The following is an appeal distributed by sympathizers of the communist left in Australia along with IP’s reply.
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Appeal to Sympathisers of the Communist Left (Australia)
Comrades!
Today humanity faces the same ultimatum posed to it since the eve of the First World War, in the words of Rosa Luxemburg and Friedrich Engels before her – Socialism or Barbarism.
The world capitalist system has seen its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with the working class taking the brunt of the blow, everywhere facing wage-freezes, job-cuts and worsening working conditions. The threat of global environmental catastrophe looks more possible than ever before. Bloody and brutal conflicts rage on around the globe – from Iraq to Afghanistan, Somalia to Sudan, Colombia to Mexico.
In contrast to these emanations of a moribund society we also see the germs of a new world – without exploitation or oppression, without poverty or scarcity, without wars or national borders – in the class struggle of the international working class.
The Communist Left has its origins in the Left currents of the Communist International which came into being as a proletarian response to its opportunist slidings when faced with the retreat of the international revolutionary wave in the 1920s. Whilst the Communist Left had expressions in many countries its most prominent representatives were to be found in Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Russia. In the period of counter-revolution which opened at the end of the 1920s, it was the Communist Left which proved to be the most intransigent defenders of proletarian internationalism and the most rigorous in drawing up the balance sheet of the revolutionary wave.
Whilst sympathisers of the Communist Left do exist in Australia, at this point they do so only as individuals suffering largely from political isolation. In order to effectively intervene in the class struggle, it is necessary that revolutionaries organise themselves into a political organisation, founded on the basis of shared positions and principles.
However, at the present hour the immediate formation of such a group is not on the agenda in Australia. What is needed at present is the coming together of internationalists for discussion conducted with the goal of initiating and maintaining contact between comrades (particularly those who are geographically isolated) and collective political clarification of the positions which define the communist programme today.
Thus, we appeal for the initiation of organised discussions between all sympathisers of the Communist Left in Australia. It is proposed that the discussions are conducted under the name: ‘Internationalist Communist Affiliate Network’.
We propose the criteria for participation is agreement with the most elementary positions of left communism today:
- Imperialist war and national movements of all stripes have nothing to offer the working class but death and destruction. The working class must oppose all bourgeois camps. By calling on them to take the side of one or another faction, the bourgeoisie divide workers and lead them to massacre their class brothers and sisters.
- Parliament and bourgeois elections are a masquerade. Capitalist ‘democracy’ does not differ at root from any form of capitalist dictatorship. Any call to participate in the parliamentary circus can only reinforce the lie that elections offer any real choice for the exploited.
- All unions are organs of the capitalist system and act in its service. The fundamental role of the unions is to police the working class and sabotage its struggles. In order to defend its immediate interests, and ultimately to make the revolution, the working class must struggle outside and against the unions.
All who may be interested in taking part are encouraged to write to InternationalistWorker[at]gmail.com. We also welcome any comments, questions and criticisms.
With fraternal communist greetings,
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Reply by Internationalist Perspective
Dear comrades
We were very heartened to receive your Appeal to sympathizers of the Communist Left in Australia, along with the accompanying letter inviting us and others to contribute to your proposed discussions. We of course applaud your effort of organizing yourselves and initiating the process of collective political clarification of — as you say — the positions which define the communist programme today. We in IP would emphasize here the word “today”, while perhaps de-emphasizing the word “programme”. The latter term is undoubtedly fetishized by some groups in the revolutionary milieu, those who seem to see their role as one of offering the working class a fully completed programme, to be accepted and acted upon in a way that gives the(ir) Party the role of organized ‘leader’ and ‘vanguard’ of the class and its revolution. We would emphasize the word “today” because we are convinced that the historic Communist Left did not provide us with a fully completed programme, one which revolutionaries can merely ‘update’ and apply to today’s conditions. The Communist Left’s programme (or programmes, since there were differing currents) had gaps and insufficiences even its own time, especially in its theoretical foundation. Today, more than 70 years after the outbreak of WWII, the capitalist world has changed enormously, and Marxist revolutionaries need to develop their theoretical arsenal if they are to be adequate to the role they aspire to, that of providing the class with its communist programme.
We think you have chosen the best method to develop yourselves politically, given the conditions that you find yourselves in in Australia. By forming a discussion circle, and informing and inviting others in Australia who sympathize with the Communist Left to join you, you are providing yourselves with the means to move forward as revolutionaries. With input from existing communist groups, you will hopefully be able to sort out many of the most important issues and positions which face the working class today, and then decide which step to take from there. This process may take some time and should not be rushed as a result of an impatience to ‘do something’. The process of theoretical clarification *is* doing something, something absolutely essential to the success of the proletarian revolution. And the need for such clarification is not something that ends when one forms or joins a communist organization. Any such organization which does not encourage such clarification and involve all its members in this process in an open manner, recognizing the paramount importance of it, is, we would argue, an organization not worthy of the respect of the working class. We would encourage you to keep this in mind as you move forward, whether you choose to form a new separate communist organization, to join one existing such, or to separately join different organizations.
We aren’t sure which questions you plan to make the initial focus of your discussions, so when you have decided on that please inform us and we will try to provide you with one or more of our texts which we think will be helpful for you. Of course, we would hope to continue in this manner as you progress through the various questions and issues you choose to discuss.
We would also be most interested in being kept informed of the results of your discussions. We will post your Appeal on an email list that we have been active on, but which is relatively quiet lately, although it does act as a sort of network of contacts, and does have at least a couple of members from Australia. (It was initially formed, in 2000, as a discussion network and so is named the Internationalists’ Discussion Network, otherwise know as Intsdiscnet; perhaps some of you have heard of it.)
Last year, in response to the rapid deepening of the international economic crisis, we produced an Appeal of our own to pro-revolutionaries throughout the world, to work to engage in common activities and to overcome their mutual competitiveness and sectarianism. We attach the Appeal to this letter. We wish to point out, since there has been some confusion about this within the revolutionary milieu, that our aim in putting forward our Appeal is *not* to put ourselves forward as a new ‘pole of regroupment’.
We hope to hear back from you once you have decided on the (initial) contents of your discussions, and to remain in regular contact with you after that. We offer you our best wishes for fruitful and fraternal discussions leading to your organized involvement in the global revolutionary milieu.
In the meantime, comrades, please accept our warmest internationalist communist greetings,
E.R., for Internationalist Perspective
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P.S. We think that you might want to consider adding one point to your criteria for participation, specifically, concerning there having never existed any form of communism in the modern world, either in Russia or China or Cuba, etc., and that Stalinism, as well as Social Democracy and Trotskyism, is part of the capitalist political Left, defenders of state capitalism and enemies of the working class.
