A close sympathiser of the ICC responds to an attack on our organisation by the so-called "International Group of the Communist Left"

Graph showing the decline in the number of hospital beds and places in France between 2013 and 2018

While the epidemic was already largely spread in Europe and notably in Italy, the French bourgeoisie were very late in timidly beginning to take measures in order to "protect" the population. It wasn’t until the situation was catastrophic in certain regions such as Picardy and the Alsace that the Macron government woke up and took drastic decisions: necessary isolation, closing of frontiers, police controls and mobilisation of the army to help medical teams that are totally overwhelmed.

We are publishing an article written by our sections in Spain and Italy, which shows that in all countries the bourgeoisie is displaying the same criminal negligence towards the pandemic and the same contempt for the lives of the exploited.

Faced with this new pandemic, we not only have to develop solidarity, look after the most vulnerable, but also reflect on the material conditions which have nurtured the disease - on the advancing decay of the capitalist mode of production - and discuss this issue as widely as possible in order to develop our collective understanding. The article that follows aims to contribute to this process.

Refugees from the war in Syria are being used as pawns by the rival imperialist powers responsible for the slaughter.

 

Behind the space race between the USA and the USSR lay the military rivalry between the two imperialist blocs. In today's period of "every man for himself", there is no let up in the militarisation of space.

The movement against pension reform in France was from start to finish under the control of the unions. They called the strike, they chose and organised the days of action, they led the rare general assemblies. And it was the unions who led the movement to defeat. And for two years the unions worked together with the government ... to prepare and manage to pass this reform!

In the December 2019 general election, the Labour Party got its lowest number of seats in the House of Commons since 1935. The British bourgeoisie has historically been one of the most experienced and effective in deploying its political apparatus, with Labour playing a key part, whether in opposition or government. The diminished position of the Labour Party echoes the situation in other European countries.

Sudan is a country that has been ruined by over 40 years of “civil” wars in which the big imperialist powers have been involved from the start. The various armed conflicts have left over two million dead in South Sudan and Darfur, and led to a general impoverishment which has given rise to numerous hunger revolts against the military and Islamist regimes which have succeeded each other since “independence”.

An underlying problem with anarchism is its lack of a class analysis - a kind of original sin of anarchism, which has always tended to express the standpoint of the petty bourgeoisie or other intermediate strata rather than that of the working class. Extinction Rebellion – like the trade unions or the Labour party – is a bourgeois organisation, linked directly to the capitalist state, and thus incapable of being “transformed” into something that serves the class struggle. Its function – like the New Green Deal or the Youth for Climate campaign - is to recuperate genuine concerns about the future of the planet and to steer them away from questioning capitalism.

What was the significance of the recent strike movement in France, principally involving railway workers, health workers and other parts of the public sector? This was a movement which was undoubtedly a response to a direct attack on workers’ living conditions – the so-called “Pension Reforms” demanded by the Macron government. It was centred on the workplaces where the working class is most obviously a living social force, but at the same time, there was a very strong push towards solidarity between the different sectors.

Saturday 7 March 2020 2.30-5.30pm May Day Rooms 88 Fleet Street London EC4Y 1DH

The election of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, with a large majority, which meant the end of the parliamentary logjam and brought the UK’s formal departure from the EU on 31 January, would appear to mark a decisive break from the political crisis that has engulfed the British ruling class over the past few years. In fact, ‘Global’ Britain has plenty of political problems ahead.

The emergence of a new virus and the reaction of the bourgeoisie shows how the development of the productive forces has come up against the death and destruction caused by capitalism.

 

Taken from the "extreme" end of the spectrum of possible US responses to continuing Iranian aggression, the hit against Iran/Solemeini was directed by Trump in true Mafia style. The President, who was calm and lucid throughout the whole episode, clearly laid his cards on the table, was open about those up his sleeve, and the Iranians, understandably, folded. There was no interest in a missile exchange, no interest from Iran in suffering further, greater losses and no interest whatsoever from Trump in getting engaged in a wider war.

Last spring, the ICC held its 23rd International Congress. This article proposes to give an account of its work.

The report on the question of the historic course from the 23rd ICC Congress, which we are publishing here, confirms a significant change of analysis in relation to the one elaborated in a basic ICC text from 1978 entitled “The historic course” (International Review 18).

According to the materialist conception of history developed by Marx, the contradictions of the capitalist system lead to a historic alternative: socialism or barbarism; either a struggle leading to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat or the mutual ruin of these contending classes and society itself.

The proletariat will only be able to free humanity from the increasingly suffocating chains of world capitalism if its struggle is inspired and fertilised by the critical historical continuity of its communist organisations, that thread that runs from the Communist League in 1848 to the current organisations that identify with the tradition of the communist left. Deprived of this compass, the workers’ reaction against the barbarity and misery imposed by capitalism will be condemned to blind, desperate actions, which may lead to a definitive chain of defeats....

After years of weakness, the social movement against pension reform shows a re-awakening of the combativity of the proletariat in France. Despite all its difficulties the working class has begun to raise its head.