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The ICC and its new Policy of Fraternization with Anarchism
To team up with anarchism, is to betray the proletariat

Disgust, nausea, here is what we felt at first when we read the last innovations of the opportunist ICC with regards to anarchism. Let's just judge from the titles of two of its articles published in World Revolution 336 and in Révolution internationale 414 : The communist left and internationalist anarchism: What we have in common ; and Réunion CNT-AIT de Toulouse du 15 avril 2010 : vers un creuset de la réflexion internationaliste [Meeting of the CNT-AIT, April 15th,2010 : towards the setting up of reflection network in the internationalist Milieu]. Two titles which come - oh so much ! - verify the soundness of the warning we issued in the bulletin 48 of the Internal Fraction of the ICC : Anarchism seeks to infiltrate the Proletarian Camp and the present ICC opens it the door (in French and Spanish only¹).

Disgust, nausea, but also now anger and rage ! There is no question to let without reaction, without fighting, the fatal outcome that this new step announces, fatal outcome which is on the way to be achieved "quietly". If sincere members and sympathizers of the ICC still remain and seeks to resist and save what still can be saved, it belongs to us to help them as much as we can as well as it belongs to us to save the communist honour and the political legacy of the ICC.

We had already denounced what seemed to be dangerous skids of the present ICC towards anarchism². It has distributed a common leaflet with two openly Anarchist groups in Mexico. But now, with its "fraternal" opening towards anarchism, the ICC initiates its break with the proletariat's camp, with marxism, with the workers movement's history, in particular with the Communist Left's one, thus with its own history ! It is an important step towards the foreseeable disappearance of this organization as a proletariat's organization which emerges through the break with its own political platform, through the loss, or worst the dissolution, of its last militant communist forces under the flood of leftist elements ; in other terms in its theoretical-political as well as militant disintegration ! Is there still time to save something from this organization ? Is there still time that members end up, finally, to react and organize consequently within it, in order to fight against the "forecast death", on the way to be realized, of the ICC as a proletariat's political organization ? Because that is where we are now ! Isn't it fraternizing openly with anarchism, current that the Communist Left has definitively categorized as counter-revolutionary and that the true ICC did not stop to denounce as a component of the extreme-Left of Capital ?

Exaggeration from our part ? Let's judge :

"Concretely, our organisation, which is marxist, considers that it is fighting for the proletariat on the same side [underlined in the French version of this article] as the internationalist anarchist militants and against the « Communist » and Maoist parties which also claim to be marxist. Why?

Within capitalist society, there are two basic camps : the camp of the bourgeoisie and the camp of the working class. We denounce and combat all the political organisations which belong to the former. We discuss, often in a sharp but always a fraternal manner, and seek to cooperate with, all the members of the second. But under the same label of « marxist » there are genuinely bourgeois and reactionary organisations. The same goes for the « anarchist » label".

How can the ICC comrades who still keep some small memory and communist conviction swallow such a lie according to which anarchist organizations can today belong to the camp of the working class ? They do accept thus to betray and to break with the class positions with our platform ! The betrayal comes with, some lines below, a class collaboration which is openly claimed : "Today, in France for example, the same name « CNT » covers two anarchist organisations, one which defends authentically revolutionary positions (CNT-AIT) and another which is purely « reformist » and reactionary (the CNT  «Vignoles »)".

Have these comrades of the ICC who still keep a little bit of communist reflexes, gone to have a look to the CNT-AIT web site and to its documents ? Do they know this organization carries on claiming openly to anarcho-unionism ? Self-management ["autogestion" in French and Spanish] ? The policy of the CNT during the Spanish war (thus of Federica Monseny and her owns who actively participated to the Popular Front, so fatal for our class) and the anti-fascist struggle ? Decades of political fight of the ICC against the anarchist danger are thrown through the window with no debate, with not any political confrontation... with no reluctance, nor opposition³ ?

Can the comrades of the ICC who still keep some "class notions", accept that it be pronounced in their name this sentences so closed to touted leftism : "Communist militants are still very thin on the ground today and there is nothing more harmful than isolation. We therefore have to fight against the tendency to stand up for your own « chapel », your own « family » (whether marxist or anarchist), against the shop-keeper's spirit which has nothing to do with the politics of the working class". The historical struggle of marxism against the petit-bourgeois anarchist ideology is so reduced to a rivalry between shopkeepers ! We do choke with rage in front of such words !

Well then what can we say, what do you say comrades of the ICC, about the article written in Spanish ¿ Cuál es nuestra actitud ante compañeros que se reclaman del anarquismo ? (What is our attitude towards comrades who claim to anarchism ?). This article attempts to respond to the indignant reactions of sympathizers - and obviously to "internal reluctances" of members -⁴ and to justify the new position. It has the cheek to pretend that the ICC position in regards to anarchism "has not changed"⁵. Even worse, this last article even comes to say that "the anarchist ideology [expresses] a willingness of struggle against exploitation and oppression and, so, it is part with no doubt on the ground of the struggle against capitalism. Clearly sharing this ground, the disagreements we have, are at the level of method" (translated by us from Spanish). The Spanish language comrades of the ICC have always got the "skill" to charge into the new orientations, above all the most confuse and opportunist, and to become their extreme speakers at the expense sometimes of big disillusions. Thus, comrades of the ICC, of our ICC (if it remains something of it), between marxism and the "anarchist ideology", there is only a difference of method according to those who represent you. Comrade MC whose icon you like to brandish, must be turning in his grave !

And to end up with this nauseating literature, "cherry on the cake" as it is said in French, if we can use this word for such leftist shit, the article What we have in common concludes proclaiming loudly and brandishing its Declaration like a banner, that "the ICC belongs to the same camp as these internationalist anarchists who really defend working class autonomy. Yes, we consider them as comrades with whom we want to debate and cooperate. Yes, we also think that these anarchist militants have more in common with the communist left than with those who, under the label of anarchism, actually defend nationalist and reformist positions and are thus really defenders of capitalism".

The communists in the same camp as the anarchists ? But how can the last militants of the true ICC who have still kept a minimum of memory and concern for coherence with the programmatical positions of this organization, accept this ? What are the two arguments put forwards for such a revision, such a betrayal ? Sincerity of the "good" anarchist militants (in opposition to the "bad") and their supposed internationalism. It is a long time since the ICC, our ICC, had rejected to the garbage the argument of the militants' sincerity  :

"When we question the class nature of a political organization which claim to be « worker one » or « revolutionary », one responds us with the argument of the « militants' sincerity » (above all the one of the rank and file). The absurdity of this argument lies on a metaphysical separation between the organization and its members, between « the good militants » and the « bad leaders » (...). One way or another : whether we reason in terms of class and we found the political nature of an organization on class criterion ; and then the only revolutionary attitude in front of the illusions which inescapably emerge amongst the individuals in rupture with the present society, is the open denunciation of their illusions and of the role that the latter make them objectively to play. Or rather one gets stuck in the individualist ground where he flounders inevitably in the moralistic metaphysics of the « individual motivations ». One begins to affirm the « right to mistake » and one always ends up mixing up the respect for the individual who is mistaken with the respect for its mistake (...). All this « no-sectarian » attitude has its roots in the confusion and cannot but serve confusion ; it denies itself beforehand all the means to tackle this question of the class nature of a political organization since it gives up since the beginning the class problematic.

Such a way to consider the problem would be a simple confusion (...) if this confusion was not a counter-revolutionary force, if its concrete result would not be, one more time, to allow the defence of bourgeois organizations within the workers movement" (The last part is underlined by us, Sommes-nous sectaires ? [Are we sectarian ?] Révolution internationale n°8, 1974, signed RV, translated by us).

For the supposed internationalism of some anarchists, it will suffice to refer to our article of the bulletin 48 of the Internal Fraction of the ICC, in particular when it says : "We can see here in what consists the « true internationalism » of Marx and Engels : in the uncompromising defence of the International as « real and militant organization of the working class in all countries » which fights for the overthrow of all the capitalist States and the institution of the political power of the working class (the dictatorship of the proletariat), in opposition to the « creators of sects » , firstly the anarchists, who tend to reduce it. It means that, for revolutionary marxism, the proletarian internationalism has never been an abstract principle, nor even a simple declaration of being « against all the States, nations and imperialist wars ». For marxism, internationalism implies a concrete effort of the working class to organize itself at international scale, to act in a unified and centralized way too at international scale, at aiming to world communist revolution. These two concrete expressions of proletarian internationalism - working class's centralized organization and struggle for world communist revolution - through the setting up of the proletarian dictatorship - are antagonistic, are opposed, to anarchism basis (that is why the ICC, trying to seek collaboration with the anarchists, must reduce internationalism to the simple attitude in front of war)". Maybe should we recall briefly to the last ICC members who keep discreetly, without exposing themselves within their organization - secretly and hidden ? Shamefully ?- some political remains of the past, that the anarchists who became real internationalists, in particular during the 1^st World war, succeeded to do so by supporting the Russian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, communism and by becoming bolshevik militants ; it means when they broke with their anarchism of origin. The most famous case being Victor Serge's. But there are much others.

Thus, anarchism and communism in the same camp ? The liquidationnist faction who took control of the ICC in 2001 and which was "obliged" to erase us and to exclude us in order to be able to make its dirty work of liquidation of our organization is getting to its ends. The "official" ICC is on the way to self-destroy by teaming up with class enemies, by rejecting marxism's struggle against anarchism. There is not a single moment of the workers movement history where the struggle against anarchism has not been present. Marx, obviously the first, who in Poverty of the Philosophy, already settles the question of the relation of anarchism with communism by settling its distinguished "theoretician" : Mr Proudhon "wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism (...).To sum up, M. Proudhon has not gone further than the petty-bourgeois ideal".

Since then, marxism has always fought the anarchist ideology as foreign to the proletariat and particularly dangerous for this latter. Quotations of marxist revolutionaries criticizing and even denouncing anarchism as alien to the proletariat are legion - we have reproduced some in our articles of the bulletin 48 of the Internal Fraction and the first issue of this International Communist Bulletin. If at first, in the beginnings of capitalism, the anarchist petit-bourgeois ideology could still represent an independent ideology from capital, in our days, capitalism having become the universal mode of production, this ideology cannot even claim any "autonomy" and is utilized by capital as a direct weapon against the proletariat and its revolutionary theory. Marx and Engels's fight within the 1^st International against Bakunin has marked important moments and fundamental theoretical and political steps, in particular on the political dimension of the proletariat's struggle and on the question of the State. This fight against the anarchist ideology had gone on within the 2^nd International - for instance with Plekhanov's book Anarchism and Socialism : "The Anarchists are Utopians. Their point of view has nothing in common with that of modern scientific Socialism".

Lenin, despite it is in his most "positive" book towards anarchists if so we can say, The State and the Revolution, comes back with no ambiguity about the relationship between anarchism and communism : "Against, the most remarkable thing in this argument of Engels' [he says referring to Engels's text on Authority (1872] is the way he states his case against the anarchists. Social-Democrats, claiming to be disciples of Engels, have argued on this subject against the anarchists millions of times since 1873, but they have not argued as Marxists could and should. The anarchist idea of abolition of the state is muddled and non-revolutionary - that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the revolution in its rise and development, with its specific tasks in relation to violence, authority, power, the state, that the anarchists refuse to see" (Lenin underlines)..

Unless one believes that the questions of class violence, of power and State, are not but questions of "method" and not question of principle, of class, it is clear that it is a class gulf which separates anarchism from marxism. It is precisely one contribution of the Italian Communist Left which brought to the fore the character, not tactical, nor of simple "method", but of class principle in regards to these questions. It is with this conception that it never stopped to denounce anarchism : "Anarchism opposes deeply to the communist conceptions" (Theses of the Communist Abstentionist Fraction of the Italian Socialist Party, May 1920, translated by us). "The party (...) condemns (...) anarchism which denies the historical need for the State and the proletarian dictatorship in order to transform the social organization and to suppress the division of society in class" (Project of Theses presented at the 3^rd Congress of the Communist Party of Italy, Lyon 1926, translated by us). Afterwards, Bilan, the review of the Left Fraction of the CP of Italy, is particularly clear on the class nature of anarchism and doesn't stop denouncing it in Spain : "May 4^th 1937, this same proletarians, provided with arms, left much more victims in the streets than in July [1936] when they had to repel Franco and it is the anti-fascist government - composed with anarchists and which the POUM indirectly shows solidarity with - which unleashes the rabble of the repressive forces against the workers. (...) In order to realize its counter-revolutionary plan, the bourgeoisie can also call to the Centrists, the Socialists, the CNT, the FAI, to the POUM, which, all of them, make the workers believe that the nature of the State changes when the personnel who manages it, changes of color. (...) The last events of Barcelone lugubriously confirm our initial thesis and they discover that it is with cruelty equal to Franco's that the Popular Front, flanked by the anarchists and the POUM, throws itself against the insurgent workers of May 4^th" (Bilan 41, May-June 1937, translated by us).

But it is not only with the whole history of the workers movement that the present ICC is on the way to break with, but also with its own history which did not but fit in with marxism continuity in its struggle against anarchism. We have recalled it, here too in the texts of our precedent bulletins already mentionned above, several quotations of our written works of the ICC. Still in the years 1990, and contrary to what it declares now, it defended clearly that the anarchist ideology "represented the penetration of alien class viewpoints into the ranks of the proletariat" (Communism is not just a nice idea... Anarchism or Communism, International Review 79, 1994).

If it does not rise up a determined and strong political reaction within our organization, sufficiently strong to put a stop to the present catastrophic dynamic, it won't last long to explode because the accumulation of political and class contradictions which pile up and to disappear for the proletariat.

The points 7, The Trade Unions, yersterday organs of the proletariat, today instruments of the capital, 9, Frontism : a strategy for derailing the proletariat, 11, Self-management : workers self-exploitation, 12, « Partial » struggles : a reactionary dead-end, of our platform, the political and principle platform of the ICC, we limit our quotations to these points, oppose directly to anarchism. They all end in almost the same terms : "Any political position which (even in the name of « working class experience » or of « establishing new relations among workers ») defends self management [or unionism, or frontism] is, in fact, objectively participating in the preservation of capitalist relations of production [... and is] directly serving the interests of the bourgeoisie".

These successive points of our political platform allow this one to conclude and to draw a political lesson of extreme importance which is in contradiction with what the "official" ICC now develops :

"All the so-called ‘revolutionary’ currents – such as Maoism which is simply a variant of parties which had definitively gone over to the bourgeoisie, or Trotskyism which, after constituting a proletarian reaction against the betrayal of the Communist Parties was caught up in a similar process of degeneration, or traditional anarchism, which today places itself in the framework of an identical approach by defending a certain number of positions of the SPs and CPs, such as « anti-fascist alliances » – belong to the same camp : the camp of capital. Their lesser influence or their more radical language changes nothing as to the bourgeois basis of their programme, but makes them useful touts or supplements of these parties".

Our organization, the International Communist Current, and its "sincere" members find themselves in front of a dramatical contradiction ; dramatical for its political consequencies, and even more dramatical since it won't be possible to postpone the political deadline and the final settling of scores of all these last ten years of escape from the fight against opportunism. The organization CNT-AIT which is presented by the liquidators of the ICC as "authentically revolutionary" has for a long time proved its anti-proletarian nature and we all know it ! Whether the platform of the ICC is to be thrown out or whether it is still valid and then the political dynamic - and the liquidationnist faction which has been its main factor and which seems to be itself gone beyond by the bastard it has given birth to - which has led our organization where it is today, it means up to defend as proletarian an organization enemy to the proletariat, is to be fought and to be eliminated from the ICC !

Fight again and again ; and in your case, "sincere" militants of the ICC, it means to fight finally despite all the affront you have swallowed and the humiliations you have suffered, it means taking back the banner of the ICC, its positions, its past struggles ; here is the only mean to regain conviction and communist energy. Rise up and fight !

August 2^nd 2010.

The Fraction of the International Communist Left.

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