Supplement to world revolution

This is the third issue of International Review, the theoretical journal of a small and exotic Left Communist group, the ICC (International Communist Current). The issue is dated October 1975 and subtitled “Supplement to World Revolution and Internationalism” (two other ICC publications). Most issues of the IR should be given some kind of award for chloroform in print. Only a sense of duty could carry a non-member of the ICC through the International Review!

This early issue, by contrast, is much better written than the later issues (although its print quality, ironically, is far worse) and could even be of some interest to left-watchers, or at least ultraleft-watchers. The most interesting piece is the article “The lessons of Kronstadt”. The ICC expresses support for the 1921 Kronstadt mutiny, but with a few unusual twists. The accompanying article “The degeneration of the Russian Revolution” is a more tedious polemic against an ex-Trotskyist outfit, the Revolutionary Workers Group (any relation to the “Kollontaist” Revolutionary Workers Faction?). This issue further contains the second part of an analysis of the fascist victory in Italy, arguing that fascism and liberal democracy are twins rather than antipodes, and a reprint of a Left Communist article from 1933 discussing the character of fascism.

Not for the general reader, but perhaps of some use if ultraleftism, anarchism or Kronstadt is something you take seriously.