On the call for the Communist Left to make a joint appeal against the democratic campaign

We are publishing a response from a close sympathiser to our call for an appeal by the groups of the Communist Left in response to the massive international democratic campaign of the bourgeoisie. We fully support its approach and conclusions.

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I want to fully support the ICC’s appeal to the Communist Left to get behind a resolution aimed against the democratic campaign played by the world’s bourgeoisie in order to submerge the working class and distract it away from the continuation of its struggle.

In the discussion at the July public meeting on this issue the question arose about the probable rejection of this position by the CWO/ICT, but that question is entirely secondary to the necessity for a strict focus on the question of democracy as it affects the manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie and their attacks on the consciousness of the working class. Across the world and leading with the US, Britain and Europe, the democratic campaigns being unleashed and sustained necessitates particular attention from revolutionaries, i.e., the Communist Left, regardless of the possible rejection by this or that group. It is much more important that this basic defence of a revolutionary position (the defence of proletarian internationalism against the capitalist nation state) is put forward for discussion, arguments and/or why it’s rejected.

The campaign of democracy cannot be underestimated: led by the US, whose own electoral process is unfolding on an unprecedented global scale, being followed by Europe and globally, is the considered response by the bourgeoisie to the dangers of workers’ struggles while attempting to rein in the forces of populism, which itself has made good use of the openings provided by the democratic terrain and the electoral circuses. In the last couple of years the Biden administration has demonstrated its strong concern for any development of the class struggle, particularly in the US and Western Europe. But even here, faced with the imperative necessity to find a candidate to face Trump given Biden’s increasing unsuitability, the Democratic Party was riven by in-fighting by cliques and other factors relating to the loss of control by the bourgeoisie. Beyond the US, the democratic campaign of the bourgeoisie is a global phenomenon reflecting the international response of the working shown during recent struggles. This is why the international appeal is an entirely appropriate response to the manoeuvres of the ruling class: it marks an important point that will only develop in the coming period.

On the CWO/ICT: It’s not the responsibility of the ICC to “save” the CWO by bringing it “into line” by signing a resolution; it is the responsibility of the ICC to make an appeal around the question of democracy as far and as wide as it can. Although the CWO has made one written response to the ICC regarding other appeals we can get a flavour of its response looking at the latest editorial on its website: “An ‘age of chaos’ or of deepening capitalist crisis?” Apart from trying to pose “chaos” against “economic crisis” when the two are intimately connected, the CWO quotes the UN Secretary General’s recent remarks about the world’s “dangerous and unpredictable free-for-all” (unlike the relative stability of the Cold War he went on to say). Underhandedly, the CWO is using a surrogate here (not for the first time) to “polemicise” with the ICC. It of course doesn’t mention the prescience of the ICC whose 1990 analysis gave a much more profound explanation of the decomposition of imperialism three decades earlier than the UN Secretary General’s pointed out the obvious.

The editorial continues with the blatant lie that it wants to work with other revolutionary forces and goes on to say that it wants to continue with its fraud of working for the “wider movement” of the NWBCW set-up. Nothing of this is new in the world of the CWO/ICT, but it is becoming increasingly likely that it will be completely unable to continue to secure its place as an effect representative of the working class and its struggle. The path that it has taken, i.e., “building a widespread movement enough to reach the rest of the working class” is littered with pitfalls and traps that it is ill-designed and unequipped to deal with. As the years have rolled by this “widespread movement” is exposed as the widespread fraud it has always been. And alongside this activism – a fraud presented to the working class as its salvation - we see the crass opportunism of the CWO with its dealings with dubious elements and parasitic forces. Activism and opportunism are nothing new to the CWO but have been constant features of the CWO/ICT’s activities, and taken to the stage they have done lately it presents a compounded double threat to it as a revolutionary force that, on past experience, it is incapable of correcting. It is in a hole of its own making and all the indications are that it will be unable to stop digging.

 

Baboon. 25.9.24