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In the bulletin 29, we underlined how the ICC press shows an increasingly "homogeneous" (as we said) orientation towards opportunism. This opportunism has particularly expressed itself through the analysis of the "wildcat" strike at the Opel factory of Bochum in Germany - which liquidates the strike as a mean of struggle for the proletariat - and through the ICC leaflet intervention on this occasion - which liquidates the past experience of the ICC on this matter. In the continuity of this first article, we publish in the following a text which points out the same opportunist drift in relation to the parlementary question through Bush's reelection in the USA. Our text criticizes the statements of the international press of the ICC which, at their turn, liquidate the principle position on the electoral question, and the understanding and the denunciation of the State political game [set ?] and apparatus of the bourgeoisie... At first, these two texts were only one. It's not but a problem of space in our bulletin which obliged us to divide it in two parts. That's why the date, December 2004, of the writing of the following material. Since then, an other event has come to present a new occasion to the new ICC to carry on its descent into the Hell of the crassest political opportunism : the disaster of the tsunami in Asia and the ideological campaign set up on the question of solidarity with the victims. Again, one more time, the ICC of the liquidationists finds itself back siding the bourgeoisie, or at least takes back the same themes and the same "arguments" of the latter, and ends up in the celebration of "human solidarity" (see on the ICC website : Capitalism is the real disaster !) and in the... classes collaboration. That's what we show and denounce in the second text of this section. And all this in the name of the International Communist Current... What a shame ! The drift, ineluctably and that we had foretold, is accelerating... even quicker than we could think it in 2001. |
The American review of the ICC, Internationalism 132 (Nov.Dec. 2004), publishes a statement about G.W.Bush's reelection which is almost entirely copied by Révolution internationale 352 (we have no doubt the entire press of the Current will follow). To take note of the whole or even a part of the contradictions and revertible or opposed "arguments" presented in Internationalism would lead us too far risking to get our reader lost. Let's limit to the essential. What does say the article ?
The result of the election is not the one the American bourgeoisie wanted. What President did want the American bourgeoisie according to the ICC of the liquidationists ? "It wasn’t until mid-September, that one could discern a preference for the election of Kerry". Very soon in the article, this preference even becomes a "consensus" since "Kerry’s program coincided with the view of a growing majority within the bourgeoisie" and that "Bush's continuance in office [was made] untenable". This thesis is repeated, more discreetly and in a less ridiculous manner, in Révolution internationale 352 of December : "Nevetheless, the fact the candidate of its choice hasn't been elected (...) constitutes an expression of the weakening of the American power".
This weakening of the American bourgeoisie - historically considerable if we keep in mind that it affects the most powerful in the world and by far - is the result of the... decomposition : "The results of the presidential election reflect the increasing difficulties that the American ruling class is experiencing in its ability to manipulate the electoral circus (...). As decomposition continues to accelerate, the U.S. ruling class has joined other capitalist nations, like France, in its difficulties in controlling the electoral charade" (we let aside too the supposed degree, apparently very high, of the French bourgeoisie decomposition...).
The reader would notice with us in which pitiful state is the American bourgeoisie. According to the present ICC, it doesn't control much things up to the point it can't avoid the coming to power of a President whose, nevertheless, "continuance in office [is] untenable". It isn't with France that the ICC of the opportunism should compare the american situation, but with Ukraine... It's not with Chirac they must compare Bush but with Koutcham and his favorite... Except that the latters will certainly be obliged to give up power. Thus, it's worse than Ukraine.
How such a powerlessness is posible according to the Liquidation ? First, "the fact that the consensus came so late". But above all, because "the growth and cohesion of the Christian fundamentalist right wing in America (...) posed serious difficulties to the ruling class. (...) This segment of the electorate proved impervious to media manipulation on the essential political questions of the campaign such as the economy, the war, international policy (...)". One more time, how not bursting out laughing while typing such ineptitudes, above all for people who claim to be communists ? Even more since they are repeated by Révolution internationale : The electoral motivations of a majority of American voters are determined by factors resorting to everything except to reason and lucidity" ! (we underline). And they are the same ones who still dare to claim Lenin and the... ICC Platform. And RI concludes that "irrationality produced by fear and powerlessness, has ruled these elections". In brief, if the American voter had kept "Reason and Lucidity", Kerry would have been elected. It's precisely what says the Left international bourgeois press, The New-York Times in the lead.
Do the ICC militants realize the overture towards the revision of an ICC principle position, on the electoral question, which is announced here ? But on what is based today their political position on the workers and communists' no-participation to the bourgeois elections and democracy ? If not on the "faith", if not on an abstract principle which is contradicted as soon as they try to explain reality ? But isn't it exactly the case for the anarchists ?
"Reason and Lucidity" ? In capitalism ? In a society which is divided into classes ? With a class, bourgeois, power and dictatorship ? But thus what are they talking about ? "Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of “democracy in general” and “dictatorship in general “, without posing the question of the class concerned. This nonclass or above class presentation, which supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle, which Socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie recognize in words but disregard in practice" (Lenin, Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 1st congress of the International Communist).
Every time the ICC comrades attempt to make enter the reality of the present events into the framework of the decomposition, sorry we must write Decomposition, their arguments are repeating those of the bourgeoisie and their method leads them to open up and to overstep the door of the revision of the class principles and positions. The result gives an understanding and above all an orientation of intervention fully opposed to the needs of the proletariat in the present historical period.
According to the American comrades, the US ruling class had two imperatives : "It needed to revive and repair the credibility of the democratic mystification which suffered a heavy blow in the debacle of the 2000 election. (...) It needed to adjust the capitalist political division of labor between the major political parties (...)".
Let's recall, as does the article too, that there haven't been any objection to the elections result, that the margin between the two candidates raised to 3 millions votes in Bush's favour, and that the participation to the elections has never been so massive. Thus, we could conclude that the bourgeoisie pulled it off at the democratic level and that it had perfectly controlled the electoral process. Well, not at all ! "Despite the large turnout and the responsible behaviour of Kerry, the democratic mystification still suffered a serious setback for the bourgeoisie. Among large sectors of the population, the “anybody but Bush” campaign had become a real crusade, an opportunity to correct a serious political blunder in American political history. (...) The failure of the bourgeoisie's media campaign to shift the political division of labor to the Democrats resulted in widespread frustration, even depression, at how such a democratic movement could have failed to dislodge an unpopular president, and risks triggering widespread disillusion in the electoral process.
The dogma of decomposition inevitably leads to the rejection of the basic positions of the ICC
How can the comrades have forgotten too so quickly the positions of the true ICC ? In this case, how can they throw away like this the lessons of the internal debates of the 1970 and 1980 about the political set of the bourgeoisie ? How can they have forgotten the 1970's debates on Portugal, about the "game" Right-Left in power or in opposition ? One more time, these are the same arguments, the division of the Americain people and the despair of half of it, which are used by the Left bourgeois press. Even worst, these are exactly what Kerry underlined in his post-election speech in which he acknowleged his defeat.
How can't they see, to the contrary, that these elections have been an important success for the American bourgeoisie ? That the democratic and electoral mystification has emerged sthrengthened and credibilized ? That the American imperialist orientation has emerged reaffirmed and has been hurled at the whole imperialist rivals as a challenge ? How can't they understand the fact "that the deep America, the country sectors, subjected to misery, to demoralization and to the total lack of perspectives by the effects of the crisis, have been particularly pervious to these mystical themes allowing to present as the devil the foreigner (the fanatical muslim !) as responsible for all evils" (Révolution internationale 354 on the web site only, Victoire de Bush aux élections :Une situation difficile pour la bourgeoisie américaine, Nov. 2004, translated into english by us) means that it has been particularly sensitive to a nationalist and warlike language ? How can't they see the fact that an other important part of the American people has been particularly sensitive, before, and with no doubt is even more now after the elections, to the "antiwar", pacifist, democratic, "Left", themes, participates to create the best conditions for setting up a pacifist and Left movement, it means on the basis of bourgeois themes and field ? How can't they see that the two phenomenons constitute precisely the setting up of a political device the State apparatus of the American bourgeoisie needs for engaging itself even more decided and determined in its imperialist and warlike policy ? Isn't there precisely the classical political conditions for a false opposition - war or pacifism -, on false fields - posible peace in the framework of capitalism -, in order to attempt to take off into it the whole population, and particularly the working class ? Isn't there the classical political shape for imposing the dynamic towards imperialist war to the American working class ? Unless one believes that bourgeois pacifism, even radical, the very one which will develop with these elections outcome, isn't the main arm of the bourgeoisie to bring the working class into the imperialist war field, behind the bourgeois State... Another door is opened... in relation to proletarian internationalism.
Inescapably, the opportunist and revisionist drift is carrying on and accelerating. We find it too in the German section intervention during the Opel strike in Bochum, Germany, of October 14th to 25th of 2004 (see our bulletin 29). There too, the giving up of basic positions of the ICC is incredible and leaves us flabbergasted even if it confirms - and to what extent ! - the sense of our struggle of fraction.
December 2004
Communist Bulletin Nš 30 - Internal Fraction of ICC