Revolution or WAR

Journal of the International Group of the Communist Left

Revolution or War is the journal of the International Group of the Communist Left (IGLC)

It is the result of the fusion of CIK- Klabastalo and FICL. Our unity is based on the following main points:

1.- For our class, this vital unification of Left Communist forces (whose main component is the ICT) is an essential step for the future and indispensable formation of the class party for the revolution. This fundamental objective also requires uncompromising struggle against the penetration of bourgeois ideology within the Communist Left, especially against the opportunism and sectarianism that still plague this environment.

2.- Today, this necessary process can only strengthen communists’ ability to assume the responsibilities that the proletariat has raised: to be its most conscious and determined fraction.

http://igcl.org

Communique on the Constitution of International Group of the Communist Left

International Communist Bulletin 11 (November 2013)

Organ of the Fraction of the International Communist Left

Editorial of the bulletin 11

The IC-Klasbatalo and our Fraction, we are on the way to adopting a ‘platform’ with main positions close to those of both the ICT and the “historical” ICC. We continue to discuss and clarify the questions of organization and functioning based on the Communist Left, especially the tradition of the “Italian” Left...

Intervention in the Working Struggle

Communist Intervention and Evolution of the Class Struggle

The great masses of workers seeing that their minorities or more militant sectors hesitate at the sheer scale of the task, of the necessity to avoid the democratic traps and erroneous approaches – such of the "indignados" or "Occupy" ideology for instance – this indicates, above all,the concrete, practical, necessity to take up the political fight against capitalism's forces, in the first place from the unions who pretend to be "workers", in the struggle.

Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency about the Port-Said Events (March 2013)

Any bourgeois government can wait. It can wait until the anger is exhausted in some act of protest, however powerful and violent, and then take back by force the situation that previously got out of hand. The manoeuvre is much simpler and more effective if the uprising is isolated, if it concerns only a sector of production or a geographically small area...

Greece, Turkey, France, Spain ...
The workers' response must be international and united!

That is why we must rid ourselves of the union-imposed framework, and take our struggle into our own hands. We must not accept that every mobilization remain in its particular “corner” in its “own” region or its “own” country. To remain isolated, separated from other sections of the working class, poses the best prospect for the bourgeoisie to continue to maintain control of the situation, for it to successfully wage more attacks against our lives, forcing us to sacrifice more and more, ultimately sacrificing our lives in the inevitable war.

International Situation

The bourgeoisie prepares its repressive apparatus

As the economic crisis deepens, the bourgeoisie and its instruments of repression are consolidating...

An Irrational Accommodation: Capitalism

The capitalist class has only one aim in mind: to prevent the proletariat from affirming its solidarity and its unity as an international working class. While making believe that the Québécois proletariat would have something to safeguard, to defend against all immigrants from Arab countries or elsewhere, all this media hoopla endeavors to do is to make them believe that the immigrant situation is separate from the working class, from the misery of its own condition as an exploited class...

Text of the Workers Movement

Rosa Luxemburg : Her Fight Against the German Betrayers of International Socialism (Preface to the Junius Pamphlet) Clara Zetkin (1919)

The Junius Pamphlet is a particularly sparkling treasure of the heritage which Rosa Luxemburg has left the proletariat of Germany, of the world, for the theory and practice of its struggle for liberation...http://fractioncommuniste.org/eng/bci11/bci11_3.php

Communique on the Constitution of International Group of the Communist Left

The Internationalists Communists – Klasbatalo (ex-ICM) and the Fraction of the International Communist Left (ex-IFICC) held a Conference in order to set up a new communist group. At that Conference, the two groups decided to dissolve in order to form the International Group of the Communist Left.

As soon as we can, we'll communicate and publish the documents adopted at this meeting and on which the new group bases itself. The Conference adopted a political platform essentially taking up the basic positions of the ICT and the ICC which generally corresponds to the positions that the FICL's International Communist Bulletin posted on its back page. It also adopted the international centralization as a mode of functioning and as a communist principle and practice to develop in its own ranks. It adopted the Thesis on the International Situation so as to define and develop political orientations and interventions within the working class.

As well, it takes up again the debate that developed between the previous groups regarding the analysis of the Proletarian Camp and the intervention to develop within it. The IGCL wants to focus its intervention within the Proletarian Camp on the struggle for the communist regroupment aiming at the formation of the Communist Party of tomorrow and on the struggle against all the forms of opportunism and sectarianism which had weakened the original. More concretely, and taking note of a central line of demarcation and opposition within this camp between the "pro-party" and "anti-party" tendencies and groups, our group will orientate its intervention in order to favor at best the process of regroupment around the Internationalist Communist Tendency – around its positions and its organization as a unique international pole icapable of embodying the legacy of the Communist Left.

Finally, the Conference decided to equip the new group with a review, initially to come out twice a year in French and English, along with extracts translated into Spanish on our website.  The web address will be:  www.igcl.org  . As well, we have a new email address : intleftcom@gmail.com to which the reader and the groups can already write.

Today, in the present historical situation – economic crisis, danger of imperialist war, workers struggles... the working class absolutely needs the regroupment of communist minorities in order to prepare the constitution of its world Party.

The IGCL, November 7th, 2013

An irrational accommodation: capitalism

In several countries, the bourgeoisie is escalating its ideological bombardment through campaigns on some subject or other called “society" which, on one hand occupies the terrain and consciousness in its diversion from the reality of capital’s crisis and proletarian conditions of life and work, and additionally on the other hand, brings up false issues, all aimed at enhancing adherence to the democratic mystification of the bourgeois state.

In various countries, mainly Europe, the question of whether to allow the Islamic veil for women has become one of these themes. In Belgium, in France, the issue of the hijab has become the pretext for strengthening secular and republican ideology, in other words, the ‘democratic’ state. This, too, was the case in Canada in French speaking Quebec. On September 14, in an appeal to religious organizations, a street demonstration took place in Montreal. On this occasion, our K-IC comrades deem it necessary to reproduce the following text from 2007 on their blog.
Fraction of the International Communist Left

An irrational accommodation: capitalism

For several months, the press and bourgeois media spearheaded a massive campaign to divide immigrant workers from their Québécois and aboriginal counterparts. The pretext: reasonable accommodations for Jews and Muslims. Even if, for example, no Islamic religious organizations requested the right to wear the veil during voting, the media kept on about it. The whole point of this divisive debate is to have us forget that the vote is utterly useless for the proletariat, regardless of their origin. Amongst politicians, this has culminated in the creation of the Bouchard-Taylor commission given the task of touring Quebec. Everyone - bourgeois, petit bourgeois and workers are invited as "citizens" to offer their opinion. This campaign serves to fuel the worst of bourgeois ideology: racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, of 'every man for himself'. The capitalist class has only one aim in mind: to prevent the proletariat from affirming its solidarity and its unity as an international working class. While making believe that the Québécois proletariat would have something to safeguard, to defend against all immigrants from Arab countries or elsewhere, all this media hoopla endeavors to do is to make them believe that the immigrant situation (1) is separate from the working class, from the misery of its own condition as an exploited class.

We have even heard that "lady of the manor" Pauline Marois, speak to us of "Our identity" as nationalists. This "Identity" being the right to be exploited by our own home-grown business people... The bourgeois elites, as always, stand in the way of any real workers solidarity, which must extend beyond nationality. This "faith" in the "secular" bourgeois State as ultimate judge of peace and social cohesion, is just the kind of crap that's thrown out for the unions. Behind this whole debate about reasonable accommodation is the defense of "secularism" which is in fact the defense of the special status given to the capitalist state and bourgeois democracy.

The government has no intention of diminishing the importance of religions, to the contrary – its aim is to reinforce them. It will be under the staff of "our secular State" that courses on all religions will flourish in the schools in the autumn of 2008. Religion will always be the opiate of the masses.

In the face of worldwide misery and barbarism in full putrefaction, there is but one prospect for the working class – to firmly reject the competitive rationale of its own exploiters, of "every man for himself". No matter what their origin, language, colour of skin, or religion, the proletariat has no interest in common with national capital. It can only really defend its interests, by developing everywhere its solidarity with the international working class, by resisting any attempt to foster division as immigrants, Canadians, Quebecois and aboriginal peoples.

Only the assertion of its common interests in struggle will permit the proletariat to gather all its resources, to affirm itself as a world class united in solidarity, to bring down the capitalist Moloch before it destroys the planet.

 Some internationalist communists of Montreal

klasbatalo1917@gmail.com

 (1) Note: from 1840 to 1930, 900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the USA. It is alarming to read the racist report of an American functionary:

« With some exceptions the Canadian French are the

Chinese of the Eastern States. They care nothing for

our institutions, civil, political, or educational.

They do not come to make a home among us, to dwell

with us as citizens, and so become a part of us; but

their purpose is merely to sojourn a few years as

aliens…

…They are indefatigable workers, and docile… All they

ask is to be set to work, and they care little who

rules them or how they are ruled. To earn all they can

by no matter how many hours of toil, to live in the

most beggarly way so that out of their earnings they

may spend as little for living as possible, and to

carry out of the country what they can thus save: this

is the aim of the Canadian French in our factory

districts. »

Massachusetts Report on statistics of labor Boston 13

th 1881

The bourgeoisie prepares its repressive apparatus

As the economic crisis deepens, the bourgeoisie and its instruments of repression are consolidating. Throughout the world, police act with increasing violence, aided and abetted by ‘democratic’ societies. It’s primarily in these ‘democratic’ societies that repression hits: arrests without charge, mass arrests, kettling of demonstrations and infiltration by agent provocateurs, surveillance of workers in struggle, murders, torture, new and old laws (the American “Patriot Act” has broadened its scope everywhere) giving individuals and police more power, if not “complete power”. In several countries, the police benefit from the unions’ help in isolating workers struggles or in containing demonstrations. The weapons paraphernalia grows steadily and is widely used: Tasers, Flash Ball (plastic or rubber balls), and even live ammunition. Far from neutral, the police are trained, armed and educated to protect the capitalist system; that’s their prime directive.

Here are several examples which represent only a tiny part of police and military activities around the world and the free reign they enjoy, backed by the media, the magistrates, laws and commissions of inquiry. The mass arrests and murders of demonstrators and of militants are increasingly trivialized by the ‘democratic’ media. The armies reinforce this to a great extent by bringing us to war to oppose workers’ uprisings.

USA

The vigilante, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of the teenaged Trayvon Martin. He copped a plea of “self-defense”. This happened in February 2012, when Zimmerman killed the unarmed teenager with a single bulled during a surveillance round. The “Stand your ground” law, valid in a large number of American States, allows bourgeois repressive forces to kill anyone if they “consider themselves at risk” of being attacked. This is the law that Zimmerman’s lawyer used to acquit him.

On the military side, the American army has established an urban training center 4 kilometers square in Indiana’s south center which boasts of more than 1500 “training structures” designed to simulate houses, schools, hospitals and factories. The center’s website confirms that it “could be adapted to reproduce foreign as well as domestic situations.”

France

Demonstrators in France sustained irreversible eye injuries from Flash-Ball discharges (in Mureaux in 2005, in Clichy-sous-Bois in 2006, in Nantes in 2007, in Toulouse, Montreauil, Neuilly-sur-Marne or Villiers-le-Bel in 2009). And on the military front, the French army constructed a city and a village. The fake town of Jeoffrécourt was created entirely by the French army for training troops in urban guerilla warfare, the most common form of 21^st century combat. Jeoffrécourt condenses all recent conflict scenarios, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, mixing suburban homes and abandoned buildings. Combat and war situations are standardized there. In this ghost town, soldiers in training can take over a town, a church or hide out in a cemetery. Sidewalks, public lighting, shutters that rattle, everything is reproduced to scale.

As for the village of Beausejour, it consists of 63 houses, all different, many obstacles (fences, barricades, rubble), different types of roads (wide, narrow, winding or clear.) It is made up of different modules: the village in itself, a squatter area in which it is impossible for vehicles to enter, a campground made up of caravans (perhaps as practice for expelling Roma), a road created from scratch and a strategic hamlet.

Canada

- The first Toronto cop to be prosecuted under criminal charges in the wake of protests against the G20 meeting in Toronto in June 2010 was recently acquitted. Constable Glenn Weddell was charged after the journalist Dorian Barton had suffered a broken shoulder, June 26, 2010. Dorian Barton had wandered onto the grounds of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario during a demonstration. In his testimony he said he’d been struck from behind while photographing police on horseback.

- One month after a Toronto cop killed Sammy Yatim, the Ontario minister of Community and Social Services, Madelein Meilleur, announced that all police officers in the province will be equipped with Tasers.

- Following the fierce and scandalous repression exercised against the students, the City of Montreal Chief of Police  and the director of Sûreté du Québec presented themselves before a bogus commission of inquiry into the events of 2012 Quebec. They claimed that the police did a “great job” under difficult and exceptional circumstances. Remember that there were over 3,000 arrests, many with serious injuries, (loss of an eye, a torn ear and head injury). Now they plan to use new chemical weapons. So far not one officer has so much as been charged.

As Rosa Luxemburg said, over a century ago:

“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

Wake up and open your eyes to what bourgeois democracy is really all about.

Steve (ICK) september 13

Solidarity with our working class brothers Port Said and Egypt!

Solidarity with our working class brothers Port Said and Egypt!

We reproduce below a political stand of the International Communist Tendency we share analysis and policy guidelines and that we support.  Fraction of the International Communist Left  september 2013

The Events in Port Said

(Internationalist Communist Tendancy)

We are publishing this position statement about what is happening in Port Said, Egypt with the warning that the news about what is going on is limited [ignored internationally by the official media] and not entirely consistent even if all the sources consulted agree on the fact that the Egyptian city is in ferment.

Information is still scarce but some facts speak for themselves. After street protests, anger erupted following the 21 death sentences handed down for the massacre in Port Said. During a spontaneous protest against this Morsi's police left 40 more victims on the streets. After that the police were forced to abandon the city leaving it in the hands of the protesters. At the moment, all public order, traffic and production linked to the Suez Canal are in the hands of the insurgents. Port Said has become a kind of free zone where the state has had to temporarily raise the white flag. If it is true that the death sentences on the 21 youth and the subsequent forty victims were the tragic triggers immediately provoking the rebellion, it is also true that the devastating consequences of the economic crisis and the arrogance of the reactionary Islamist Morsi government have been a decisive element.

Finally, after two years of tensions on the streets, of managed elections, of fraud and betrayal of the most basic expectations, something has snapped. The main fact, if confirmed, is that workers of Port Said were the first to trigger the revolt; including the port workers, those in transport and workers from other factories. Marine traffic has halted, factories have closed and the mobilisation of the city seems to be general and definitive. The movement, as well as guarding against the inevitable government reaction, must also deal with a number of internal problems

A first danger is the risk of isolation. The workers of Port Said must actively ask for practical militant help from all Egyptian workers, from the factories of Cairo to those of Alexandria, Ismailia and Assiut. The only way to avoid the risk of isolation and the ability to continue the fight is to widen the struggle and open up greater opportunities. Any bourgeois government can wait. It can wait until the anger is exhausted in some act of protest, however powerful and violent, and then take back by force the situation that previously got out of hand. The manoeuvre is much simpler and more effective if the uprising is isolated, if it concerns only a sector of production or a geographically small area. Breaking this isolation, asking for proletarian solidarity is not only tactically necessary but it is the condition for the fight to continue, otherwise the axe of repression will fall heavily on the demonstrators.

The more the struggle continues on the lines of a frontal attack, away from the conservative siren calls of reformism, whether secular or religious, the more it can serve as a model for proletarians in the whole area of North Africa, in the hope of giving an initial sense of class to the failure of the "Arab Spring ". At this point, the proletarians of the Egyptian Canal Zone must not fall into the trap of believing that reform can be a different way of managing public affairs within the framework of a capitalism that is everywhere around them. It is not only by demanding the fall of the Morsi government and respect for democratic freedoms, or by operating within the political framework of civil disobedience that things will radically change. The movement that has had the strength to rebel against the murderous authoritarianism of the Islamist government, to free itself from the chains of the traditional political forces, which is trying to present itself as politically autonomous, must continue on the path without falling back on the options that radical reformism offers, or be drawn back into the old worn-out democratic game.

The European proletariat, which suffers the same exploitation on the other side of the Mediterranean, should do its part. Class solidarity, which despite a few episodes of struggle has recently sensationally absconded everywhere, has expressed itself here and there. It should now take this opportunity to reappear on the international scene. Europe’s streets have every reason to be full of disturbances against the various policies and heavy sacrifices demanded of us. If they do it should not be in single sectors or under the umbrella of this or that union policy, of this or that "left reformist" political force, but on the basis of real class solidarity, beyond nationalist boundaries and particularism, and this seems to be a good opportunity to start.

One last point. Spontaneity, the determination of a struggle that arises immediately against a government, against its police, is doomed to failure if it does not elaborate a tactic, a strategy and a programme that goes beyond the traps of capital, to build a real social alternative, which is another way of producing and distributing that wealth of which the Egyptian proletariat, like the international working class, is the only creator. However, if we stay on the ground of civil disobedience, if the movement sets as its objective just the overthrow of the Morsi government in favour of "true democracy", subject to all the pressures of capitalism, as the movement in Tahrir Square did with Mubarak, the results will be the same, if not worse.

FD (ICT) 6 March, 2013