The Question of Parasitism.

Petey

The IFICC disagree with the theory of chaos and decomposition and regard this as the beginning of the degeneration of the ICC. They issue a set of positions which is identical to the ICC in all other respects but you can read their stuff somewher as they have site. They have just had split too (some wanted to fold the organisation I think).

Marsella

To be called "self-obsessed" by you is almost amusing (and I have enjoyed your anarchist baiting as much as anyone). As Mikail says no-one is trying to score points here and you have to remember that when we began as left communists in the early 1970s we knew nothing. We had no models and no-one to look to (we visited Guy Aldred and peole like that to try to find a guide but didn't). I was in Solidarity with Brinton, Joe Jacobs et al and thought Solidarity summed up the situation well until I realised that it was just a group of semi-repentant Trotskyists who still supported the Labour Party (many of the regional members were on Labour Party committees) nat lib and the unions. When I realsied that Cardan was anti-marxist as well that was the final straw. I am sorry if you find this all very depressing but hopefully we too can learn from the experience and pass on to the future comrades a more coherent understanding of revolutionary politics. However the key to victory is both consciousness (hence all the arguments - proletarian consciousnes will not arrive in linear fashion) and organisation...

Through some sort of break-dancing or dirty-dancing battle. I'm thinking of something similar to Bring it On. Failing that, a gang street-fight, similar to Warriors.

I think every member should rate at least an 8 in looks. Left Communists should be sexy.

How dare you! Its not my fault I'm so good looking. ♥

As a side-note, its interesting that you met Guy Aldred & Brinton. By Cardan do you mean Cornelius Castoriadis? I like hearing about stories of people meeting old militants. It reminds me of a book I read by Avrich (?) where he met and interviewed various anarchists (I think Kropotkin's daughter, from memory). Unfortunately, most (all?) of the Left Communists I would of liked to have met were dead long before I was even born. I'm thinking of people like Bordiga, Jan Appel, Onorato Damen. Maybe I should start a thread where people can share their experiences or memories.

Love xo

You'd have been doing really well to find Guy Aldred in the 70s - he died in 1963.

Perhaps that's why they found him of little use as a guide? Compared to Lenin's corpse let's say.

Maybe it was a Guy Aldred tribute act.

thanks cleishbotham. i've been to their website but

and my french isn't quite up to that.
http://www.bulletincommuniste.org/index_eng.php

Wait a minute, are you the new LR?

~J.

hey how would you know about LR? just who are you?

Reading old threads mainly, though he may have been still around when I first started reading this place a few years back. I don't remember.

~J.

oh. uh, ok.

Shin Bet. Would make sense, they always identify through an initial, too. Don't they, Agent J?

Whoa on Guy Aldred. I knew he was dead in the Sixties and somewhere near Glasgow (I have forgotten where).

When I said we I meant the collective not the personal and I did not meet him but the RP comrade who collected some of his APCF papers from him did when he was himself in CND(or else he "misspoke" to quote Hilary Clinton and I have been under an illusioon for several decades).

I did not even meet Onorato Damen as he was a the dentist when we called in in 1977 and we did not go to Italy until after his death. I have spoken to people who heard him speak (and not necessarily left communists) and he was apparently a fantastic orator (but not so great a writer - we keep putting off translating his stuff because it is difficult).

Brinton aka Chris Pallas was a very nice man (although Brian Behan's memoirs has "the doctor" joining in beating him up when he was thrown out of the WRP!) who listened to what people said except when thye tried to defned the Russian revolution!. He was in full retreat from Trotskyism like his mentor Castoriadis (who was ctually in the same tradition of end of ideology cold war ex-Trots like Schachtman, Bell etc who also abandoned class politics too.

I withdraw my previous comment that I think ICC members are self-obsessed weirdos. Every ICC member I’ve communicated with has been very respectful and interested in my political views, rather than simply explaining theirs. But when I read stuff about free-masons and agents of the state it sounds like something out of Lord of the Flies.

Yes, I understand that police agents may attempt to infiltrate communist organizations. Strong evidence needs to be clearly provided for such an accusation. Parasitism is a disgusting term to use to label other Left Communists. Wrapping it up in Marxist jargon and historical quotes is pathetic.

I find the writing style used in these articles extremely off putting. It is very tedious and I doubt few here have the desire to read through them. I think some of the ICC articles are well written but most read like they were written in 1914. To me, something should be expressed as clearly as possible and as in few words as possible, and should be enjoyable to read. I don’t think this is the case for most ICC articles (this isn’t something just applicable to the ICC, however).

And this comes from someone who is largely in agreement with the majority of the stances of the ICC, how would someone else feel? To me, a Left Communist has certain stances on national liberation, unions, and parliament. As far as I am aware, the IBRP (I forget its new name) and the ICC agree on these things (though it seems the ICC puts emphasis on ‘decadence’). That’s what I think is important.

I probably disagree with what the ICC sees as the purpose of a revolutionary organization.

I think an organization of communists should be employed like a weapon. A party is a weapon furnished by workers in political struggle and to further that purpose. To unite workers into a centralized force across workplaces, industries and geographic location. An international communist party, also seems to me to have the purpose of uniting all revolutionary groups into some sort of body which can collectively discuss/organize (I’m thinking of something like the IMWA).

Such an organization should be about providing a leadership role in organizing and fighting class struggle. Ultimately, such an organization should aim at getting as much influence as possible. Arguing for strikes, organizing solidarity actions, arguing for a radical stances in opposition to union leaders, exposing the nationalism of other leftists and of the bourgeoisie state.

I presume you are referring to John Taylor Caldwell, who only died quite recently.

Devrim

There was an interview with Bordiga

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOvwH9m-MCI&feature=player_embedded

In answer to Devrim's question

he can find the answer in Theses on Parasitism

This written statement, along with the Written Warning was accompanied by a word of mouth campaign by the ICC within the milieu stating the same.

This is the most serious allegation that can be made about anyone. It can end a comrades political life, at the very least. In certain circumstances it can be a threat to life. It should be made only when the evidence is clear and overwhelming.

In the same sentence they manage to indict the CBG. Elsewhere in the article the CBG is described as Chenier's "avatar". This is despite the fact that they knew full well that we had no discussion with him, no meetings, no correspondence and did not share his positions. Our crime was to state that we couldn't accept such a serious denunciation without some degree of proof. For that we have had 28 years of slander and outright lies.

Loads of anarchists are laughing their heads off at the self important and deeply deluded drivel being spouted by the "left communists" on this thread.

If you don't find this kind of thing interesting or amusing (and you're far from alone in that either) then I suggest you concentrate on threads that are more to your liking.

It's also important to remember the ICC and their rivals represent a tiny number of people even within the fairly small revolutionary left/anarchist milieu.

Fair enough, I was just going on what people in the ICC had said, and what Alf said on this thread:

But I was obviously wrong. I hope people believe that I was acting in good faith, and didn't mean to deceive. Actually, I was just reading the 'Thesis on Parasitism' today after work, and saw this, and was about to 'confess up' anyway.

Devrim

You can't blame Alf and Ernie, they are obvisously passed it, time to talk to Paris about you assuming their mantle, methinks.

This thread appears to have reached the end of its useful life and this might be a good point to both sum up and point the way forward. It’s obvious that the vast bulk of the milieu simply does not accept the ICC’s theory of parasitism. It is viewed with ridicule and disgust. It is seen, correctly in my view, as a construct to enable them to suppress and destroy disagreement and dissent. It involves them in duplicities, outright lies and behaviour which over the years have been incredibly destructive to them and the wider milieu; from the spurious appeal to proletarian history to repeated false allegations of the most serious kind against comrades.

In short, comrades, you have managed to cover yourselves in shit throughout this thread. You have demonstrated repeatedly down through the years a willingness to conflate genuine differences between comrades with the intrusion of an alien, hostile class – either the bourgeoisie or the petit bourgeoisie. How can comrades ever feel confident in debate if at any moment they can be accused of being an agent of the state, a gangster, a parasite, a mason, a clan member et al?

What we talking about here is the whole question of organisation which obviously needs a whole new thread. However, we can make some suggestions here. We stand by the class lines already defended by the ICC, the IBRP(CWO) etc but we think the practice of both organisations is tainted by the last period of profound defeat for the class. What might have been appropriate to survive the 20’s and 30’s when revolutionary existence was under dire threat is grotesquely inappropriate in the present period. The struggle for political clarity, which both organisations played a central part in is not a process which is ever finished. We must organise in a way which can embrace this, which can include all elements which contribute to this. Monolithism and sectarianism remains a barrier to this whole process. To quote from “Another look at the Organisation Question” http:cbg.100mb.com/organisation_2pdf

“We reject the notion that defence of clarity on the class lines and commitment to a centralised mode of organisation is synonymous with monolithism and sectarianism, along the lines of the ICC and the CWO. One of the lessons we’ve tried to draw in this text is that an organisation can’t survive as an organ of the class without the widest and most thorough-going freedom of debate both internally and publicly and that is inseparable from the free operation of tendencies and fractions. Far from seeing this as a sign of “immaturity and degeneration” as the ICC do, we think this is an inevitable sign of the health of an organisation. . . . . a practical rejection of sectarianism must start by understanding that in a milieu as tiny, fragmented and remote from the life of the class as ours, there is almost nothing to stand in the way of arbitrariness in the adoption of positions. Therefor, we should exercise a profound seriousness and responsibility about the gravity of taking up a position organisationally, and a profound caution about the way we choose to defend those positions in the political milieu in which we work. But standing alongside this caution must be a positive boldness about opening up debate publicly. The whole revolutionary movement must put away its current timidity. It’s the suppression of debate we have to fear. The milieu is too tiny and weak to be able to afford the bottling up of debate inside individual organisations. We have to exorcise the notion that political clarity and cohesion demands either the total agreement of everyone on everything . . . .”

I agree with you that the ICC are loons but you lost me at that point.

there have been a number of l-c threads here now, and all of them reach a certain point, when members of l-c organizations say words to this effect: "we must be honest about the past, to put aside the cheap stuff and find a comradely way forward." and it never happens (except maybe in the recent midlands discussion meeting, but not all tendencies were represented there, afaik). there will anon be another thread in which posters will make nasty comments covered (or not) in hifalutin language.

also, i claim no expertise to judge the theory of parasitism, but i think that it is unnecessary, and it's clearly counter-productive; if the charge is going to be used it should be used against the likes of the republican and democratic, tory and labor parties. using it against your close ideologues is merely the narcissism of small differences.

For all the left-communists' critique of nationalism I think - in their need to claim, maintain and protect their political ancestry - some of them can fall into the same absurd traps as occur when constructing a national identity. Reading this thread made me think of Orwell's article; http://libcom.org/library/notes-nationalism-george-orwell

Of course, this only applies to left communists. It could never be true of anarchists or syndicalists.

Well, anarchists and syndicalists in general aren't as hard on nationalism, so that the irony is less striking.

(So are we pretty much just gonna slag off the ICC for the rest of this?)

Don't judge me by your own sectarianism - as I put in the intro to the article; "As such, his comments can still be seen to be largely relevant across the spectrum of many political and religious organisations today." But this thread is about left communists.

it would be nice to know to whom you're responding then. anyway, i am unaware that any anarchist or syndicalist grouping has a specific category equivalent to 'parasite'. abusive name-calling, yes, dismissive attitude too, no attempt at a theoretically-grounded term of anathema tho'.

but you're not talking about that. in fact i have never read, at least on this board or on other boards like it, a series of arguments among syndicalists or anarchists groupings like the ones here among the l-c's, for the reason i gave. can you point me to one? whether this happened in print or person i can't say. among syndicalists i know that the IWA had a problem with the WSA; and some syndicalist unions have been read out of the IWA for engaging in state-connected activity, but they don't bang on about it like this, either you're an an-archist or you're not.

I agree that it's clearly counter-productive, but I'm not sure it makes sense to describe the main bourgeois parties as parasitic. There are many good reasons to hate the tories, but I don't think you can justifiably accuse them of living like fleas off the back of the ICC and "publishing texts which on the surface adhere to the communist left... and which at the same time denigrate in different ways... the serious groups of the proletarian political milieu."

true, i was thinking a) in terms of parasites on workers and the working class, which i thought was kinda included in the idea 'proletarian milieu', and b) just in a dictionary sense of 'organisms which live by sucking their life out of other organisms without killing them', which would excellently describe said political parties (or even all political parties).