We publish here a report on the imperialist situation adopted by the central organ of the ICC at a meeting in June 2018. Since then, events around Trump’s visit to Europe have very clearly confirmed the main ideas of this report, in particular the idea that the USA has become the main propagator of the tendency towards “each for themselves” on a world scale...

We reprint here the section of the 2013 report dealing with this issue: as with the rest of the report, this was not widely discussed in the ICC at the time.

Today, a further 40 years after its foundation, the ICC is confronted with the task of re-examining the whole corpus of the very considerable work it has carried out in relation to the historic re-appearance of the working class at the end of the 1960s, and the immense difficulties it has encountered on the road to its emancipation.

“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.” (Rosa Luxemburg, An Anti-Critique)

At the beginning of May the ICC convoked an Extraordinary International Conference. For some time a crisis had been developing within the ICC. It was judged necessary to call this Conference in addition to the regular International Congresses of the ICC, in view of the urgency of fully understanding the crisis, and developing the means to overcome it.

All the international sections of the ICC sent delegations to this third extraordinary Conference and participated very actively in the debates. The sections which were not able to come physically (because of the Schengen fortress around Europe) sent statements to the conference on the different reports and resolutions submitted for discussion.

The ICC's 20th congress recently approved the report on imperialist tensions which we are publishing here.

The ICC held its 19th Congress last May. In general a congress is the most important moment in the life of revolutionary organisations, and since the latter are an integral part of the working class, they have a responsibility to draw out the main lessons of their congresses and make them accessible to a wider audience within the class. This is the aim of the present article.

 The text that follows is, apart from a few minor changes, the economic part of the report on the situation in Britain for the 19^th Congress of the ICC’s section in Britain. We thought it would be useful to publish it to the outside since it provides a number of factors and analyses which enable us to grasp how the world economic crisis is expressing itself in the world’s oldest capitalist power. 

Crisis of overproduction, state capitalism, and the war economy

(Extracts from the report on the international situation, 5th Congress of Revolution Internationale.)

After having turned the globe into a gigantic slaughterhouse, inflicting two world wars, nuclear terror and countless local conflicts on an agonised humanity, decadent capitalism has entered into its phase of decomposition, a new historic phase first marked by the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. In this historic phase, the direct employment of military violence by the great powers, above all by the USA, becomes a permanent phenomenon.

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The ICC has just held its 10th Congress.

Introduction