International Communist Current
Encyclopedia
Left communism
Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks at certain periods, from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International...
organisation which was formed in 1975 and which has sections in France, Great Britain, Mexico, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, Brazil, Sweden, India, Italy, USA, Switzerland, Philippines and Turkey.
Heritage
The ICC claims to embody the heritage of the Communist LeagueCommunist League
The Communist League was the first Marxist international organization. It was founded originally as the League of the Just by German workers in Paris in 1834. This was initially a utopian socialist and Christian communist group devoted to the ideas of Gracchus Babeuf...
of Marx and Engels (1847–52), the three Internationals: the International Workingmen’s Association, 1864–72, the Socialist International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, 1889–1914, the Communist International, 1919–28, the left fractions which broke with the Third International in the years 1920-30, in particular the German, Dutch and Italian Lefts. Its direct political antecedent was the Gauche Communiste de France, which broke away from the so-called Bordighists
Amadeo Bordiga
Amadeo Bordiga was an Italian Marxist, a contributor to Communist theory, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy, a leader of the Communist International and, after World War II, leading figure of the International Communist Party.- Early life :Bordiga was born at Resina, in the province of...
in the mid-1940s because it considered the formation of a new party to be premature. This group was dissolved in 1952. However, the Internacionalismo
Internationalism (Venezuela)
Internationalism is a left communist group in Venezuela.The party was founded in 1964 around Marc Chirik, a member of the Left Communists of France until the latter's dissolution in 1952. It published ten issues of its review Internacionalismo between 1964 and 1968...
group, which was founded in 1964 in Venezuela, was heavily influenced by the experience and positions of the Gauche Communiste de France, as among the militants who were to form this group was an ex-militant of the Gauche Communiste de France, Marc Chirik
Marc Chirik
Marck Chirik also known as Marc Laverne or simply MC was a communist revolutionary and one of the founding militants of the International Communist Current...
.
History
The International Communist Current (ICC) was founded in 1975 by Revolution Internationale (France), World Revolution (UK)World Revolution (UK)
World Revolution is a left communist organisation in Britain. It is a section of the International Communist Current .The group was founded in the mid-1970s by former supporters of Solidarity. In 1975, they merged with the ICC, adopting the "World Revolution" name. The following year, a minority...
, Internationalism
Internationalism (US)
Internationalism is a left communist political party in the United States. It is a section of the International Communist Current.The Internationalism group was founded in New York in 1970, partly by former members of the News and Letters group of Raya Dunayevskaya...
(USA), Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), Internacionalismo
Internationalism (Venezuela)
Internationalism is a left communist group in Venezuela.The party was founded in 1964 around Marc Chirik, a member of the Left Communists of France until the latter's dissolution in 1952. It published ten issues of its review Internacionalismo between 1964 and 1968...
(Venezuela) and Accion Proletaria (Spain). Most of these groups came out of the growth of revolutionary politics with the international resurgence of working class struggles that took place in the late 1960s.
Gradually the ICC has spread to several countries across the world although most of its national sections remain small. It has also seen a number of splits from its ranks. From 1978 up to the present day a succession of groups have split from the ICC such as the Internationalist Communist Group, Communist Bulletin Group
Communist Bulletin Group
The Communist Bulletin Group was a small left communist organisation based in Scotland. It was founded in 1981 by groups in Edinburgh and Aberdeen which split from World Revolution...
, Internationalist Perspective group in 1985. More recently, in 2003 several members who belonged to a group calling themselves the "Internal Fraction of the ICC" split from the ICC.
The ICC has sections in France, Great Britain, Mexico, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Venezuela, Brazil, Sweden, India, Italy, USA, Switzerland, Philippines, Turkey and has published in different languages such as Russian, Finnish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Persian, Bengali, Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
In November 2010, the ICC joined people advocating the use of "legitimate force" to stop a rise in tuition fees at British universities to mobilise school children. At least one ICC member attended a planning meeting of the Education Activist Network campaign group.
Ideology
The ICC considers itself to stand in the left communist tradition. 'Leftist' groups, whether TrotskyistTrotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
, Stalinist, or Maoist, are thought of as "the left of capitalism’s political apparatus." According to the ICC, there is no way these groups can be the true representatives of the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
. The ICC considers, however, other left communist organizations such as the Internationalist Communist Tendency, the Bordigists
International Communist Party
The International Communist Party is a left communist international political party which is often described by outside observers as Bordigist, due to the contributions by longtime member Amadeo Bordiga...
, the Councilists
Council communism
Council communism is a current of libertarian Marxism that emerged out of the November Revolution in the 1920s, characterized by its opposition to state capitalism/state socialism as well as its advocacy of workers' councils as the basis for workers' democracy.Originally affiliated with the...
and the anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
who defend internationalist and working class based political positions to be the part of the proletarian revolutionary camp.
The ICC rejects what it describes as bourgeois democracy, finding that it "does not differ at root from other forms of capitalist dictatorship, such as Stalinism and fascism". It is also hostile to the unions, seeing them as "organs of capitalist order within the proletariat".
Instead it believes in the self organisation of the working class, electing its own leaders outside of parliament, in workers' councils. This organisation of the working class needs to be done on an international level; the revolution can only succeed if it is a world wide revolution, leading to the overthrow of all existing states and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
on a world scale.
In their opinion, once this has been established, capitalist social relations will be abolished: these include wage labour, national frontiers and commodity production. Instead all economic activity will be oriented "towards the full satisfaction of human needs". The ICC sees the role of the communist minorities, in this process as the vanguard
Vanguard party
A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
of the workers' movement, in which it neither organises the working class nor takes power in its name, but actively participates within the movement.
Political Positions
The International Communist Current defends the following political positions:- Since the First World War, capitalism has been a decadent social system. It has twice plunged humanity into a barbaric cycle of crisis, world war, reconstruction and new crisis. In the 1980s, it entered into the final phase of this decadence, the phase of decomposition. There is only one alternative offered by this irreversible historical decline: socialism or barbarism, world communist revolution or the destruction of humanity.
- The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first attempt by the proletariat to carry out this revolution, in a period when the conditions for it were not yet ripe. Once these conditions had been provided by the onset of capitalist decadence, the October revolution of 1917 in Russia was the first step towards an authentic world communist revolution in an international revolutionary wave which put an end to the imperialist war and went on for several years after that. The failure of this revolutionary wave, particularly in Germany in 1919-23, condemned the revolution in Russia to isolation and to a rapid degeneration. Stalinism was not the product of the Russian revolution, but its gravedigger.
- The statified regimes which arose in the USSR, eastern Europe, China, Cuba etc. and were called ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ were just a particularly brutal form of the universal tendency towards state capitalism, itself a major characteristic of the period of decadence.
- Since the beginning of the 20th century, all wars are imperialist wars, part of the deadly struggle between states large and small to conquer or retain a place in the international arena. These wars bring nothing to humanity but death and destruction on an ever-increasing scale. The working class can only respond to them through its international solidarity and by struggling against the bourgeoisie in all countries.
- All the nationalist ideologies - ‘national independence’, ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ etc. - whatever their pretext, ethnic, historical or religious, are a real poison for the workers. By calling on them to take the side of one or another faction of the bourgeoisie, they divide workers and lead them to massacre each other in the interests and wars of their exploiters.
- In decadent capitalism, parliament and elections are nothing but a masquerade. Any call to participate in the parliamentary circus can only reinforce the lie that presents these elections as a real choice for the exploited. ‘Democracy’, a particularly hypocritical form of the domination of the bourgeoisie, does not differ at root from other forms of capitalist dictatorship, such as Stalinism and fascism.
- All factions of the bourgeoisie are equally reactionary. All the so-called ‘workers’, ‘Socialist’ and ‘Communist’ parties (now ex-’Communists’), the leftist organisations (Trotskyists, Maoists and ex-Maoists, official anarchists) constitute the left of capitalism’s political apparatus. All the tactics of ‘popular fronts’, ‘anti-fascist fronts’ and ‘united fronts’, which mix up the interests of the proletariat with those of a faction of the bourgeoisie, serve only to smother and derail the struggle of the proletariat.
- With the decadence of capitalism, the unions everywhere have been transformed into organs of capitalist order within the proletariat. The various forms of union organisation, whether ‘official’ or ‘rank and file’, serve only to discipline the working class and sabotage its struggles.
- In order to advance its combat, the working class has to unify its struggles, taking charge of their extension and organisation through sovereign general assemblies and committees of delegates elected and revocable at any time by these assemblies.
- Terrorism is in no way a method of struggle for the working class. The expression of social strata with no historic future and of the decomposition of the petty bourgeoisie, when it’s not the direct expression of the permanent war between capitalist states, terrorism has always been a fertile soil for manipulation by the bourgeoisie. Advocating secret action by small minorities, it is in complete opposition to class violence, which derives from conscious and organised mass action by the proletariat.
- The working class is the only class which can carry out the communist revolution. Its revolutionary struggle will inevitably lead the working class towards a confrontation with the capitalist state. In order to destroy capitalism, the working class will have to overthrow all existing states and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale: the international power of the workers’ councils, regrouping the entire proletariat.
- The communist transformation of society by the workers’ councils does not mean ‘self-management’ or the nationalisation of the economy. Communism requires the conscious abolition of capitalist social relations by the working class: wage labour, commodity production, national frontiers. It means the creation of a world community in which all activity is oriented towards the full satisfaction of human needs.
- The revolutionary political organisation constitutes the vanguard of the working class and is an active factor in the generalisation of class consciousness within the proletariat. Its role is neither to ‘organise the working class’ nor to ‘take power’ in its name, but to participate actively in the movement towards the unification of struggles, towards workers taking control of them for themselves, and at the same time to draw out the revolutionary political goals of the proletariat’s combat.