Polemic with the International Communist Current: Working Class or the Masses?

by Admin

“It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do.”

Marx, The Holy Family

The International Communist Current (ICC) [1] is one of the main currents of the communist left which historically belonged to the communist left. The ICC tendency, as it has emerged, has always defended proletarian positions, especially during the black anti-revolution era. We have declared any attack on the currents of the communist left as an attack on ourselves; of course, the currents we are assessing belong to the communist left. That is why we have declared solidarity with comrades, if it is necessary (the ICC, the international communist tendency, etc.). The last manifestation of this solidarity is a paper entitled “Discrediting the Revolutionaries Only Serves the Interests of the Capital state” was a response to the slogging and discrediting of the ICC and perhaps the ICC been shaped by the CIA. Although we defend the proletarian nature of the ICC and consider its basic positions to be proletarian and communist, we have criticized in relation to three issues:

Class consciousness and the revolutionary organization – We have already published critiques in the form of a series of articles, the series of articles will be published with a new edition and a new introduction in the form of a pamphlet. The important point in this regard is that the basic positions of the ICC are not wrong in this regard, but they are ambiguous. The following points are correctly define the positions of the ICC in relation to class consciousness and the revolutionary organization:
- The necessity of the International and Internationalist Communist Party for the victory of the communist revolution.
- The dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the working class through workers’ councils, rejecting party dictatorship
- The revolutionary organization is a part of the working class and a product of class struggle

Despite these correct positions, the ICC has ambiguities about class consciousness, and the role and function of the revolutionary organization; in practice, it reduces its role, functions and performance to the level of a revolutionary publication. The root cause of the internal crises that the ICC has experienced was the ambiguity surrounding this issue.

The left of capital – The ICC, based on its basic positions, considers the left of capital to belong to the bourgeois camp; but, in practice, it has repeatedly expressed its ambiguity in this regard. We have publicly published our critique of the relationship between the ICC and the Unity of Communist Militants (UCM) [2]. A large part of the criticisms in this regard has been sent directly to the ICC without being publicly published.

Popular protests – After the Green Movement in 2009 and the positions expressed by the ICC, as captured in our article “Class Struggle Is the Only Alternative for the Working Class”, published on its website, we published the article “Two Movements, Two Perspectives: Intensifying the Class Struggle Is the Only Alternative” in the Critique of the ICC. Following the protests in Iran in January 2018 and those that followed in Jordan and Iraq, the ICC published four articles:

Iraq: marching against the war machine [3]
Class struggle in Jordan’s war economy [4]
Demonstrations in Iran: strength and limits of the movement [5]
Iran: the struggle between bourgeois cliques is a danger for the working class [6]

Unfortunately, all four texts were written without the slightest research and thus with many mistakes, both from the perspective of positive arguments and persuasive discussions. The publication of these articles not only failed to clarify the proletarian political milieu, but it also created many ambiguities. Rather than reviewing every four articles, we saw it as logical to portray the social events that have taken place in all three countries with regard to the facts that took place, and this could be seen as a constructive critique. We did this and published an article entitled “Street Protests Amid the Barbarity of Capitalism: The Only Alternative Is Class Struggle”. We hoped that the ICC would seriously address the issues raised and contribute to the transparency and clarification of the proletarian political milieu. In particular, comrades promised repeatedly during the past 10 years to respond to our critiques. Finally, after 10 years, the ICC broke its silence and gave its response. Apparently both our expectations and our 10-year wait were unnecessary. The ICC, with a less serious text than previous texts, and with many mistakes, under the title “Internationalist Voice and Protests in the Middle East”, practically let the cat out of the bag. Before proceeding with the discussion, the transparency of some issues is firstly necessary.

Contrary to the slime propagation of recent years that the ICC has lost its revolutionary nature, we always emphasize the proletarian nature of the ICC, and our discussion with comrades in all three contexts goes back many years.

Another point is that we distinguish between popular struggles and the struggles of the working class. The popular struggles mentioned in this article, in the case of Iran, are the same protests as those in late December 2017 and early January 2018. For more information on the position of Internationalist Voice in relation to labour struggles, see our analysis of the recent strikes and labour protests, under the title “Lessons from Strikes, Labour Struggles and Internationalist Tasks”.

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