The Question of Parasitism.

I offered no "excuses" nor am I trying to "convince" you. I explained the situation. You are neither a prosecutor nor a judge, you should stop taking yourself this seriously.

I don't expect you to be "convinced" anyway, you have shown yourself to be clearly biased and are "interpreting" things the way you want to interpret them, in order to show the ICC has a "siege" mentality. There is nothing to interpret though. If we were to accuse that the expelled person was a member of the Freemason Order, that is what we would have said - we didn't. There is nothing further to discuss about this really in my opinion except perhaps saying that the tone of the article is a bit too excited which itself is something understandable since it was written more or less right after the guy was expelled.

Yet you are not interested in understanding. You are attempting to distort the meaning of what is said by your "interpretations". You are approaching the issue with hostility, not with a well-intentioned and fraternal concern that what was written could be misunderstood, not with an actual interest in the event: instead you do what you are interested in: you accuse!

I'm sorry but it is comical.

Irony of ironies, coming from the 'moderator' who soon began posting aggressive insults here - and who tries to defend the misleading insinuations of his group. Comical indeed.

Mate, compared to the ones on Revleft, the insults I as well as you posted here are compliments.

Yearzero asked…

"Libcom.org, Solidarity Federation and Anarchist Federation are parasites, yes?"

I am not sure where you get that idea from, but the answer is clearly no. That doesn't mean that these groups/networks can't be influenced by ideas that we would call parasitic.

It is also true that in the past we have characterised the AF as leftist and/or parasitic. I think that this was a mistake, a misinterpretation of the term.

Maybe it wasn't a misinterpretation; maybe you (the ICC) just lack an actual coherent interpretation. Honestly, I don't see the point of using euphemistic weasel words like "parasitic." If you think someone is clearly wrong, just say so. If you change your mind and come to agree with them (at least partially), just say so.

Are we ever going to get to the bottom of this? Even you guys can't decide what it means!

~J.

I agree BigLittleJ the question of parasitism and exactly how we define it has got lost along the way a bit. May be we could get back to how we define it and see if we agree (Vlad we really are trying to say if someone is clearly wrong, by trying to define where they are going wrong as clear as possible, but it is clear that we need to try and explain just what we mean by this a lot more clearly at time) on the principle concepts behind it. Then we could move on to whether we have applied it correctly. Yes this does mean going back to the dreaded Theses but that is our official definition, from which we may have strayed at times.
Though this discussion has got a bit rough in places there has been some clarification: well at least I now know I know I should bow when I next met Alf king of the ICC, I always thought I should have been giving him more respect. But then he hasn't thrown down the great tree amongst the roots of the great tree of the world, well not yet: better watch my step though!!!!

For a fairly brief view of what the ICC thinks about parasitism, IP has published the ICC's replies to its "Appeal to the pro-revolutionary milieu" - worth a read.

.
So you assumed he was a police spy, no?

baboon,

1) I think you mean EFICC (i.e. External Fraction of the ICC), which is the name IP had from 1986 until 1994;

2) This position you claim the EFICC defended is news to me, and I am sceptical that they did; can you give us a reference to support your allegation?

3) What exactly does this have to do with the ICC's theory of 'parasitism' anyway? It just appears like you are trying to smear a group that split from the ICC and went on to be become (according to the ICC) 'parasites'.

4) The ICC may have 'almost begged' the Tendency (i.e. future IP) comrades to stay in the organization, but they (the ICC central organs) also refused to let them (the Tendency comrades) participate in the ICC Congress of 1985 unless they signed a loyalty oath beforehand to agree with whatever the outcome of the Congress was. Not exactly very hospitable or comradely, not to mention, tolerant of internal differences.

I am an anarchist, not because I conform to a specific cathechism. I tried to follow the line of thinking in the discussions, but got hopelessly lost in the first two pages. I know what's in my heart. I know what's right. I understand how capitalism works, how it has infected the working class (if we can even call it that anymore)...Here's my dilemna: when I read all these writings and posts, I get a headache. My back starts hurting. I have to believe that there are a lot of people in the world who do not wish to, or who cannot, follow this catechism...these rules...these ex cathedra statements. It's not that I disagree with these ideas. It's that I'm not prepared to discuss these ideas, nor do I want to.
However, I am at a quandary. If all this is as complicated as it looks like, then I must read and understand it all myself, or I must trust someone who will and can.
Are there others like me?

farmer wrote:

Yes - plenty.

Whatever is sometimes 'correct' in what they say is expressed with far greater passion and insight into nuances by others who aren't stultifying politicos.
I suggest that all those who dislike/hate/are bored by the ICC (of which I am one) to stop feeding them with an importance and attention they (at least in the UK and France - I don't know about places like Turkey) do not deserve. In France, anyone with any sense just ignores them. As Oscar Wilde said, "There's one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about".

On 'Freemasonary':

I don't think so. I interpreted that why, which is why I asked the ICC about it, and I certainly didn't 'want' to. Personally, I think that it is the most logical way to read it, and I am not surprised at all that people interpret it that way. The stuff about the capitalisation is really clutching at straws. Even if it were true, which I am pretty sure it isn't, the fact that it has been misinterpreted by so many means their is a problem with the phrasing.

As I said earlier in this thread:

Both of which would be problematic. Even if we were right about an obscure grammatical point, I believe it would be much clearer if we had used an easily understandable term like 'Freemason like ideology', or 'ideology similar to freemasonry'.

Ret wrote:

I don't think we should take the article down. It was something that was written, and I don't think that trying to 'expunge the historical record' is the best way to deal with these things. That said the article is obviously problematic. The ICC has talked about making mistakes in the past and in my opinion this is clearly one of them. What could be done is a 'rider' could be added at the start of the article stating that this person was not actually a Freemason and what was meant by the term with an apology for any misunderstandings caused.

Even if it wasn't slanderous in implying that somebody was a Freemason who wasn't, I think the misunderstandings caused have been at least if not more damaging to the ICC as anybody else. After all, they have led to countless comments like these quoted by Leo:

Ironically, I don't think that freemasonry, as I understand it and, to be fair they don't really go out of their way to explain themselves, is really about 'esoteric' things at all today. The impression that I get is that it is just a club for businessmen to meet other people of the same social class and do deals with them, and 'help' each other, which has a few old-fashioned rituals.

On 'Police Agents':

I will assume from Ingram's lack of a response and Alf's statement contradicting it that we didn't call him a 'police spy'. I think it is reasonable for people to take this on faith unless proven otherwise. The impression that I have got about this from talking to people who were members of the ICC at the time was that he was more of an 'adventurer' who wanted to be the leader of his own little group. Maybe again it is not clear in the statements published on this. Also, I believe that a lot of people may not have actually read these things, and are just going on second hand sources. Maybe it would be clearer if we said in things like this very clearly, that "We have no evidence that he was a police spy", so we can point to it later. Maybe we did. I haven't read it either.

Another important thing to stress is that even small revolutionary groups do get infiltrated by the police. It does happen. To go back to the 80s and the UK group Class War, I can remember two incidents, one when a naive young kid got in a bit over his head with dodgy connections and was asked by Special Branch to get involved with CW and inform on them, and the other one with Andy Anderson, author of the book 'Hungary 1956' acted in a way that, to quote Alf, a "police agent could not have done his work any better". I am not saying that Anderson was a spook. I am saying that he acted like one, and his background in military intelligence, amongst other things, certainly meant that the suspicious were at least worth thinking about. Also it wasn't just me who thought it was possible. 'P' the then national secretary of DAM, also held the same opinion as did many others. I can elaborate on both these incidents in a separate thread if people want me to.

Whether these people were police spies or not, the idea of the police infiltrating even small revolutionary groups is not just paranoid fantasy, and I think that the recent thing about police files that came out in the UK Guardian should make people think about this.

On Anarchists being 'parasites' and the term in general:

"Libcom.org, Solidarity Federation and Anarchist Federation are parasites, yes?"

I am not sure where you get that idea from, but the answer is clearly no. That doesn't mean that these groups/networks can't be influenced by ideas that we would call parasitic.

It is also true that in the past we have characterised the AF as leftist and/or parasitic. I think that this was a mistake, a misinterpretation of the term.

We were talking about the AF at lunch at the last ICC congress. One of the English comrades was talking about revising their view of the AF, and writing an article about it. He jokingly asked what we should call it, and suggested maybe "Sorry, but we have been wrong for the last twenty years". People laughed, but I said I thought it was a good idea. I think a little humility might go a small part of the way to breaking down the barriers.

In the past the ICC has not managed at times to put itself across very well. I think that much of it could come down to the tone that we have adopted. That doesn't, however, invalidate all of what we have said. I spoke last year to a guy from the IBRP, and we discussed some of the problems between us. An article the ICC had written came up "IBRP: An opportunist policy of regroupment that leads to nothing but ‘abortions’". When I was talking about this later with some people in the ICC who asked me what he had thought about the article, I had to tell them that he hadn't got further than the title.

My point being that even if your political analysis is spot on if you manage to put off the people that you are trying to engage with it doesn't really matter. With the 'Thesis on Parasitism', which I have actually read this time , the ideas in it, whether they are correct or incorrect are very seldom discussed. Most people aren't really interested in reading an article that calls them parasites, and many anarchists have asked me, probably without reading the article and understanding a parasite as it is normally understood in English how the ICC can talk about parasites when you see the small group of them outside the anarchist bookfair.

Whatever the merits of the 'Thesis on Parasitism", the wording and the tone makes it a disaster as very few people engage with what it says.

Devrim

Samotnaf wrote;

I senssse the hatred in you ss little one sss. Gooog, that is goood. You are one your way to dark side sss.

Could you elaborate on a separate thread? I remember the 'Anderson controversy' (the real enemy of the working class is the middle class, etc.) and the ructions in Class War, but had no idea he was being accused of being an intelligence agent (unless I forgot, putting the accusations down to sour grapes).

Devrim writes

and he's right. The ICC has recently expressed concern that the CBG archive contains articles at odds with the ex-CBG's expressed desire at May's Birmingham meeting to find a fraternal basis to communication. The same concern could be voiced about the ICC's archive from the time. There was an enormous amount of heat, anger, and anguish generated at the time - and this is reflected in much that was written, but it can't just be wished away. Beneath the anger, genuine political concerns about organisation and the management of dissent were being expressed, and it's these that are really worthy of debate.
On a purely personal level, I have to say that I find Devrim's contributions fairly refreshing. eg. comments like

and

This is refreshing because it is at odds with the default self-righteous and belligerent tone some ICC posters use. Like Cassady, I too think the ICC is “at the heart of the revolutionary movement”, and gain no pleasure from seeing the alienation caused within the milieu by such an approach. Devrim's is an approach we should all try to develop, given we are debating with comrades.

The IBRP(CWO) has been conspicously missing from this debate. As a significant part of the left communist movement I would like to hear their views on parasitim. Also, I remember they were invited to witness the ICC's evidence that Chenier was a state agent at the time. Unfortunately, they chose to remain silent about the results.

Waslax, I think it an indication of the over-heated nature of some of this debate that you can accuse me of trying to "smear" the split from the ICC which became the EFICC, when I have done nothing of the kind. What I pointed out was that not all, not the majority, of splits in the ICC, came from any sort of "state" intervention but from political differences (whether these differences were real or imagined). This is not a smear. My opinion is that these political differences, as far as I remember, which were based largely on, or coming from the international situation, could well have been clarified in the ICC. If they thought their positions were correct they should have stayed in and fought for them, instead of quitting. How you make this a "smear" I don't know.

The position of the EFICC that I refer to on the role of Russia in the first Gulf War was not made up and appeared in their leaflet entitled: "Don't take sides in the Gulf War".

Of course the state tries to infiltrate revolutionary groups, and many more non-revolutionary ones too. I remember one policeman tried to infiltrate an ICC public meeting, but his big hat and silver badge gave him away.

Cass, I also think it's important that you respond to Alf's response to you.

But if you want them to comment why don't you invite them to? One of them posts on here. Maybe he got bored of this subject, but if you want his response you can pm him :http://libcom.org/user/cleishbotham
Devrim

"I will assume from Ingram's lack of a response and Alf's statement contradicting it that we didn't call him a 'police spy'."

Not at all Devrim, its just that I have been doing other things in other cities since yesterday. The Chenier denunciation was addressed in the very first issue of the Communist Bulletin and that can be found here: http://cbg.110mb.com/ChenierAffair_1.pdf

I suggest you go and read it - in fact I would suggest everyone interested in this thread go and read it. In fact, Devrim, I would suggest you go and read a lot more of the material in that archive which might give you a more balanced view of many of the issues.

Of course the main issue I bought up, the fact that every split from the ICC has been denounced by them as the work of clans, anarchists, masons, criminal gangs or state agents, hasn't been answered. Its a tactic particularly beloved of transatlantic academics, avoid answering the question by asking a smaller question instead in the hope that the audience's attention will. be diverted away from the initial question into the back alley of the second. So lets get back to it.

One ICC responder today (or yesterday) said all the splits were political. That is not what the ICC said at (any of) the time(s) and if that is their current position it would be a gigantic step forward for them and could be the start of an honest reappraisal of their own performance in such situations in the past. If such a reassessment is indeed taking place within the ICC lets hear more about it.

Fair enough, sometimes we expect a near instant reply. Maybe we forget that they people we are discussing with on the internet, especially when we don't know them, are real people with all that that involves.

I read through seven pages of that and couldn't find anywhere where we actually called him a spy. In fact here it states that we didn't:

I think that it is fair to criticise the ICC for what we did. Here we didn't actually call him a spy. Yes, it is insinuated and implied, but we didn't actually come out and say it. I just wanted to be clear on that. If you had said we suggested he may be a spy, I wouldn't have had any problems with what you said.

I am, to be totally honest, not particularly interested in reading texts about who did what nearly 30 years ago. I remember reading CB at the time, and I might go back and read some of the other articles in their, but I can't say I am particularly motivated to read things like this. To be honest I think that to move on people at least need to stop talking about these events constantly, something our side is as guilty of as yours.

I am happy to discuss it. In fact, I raised exactly the same point if in different words with the ICC before I joined. I just wanted to clear up the facts first.

I am not sure if this is aimed at me. I don't think I know you. We may have met once, but I am not sure. I have never been accused of being a 'transatlantic academic' before. Ironically enough, only this week, somebody on here was telling me I had a chip on my shoulder because I hadn't been to university.

OK let's. Why don't you lay out exactly what you think needs discussing and what you think the problem is?

Devrim

Oh dear. I was hoping to ignore this thread but as we have been asked to comment I''l try to make a few points.

Year Zero is obviously a police spy for raising this issue as it does no credit to anyone! (OK no more jokes)

The ICC have done enormous discredit to the internationalist communist left in their penchant for abusive name calling. They have a French comrade (Fabienne) who is a master publicist and this is his special skill. It is a pity that WR comrades have never opposed this and indeed the whole Paris hothouse where most of the splits from the ICC continue to operate as discussion circles etc.

We have never supported any split from the ICC (although we have discussed with them) since nearly all of them have been worse than the ICC in terms of political confusion. But they have been political splits. Chenier's split was an activist one (and there were various elements in it all pulling in different directions). At the time the ICC just called him "louche" (shady) and when it was revealed he had taken a job as a bureaucrat with a French trade union federation this was taken as proof that he had had a suspect agenda all along. The CWO did not have any involvement with the ICC over this (at least to my knowledge and I am a founder member) and saw only the documents shown to us by the splitters (which included a text complaining that ICC members had to read 200 pages a month in internal documents - this was proof of their academicism and explained the agenda of the activists). We later received a pamphlet written by JM (who had been the leading member of WR at its foundation) which not only was a very personal denunciation of MC (the founder of the ICC) but also accused the CWO of being somehow complicit for not taking sides in this split!

We did see the large dossier (about 90 pages in French) which we had to read in an evening on JJ when the battle of the clans was taking place. It was document which relied on innuendo, guilt by association and the main evidence was the ICC majority clan's own articles. This is actually how the ICC argues politically. They first write a trendentious article and then it becomes the evidence for the next article. ICC members in France do not read other organisations' stuff. They have a committee to summarise it for them and we often find ourselves arguing with the ICC over what the ICC has said about our texts but not about the actual texts. Having read the JJ dossier we declined to take part in a jury of honour on JJ (who left the ICC after months of pressure - another piece of evidence of his obvious guilt, according to the ICC). The real reason for this battle of the clans was the fight for leadership of the ICC after the death of the founder. It was the least political of all the splits and demoralised some excellent ICC comrades who now take part in a discussion circle in Paris (although I am not sure how active this is now).

The ICC however are not content to accuse their splitters of parasitism. They even intervened to suggest that the Los Angeles Workers' Voice group who failed to integrate into the Bureau in 2000 were "parasites" on the IBRP. This wasn't remotely true. The LAWV people came very close to us (we discussed every day for 5 years!) but in the end they carried on past us (from Maoism to councilism). They were not then lost to the revolutionary movement even if they were in our view caught in confusion. We maintained good relations with them until they disappeared but one of them still sends praise on every issue of our paper.

The ICC though have not left us out of their methodology of demonisation. Using a letter sent to us from an Argentinian purporting to represent a split from a pro-ICC group they have accused us of all kinds of underhand tricks. This letter was only published in our Italian paper and we did not translate it despite the fact that it announced his support for the Bureau. He used the phrase that we were the "pole of regroupment" which belongs to the iCC and therefore we were not convinced by it. As it turned out this letter was inspired by the latest Paris split from the ICC (the Internal Fraction) and the ICC seems to have been terrified that they would join the Bureau hence the campaign of vituperation which culminated in the Open Letter to the IBRP (again written by the master publicist) although we had previously indicated to the ICC that we were giving no support to this Argentine comrade and considered the matter closed. [We also have no intention of admitting into our ranks people who consider themselves "the real ICC". As we have told the IFICC on several occasions - if that is their position we would rather talk to the "new ICC".] And as our leading international comrade (Mauro) was dying at the time we did not give the matter any more attention. The ICC have since published nothing but denunciations of the Bureau and WR sent a delegation to wreck our public (and there were some there) meeting in Nov 2004. They then wrote a farrago of lies about the meeting as though we had censored them when in fact we were only opposing their disruptive aims. Since then we have had positive discussions with WR but it is the ICC as a whole that are the problem. From the start they had a perspective which saw revolution as just around the corner (which is why they need to keep having pseudo theories to breathe life into organisation (chaos and decomposition for example adds nothing to the concept of decadence but does make it sound more immediate even if they can't say that). It keeps the sense of mission going. On the other hand we have always thought that we were in this for life and that the growth of revolutionary cosnciousness is not just a question of having the right words and revolutionary phraseology. The latter is behind the quasi-religious zeal of so many in the ICC. In one sense admirable, in another frightening, but it gives rise to all the caricatures of the communist left raised on so many of these boards.

I don't know how many people read the 'More Like this' links at the bottom of this thread but the 'ICC Interventions' one is genuinely related to this topic if you haven't seen it before.

I could certainly have repeated my remarks there almost word for word on this thread.

Who the hell would want to join the ICC or any of the other organizations when they read any of this garbage? To any prospective person, to anyone interested in joining, you've made the best case on why they shouldn't join your organizations after reading this crap. All you've ended up doing is making yourselves look like a bunch of self-obsessed weirdos.

These articles are not written in order make people to join the ICC. Their aim is to discuss politically the reasons of problems an organisation inside the communist left face internally.

But if you think so; what do you think should an organization of communist left be like or look like? How do you think a left communist organization discuss its internal matters openly?

do the IFICC have a specific political disagreement?

Marsella's written probably the best comment on this thread:

So at least some good has come out of it.

Let's hope, if these threads are to serve a useful purpose, that people turn to discussing something human again.

BINGO

you have finally hit the nail on th e head. Now you have to ask yourself is this really the organisation I want to be a part of? I guess for a while you will answer 'Yes', but eventually you will realise the futility of your attempt to change this internal dynamic. Until then good luck with your endeavors in this titanic task.

I don't know, Jason, it at least seems that the ICCers around here are beginning to change their ways. Perhaps one day they will look back at this time as the "Libcom-induced awakening".

Congratulations to all those most immediately involved in the events under discussion here. You have all shown remarkable restraint - especially in view of some of the comments from onlookers (I really mean cackles from the smirkers of this enclosed little world). It cannot be easy to try to unburden the weight of the nightmarish past. A lot of people (both old and new hands) reading these discussions must be holding their collective breath, dreading to see the recriminations resurface. But you do need to be a lot more expeditious! This 30 year old slate urgently needs to be wiped clean for the sake of the future. It must be time by now to move on to specific proposals to accomplish this. How about expressions of regret; commitments to avoid immoderate language and terms of abuse; maybe some kind of truth & reconciliation committee?

Or is all this debate simply going to get nowhere slowly?