Leon Trotsky y Wall Street

International Review is the official publication of the International Communist Current (ICC). This issue of the magazine was published in July 1977, but the political positions of the ICC have such a timeless quality about them, that the publication date doesn't really matter. I wouldn't be too surprised if some articles from this issue are on-line at the ICC's website! The ICC claims to be in political continuity with the ultraleft factions of the early Communist International: the Dutch and German Left around Pannekoek and Gorter, and the Italian Left around Bordiga. These currents are sometimes referred to as Left Communists. To make a long story somewhat shorter!

I admit that I don't really like this the ICC, and this particular issue of their journal gave me several additional reasons to dislike the group. The ICC reprints several old articles by an obscure Left Communist group in Mexico, the Marxist Workers' Group. The reprinted articles were written in 1937-38, during the Spanish Civil War. One of the members of the Mexican group was Eiffel, a former Trotskyist and Oehlerite, who had been extradited from the United States and found refuge in Mexico. Eiffel is rather scathingly mentioned in a few polemical articles by Trotsky, who denounced him as an ultraleftist sectarian. Reading the articles reprinted by International Review, I can only conclude that Trotsky was (for once) right!

The Marxist Workers' Group denounces both Franco and the Spanish Republic in such terms, that they sound virtually like fifth columnists. Republican soldiers should mutiny and fraternize with Franco's soldiers, who are just deluded peasants betrayed by the Republican government, which refuses to give them land. The fight is not against Franco's army (no?), but against "the bourgeoisie itself, fascist or `anti-fascist'". All "workers and peasants" must launch a "common struggle", including Moroccans, Italians and Germans. At the time, Morocco supported Franco, while Italy and Germany were fascist! How likely was it that German workers (in the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, perhaps?) would have launched a "common struggle" with workers in Barcelona against "the bourgeoisie itself"? Ridiculous nonsense.

The Mexican Workers' Group further states that the Mexican government should stop sending arms and ammunition to the Spanish Republic. Mexican president Cardenas (a left-nationalist populist) is supposedly an agent of U.S. imperialism, who gave Trotsky asylum only because his American masters demanded it. The United States wants to use Trotsky in its diplomatic wrangling with Stalin, etc. Somewhat contradictory, the Mexican Workers' Group nevertheless demands that Trotsky should be granted asylum...

This kind of fifth columnist drivel didn't go unnoticed. The famous painter Diego Rivera, at the time a prominent supporter of Trotsky in Mexico, denounced the Mexican Workers' Group in the magazine Excelsior, presumably the local Trotskyist publication.

The other articles in this issue of International Review are written by the ICC themselves. The contents of "From Austro-Marxism to Austro-Fascism" can be easily deduced by the title. Let's just say that the ICC doesn't like Social Democratic Austria, either! Another article is a polemic against the CWO, a perennial competitor to the ICC on the ultraleftist flank. The ICC doesn't like CWO's quasi-Leninist or crypto-Bordigist positions on War Communism, the role of the state after the revolution, etc. I suppose they do agree on Spain and Austria.

An erratic ultraleftist publication of this kind is definitely not my cup of tea, but for creating a little tempest in my tea cup, I will nevertheless award it three stars. I suppose you could call these musings "interesting", after a fashion.