Category: Workers’ Struggles
Discussion Contribution: 1825-2025 – Two Centuries of Class Struggle
The article “1825 – 2025: Two Centuries of Class Struggle” provides an impressive overview of the distinct periods of proletarian class struggles, their rise and fall shaping the course of modern, industrial, capitalism and the fate of humanity, in order to identify historic offensives, defeats and resurgences, and discern the dynamic of the force relationship between capitalism’s antagonistic, historical classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat from the latter’s point of view.
Dissatisfied with a “lack of precision among revolutionaries as to what is at stake in the terms “counter-revolution”, “physical or political defeat” and “resumption of the class struggle””, it proposes “an initial framework for analysis” for discussion, in view of elaborating a well-founded assessment of the force relations between the classes.
We share the author’s concern and think that this effort responds to a wider concern among internationalist minorities, one which has recently also been raised in the discussions at the international conference in Arezzo. Moreover we esteem that this draft is a veritable contribution to this and similar discussions.
Notwithstanding reservations about its appreciation of the historical workers’ struggles in Germany in the period of 1917 – 1923, and albeit we certainly disagree with a positive assessment of the presumed “Spartacus insurrections” at Berlin 1919, we recommend this remarkable work for attentive reading and discussion.
The editor, October 8, 2024
Internationalist Meeting at Arezzo (June 2024) – Documents and Discussions
In June 2024 the second international conference of a number of groups and elements from the internationalist Communist Left has been held at Arezzo (Italy). Initiated by Internationalist Perspective and Controverses in 2023, this sequel has gathered participants from six European countries for contradictory discussions on the following topics:
1. The proletariat and the balance of forces between the classes;
2. The action days and meetings at Prague ‘against war’ (end of May 2024) and the initiative of an internationalist statement on capitalism and war;
3. The central role of war in capitalism and its effects on the prospects of the working and ruling classes;
4. The period of transition and ‘communization’;
5. the statement on capitalism and war.
In the section ‘International Meetings & Conferences’ we assemble discussion contributions and file documents pertaining to these conferences, as they become available in English.
Last updated: September 30, 2024.
‘Barbaria’: Against Israeli and Palestinian Nationalism
As internationalist statements of position and analyses on the current exacerbation of imperialist standoffs and maneuvering in the Middle East over the bloody Israeli-Palestine conflict have started to come to the fore, we limit ourselves to highlighting contributions that we esteem to merit attention. Such as the following statement by the ‘Communists against commodity and state’ group ‘Barbaria’ from Spain, which notably recalls the commencement of class confrontations within the Gaza zone only some weeks before the terrorist onslaught by Hamas and the monstrous counter-reactions by the Israeli state officials and their sponsors in a wider framework.
The editor, October 15, 2023.
Continue reading “‘Barbaria’: Against Israeli and Palestinian Nationalism”
Axel Weipert: The Second Revolution. The Council Movement in Berlin 1919-1920
A Book Review by Ph. Bourrinet
The history of the council movement seemed a long outdated history after a myriad of studies in the 1960s and 1970s in both parts of Germany, often under very clear ideological banners: democracy versus dictatorship. After a long historiographical slumber on revolutionary events in Germany; after the so-called “collapse of communism”, important studies on the council movement emerged in 2013 with a volume devoted to the Hamburg Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council. (1) Axel Weipert’s study, published in Berlin in 2015, is a very notable contribution to the new historiography after the downfall of the (Berlin) wall, this time devoted to the “second revolution”, the second phase of the council movement after the January 1919 workers’ defeat in Berlin. (2)
Continue reading “Axel Weipert: The Second Revolution. The Council Movement in Berlin 1919-1920”Russia’s Annexations in Ukraine are Another Step Towards Global Imperialist War
Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency
(October 21, 2022).
We resume this publication by adopting the latest statement issued by the ICT (International Communist Tendency) on the threat of a more generalized war, including the use of nuclear weapons, apropos of the recent exacerbation of the armed conflict in Ukraine, and on the development of the working class alternative to capitalism, its crises and war, which has also recently announced itself through a tendency towards massive strikes.
In addition, we draw the attention of ours readers to the progress in the constitution of “No War but the Class War” committees, defending proletarian internationalism against all sides in the inter-imperialist conflict, which has been initiated by the ICT, and which has recently taken shape through the constitution of such committees in Turkiye (April 28), Italy (August 5) and Canada (Toronto and the Pacific North-West Committee, September 2022; Montreal, October 2022).
The Editor, October 23, 2022.
Continue reading “Russia’s Annexations in Ukraine are Another Step Towards Global Imperialist War”
Russia: About “Anarchists” who forget the principles
Statement approved at a referendum of the members of the KRAS-IWA (Russia)
“We reproduce the following article in solidarity with KRAS, section of the anarcho-syndicalist IWA in Russia. From the beginning of the war in Ukraine members of KRAS have consistently defended the internationalist position, denouncing all sides in the conflict and calling on workers to resist it. (1) For this, they are now being accused by those anarchists who have taken the side of the Ukrainian national resistance of being stooges of the Kremlin.
We can’t help but be reminded of the smears against our comrades in the PCInt who, for opposing all sides in the Second World War and for calling on workers to “desert the war” , (2) were denounced by the Stalinist party of Togliatti as “agents and servants of Hitler”. Back then such smears were used to physically liquidate internationalists.
Once again there is no low to which those who have made their peace with national defencism will not stoop down.” (ICT, June 13, 2022)
In agreement with the foregoing, we have added a translation of the London Anti-War Manifesto of February 1915 to a new documentary section on this site: Proletarian Internationalism against Imperialism and War (Documents), which refers to the historical schism on the question of war that also took place within anarchism apropos of the First World War,
The editor, July 3, 2022.
Continue reading “Russia: About “Anarchists” who forget the principles”
Lessons from the dockworkers’ strike in Italy against the mandatory ‘Green Pass’
Statement of ‘Le Prolétaire’, October 22, 2021.
Faced with the need to cope with the rising infection and hospitalization rates in the current “fourth wave” of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a staggering vaccination campaign, some governments in the western hemisphere increasingly take their resort to measures… not so much of strengthening public health services, but rather of increasing repression, like blackmailing wage earners, who are barred from their workplaces and having their wages suspended, if they do not dispose of the required vaccination status, as for instance in Italy.
The following elaborate statement by the Bordigist group around ‘Le Prolétaire’ analyses an attempt initiated by dockworkers in Italy last autumn to thwart off such an attempt by the state to strengthen its control over the workers (via the “green pass”) – one that however was nipped in the bud rather spectacularly, not only by the usual political and syndicalist maneuvers, but also by the poisonous, if not nefarious, influence of the ‘anti-vax movement’. It also proposes some basic lessons to draw from this defeat that merit discussion.
Continue reading “Lessons from the dockworkers’ strike in Italy against the mandatory ‘Green Pass’”
Iran: Strikes in the Oil and Petrochemical Industries at the Center of new Proletarian Struggles
After the fiasco of the recent presidential elections in Iran (less than 50% of the voters participated), a massive strike wave initiated by ‘contract’ workers in the oil and petrochemical industries has extended throughout the country, persistently resisting the maneuverings and repression of the ‘Islamic Republic’ and resuscitating a widespread solidarity in society.
In the following we document its repercussions in the political milieus laying claim to proletarian internationalism:
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‘Left-wing Communism – NOT an infantile disorder’ has opened a special section since last June 30, featuring analyses from internationalist sources, news and background articles: Iran oil strike at the center of a new wave of proletarian struggles. Besides voices from the former milieus, statements by a number of bourgeois (ultra-) left organizations can be consulted there (in provisional translations) as well, next to a number of communiqués by the strike committee in Iran, and some commentaries.
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Hereafter, on page 2, we present the first statement we have received on the courageous struggle by the precarious workers in Iran, the communiqué by ‘Internationalist Voice’ of June 27, 2021, (regardless our disagreement on ‘peripheral’ capitalism’), summarizing the stakes and demands at its point of departure, and putting forward a first evaluation.
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The Internationalist Communist Tendency has just published its first article, envisaging both to inform its readers (at the hand of communiqués from the strike committee) and to draw a critical balance sheet of the strike, its repercussions in the country, and the perspectives this opens up: Iranian Oil and Petrochemical Workers’ Strikes Go On . (28 July, 2021)
Last but not least, we invite our readers to explore the publications we have had occasion to relate on this blog on the situation in the Near and Middle East, and specifically regarding Iran. For our following of proletarian struggles we recommend in particular:
Iran: “Lessons from Strikes, Labour Struggles and internationalist Tasks” (Extracts) (A balance sheet by ‘Internationalist Voice’, January 2019)
Theses on the 2018 proletarian struggles in the Near and Middle East and their prospects (An article summary, Fredo Corvo, January 2019)
Impending war Iran-USA, towards a third world war? (Translation from ‘Arbeidersstemmen’, January 2020)
Iran: A New Wave of Strikes and Workers’ Protests and the Need for Workers’ Solidarity (A Communiqué by ‘Internationalist Voice’, August 2020)
The editor
Appeal to Arab and Jewish workers in Palestine and Israel
An internationalist Articles Selection & Review 