Herman Gorter when not busy writing open letters |
This is a collection of old back issues of "World Revolution", the British publication of the International Communist Current (ICC). I've read three of these issues (124, 134, 135). They were published in 1989-90. Margaret Thatcher was still in power in Britain, but she was being increasingly challenged by anti-poll tax protests, including the riots at Trafalgar Square in London. Meanwhile, the Soviet bloc was in terminal crisis, the IMF had begun to impose "structural adjustment programs" on various Third World nations, Nelson Mandela was out of prison, and climate change had already become an issue. On the British left scene, the SWP and the old Militant Tendency were the strongest groups, while Class War was the most theatrical.
I admit that "World Revolution" is more accessible than the ICC's
super-boring theoretical journal, International Review. But, of course, the
basic politics are the same. If read carefully, the ICC's "interventions
in the class struggle" turn out to be super-sectarian ruminations. The
anti-poll tax movement is written off as "bourgeois", neither the
Labour Party nor the unions can be supported, the SWP and Militant are no good
either, and Class War are probably government agents. The crisis in the Eastern
Bloc is given a pessimistic interpretation. Although the ICC opposed
"Stalinist state capitalism" in the Soviet Union, they nevertheless
argue that the democratic and nationalist protests against the Stalinist
regimes have weakened the proletariat, both East and West, making it easy prey
to "bourgeois" illusions about democracy, etc. This "wind from
the east" made the ICC to draw even more pessimistic conclusions a few
years later, claiming that the whole capitalist system (and society with it)
was rapidly "decomposing", with no revolution in sight.
Another thing that stands out in "World Revolution" is the
quasi-conspiracist perspective, what the ICC dubs "the Machiavellism of
the bourgeoisie". The ICC somehow believes that the establishment (from
left to right) is more or less perfectly united, and consciously decides which
political party should be in government at any given time, the better to trick
the workers into passivity. Thus, both British and American elections are
really rigged. The British Labour Party *wants* to loose the elections to
Thatcher, and therefore deliberately takes impossible positions (such as
unilateral disarmament) which they know the electorate will reject. By being
the opposition party, Labour can pretend to be a "radical"
alternative to the Tories, and will be called upon by the bourgeoisie to take
power at a later date, when the workers are too fed up with the Tories, and
only Labour can control them. This scenario, needless to say, has nothing to do
with classical Marxism, but the ICC believes that the capitalist class becomes
*more* unified and conscious when the system declines, due to the increased
power of the state, which acts like a general staff of the otherwise fractious
bourgeoisie.
"World Revolution" no 134 contains a surprising article by one C D
Ward about the greenhouse effect (man-made climate change). While condemning
the Greens and Deep Ecology, Ward nevertheless lands in a surprisingly Green
position himself: "A considerable part of the existing industrial
infrastructure will have to be demolished, relocated and reconstructed on a new
basis, using non-polluting energy sources. The monstrously swollen urban
conglomerations will also have to be dismantled, and the tyranny of the private
automobile overthrown. There will have to be a vast programme of reforestation
as part of the wholesale reshaping of the social\natural landscape".
Needless to say, such a perspective has nothing to do with Marxism either, nor
- I presume - with the usual line of the ICC...
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