THE REGROUPING OF THE REVOLUTIONARIES
How the present ICC destroys 30 years of struggle for the regrouping of the revolutionaries
(2nd part)

In a first article we showed how the ICC has been built and how it carried out a permanent struggle in order to gather revolutionary energies, isolated groups or elements, around the communist positions.

With the first signs of brutal acceleration of the economic crisis (1967-68) the small group which gave rise to Internacionalismo (Venezuela), then to Révolution Internationale, analyzed that a change of period was under way and that the first working class fights which had started in France into 1968 inaugurated an upheaval in the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

This situation required that a process should be set up, making it possible to initiate the discussion, to confront the positions and dissensions around the fundamental questions which emerged owing to this situation and which clearly needed a positioning in particular on behalf of the groups having survived, on a revolutionary ground, during the long period of counter-revolution. These questions were numerous : nature of the October Revolution, nature of the Eastern European countries, nature of the economic crisis, responsibilities for the revolutionaries, need for the Party. But their common denominator was this one : we had entered a new period where the alternative, war or revolution had been coming back to the front of the scene.

Moreover this situation implied a resolute struggle against all the old deviations which the bourgeoisie was bringring up to that date and in which it was seeking to involve the proletariat : fights for "national liberation", "partial" struggles (women's liberation for instance…), pacifist and reformist path (parliamentarism) like the only possibility for passing from the capitalist system to a communist one, moreover denatured.

Finally and above all, the fight against the anti-party and anti-organization conceptions which were multiplying, pretending to ensure a radical rupture with Stalinism.

Consequently Révolution Internationale had attempted to tie or join again contacts at the international level in order, as first objective, to launch this discussion, to integrate and to imply revolutionary energies in this process, to allow by this way that should be made a selection of the authentically revolutionary forces, that the various currents should be delimited thus clearly making it possible to create a true pole of reference of the positions of the communist Left.

And indeed, during the years 1970-80 one could see developing the richest debates between the revolutionary organizations and within them : under the double effect of the evolution of the general situation and the development of the debate (meetings, conferences, polemics by way of press, common public meetings), the political milieu moved. The organizations, connecting themselves to the political and organizational tradition of the Communist Left, strengthened their positions and managed to constitute a real pole of reference on the essential and vital positions while maintaining their diversities. In spite of their differences, of rough and often virulent discussions, they constituted nevertheless an essential leaning point for the policy guideline of the reflection, a vital bench mark for all the energies which were emerging amongst the class, searching for the communist positions.

In parallel, a decantation was done with the thread of the time. Thus gradually, the groups and elements strongly marked by the organic rupture related to 50 years of counter-revolution as by the student milieu from which they often came, conveying most terrible confusion on the questions of the moment, generally preaching dispersion in the name of the originality, making themselves the promoters of the no-debate while asserting that "all this will not make advance the history", all these disappeared the ones after the others. The first part of our article thus evokes a multitude of groups and ‘groupuscules’ emerged during this time and which did not resist to the wind of history.

While coming within this process of regrouping, while using, in this intention, means and methods which it was going to draw from history, all the history of the workers movement, the ICC did not count, therefore, on an immediate result. It was actually in a process that it engaged, in a struggle which could be stated only on the long term. And if, by adventure, this process could have resulted in an immediate profit of militant forces (widening of the ICC in several continents) it was a considerable but nevertheless relatively secondary matter in comparison with the priority that constituted the creation and the systematization of a place of debate, of confrontation and defence of the communist positions and the constitution of a true international pole of the Communist Left.

It is a quite different policy which the current ICC follows up, almost exclusively turned towards a rejection of the discussion, a total contempt toward the positions and analyses proposed by the other groups of the proletarian camp such as this one continues today. The danger of sectarianism which it fought during 30 years, here is that it immersed in to its turn and, worse than that, it raises it as a mean of supposed resistance, of supposed remedy, in a ready made formula, vis-a-vis the internal crises that any revolutionary organization confront necessarily.

All its past practice, its analyses, its programmatic positions are today revisited, one after the other, in the light of its new vision of the period in which the decomposition became the determining axis in the situation, that very one which goes in the direction of the definitive burial of the historical alternative proposed and defended by the revolutionaries : that of war or revolution.

Logic in its drift, but terribly gnawed by its tender for this new destroying and ahistoric theory, it comes to give up its past practice, to even condemn it without however considering necessary to defend publicly and seriously its new orientation, in spite of the constant heckling which are made to him (readers, revolutionary groups, without forgetting our fraction). A decisive stage in this trajectory is the renunciation, asserted like a proof of political clarity, to the intervention on and in the situation which proceeds under our eyes : on the war and its preparations by the bourgeoisie, on the resumption of the working class struggles. And, a sign quite as significant, the present ICC ended up leaving up any policy of regrouping of the revolutionary forces around the communist positions. It is what we will illustrate in this text.

II - The present ICC or : how the liquidationism acts as a destruction force

For the first time of all its history, one sees the CCI suddenly accumulating, in a few years, a large whole of practices in complete contradiction with the principles and practical defended during more than 30 years, without never appears the outline of a serious political explanation.

Let us, first of all, draw aside the false lawsuit (one more) which one could make us according to which we would have a purely democratic conception of the communist program. Far from us the idea that any question, any idea itching the head of the first one to come must be without delay the subject of a mobilization of all the proletarian milieu ; even less that any question resolved by the history of the working class itself must systematically, imperatively and forthwith, be the subject of a questioning. This method being a matter of the petty-bourgeois immediatism, we leave it to all the innovators so often and pitilessly fought by the Marxists and whose destiny is indicated to us in the pitiful bankruptcy of all the groupuscules and individuals who, because they have preached this type of method, asphyxiated themselves in the years 1970 –80.

But the questions carried by a given period, which require a decoding of the outstanding events in a given situation, the dominant and the determining tendency that they indicate and, to speak more concretely, of the events such as a succession of working struggles at the international level, or a succession of crises in a revolutionary organization, all these questions must be taken bodily, be examined, invested with the weapons of criticism by the whole revolutionary forces.

1. New method: To exclude the divergent points of view

During more than 30 years, the ICC developed a constant and stubborn effort to organize places of discussion open to all, proletarian groups and isolated elements. The extracts of press testify to the constant effort to encourage the confrontation of the positions in its own public meetings. In the same way the ICC always made a point of honor to take an active part in the meetings organized by the other groups, like it has always been the tradition in the workers movement.

We saw that, until recently, vis-a-vis its oppositionists and in particular those which deserted the ground of the internal struggle, the ICC always had as policy to seek by any means to continue (or engage) the debate openly and if possible publicly so that all the political questions in divergence are put, clarified until the end and are finally resolved, on the organizational level, in a direction or in another, to prevent that the personal grievances do not come to pollute the strictly political discussion. The significant examples of this willingness are numerous but the most obvious is that of the invitation made toward the PIC (Pour une Intervention Communiste : For a Communist Intervention), recently and hastily made up, to come to discuss publicly the divergences that opposed it to the ICC (1). The PIC refused at the time this field of expression appealing, for its cause, with the most stupid reasons. Today, it is the present ICC which is found in the position of the PIC, it is the one which adopts and sets in music the escape in front of the debate. Is it because it is conscious of our determination that the ICC did not venture to reiterate this proposal ? No. The simple chronological account of the behavior of the new ICC these last years is enough to check that it is well another political line which ended up overcoming, putting a term at the orientation towards the opening and the political debate.

- During the public meeting in Paris of January 9^th 2002, each one among us (future members of the fraction) discreetly receives a small message on a crumpled paper notifying us the order "to communicate to presidium our possible intention to intervene as well as the axis of this intervention". At the time, let us underline it, we were still militant of the ICC and were not the subject then of any official prohibition to intervene publicly. This small fact can appear benign but such a practice had never been established in the ICC up to that point ; moreover it was already a significant degree of renouncement of the political struggle which was going to set up quickly.

- A few months later (August 2003), a public meeting in Mexico is purely and simply cancelled by the local section because militants of our fraction are present and are decided to defend their point of view on the topic of the meeting. To the political cowardice is added, in this case, irresponsibility and the contempt for any isolated element which would have the idea (absurd?) to seek a place of discussion and political reflection nearby the present ICC.

- In Paris again, they try (March 16^th 2002) to prohibit us to speak and it is only on insistence of several sympathizers that we manage to expose our point of view on the international situation and the warlike preparations (see our report of this meeting in the bulletin n° 8). Our intervention and the different points of view that we oppose to the analysis developed by the ICC, all that will be voluntarily ignored, obviously on order of the liquidationist leadership, and no matter the seriousness of the situation and the importance of the questions evoked.

- a decisive step is made during the Public meeting in Paris the June 29^th 2002 when the ICC prohibits us to speak, referring to an alleged "motion" (of course, never published and never communicated to us !) we don't know who decided it, vaguely stumbled by the presidium of this meeting and "mandating" the ICC and its militants, not only to prohibit the word to us in the public meetings but still "to break any political, personal, friendly relation… with the members of our fraction" (see our text "Until where the `new' ICC will go in the abandonment of its principles " in the bulletin 12). Vis-a-vis this attitude which confirmed the sectarian drift that we had identified since one moment already, we wrote in the same text : "We launch this call to all the groups, all the militants (including and especially those of the ICC) and to all the sympathizers of the Communist Left : do not be unaware of what occurs with the ICC today ! Intervene in your publications, in the meetings which you can have, with contacts, etc…

A significant number – on the scale of the weak revolutionary forces of today - militants are involved in a political dead end and, in the long term, in the despair and the abandonment of the combat of class. The present drift of the ICC – whatever our political disagreements are – can only carry damage and discredit to the whole tradition of the Communist Left. From a pole of regrouping and a political reference, the ICC is becoming – it is inescapable if the current process goes to its term – an obstacle to the regrouping, regrouping understood with the meaning of discussion and clarification policies, of the revolutionary forces. It becomes the parasite of the Communist Left. Its foil " (we underline). The process could only be pushed further, in direction of the groups of the proletarian camp on which the ICC will make insistent pressures so that they break in their turn any relation with our fraction. The objective is simple : it consists less, in reality, to isolate our fraction, than to try by all means to impel within the groups of the Communist Left, an environment of reciprocal mistrust, of shrinkage, of sectarianism. Failure. Because the groups of the proletarian camp show, from this point of view, a maturity and an experience that the new ICC could not imagine : henceforth, in fact, the stakes of the situation direct their intervention and not the coarse and petty operations of a paranoiac ICC.

- a comrade of the fraction (militant of the ICC until 1995) still had the possibility of intervening since no fact was reproached to him. That's no problem, a new rule has been invented : before being allowed to intervene on the topic on the agenda, he is ordered to pronounce, preliminarily and publicly, "Jonas' case" and, as he refuses to support the infamies that the ICC pour on this comrade, then it is meant to him that henceforth, it will have to keep silent.

- Some meetings later, as we persist in being present and willing to defend our points of view on the questions of political analysis (see in our bulletins the various reports and projects of intervention), we are publicly and "without possible discussion" (sic!) prohibited of presence and declared also publicly "persona non grata".

Where the true ICC would have encouraged, provoked the public discussion on a political ground, the present ICC calls upon the most pitiful reasons to justify its escape in front of the debate and the confrontation of the disagreements.

2. One step more : to flee the differing points of view

The ICC has always defended this other principle consisting in giving an account of these meetings in its press in order to inform the readers, to explicate the positions which had been confronted there, to comment on them, to enrich them or criticize them. It is not a fate if the various territorial presses of the CCI devoted a specific heading, often packed with these minutes of meetings. This orientation arises also clearly from the extracts of press which we reproduced.

The present ICC ended up leaving also the defense of this principle. Worse than that, it affirms on the contrary today, than this practice is against the communist tradition. Thus the publication of such reports is comparable with an "act of espionnage", "this is work worthy of the agents of the Renseignements Generales (French security forces)!", "an irrefutable illustration of a police attitude" and the militants who "come to our meetings and write copious notes about them" are denounced as "open and avowed sneaks" who "are snitching gratis and for their own reason" (World Revolution 267, September 2003, The ICC doesn’t allow snitches into its public meetings).

Concerning the public meetings of the other groups of the political milieu, the ICC, on that question too, radically turns his back to the policy which was always his. While it always fought in the past, including in its own ranks, against the hesitations to affirm a regular political presence in all the places of discussion and in particular in the meetings held by the groups of the proletarian camp, it deserted today these same meetings, quite as "regularly", in particular where its new policy is likely to be denounced concretely… in the name of the principles of the ICC itself and where the description of the treason of the latter could not be contradicted by its current members.

These various examples, by their systematic repetition, are symptomatic of a conscious and deliberated policy, of an orientation aiming at evacuating the combat for the defence of its political positions, ABC-stage for a revolutionary organization. The intervention in the public meetings constitutes a particular dimension of the intervention in the working class. The abandonment of this ground of intervention goes hand in hand with the policy of deliberated ignorance and contempt displayed by the ICC in particular vis-a-vis the last working class’ struggles in France, Great Britain or Italy.

As for the pretexts proposed by the ICC to justify its new policy, they appear for what they are : invented, ridiculous and deeply anti-communists arguments. The ICC would have a new principle : the refusal to find itself in front of the fraction. We fought, on multiple occasions (and we will do it as often as necessary), this attitude justified by the worst calumnies, in particular that we should be State agents. But beyond these speeches, being more a matter of paranoia than of a healthy political confrontation, an obvious question calls for response on behalf of the ICC : is it the only presence of licensed and proven representatives of the bourgeois State, like are for example the trade unions in the struggles and demonstrations, which explains also the nature of the intervention (or rather of non-intervention !) that the ICC decided to adopt ? Does the only presence of police informers in the demonstrations prohibit to the ICC to be present in those and to defend there, highly and strongly, its positions ? When will we see "secret" public meetings in which the no-debate will be seen as a sign of high vitality ? And the unilateral judgement - never established on concrete facts and disputed, besides, by the whole proletarian milieu - of the ICC against us is it sufficient to justify the prohibition of our fraction in the public meetings whereas we never did nothing but to express ourselves when we still could do it, on a strictly political ground, respecting the framework of those and without the ICC could ever show that we have tried to sabotage them ?

Such practices resolutely turn the back to the policy of regrouping of the revolutionary forces such as the ICC defended and implemented it during its 30 years of existence.

3. Yet another step : to advocate violence against the differing points of view

And when the ICC has the impertinence to call upon History to justify its current contortions - "today, as yesterday, revolutionary organisations have to apply these elementary elements of what we may call ‘political hygiene’. And one of these measures is precisely to chase snitches out our meeting places" (WR 267 already quoted) - we violently denounce the scandalous falsification of the history of the working class movement which is made. It is completely false to claim that such designs would belong to the inheritance of the working class movement and of the revolutionary organizations. On the contrary, it is Stalin who proposed a "medicine of prevention " based on strong-arm prohibition to the oppositionists from the public meetings of the Party.

In total opposition to such practices, we can find on the contrary a permanent struggle and denunciation of such practices as being significant of a degeneration of the organizations of the working class. Let us quote Trotsky which, replying to a letter of Rosmer informing him that a group of Hungarian oppositionists had been copiously thrashed by the Stalinists in one of their meeting, whereas they had come to distribute a leaflet to make known their existence, proposed in December 1929: "It would be necessary to begin a campaign against the brutal processes which employs the official party, not only towards the Communists of the opposition but even towards the socialist workers meetings

During the years of emigration, the struggle between the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks and SR was relentless, but at the same time one never prevented the meetings by the force, nor driven out the salesmen of the opposing press, in short one never applied the physical behavior..... it is necessary to gain the right on violence. One can gain this majority only by persuasion, not by the stones, by the fists, the sticks" (Trotsky-A and M Rosmer Correspondence 1929-1939, collection Témoins-Gallimard. We translate).

To assume the political struggle, openly, publicly and without concessions so that to carry the conviction along and not to shun (and this desertion can take various forms) in front of the difficulties of the debate, here is the only real and elementary rule which has always been defended within the working class movement.

4. A conception of the revolutionary milieu foreign to the proletariat

To the political, historical and ‘objective’ criteria of “class line” and of “proletarian milieu”, based historically on a tradition, a program and political positions, on an intervention and an experience, criteria that the ICC contributed to develop and make live during more than 30 years, the current ICC substitute the criteria, how much subjective and obviously taken up from the petty-bourgeoisie, of clanism, parasitism, concepts reduced to personal, individual, psychological characteristics and capacities, like ambition, jealousy, personal or collective hatred, to determine who is “worthy”, in its sight, to belong to the proletarian camp.

In coherence with this attitude, to the debate and to the confrontation of the political critics, the ICC opposes the personal condemnations. Thus, it binds its hands and it misses out on any possibility of real political defence, the one which really count for the communists, as well on the level of the political clarification – because there is no worse answer than ignorance and silence in front of political criticisms – (2) as on militant level where the members of the ICC are compelled to ignore and to reject the few internationalists except themselves (and that drive to situations which could be comical if they were not historically dramatic) such as, for example, in the street demonstrations amongst thousands of pacifists and nationalists.

In the same way the groups, up to now recognised as part of the proletarian camp, of the Communist Left, like the IBRP, the ICP–Le Proletaire, are suddenly assimilated roughly and wantonly to the altermondialist domain (3).

The concrete, immediate realization of this policy implies that the new and main “criterion”, the one which determines the membership or not in the proletarian political milieu, and even the adhesion to the ICC, became the political positioning against our fraction. Any element or group, so as to be recognised by the ICC and admitted at its discussion table must imperatively participate actively in the construction of a wall of calumnies raised against the fraction (4). Such is the message insinuated, but nevertheless clearly indicated in the columns of its publications : "The ICC has taken the decision to bar from its public forums and contact meetings members of the so-called ‘Internal Fraction’ of the ICC". We perfectly understood, it’s prohibited (to the militants, sympathisers, …) to be in the presence of members of the fraction. This formal order is followed by a note specifying that "this relates to the following elements (...) and possibly to other members of the IFICC [our fraction] who have joined it recently and who support the behaviour of those mentioned". Quid of all those who would venture to defend any position asserted by our fraction since two years ? Thus, the ICC makes an international publicity, in its columns, to the mails of sympathisers denouncing the fraction on the only word of what the present ICC accepts to tell them, these ‘political sympathisers’ carry the absurdity until recognising proudly that they never read a line of our bulletins !

They are these conceptions and this state of mind that the ICC spreads around it today and which are typical of the most contemptible sectarianism in which it is inserted. These conceptions and this state of mind appear finally in its overall policy which aims at actively encouraging dispersion, division and, consequently, the discredit of the proletarian camp whereas the current period calls more than ever for an effort in the direction of the regrouping and the unit of the revolutionary forces.

III To preserve and defend an experience, principles and a practice for the regrouping within the proletarian camp

Desertion from the debate and from the confrontation of the political positions and consequently desertion vis-a-vis the need for enriching, for making live and for defending the communist positions and analyses, refusal to treat divergences (in the internal front as outside the organization), refusal of the debate with the organizations of the proletarian camp, desertion vis-a-vis the questionings posed by its own readers and sympathizers, sabotage of the rare regular places of debate still existing (including its own), here are which is the major characteristics which ended up ruling within the present ICC. In this way, it constitutes the principal instrument of destruction of its own history, in particular that which it contributed to implement in order to gather the revolutionary forces.

But it’s also, and above all, a real treason of the principles and of the elementary rules of the working class movement to which the ICC devotes itself today.

This destroying work, it develops it in a period which precisely calls the revolutionaries to take all their responsibilities and incites them to concentrate their activity and to collect their forces in the service of the working class.

At the moment when the historical stakes become clearer, when the alternative ‘war or revolution’ becomes more palpable from day to day, the intervention of the revolutionaries, their combat are decisive factors so that the communist perspective can gain.

The question of the regrouping of the revolutionary forces has never been so present, not in the meaning of gathering in the same organisational framework all the energies claiming themselves of communism, but as a process aiming at :

- fighting the pernicious effects of the counter-revolution and the impact of the collapse of the Eastern countries which lasts in the shape of ideologies and ideological campaigns orchestrated by the bourgeoisie and which darken the revolutionary perspective still nowadays ;

- fighting the dispersion of militant energies by answering the questions which re-appear under the effect of the acceleration of the situation ;

- making re-emerge at the foreground all the vital questions to which will be, and is already, confronted the proletariat and amongst them : the dictatorship of the proletariat, the question of the party, etc. ;

- taking up again, for that, a practical experience of debate, of permanent confrontation of the positions and analysis, developing true and constructive polemics, establishing clearly a hierarchy between the priority questions and the secondary ones, and focusing the debate specifically on the first ones ;

- carrying out the necessary struggle against all that tends to oppose, to distort or to block the necessary collective character of the communist reflexion and, in particular, all the forms of petty-bourgeois individualism and of individualist behaviour, opposing the construction of real proletarian political organs.

It is thus, in first place, the objective context of the situation which imposes a policy resolutely turned towards the regrouping. And it is in this very moment that the present ICC took the option not only to desert the combat which is essential, but to turn its back to all the policy and the experience of regrouping which it defended unflaggingly up to that point, and to sabotage the efforts which go to this direction.

But it’s too, aggravating fact, in a context where this fight begins to carry its fruits that it chooses to change its cape. At the same time that took place the ‘selection’ of the revolutionary forces in the 1970-1980 and that we evoked above – and that didn’t mean mechanically the disappearance of the ideologies and positions that they carried -, the political positions defended by the groups constituent of the Communist Left tended to impose themselves as central reference.

More positive phenomenon still, the groups of the proletarian camp, and mainly the groups of the Communist Left began to reappropriate the need for regrouping, to fit in a more consequent way in this process. This noticing, the ICC had done it itself since September 1991. Thus, at the moment of the war from the Gulf, the ICC in a "Call to proletarian political milieu" (July 1991) affirmed:

"Instead of the total sectarian isolation, we find today in the different groups a greater disposal for exposing their reciprocal criticisms in the press or in the public meetings. There is too an explicit call from the Battaglia Comunista comrades to overcome the present dispersal, call whose arguments and goals we share in great part. Finally exists - and it has to be encouraged as much as posible - a pushing against the sectarian isolation which comes with a new generation of elements that the earthquake of theses two last years leads to the position of the Communist Left and who remain flabbergasted in front of the extreme dispersal whose political reasons they don't get to understand. We well know that the difficulties are enormous and that, for the moment, the willingness to discussion - when it exists - is very limited. (...) The roots of sectarianism are too deep for making today too much ambitious proposals for the content (work for the rebuilding of the Party) as for their form (for instance an international conference). What can be done then for overcoming concretly this present state of dispersal ? We must favour all which goes in the sense of the increase of contacts and debates between internationalists (5). It's not a matter of hidding the disagreements in order to make posible a "marriage" between groups, but to begin to expose and discuss openly the divergences which are at the origin of the existence of different groups.

The beginning is to systematize the reciprocal criticism in the press (...).

Another step which can be done immediately, is to systematize the presence and the intervention to the public meetings of the other groups.

A step more important is the confrontation with the positions in the public meetings called together by various groups in front events of particular importance, as the Gulf War.

It's clear that all this, and in particular the last point, won't be feasible immediately everywhere and between all the groups. But even if there is only two organizations which succeed to publicly discuss their agreements and their disagreements, it will be a step forward for the whole internationalist political milieu. And the ICC will support with conviction such initiatives even though it's not amongt the direct participants of this particular discussion.

Our proposals can look to be modest and actually they are. In front of decades of unrestrained sectarianism, it's already ambitious to only want to contribute to engage a process of confrontation and of regroupment between internationalists. But it's the only path in order the process of political clarification and of programmatical demarcation can develop for leading the communist minorities to fully play their essential role in the class battles to come" (International Review 67, Call to the proletarian political milieu, July 1991, translated from french by us).

Such were the positions defended by the ICC a little bit more than 10 years ago. These positions, our fraction asserts them completely. It supports the analysis, it defends the validity of the state of mind which underlies them, the principles on which they are founded. It carries out the struggle in this direction including and especially against the obvious treason that makes the present ICC. Briefly let us pick out the obvious signs of this treason:

- Only ten years ago, the ICC noticed a greater maturity of the groups of the proletarian milieu of "a greater disposition to expose their reciprocal critics in the press or the public meetings". Today, the ICC doesn’t see in the press of the other organisations anything but some flirts with the bourgeoisie while it despises the analysis that they put forward.

- Only ten years ago, the ICC engaged itself : "Even if there are only two organisations which succeed in discussing publicly of their agreements and disagreements, it will be a step forward for the whole of the internationalist political milieu, and the ICC will support with conviction such initiatives, even if it is not amongst the direct participants of this specific discussion". But, when our fraction decided, in January 2002, to address to the groups of the proletarian milieu to alert them on the situation of crisis that the ICC dissimulated (not without having, before that, advised the decisional organs of the ICC by a letter stayed without response) (6) this step has been assimilated to a treason and was a pretext for new sanctions against us. It was here, besides, only the prelude of a new policy which was going to be spread, from that moment, in all the directions. Today, the ICC flees regularly the meetings organised by the groups of the milieu, the essential of its efforts being concentrated on the orchestration of spectacular blows dedicated to give some semblance of justification to its desertion. It cancels its own meetings when the participants are not suitable for him rather than to affront the discussion.

On all these plans, the ICC has completely turn tail in front of its engagements, it tends to become an obstacle to the politics of regrouping.

IV Conclusion : the tasks of the hour

We wanted to show, in this text, that the present ICC is not only giving up the positions and the policy which had characterized it for more than 30 years on the question of the relations between communist organizations, but also that, while turning its back on this practice, it is involved in a spiral tending to transform it into a heavy obstacle for the necessary debate between revolutionary groups.

The opportunist drift, which initially appeared internally against the militants and above all against those which will, later, constitute the fraction, could only lead (like our fraction announced from the very beginning) to cut this organization of its political bases.

It is, for us, of primary importance to save of this disaster the political basis which governed the constitution of the ICC, of its development which passed – and could only pass – by the debate, the political confrontation with the other groups and elements of the proletarian camp.

Thus, it is the transitory form of the organization "ICC" which is "decomposing" today and threatens to be ruined, not the political corpus which underlays it, even if this one must be corrected where it was chipped, distorted or betrayed.

In an historical context which shows with obviousness the need for the communist minorities, our fraction intends to take up on its account the political bases and the original orientations that the opportunist direction of the ICC throws to the nettles ; these bases and orientations which enabled it to work usefully and effectively, during several decades, for the regrouping of the communist forces. And a thing seems more than obvious to us, it is that to carry this task can be done, precisely, only in bond with the groups of the Communist Left, in the debate and confrontation with the groups and isolated elements of the proletarian camp.

The fraction, from its very emergence, addressed itself to the groups of the Communist Left because it knew that a crisis of the extent of which our organisation suffers, can only have an impact on the whole proletarian camp, because it implies it, engages it and threatens to block it in its dynamic to rise to the height of its historical responsibilities. We will continue in this way !

April 2004

Notes: