ICC public forum, London 20 February: internationalists against capitalist wars

[BOZG]

What do you think that the ICC sees itself as a revolutionary party? If so, it would have called itself something like "intl'ist workers' cp of gb". Furthermore, they have are indeed "outward looking", they have participated in everything that was multi-tendency from the beginning, such as the postal strikes to the open discussions on Kosovo (which involved groups ranging from marxist-leninists through to trots through to anarchists and leftcoms). Also, even Anarchist Federation don't necessarily see themselves as the vanguard organ of a potential workers' revolution in the future.

It's pretty obvious that just a part of the ICC's reason for existing is to be a propaganda group, other than that, their stated aim is to have an organisation of extremely class-conscious well-developed proletarian militants, I don't think there is anything wrong with that myself and giving out to opportunism and calling themselves a party would be pretty stupid. The CWI-SP has a tendency of just letting anyone in, supporting anyone and doing anything they feel will further themselves, while they have started some worthwhile movements they have let opportunism grow and grow until it threatened to destroy the movement, only workers at the grassroots have stopped this from being the case pretty much every single time.

What's with the fucking bee in your bonnet? Did you actually read what I said?

I never implied in anyway that the ICC or the AF are claiming to be a revolutionary party. My point was that as far as I understand, the AF and the ICC see themselves as groups who are appealing to people beyond members of the left groups or activists and are appealing to ordinary workers.

Groups like the IBT and the Sparts on the otherhand, while I'd assume they would like to recruit ordinary workers, are generally focusing on building their organisations because they don't see themselves as parties just yet and would like to build a revolutionary cadre before taking a fully open turn to the masses. Maybe the IBT are not as blunt as that but I've been told by Sparts themselves that this is their current focus. In reality, their current orientation is towards activists and left groups as grounds for recruitment.

In that context, such a meeting would be a success for a group like the Sparts but I can't understand how it can be a success for a group that has much broader outlook if only left activists attended and not ordinary workers. Maybe I'm wrong and the ICC is currently focusing on recruiting left militants from other groups and in that case, the meeting was maybe a success.

And before you go on your little tirades, it would help to understand what exactly am I referring to by propaganda groups or propaganda circles. They're not groups who merely give out propaganda and hope to offer a leadership of ideas, they're groups that are inward focusing, hoping to develop their internal organisations prior to taking a turn to mass work.

Finally, what are you talking about when claiming that Joe Higgins is axing jobs?

[Leo]

Someone will probably correct me on this, but I thought something like ICP/Battaglia Comunista had quite a lot of members, remembering that they are based in Italy alone.

In the late forties, the PCInt had thousands of members in Italy. In the late seventies, the Bordigist ICP again had thousands of members internationally, although considerably less in Italy. Battaglia, while it was initially the majority in the split in 1952 in the PCInt, while they still have good numbers in Italy, is nevertheless quite small, and from what I have heard they don't have more than a several dozen members.

[Devrim]

In the late forties, the PCInt had thousands of members in Italy.

Tens of thousands I believe

the PCInt, while they still have good numbers in Italy, is nevertheless quite small, and from what I have heard they don't have more than a several dozen members.

It is probably in three figures, just.

Devrim

[Q]

Why did the ICP's forces dwindle down so much?

[Devrim]

Why did the ICP's forces dwindle down so much?

Basically they were formed in the wave of struggle after the war, and when it died down so did they. They split in 1952, and have continued to split since. There are at least four groups today calling themselves the International Communist Party, as well as other groups who had more originality whilst thinking of a new name.

'Programma' (the different ICPs are known by names of their publications), which was the main current internationally seemed to 'implode' in 1982 in a dispute over Arab nationalism.

Devrim

[The Ungovernable Farce]

And to make it clear, my point is that for groups like the IBT or the Sparts, this would be a good meeting because they see themselves as being propaganda groups (maybe the IBT is a bit more outward looking) and they're particularly focused on orientating towards left groups and other organisations in order to build themselves up and then to turn outwards. I would not have been of the opinion that this was the attiude of the AF or the ICC so in that context, I can't really see this as being a successful public meeting.

There's different kinds of meeting. There are meetings where you start off by assuming you have some piece of knowledge that the public could benefit from, and try to get them along to hear it. Most Trot meetings fall into this category, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of meeting (f'r instance, there's a speaking tour currently being organised to publicise the repression faced by Serbian and German anarcho-syndicalists, which is a subject where awareness needs to be raised and spread). There's also meetings where you start off by being aware that you don't know everything, and there's some gaps in your understanding of the world, so you sit down with some people who have a relatively similar outlook to you and try and improve your ideas together. This may be a bit masturbatory, but if as a revolutionary you only go to meetings about things you already know about, you'll never improve your consciousness. This second type of meeting is certainly the kind of thing that the AF and the Commune are currently doing as a joint activity where I live; I have no idea if this is what the ICC intended to do (from what I've seen of them, one of the ICC's major flaws has tended to be an assumption that they actually do know everything there is to know about everything), but if is then it sounds like it could've been a success on those terms.


Also, I've never heard "propaganda groups" used in that way before. It's a pretty misleading use of the term. Surely propaganda, by definition, is usually aimed at people outside the group, so your criticism of the Sparts et al isn't that they make propaganda, it's that they neglect making propaganda in favour of inward-looking stuff?

[BOZG]

There's different kinds of meeting. There are meetings where you start off by assuming you have some piece of knowledge that the public could benefit from, and try to get them along to hear it. Most Trot meetings fall into this category, and there's nothing inherently wrong with this kind of meeting (f'r instance, there's a speaking tour currently being organised to publicise the repression faced by Serbian and German anarcho-syndicalists, which is a subject where awareness needs to be raised and spread). There's also meetings where you start off by being aware that you don't know everything, and there's some gaps in your understanding of the world, so you sit down with some people who have a relatively similar outlook to you and try and improve your ideas together. This may be a bit masturbatory, but if as a revolutionary you only go to meetings about things you already know about, you'll never improve your consciousness. This second type of meeting is certainly the kind of thing that the AF and the Commune are currently doing as a joint activity where I live; I have no idea if this is what the ICC intended to do (from what I've seen of them, one of the ICC's major flaws has tended to be an assumption that they actually do know everything there is to know about everything), but if is then it sounds like it could've been a success on those terms.


Also, I've never heard "propaganda groups" used in that way before. It's a pretty misleading use of the term. Surely propaganda, by definition, is usually aimed at people outside the group, so your criticism of the Sparts et al isn't that they make propaganda, it's that they neglect making propaganda in favour of inward-looking stuff?

That's fair enough and I've no problem with groups organising those type of meetings. For example, we recently organised a forum on the re-introduction of water charges which we recognised would generally appeal to old anti-water charges activists or to other political groups rather than necessarily being a meeting that the masses would attend. Having re-read the OP, it does generally seem to be aimed more towards "internationalists" and in that sense, it potentially is a success though I wouldn't describe a meeting as aimed towards other groups/activists as a "public forum".

Propaganda circles would have been a far more precise phrase but I was working on the assumption that it would be widely known but in fairness, by the very nature of such a circle or group, it probably only really applies to vanguard organisations and is probably only used amongst vanguard organisations or those that are widely read on the development and history of such groups. Nonetheless, ls's was extremely aggressive and completely ignored the point that I was making and just comes across as a sectarian attack.

I have numerous problems with the Sparts but I don't have a problem with propaganda circles as a rule. Any new or small group inevitably goes through a period where it has to build up some level of forces before it can be more outward looking and orientated towards mass work. The issue with the Sparts is that they have no orientation towards mass work at all really. Their whole focus is on attacking other groups and winning over other activists.

[Alf]

We generally call our public forums public because they are open to anyone. It's true that some meetings can be attempts to draw in a wider audience, particularly if you think that they may connect to more immediate struggles, and we would certainly be in favour of such meetings at given moments. But part of the problem facing revolutionary organisations today is that they are not only small, but also divided among themselves, and if they are to overcome their isolation and have a bigger impact they must begin to get over these divisions. The very modest aim of this meeting was to start breaking down the long-standing divisions between internationalist groups from various tendencies, by at least getting a face to face debate going. In this sense we think the meeting was a success.

This is very far from a sectarian project. We don't consider that we know everything but we have very good, political reasons for considering that the Trotskyists are not part of the internationalist movement, or have not been for many decades. And we certainly don't include the Catholic or any other Church as consistent opponents of capitalist wars (not since the Pope was standing up for feudal wars at any rate).

Leo and Devrim - I think you are probably overestimating the numbers of militants in the PCInt in Italy after the second world war - I have never seen the figure of tens of thousands. Several thousand, yes. Similarly I doubt very much whether the Bordigist PCI had thousands of members prior to the explosion of 1982.

[Leo]

Similarly I doubt very much whether the Bordigist PCI had thousands of members prior to the explosion of 1982.

Well, thats what I've heard from ex-militants or ex-Bordigist sympathizers who I know.

[Devrim]

Leo and Devrim - I think you are probably overestimating the numbers of militants in the PCInt in Italy after the second world war - I have never seen the figure of tens of thousands. Several thousand, yes. Similarly I doubt very much whether the Bordigist PCI had thousands of members prior to the explosion of 1982.

I may be wrong, but it is a commonly quoted figure. Look no further than Wiki:

The International Communist Party was a left communist international which was also described as a Bordigist party. The strongest base of the party was Italy, in which, at one point, they had more than 50,000 members.

Devrim

[Alf]

hm, as I say to students, don't always trust what you read on wiki.....In any case, there was certainly a rapid influx of workers towards the party when it was formed at the end of the war, and this was part of the upsurge which led many comrades to think that the second world war would give rise to a new 1917, above all in the defeated countries. But these hopes were dashed very quickly and the party's numbers quickly diminished. The other aspect of this sudden rise in numbers was a drift towards opportunism which was criticised very severely by the Gauche Communiste de France in particular.

[BOZG]

We generally call our public forums public because they are open to anyone. It's true that some meetings can be attempts to draw in a wider audience, particularly if you think that they may connect to more immediate struggles, and we would certainly be in favour of such meetings at given moments. But part of the problem facing revolutionary organisations today is that they are not only small, but also divided among themselves, and if they are to overcome their isolation and have a bigger impact they must begin to get over these divisions. The very modest aim of this meeting was to start breaking down the long-standing divisions between internationalist groups from various tendencies, by at least getting a face to face debate going. In this sense we think the meeting was a success.

This is very far from a sectarian project. We don't consider that we know everything but we have very good, political reasons for considering that the Trotskyists are not part of the internationalist movement, or have not been for many decades. And we certainly don't include the Catholic or any other Church as consistent opponents of capitalist wars (not since the Pope was standing up for feudal wars at any rate).

Leo and Devrim - I think you are probably overestimating the numbers of militants in the PCInt in Italy after the second world war - I have never seen the figure of tens of thousands. Several thousand, yes. Similarly I doubt very much whether the Bordigist PCI had thousands of members prior to the explosion of 1982.

We'll obviously disagree over the Trotskyist thing but thanks for clarifying nonetheless.