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Public meeting of the ICC in Brussels (Belgium)
Opportunism makes itself the bearer of the ecologist ideology

The "new way" ICC (we mean the ICC corrupted by the opportunist disease) seems to put a point of honour in showing itself as a caricature of what all the history of the working class movement has known in terms of betrayal of marxism, of abandonment of the classists principles, of flat and coarse demagogy; in short : of political liquidation.

An example, particularly revealing, is given by the reading of an article about a public meeting held last March in Brussels and published in the April issue of Internationalisme (and reproduced in various other publications, amongst them Révolution Internationale n°381, July / August 2007 1).

This topic of "the planet in danger", of "the ecological holocaust" (to take up the expression as stupid as bombastic that the liquidationists of the ICC have so liking for) is not the prerogative of this organisation – by far ! - even if, more and more, this question is treated in their press and in a way completely foreign to Marxism.

All that the bourgeoisie have of political, journalistic or other "personalities", kept harping on about their great concerns, their existential anguish about the degradation of nature. From Al Gore and his successful film to the buffoonery of a Nicolas Hulot who made to himself a cheaply publicity during the presidential campaign in France, while passing by innumerable Summits, Conferences, Forums and other Meetings of all types, the "safeguard of the Earth" seems to have become the major concern for all this little world. And the present ICC comes to their assistance ! To the hypocrites and terrorizing alarms launched by the dominant class on "the end of any life on the planet" echoes "the ecological holocaust" of opportunism. And when Gore and Hulot, relayed by the great democratic States, do all they can to make believe that it is the fault of the men, the" official" ICC overbids by speaking about "a 'man- made' ecological meltdown" (International Revue n° 129 –Imperialist chaos, ecological disaster).

The motives of a plug

This deafening campaign does not have anything sincere and even less innocent. Firstly, it must make it possible to instil fear and impotence into the population and, in particular, amongst the workers ; and consequently to push them to rely on the bourgeois State "the only one able to do something". But the bourgeoisie is today in a situation where it must, at the same time, carry radical attacks to the living and working conditions of the workers and, at the same time, to take resolutely the route of a direct preparation to the world war. To overcome and, in a first time, disorientate the proletariat, the bourgeoisie must advance masked, mislead the workers and cant them of their original ground of resistance to the economic attacks. The democratic ideology, with its "equal and responsible" citizens in front of the ballot paper and the orgy of TV propaganda is a tool, a terribly effective weapon to isolate the workers, to transform them into citizens, in elements of the "civil society", therefore as passive and subjected individuals. The environmental topic is only the last avatar, the most insidious form that this democratic ideology takes.

It is on this rotten terrain that the bourgeoisie tries to involve us to make us "forget" our interests of class and to melt us in the "general interests of the men". If we let ourselves take with this trap, there is no doubt that it would be for raised, satisfied and deeply human reasons that the respective States would engage us towards a holocaust, quite real that one, that of the imperialist war world.

A new flow or the sign of an irremediable fall ?

When one reads the press of the ICC, he comes to pose the question of knowing if the focusing of this organisation on the topic of ecology is only an expression more of their opportunist drift (after, in particular, the developments on the alleged "3rd way") or if this new step does not mark a stage much more serious in this drift2.

Because, in fact:

• to organise a public meeting on such an ambiguous topic;

• to give up its role of a vanguard 3 by leaving to a sympathiser the responsibility to present the debate – a sympathiser who, obviously, does not overcome the basic positions of the organization (nor those of the communist Left in general);

• not to react vis-a-vis many expressed confusions (even to approve them), as when this sympathizer comes to say nonsense such as "If it [ capitalism ] existed to satisfy the human needs [… ] one would develop science in other directions that the production of weapons of high technology, particularly polluting."

• to dare to be filled with enthusiasm at the end of the article while proclaiming that "the active participation in the debate of the majority of the participants made that there did not remain any more time for a profound discussion on the durable alternatives and solutions", which is the obvious proof of the bankruptcy of this public meeting;

All that should nevertheless pose problems to sincere communist militants who are taken today in the meshes of the liquidationnist net, who were formed on healthy political bases and who defend, in theory, positions like this one:

" […] while it is true that the proletarian revolution will engender new relationships in every area of life, it is wrong to think that it is possible to contribute to the revolution by organising specific struggles around partial problems, such as racism, the position of women, pollution, sexuality, and other aspects of daily life.

The struggle against the economic foundations of the system contains within it the struggle against all the super-structural aspects of capitalist society, but this is not true the other way around.

By their very content ‘partial’ struggles, far from reinforcing the vital autonomy of the proletariat, tend on the contrary to dilute it into a mass of confused categories (races, sexes, youth, etc.) which can only be totally impotent in the face of history." (Platform of the ICC, adopted in 1976)

We ask the question to the comrades of the ICC who didn't completely abdicate any communist dignity. Which side are you on ? On the side of the platform of 1976, like us, or on the side of the liquidators who are more and more joining the bourgeois positions ?

The Fraction, July 25, 2007

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