Use of Internet according to one fraction of the ICC

[ñángara]

It seems that there is a fractional dispute in the ICC since 2000. What do you think about this arguments at the *fractioncommuniste(.org) +/ficci_eng/b44/b44_6.html*


Via Internet, the ICC flirts with the worst bourgeois leftism and gives it its guarantee

In previous articles, we had already warned against the use of Internet with no control by communist organizations. In the former issue of this bulletin, we pointed out how the thoughtless publication "online" of articles the ones after the others turns the back to the requirements of a militant communist press which needs a theoretical and political framework, political analysis and orientations, and a militant intervention towards the working class. All things which necessarily require a permanent collective and organisational framework and life as well as a Party activity and a Party spirit opposed to the "Internet network".

We also warned against "the networks and the forums on Internet [which] aren't but a kind of illusory virtual community where everyone can write as long as he wants with not any political compromise. Their business is "democracy", "freedom of expression" (...)... In the name of "individual freedom of expression", anonymity is stipulated, it means the right for the crassest cowardice. Or it can even purely and simply be a lure from people at the service of bourgeois ideology. This kind of medium is incompatible with the imperatives for a managed and voluntarily orientated debate according to political criteria previously defined" (For a militant press of intervention, Communist Bulletin 43, only in French and Spanish).

It's on this question of "the forums and other networks" that we want to call the attention of our readers. And one more time, it's the present ICC which gives us the most manifest expression of the danger of participating to these forums...

[Q]

So, this faction considers the internet a threat for the core editorial work of a group that is built around a paper publication? Well, it certainly is a threat to the old way of doing things. But paper publications are completely deprecated,so the ICC better keeps up or itself becomes completely deprecated.

Also, this rant against forums is old bogus too. This is coming from people believing in a strict top-down organisational model that doesn't allow for much thinking cadre. Being lured by bourgeois ideology? Yeah, I'm sure that's why Devrim and Leo left the ICC, those drat internet forums! Seriously though, what lack of confidence one must have in their own membership if you're that protective against 'wrong influences'.

[Devrim]

This group isn't in the ICC. It's a split. The fact that it called itself a fraction of the ICC may have been confusing.

As difficult as it may seem, they are perhaps madder than the ICC itself.

Devrim

[The Red Star Rising]

Call me crazy but I'm getting a very "Grumpy old men being grumpy about the things the kids are doing" kind of feel from the faction's anti-internet rhetoric.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I trust Devrim when he says these people are mad, but I have to say, I'm not seeing it from their article. That is, for all I know they sacrifice puppies to Xenu then illegally sell on multi-pack cans of Coke, but they do not come off as mad in the article. They treat the forum in question as an official organ of the ICC - I don't know if that is true or not, I suspect it's a bit exaggerated - and complain that it gives a platform for people most left communists wouldn't want to be caught dead associating with. And that makes sense. If the ICL (FI) had an official or semi-official site, and it published articles by people from the IOPS, for example, I would be very surprised. And wonder if the organisation is slipping.

And generally, yes, it is dangerous to ignore things like physical papers in favour of publishing articles on the Internet. People can deride selling papers, but it offers an opportunity to actually engage someone in conversation, to explain some of the term used, what certain slogans mean, and so on. Second, unfortunately the Internet is full of, to be blunt, dilettantes, and groups that have no real-life presence - Potemkin groups. A lot of "socialist" organisations found that out the hard way when a group of scammers in the Ukraine robbed them blind by posing as sympathising groups. If a group is able to put out a newspaper, you know they're at least serious, if not necessarily sane.