Internationalist Communist Tendency's blog

Of the many utopian positions widespread in the left today, some of the most persistent – and misguided – are various manifestations of pacifism. At its core, this type of thinking can be reduced to a single fundamental assumption: that the atrocities of imperialist war can be overcome and allayed without the disappearance of class society.

New year, old music, from a well-known score sheet played out by... the Left. A "Left" that’s not ashamed to dress itself up in populist clothes, worn in the service of state capital on the understanding that this is the way to open up markets as a "progressive realisation of the patriotic ideal and the concept of nationhood". In the name, of course, of the people and the "concept of community" as understood by those who are ready to recite the hidden virtues of a renewed "capital-socialism".

The article which follows is taken from the new edition of Revolutionary Perspectives (#14) which is just out. It was obviously written before the events which followed the British Navy’s seizure of the Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar, but the substance of the analysis has not changed.

Capitalism is now undergoing a technological and scientific modernisation that is becoming a bomb ready to blow up the whole system. Humanity finds itself swept along in a vortex of technological innovations and automation.

What emerges, even among its younger representatives who are less involved in roles of responsibility, is the fact that politically speaking the Left has "abandoned" the poorest social strata and in every respect embraces the economic logic of the world in which we live.

The article here, from our ICT affiliate in the United States, evaluates the longest strike by US car workers in a decade. After six weeks, members of the United Auto Workers voted for the union’s deal with General Motors.

Let's cut through the media fog and get to the point. The American attack in Baghdad which killed 10 people, including two Iranian politicians and Qassem Suleimani, a strong man of the Iranian regime, poses a series of problems to which we should give precise answers, even if based for now only on piecemeal information.

For decades Latin America was the United States’ "backyard", although more recently it has also been seen as a den of "socialists". Today it is undergoing a deep crisis that spares neither the big countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, nor the small ones such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.

What we are looking at in this election is the victory of the concept of nation over that of class. But then it could be said of all elections.

The document which follows is a translation from the French original. It was sent to us in the facsimile version kept in the NKVD files in Moscow by comrades of the Workers’ Group in the USA. The official stamp shows that the NKVD had received it by 8 July 1932 and, no doubt, it later played a part in sealing the ultimate fate of Gavril Miasnikov. Our translation is based on this version.

For years now the whole Brexit issue has diverted attention from the declining quality of life experienced by the working class in the aftermath of the financial crash. Now we have an election campaign where Labour and the Conservatives are vying to outdo each other as to how much they will increase state spending in order to end austerity. Labour's plans for a kind of soft nationalisation (a sort of John Lewis employee share scheme, “when the market will allow it”) and Boris' gob shite about the NHS (as the break-up continues) are not going to alter the fact that the working class is paying for capitalism's crisis.

On the left of the political spectrum there is no shortage of calls for the formation of “workers’ parties”, the transformation of existing parties into “real workers’ parties”, or this or that clique declaring itself to be “the party”. An endless alphabet soup of Trotskyist and Stalinist groups have dedicated their resources towards depriving this slogan of all meaning. So it’s no surprise at all that at first glance our work towards the formation of an independent and international political organisation of the working class, can come across as just more of the same.

The “synchronised stagnation” of the global economy since 2008 shows the capitalist class everywhere has no solution to economic crisis. Hence ever more strident nationalism has been adopted across the globe. It even engulfs its two greatest powers, now locked in a trade war. This nationalism is their “alternative”. For them the problem is not capitalism but one form of it – globalisation. The fact is that the continued existence of the system in any form means more misery for most.

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 by Will Shu, an investment banker, and Greg Orlowski, a software developer. It was a simple idea whereby customers place food orders through an app or on the website, and couriers, with the app on their mobile phones, deliver the food from the restaurant to the customer. However, like any technology (no matter how life changing) utilised under capitalism, in practice Deliveroo means exploitation for the workers on whose labour the success of the company depends.

For those not fortunate to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouth and happy with the status quo, who want to see change, the task of finding a political home is no mean feat. For many the answer is obvious enough. It may be a simple ”Leave the EU” or “Get the Tories out”. But for many workers, Corbyn and his Labour Party represent the way out.

As the Brexit pantomime plays on, a General Election is now thrust upon us. Like all capitalist elections it will be a sham. About a third of the electorate (mostly working class) already have no illusions that a vote will do anything for them. In the UK the sham does not mean that ballot boxes will be stuffed with fake votes. Our rulers don’t need to do that. They have worked out how to get a result acceptable to the system without it.

In spring 2019, a crisis on an unprecedented scale was sparked in French hospitals. The emergency services went on strike in massive numbers. Barely three months from its beginnings on 18 March, in the Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris, it had spread to around a hundred establishments all across France by July. The movement will not stop spreading as long as the situation remains untenable. In September, the number of emergency services on strike was 239, or more than half of all services. This mobilisation has not died down and even rose to 267 services on strike in mid-October.

Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

North or South, anyone who’s ever worked as a courier or care/support worker, or grew up in a working class nuclear family household, will have serious déjà vu watching the new Ken Loach film.

Today (‎9/11/19) marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (which did not quite make its own thirtieth anniversary). It will be accompanied by the usual capitalist paeans to the wonders of democracy and the capitalist way of doing things. The following article from Communist Review 8 (later Internationalist Communist) appeared in January 1990 but has never been reproduced digitally before. It was our deeper reflection not only on the collapse of the USSR’s empire in the East but the burgeoning crisis of world capitalism as a whole