decree of the Ministry of Public Security to legalise the figure of the "secret agent" who has a free hand to spy on and accuse anyone "engaged in activities that harm national security, State assets, social cohesion”, which means that anyone can be denounced.

The unrest that these measures caused led to more than 10,000 people demonstrating on June 29th in Panama City. But the combativity of the banana workers quickly reached the centre stage of the social situation. The strike spread quickly throughout the province. "From July 1st more than forty pickets blocked the twenty access points to Bocas de Toro, mobilising a huge popular support; and groups of indigenous people from all the estates in the area were quick to join the struggle begun by the banana workers' union, gathering at the barricades the workers had organised and in the occupation of the airport, which was completely shut down." The workers assembled at the entrance to the main city of the province, and then led a demonstration calling for everyone to join the struggle. These actions quickly found an echo in the solidarity of the population, clearly expressed in the demonstrations and daily support in the assemblies. Following some brutal police attacks, barricades were removed from both urban roads and rural pathways. Despite pressure from the authorities, parents decided against sending their children to school and, in the follow up, high school students expressed their solidarity with the struggle, completely shutting down the educational establishments.
"In addition to indigenous and neighbouring groups, the strike of banana workers quickly united the teachers and construction workers working on the extension of the Panama Canal, opposed to cuts in their wages and to some of the principal workers' leaders being sacked.  Students at the University of Panama also demonstrated, blocking the Transísmica Way in support of the struggle of the banana workers and against Statute 30, before also coming up against brutal repression that ended with the detention of 157 students from the College of Arts and Crafts who joined in blockading the Transísmica Way with students from the University of Panama."

The government unleashed a savage crackdown. It was particularly brutal in the town of Changuinola, at the centre of the strike in the banana plantations. According to various sources, there were six dead and hundreds wounded, shot by the anti-riot police ordered in by the President of the Republic. They used pellets that caused serious damage to the eyes of many protesters. According to one witness, "Children died in residential areas suffocated by the tear gas. They are victims of respiratory problems, according to the authorities who consequently do not consider them victims of police brutality", which would add to the number of dead. Another witness said that "the police went searching homes and hospitals for the injured to imprison them. With no warrants of any kind they carried out raids on the homes, and right up to the Presbytery they have carried out arrests. They have tortured, beaten up, intimidated and abused ...."

The unions workers stab the workers in the back

In the face of this brutal repression, the union leaders immediately offered the government an olive branch. Negotiations between government representatives and the union, Sitraibana[3] opened on the 11th. The union called for the resumption of work under the terms of an agreement whose only demand satisfied was the withdrawal of certain articles of as a whole Statute 30, which would have abolished the employers’ payments to the unions! The union was shameless in looking after its own specific interests and has disregarded the workers' demands and the violent attack that Statute 30 represented!

Some sectors of workers have opposed a return to work and remained on strike until July 14th, daily protests across the whole population were not quashed, and on July 18th there were demonstrations across the country as a sign of mourning for workers killed.
To calm the situation down, "Martinelli and Co have visited Bocas de Toro as if they were still on the election trail, offering gifts, with false promises and weak excuses without acknowledging the scale of government responsibility for the massacre of people. The media did not broadcast any more of the many demonstrations of popular protest against what was, without doubt, an affront to the dignity of the people."

In addition, the President organised a Commission of Inquiry, composed of government, employer, religious and trade union representatives, to "shed light on what happened in the province of Bocas de Toro between 5th and 13th July, 2010" and a 'Round Table' was set up to "examine the working conditions of workers in the banana plantations", which, as one of the messages we have received says "is a commission of me and me."

By combining the carrot and stick, fierce repression with displays of dialogue and parliamentary action, the Panamanian bourgeoisie appears to have emerged victorious from this conflict, having toughened and degraded working and living conditions and strengthened repression and the hand of the bosses. Some dissident unions promised a "general strike" without fixing a date.

Some lessons

Union control of the struggle led to the workers being served up with their hands and feet tied. Initially, the Sitraibana has shown itself to be combative and all the leftist organisations and unions cited it as a "model". This "radical" reputation allowed its leaders to make a 180º turn around and draw up an "agreement" with the government that demobilised the workers despite some resistance having been expressed. This shows us that workers, whether unionised or non-unionised, need to take collective control of their struggles by wresting it from the hands of the treacherous trade unions, and need massive assemblies open to others workers, in order to monitor the day to day developments of the struggle, the negotiations, the actions needed, etc.. These measures are vital so that the solidarity, camaraderie, collective strength, heroism and the consciousness that develop in the struggle are not wasted and lost, causing disillusionment and demoralisation.

The fact that the province of Bocas de Toro is one of the poorest areas of the country, inhabited by many indigenous oppressed and impoverished tribes, has been a heavy burden on the struggle and has contributed to it being led off course from a truly proletarian and autonomous struggle. The strike was the signal for a major wave of popular discontent. This is positive when the proletariat is able to channel this discontent onto its own class terrain against capital and the state. However, it is negative and weakens the proletariat as well as the emancipation of these social strata, if - as happened in this fight – it becomes an inter-classist mobilisation that emerges in favour of "restoring the democratic freedoms under attack by Statute 30" and "the implementation by central government of some investments in the neglected province" in order to give "recognition to the ancestral rights of the indigenous peoples".

When the struggle sinks into this populist quagmire, there is just ONE WINNER, CAPITAL. It never declares its real interests for what they are – its own selfish interests at the expense of the vast majority - but dresses them up in the false disguises of "the people" and "citizens", of "social rights" and other meaningless drivel. These deceptions take away the proletariat’s identity and class autonomy and thus succeed in disarming it and all the oppressed population along with it.
ICC (July 27, 2010)

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Statement by the comrades of LECO, Costa Rica on the The Struggle of the banana workers in Bocas de Toro (Panama)

We want to salute and give our support to the struggle that the workers in Panama have recently developed. The unity of different sectors shows that workers recognise that their strength lies in unity; this struggle is an effort by the class to free itself from the framework of struggle of the unions and the organisations of the left of capital. The unions play the role of negotiators, as is the reason for their being, and the class are the victims of this. But this does not mean that the proletariat is defeated, it is taking up its international experience in order to know how to confront the bourgeoisie and its agents with accuracy. The unity in struggle that the workers of Panama have shown is being accompanied by a resurgence of solidarity on the part of the working class in relation to different struggles. For some time now atomisation has reigned. Although these efforts have been isolated, they are none the less important because they show the road that the struggle has to take.

Thus spreading these struggles will be a step forwards for the class, carrying different sectors such as the banana workers and students in Panama, workers in all sectors and all countries are carrying out the same struggle, with the same interests.

The banana workers

The banana workers are hit very hard by the most disgusting conditions of exploitation. Here in Costa Rica they are subjected to all kinds of pesticides even those illegal for cultivation, furthermore they have to work in dangerous working conditions the threat of being bitten by poisonous snakes, etc. It is the same for the pineapple workers. The attack on living conditions carried out by the bourgeoisie in Panama is the same as that carried out in the rest of the world, increasingly threatened by the crisis; faced with this the banana workers have carried out a struggle valuable for the whole class.

The unions and organisation of the Left compromised on all sides by Parliamentarism and capitalist democracy, have end up by burying the class efforts to develop its struggle. Thus, when there are no movements they call for strikes and demonstrations in order to be able to undermine general discontent, and when struggles try to spread beyond their sector they take control of it, the unions as much as the leftist groups call for calm, for democratic and pacifist solutions, that is to say the terrain of the bourgeois, from which these representatives gain the slice of the cake.

In Costa Rica has happened in Panama the negotiations in 2000 to end the struggle against the “electricity Combo” took place when the leads of the unions and left groups became part of the negotiating commission. Thus avoiding the class developing their own autonomous mechanisms of struggle, thus clearing the way for the police and their repression. A struggle that the unions initially wanted to carry out for their own ends, was put under pressure by the workers when they took to the streets demanding much more, calling on everyone to struggle. Many workers took part independently of the unions, the neighbourhoods were self-organised and there were confrontations with the police. The unions had to run to catch up in order to control the strikes and to bring democratic calm to the country again and to try and erase the consciousness of hundreds of thousands of workers and exploited who had supported the strikes, an achievement that this protest movement spread beyond sectoral interests.

Today all those leaders that supported the negotiation of the struggles through a commission and called for peace and democracy, are participating in bourgeois elections and looking for parliamentary and unions positions, aspiring to survive as part of this class, as a practical layer. The same story is repeated with the class efforts to develop struggles that really defend class interests, as with May 68. Therefore, we must unite our struggles, beyond boarders in order to be able to develop them, in order that workers can discuss and gain the experience of the whole class.

Enr, July 2010.

 

 

We are publishing a statement written by the comrades of the CREE (Coletivo Revolucionario Espartaquista Estudiantil) about the Madrid Metro workers’ strike at the end of June, in response to wage cuts and tax increases imposed by the local authority.

The CREE’s statement on the metro strike, we believe should encourage other comrades and proletarian collectives to discuss this question in order to prepare new struggles and find confidence in their own strength. There are two precisions that we want to make in order to help stimulate the discussion:

1.       The strength of a struggle does not necessarily reside in how radical the strike is, whether it paralyses production and services or not, but in its capacity to push forward the unity of the class through extension and solidarity, and the development of a balance of forces against the bourgeois state. In the present period, with the accumulation of unsold stocks, the stopping of production in this or that factory does not threaten the bourgeoisie, above all if it is not accompanied by class solidarity and unity. Public service strikes, as we have seen with the Madrid Metro strike, even if they totally paralyse services, can be turned against the workers if the struggle remains isolated. The refusal to maintain a minimum service in this struggle expressed the will to try and break out of the prison of legal and union rules aimed at imprisoning and isolating the struggles. Nevertheless the workers’ search to wage an effective struggle that had enough strength to impose their demands was undermined by the fixation on the demand about not respecting minimum services, on the call for the total strike (in isolation). Rather than being a strength this fixation was a weakness. A weakness that allowed the bourgeoisie's propaganda to set the rest of the proletariat and the population against the Metro workers in order to isolate them.

2.       Another thing that we need to clarify is that the comrades of the CREE call for a Proletarian United Front. Although we understand what the comrades mean by this - they are calling for the unity of the class - from our point of view the concept of the “United Front” traditionally refers to a unity that is constructed through agreements between organisations, in this case the unions. The unity of the working class in struggle however is the product of its solidarity, its class nature, where there are no divergent interests; while union unity is the product of machinations and negotiations in order to share out privileges, for the distribution of “posts” etc, and generally with the aim of impeding the building of a true unity through open assemblies and the revocable organs that arise from them.

ICC 16th August 2010

 

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The Greek coffers received a far from negligible sum of billions of Euros from the IMF and European Central Bank a few months in order to palliate the fiscal crisis that this country developed at a time of heightened economic activity. It was not the most powerful, nor the most rich, nor the most noticeable of the countries of the European Union; but it was on the edge of bankruptcy and had to be saved in order to stop the Euro entering into a profound coma. From this moment, a castle of cards was constructed with trembling hands, as the other countries began to fall. The alarm was sounded in Hungary: it appeared to be suffocating. The Spanish state has been in the sights of the speculators, who had already been assaulting it for months. Italy has not been able to do anything about its hyper-indebtedness. We are in a new period of the crisis marked by the fiscal debt of different national states, overwhelmed by the payment of credits accumulated over many years and which they appear not to be able to pay. The capitalist state is running short of resources and now it is the working class (since it is “all our fault”) that is acting as the guarantor of its debts. The different austerity plans that are being developed throughout the planet follow the same logic.

In France on the 24th June more than 2 million people took to the streets to protest about the reforms initiated by the Sarkozy government through its Austerity Plan. On the 25th June in Italy hundreds of thousands mobilised against the proposed cuts in public spending, a wage freeze and pension reform. In Greece the 29th June another general strike began on the same day as negotiations commenced in Parliament on the necessity to impose new measures aimed at allowing the country to comply with the credit terms set by the IMF months before. On the same day, an assembly of Madrid metro workers called an all-out strike which did not agree to maintain the minimal service demanded by the Madrid municipality.

Overturning the Collective Agreement that had been legally in force until 2012, the Madrid local government imposed a 5% wage cut on the Metro workers, which was in line with that imposed by the Zapatero government on all civil servants (so much for the difference between the ‘Left’ and the right which so many talk about). Independently of whether the wage cut was large or small, the struggle arose, precisely, from the unilateral breaking of the Collective Agreement, which meant breaking the traditional collective negotiations over working conditions, and replacing it with case by case negotiations. When it was decided to call the strike, the Municipality tried to limit the strike by obliging the strikers to maintain 50% of the Metro services. The workers, in an act of unprecedented courage, took the decision in their assembly not to respect the demand for minimum service. On the 29th and 30th June Madrid was without a Metro. Although the Ministry of the Interior deployed thousands of police, the pickets were successful, despite the traps of the bosses and Madrid municipality, in ensuring that no trains ran.

Media harassment

 Today the only way that we can get close to reality is through the media. Thousands of people throughout Spain felt that this legitimate defense of the working class faced with a new “decree” that undermined its historical conquests was an aggression. The mass media unanimously condemned the evils of the “privileged” metro workers, in order to criminalise their demands in every way possible. In the first place, by ignoring the necessity to go into the causes of this social conflict in order to give a more complete and complex vision of the situation. The efforts made by Metro passengers to find other means of transport were given more prominence than the workers’ assemblies. The voices of the disgruntled passengers were more important than those of the discounted workers who were seeing their rights trampled on. It was not a question of the Collective Agreement, but the 5% pay cut which left the Madrid Metro workers looking inconsiderate and stamping their feet despite their privileged working conditions. There was no hesitation in trying to create divisions between workers in the private sector and those in the public. Endlessly they repeated that those in the public sector have to accept the same measures as the rest, that any struggle would be unjustified. These are the standards of the informationsociety. Their aim was to spread vile lies aimed at stopping this example spreading.

Secondly, there was no hesitation about manufacturing an image of the strike as absolutely uncontrolled, calling it a “wildcat”. Pretty soon however somebody informed the newsrooms that “wildcat” means the workers spreading a strike without (and often against) the unions. A strike is not a wildcat because it does not have minimum services. A strike is a mere hoax if there is a minimum services.

Recent developments

The campaign of harassment and wrecking by both the media and the different bourgeois organisations and parties spread demoralisation amongst the striking workers, leading to their submission to the pressure exerted by the government departments and media. This explains why the latest mobilisations have respected the unfair minimum services. The bosses did sit down at the negotiating table on the 10th July but there is still no agreement and 2000 disciplinary proceedings are in place due to breach of minimum service during the 29th and 30th June. The 5% pay cut has been reduced to 1.5%, but the reprimanded workers will stay reprimanded and the Collective Agreement will be a thing of the past.

What conclusions can we draw?

The Madrid workers strike was an example. An example for workers throughout Spain. The consciousness of class unity and solidarity were stronger than the symbols of the unions, allowing the creation of organs of collective struggle despite the confluence of conflicting tendencies. It reappropriated the method par excellence of workers' organisation: sovereign assemblies, germs of the future workers' councils; where the workers expressed themselves and took decisions, real organs of workers' democracy. It also directly confronted the attack on workers’ right to strike, going beyond maintaining a minimum service and expressing the real nature of a strike, which can only have an impact when economic activity or services are paralysed.

However, we have to be aware that the solidarity of the working class, the sin qua non for achieving workers' demands and confronting the isolation imposed by the forces of the bourgeoisie, was weak and insufficient. The absolute necessity to take to the streets and to combat the lies was of the utmost importance in this conflict, but this did not happen and, due to this, the strike was not able to gain the real support of the wider working class. If this weakness had been overcome, perhaps today we would be talking about the workers having a strong hand at the negotiating table or even something much bigger.

Just for the moment. Because there was not this support and solidarity strikes did not happen, the Metro workers were left feeling guilty and real criminals and soon bowed to the demand for minimum service which only served to stifle the protests and leave them with no impact. Due to this the movement lost strength and was not able to regain the initial conditions of the Collective Agreement. We can see that the movement in Madrid came to nothing, but we must not be discouraged. Madrid is only a small step in recovering the best traditions of workers' struggle in this new period of the resurgence of proletarian combativity. The United Workers' Front defended by the CREE has found expression in this struggle without the need to call for it. This encourages us to continue working because we are going in the right direction. Here we give our support to the workers of the Madrid Metro, who have given a first and very important lesson to the working class about how one day to confront the bourgeois social order.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last spring, the 18th Congress of RI took place. This plenary assembly of the ICC’s section in France was a moment very rich in fraternal and warm debates in which other sections of the ICC and invited sympathisers took part.

The work of this Congress was centred on 4 main axes:

• the evolution of the world economic crisis
• its perspectives for the development of class struggle
• the present dynamic of the ICC’s contacts
• the link between Marxism and science.

Concerning the economic crisis, the report presented by the central organ of RI and the debate that followed underlined the present impasse into which the dominant class is driven and its incapacity to hold back the scourge of debt. Despite all its mystifying speeches on the so-called economic “recovery”, the world bourgeoisie has no other solution to reliance on debt that to continue with its policy of state debt. A debate developed, and must be pursued in the ICC, on the objective limits of debt.

The congress was homogeneous on the perspectives of the economic crisis: no return to any sort of period of prosperity is henceforth possible. The bourgeoisie’s margin of manoeuvre is extremely narrow and can only lead it to impose plans of draconian austerity everywhere.

Faced with the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to find any sort of remedy to the bankruptcy of its system, which is now hitting European states like a full-force gale (Greece, Portugal, Spain, etc.), the bourgeoisie can only effect one response: attack the conditions of the exploited class still more violently, as is the case in Greece.

These massive attacks are shown through an unprecedented aggravation of unemployment with job cuts in all sectors, a drastic lowering of wages, a growing precariousness in youth employment, the deepening attacks on retirement pensions, a dismantling of the welfare state, etc.

It is in the context of the plunge of the world economy into a more profound and insurmountable crisis that the confrontation between bourgeoisie and proletariat will sharpen.

The debate on the present dynamic of the class struggle and its perspectives for the next two years put forward the difficulties confronted by the working class of the western European countries, particularly France.

The fact that today workers’ struggles are not up to confronting the violence of the attacks gave rise to a very rich debate which allowed the Congress to better discern and analyse the causes of such a gap.

As the last ICC Congress proposed, the working class, despite its enormous discontent, is showing a hesitation to engage in massive struggles. This relative disorientation is due to the massive blows that it is suffering and which, in the first place, can only strengthen its hesitations to engage in the combat for the defence of its conditions of life.

Unemployment, and its fear of job losses, constitutes a factor of paralysis which can’t be overcome immediately and necessitates the proletariat progressively rediscovering its class identity and confidence in itself.

A process of maturation is thus indispensable for the appearance of massive struggles. This maturation is already expressed by workers’ struggles which have developed recently, notably those of workers of Tekel in Turkey which are particularly significant of the class struggle at the international level (see articles on Tekel in the ICC).

The debates of the Congress equally demonstrated the fact that the bourgeoisie of the industrialised countries, and notably the French bourgeoisie, fear an upsurge of these massive struggles. In France, the dominant class cannot allow the risk of a similar social situation which exploded in Greece following the austerity plan attempting to stem the bankruptcy of the state.

The Congress also developed a discussion on the difference between the mass strike and massive struggles. It showed that even if the perspective of the outburst of massive struggles is in front of us, that doesn’t at all mean that we are entering into a historic period of the mass strike, which necessitates a certain level of the politicisation of struggles.

The debate on the social situation in France unfolded in the framework of the analysis of the ICC on the dynamic of the class struggle at the international level, put forward at our last international congress.

The discussion underlined that the proletariat in France contains a long experience of struggle anchored in its collective memory: the Paris Commune, May 68 and, more recently, the struggle of youth against the CPE, which obliged the Villepan government to draw back.

The spectre of massive struggles haunts the bourgeoisie; a bourgeoisie weakened by the successive blunders of the more and more unpopular Sarkozy. That’s the reason why the dominant class is walking on eggshells: it is trying to hide the depth of the attacks as much as possible (notably on the retired) and counts on the unions to sabotage the explosions of discontent of the working class.

The Congress debates thus showed that the continuance of the attacks on the retired in France will constitute a very important test allowing an assessment of the rapport de forces between the classes.

The discussion also allowed us to better discern the present impact of the corralling of the working class by the unions. Although the workers are not yet near to getting out of the union grip and the union ideology in order to take their struggles in hand themselves, the debate brought out the existence, in the workers’ ranks, of few illusions on the role and effectiveness of the struggles advocated by the unions.

If, despite this disillusionment, the working class is not yet ready today to mobilise itself outside and against the unions, it’s essentially because of the difficulty of again finding confidence in its own strength.

The working class more and more feels the need to fight against the attacks of the government and the bosses, but doesn’t know how to struggle without going through the unions. This difficulty is linked to the strength of democratic ideology which weighs very heavily on the consciousness of the exploited class. The workers can’t conceive of massively mobilising themselves outside of the “legal” framework of the democratic state. The union question thus constitutes a major stake in the future dynamic towards massive class confrontations.

The work of the Congress also looked at the present dynamic of our milieu of contacts in France.

On the numbers of new contacts, we noted a certain gap between the countries of Western Europe and the zones of the periphery (Latin America notably).

The Congress wasn’t totally homogenous on drawing out an analysis on the causes of this and put this as an objective on the agendas of all the sections of the ICC.

In particular, an analysis was advanced that merits deeper reflection. Western Europe has been the theatre of two world wars and of the deepest counter-revolution in history with the bloody crushing of the revolution in Germany at the beginning of the 1920s. These tragic events provoked a profound trauma the after-effects of which still mark the proletariat of Western Europe today and this could explain the very strong weight of democratic illusions in this part of the world and, similarly, the distrust towards groups claiming links with the October revolution in Russia 1917. It’s also on this part of the planet that the anti-communist campaigns following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the Stalinist regimes had the greatest impact. Revolutionary organisations belonging to the Left Communist current thus aroused a certain mistrust.

Nevertheless, with the bankruptcy of capitalism becoming more and more evident, a growing number of elements looking for a historical perspective tend to turn towards such groups as the ICC. Thus in France, as in all the countries of Europe, we’ve noted a growth in the numbers of our contacts and sympathisers. And above all, we’ve seen a will to discuss and debate, to confront and clarify divergences in a fraternal and mutually confident ambience, including in our relations with groups and internationalist elements belonging to the anarchist currents (such as the CNT-AIT).

The Congresses’ work also developed a discussion on an orientation text prepared by the ICC’s central organ: “Marxism and Science”.

Following discussions we had around the Darwin anniversary, the ICC felt the need to take up the approach of the workers’ movement relating to the link between Marxism and the sciences.

Inasmuch as Marxism is, before everything, a scientific method of the analysis of social reality, the ICC has to develop its interest in the fundamentals of all scientific method.

Marxism is always interested in science, in its discoveries which are an integral part of the development of the productive forces of society.

The proletariat will only be able to construct a future communist society with the development of scientific research.

Obviously Marxists are not scientific specialists, and the debate at the Congress bore essentially on method. A certain number of divergences appeared, notably around the question of “what is a science?”. Similarly, there’s no official position, no homogeneity amongst us regarding the contributions of Freud to science. The discussion also shone some light on the particular interest that Marxists should bring to the science of man so as to understand better what “human nature” is.

These debates must be pursued within the ICC and towards the exterior.

To conclude, all the delegations of the ICC and the comrades invited to the Congress saluted its work, the richness of discussion and the fraternal climate in which they took place.

This fraternity was manifested not only in the debates themselves, but also through the organisation of a convivial soiree during which all the participants shared a moment of festive relaxation where solidarity and human warmth came together.

This mutual confidence and solidarity must continue to serve as a beacon to us in order to pursue our activity and combat for the unification of humanity and the construction of a new society without want, war and exploitation.

We know that the road is long and strewn with pitfalls, but our conviction of the impasse of capitalism and the confidence in our class which is the bearer of communism is unbreakable. It is this confidence in a future that bears the coming combats of the working class which constitutes the principal strength of the ICC.

Sofiane, 20th August 2010