Internationalist Communist Tendency's blog

We are happy to publish this correspondence with an Italian comrade translated by the IWG. It illustrates, once again, despite all the propaganda that “we are all in this together”, what the working class really represents for capital … lambs to the slaughter, especially in dramatic situations like the one we live in.

Coronavirus has now become a pandemic that none of us wished for. And the response of the society in which we live only demonstrates the absurdity of its economic laws which cannot cope with sudden calamities and natural upheavals, including the climate and environmental disasters also looming on the horizon.

The Angry Workers of the World (AWW), a group based in West London which publishes the irregular workplace bulletin WorkersWildWest, has released a pamphlet collecting their articles on history, crisis, and revolution. We want a new society – and don’t we need it! seeks to explain in a straightforward manner how the current system emerged and how a new society can replace it.

Socialism, or communism, or whatever you want to call a society of the future, will not save us from occasional epidemics. It would however deal with them in an entirely different way.

The following review is a small depiction of what’s happening in the world, outside Italy (for the situation in Italy, see: leftcom.org).

Capitalism – the current social system based on private property, wage labour and production for profit – is at a turning point. Day by day it becomes clearer that the existing relations of production have become fetters preventing humanity from addressing the urgent problems facing the whole planet. Unable to resolve its own contradictions, capitalism is instead hurtling us towards barbarism.

The line that divides this entire society into two social classes is today, in the time of coronavirus, clearer than ever.

On February 29th we (comrades from the CWO and Battaglia Comunista) were at the solidarity demonstration with the warehouse workers of the Italian-Japanese company Peroni in Tor Sapienza, Rome. The workers there are carrying on a bitter struggle for better working conditions which started with a week-long strike.

The article which follows is a translation from Battaglia Comunista 3 (March 2020), paper of our Italian affiliate, the Internationalist Communist Party. Italy has currently one of the worst death rates from coronavirus (4%), higher even than China’s. This despite locking down over a dozen towns in Lombardy, closing all schools and universities throughout the country, banning public gatherings and telling Italians who attend any social gatherings that they should keep one metre in any direction away from the next person.

As this article goes to press (December 2019), the bush fires that have been raging for weeks through six Australian states, from Queensland to Western Australia, have consumed 12.5 million acres of land and the death toll is mounting. They continue to wreak disaster as record-breaking temperatures average over 400C.

After 100 years of us failing to achieve the "Co-operative Commonwealth" the bourgeoisie continue to dominate workers' lives with the "Great Money Trick". As Tressell foresaw, there remains a desperate need for the revolutionary reconstitution of society.

Governments and bosses have divided the class, between “national” and “foreign” workers, young and old, public and private, all in the name of the so-called national interest. But workers in France have given an inspiration to workers everywhere.

The Twentieth Century saw the emergence of “total war”. Wars which are not just between armies but involve entire socio-economic formations and inflicted on the population at large. They are wars to the death with no negotiated outcome — only the “unconditional surrender” of the loser. Revolutionary Marxists call this “imperialist war”.

The Stockholm Resilience Centre has recently identified a number of key issues which are becoming catastrophic for life on Earth. Climate change is only one of them but it’s top of the list.

For the “remain” section of the capitalist class the unexpected result of the 2016 referendum meant they had lost control of the political process. Now the December general election has confirmed the “leavers” will be in control for the next 5 years.

The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party was formed in 1983. In order to give clearer expression to our existence as a united international organisation we decided to change the name of the organisation to the Internationalist Communist Tendency in 2009.

Perspectives for the CWO as discussed in its AGM, November 2019.

For the Party to live a real life – in, with and for the class – well, this does not depend only on our will and abilities, on the contrary, it depends on the class itself.

Via this red thread, which involved the interpretation, application and defence of revolutionary Marxism against various denials and betrayals, the Italian Communist Left in 1943 formed the Internationalist Communist Party.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2018 was a good year for arms producers.