Internationalist Communist Tendency's blog

This is our third translation from Kommunist No 1 the journal of the “left Communists” which appeared briefly in the spring of 1918 to register the concerns of its supporters about certain developments in the Russian revolution which they saw as dangerous to its future.

The building of a new mode of production which is based on the self-activity of all people cannot be delegated to any body – not even a working class party. It is only through the mass organs of working class life that a new society can be built. Communism cannot be brought in by decree but is the living product of a mass collective consciousness struggling towards new forms of social organisation.

In Charlottesville, Virginia 32 year old anti-racist Heather Heyer was run down with a car at an anti-fascist protest on August 12. This murder by a white supremacist touched off a fury of democratic rhetoric by the very political forces that have cultivated this political violence for decades.

The results of the G20 summit in Hamburg, which cost €130 million, have been, as expected, modest. According to official announcements the G20 meeting offered political decision-makers the possibility of “finding their tongues and entering into dialogue with each other.”

Once again the workers of Mahallah have gone on strike against both management and unions over the non-payment of wages.

Some of those who support Corbyn’s Labour do so with the idea that “it’s the least worst option” but many more actually believe that Labour can reform capitalism in favour of those who create the wealth that is enjoyed by a minority. This article is mainly directed at their distortions.

Durham Teaching Assistants have remained solid in their resistance to the threats and deals done behind closed doors between the unions and the Labour Council. The fight goes on.

In 1922, at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Władysław Kowalski (pseudonym Grzech) and Henryk Stein (pseudonym Domski) openly clashed with the leadership of both the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland and the Communist International. This article documents their contribution to the proceedings of the Congress to shed some more light on the Polish Communist Left. For more on the subject check the links in footnotes 2 and 3.

The official story is that Saudi Arabia, supported by Egypt, the Emirates, Bahrain and other sidekicks in the Gulf, is trying to isolate Qatar from the rest of the Arab world as punishment for betraying the Sunni cause and for financing jihadhi terrorism. Like all lies, this one contains an element of truth which conceals other aspects of the situation which must not be brought to light, much less focussed on.

The truth is, to the authorities, Grenfell Tower tenants didn’t really matter ...It has been left to the survivors themselves and the wider community to organise relief ... they organised in their hundreds and held mass meetings, electing delegates, organising demonstrations. The community has shown itself to be well organised, efficient, extremely compassionate and truly democratic. Everything the capitalist state isn’t.

There was no revolution in Venezuela. Being against neo-liberalism is not the same as opposing capitalism but only one form of it. However, it does feed into the social democratic narrative of Corbynism. Today, in the middle of an election campaign, the assertion that “Venezuela is socialist” is happily repeated by right wing papers and politicians to gloat over the social disaster which Venezuela has become.

It is a fact that lately certain anarchists have placed themselves in the Corbyn camp. As Freedom News admits, "lots of anarchists have decided they’re going to vote to try and get rid of the Tories".

For years the world capitalist system has been in economic crisis. No matter what policies various governments have tried (from increased spending, to privatisation and letting the banks speculate on anything and everything) this crisis has not gone away. It got worse in 2007-8 when the speculative bubble fuelled by the banks burst. We have been paying the consequences ever since. Despite talk of a recent recovery, real incomes of the majority have continued to fall.

These are dangerous and unpredictable times. Ten years after the global financial meltdown the world economy still isn’t fixed. After decades of promoting globalisation, which has produced only fortunes for the few and misery for the many, our rulers are beginning to lose their grip. A growing number are turning to so-called nationalist “populism”. ... this is the sign of a system which lacks real solutions.

Our work creates the bulk of the world’s wealth which ends up in the hands of the capitalist class. They use the wealth we create to supply armies and to wage wars to defend their existence. We need to build an international movement which can create a society in which people’s needs not capitalist profits dominate, and in doing so end atrocities like the one in Manchester. No war but the class war.

The electoral process is a fraud offering only capitalist choices. It will not end austerity for millions of workers. The working class has already discovered its own form of direct democracy but this can only become operative in the active struggle to step up our fight not just for better living standards but against the system which is reducing them.

May Day Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency on the current international situation and the challenges facing the working class a century after the Russian Revolution offered so much hope and brought so much despair.

The corruption of the Zuma regime has now reached scandalous levels but it was entirely predictable given the ANC's past.

Two articles by Battaglia Comunista translated from Italian analysing two stories which demonstrate some of the limitations of base (rank and file) unionism. The first concerns the split in SiCobas which has seen the formation of Solcobas and the second on a classic sting targetting of Aldo Milani, chief spokesperson for SiCobas.