International Communist Current
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The International Communist Current is a centralised international left communist organisation with sections throughout the world.
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[edit] History
The International Communist Current (ICC) was founded in 1975 by Revolution Internationale (France), World Revolution (UK), Internationalism (USA), Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), Internacionalismo (Venezuela) and Accion Proletaria (Spain). Most of these groups came out of the growth of revolutionary politics with the international resurgence of working class struggles that took place in the late 1960s.
The ICC traces its political origins to the left fractions which detached themselves from the Communist International, in particular the German, Dutch and Italian Lefts. Its direct political antecedent was the Gauche Communiste de France, which broke away from the so-called Bordigists in the mid-1940s. This group was dissolved in 1952 when the anticipated revolutionary wave had failed to materialise. However, the Internacialismo group, which was founded in 1964 in Venezuela, was heavily influenced by the experience and positions of the Gauche Communiste, as the people who were to form this group had an ex-member of the Gauche Communiste as their mentor.
Gradually the ICC has spread to a large number of countries but its national sections remain tiny. It has also seen a number of splits from its ranks. From 1978 up to the present day a succession of groups have split from the ICC such as the Internationalist Communist Group, Communist Bulletin Group, Internationalist Perspective group in 1985. More recently, in 2003 the ICC expelled several members who belonged to a group calling themselves the "Internal Fraction of the ICC".
[edit] Ideology
The ICC considers itself to stand in the left communist tradition, believing itself to be the only genuine communist movement. All other 'leftist' groups, whether Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist, or Leninist, are thought of as "the left of capitalism’s political apparatus." According to the ICC, there is no way these groups can be the true representatives of the proletariat.
The ICC rejects what it describes as bourgeois democracy, finding that it "does not differ at root from other forms of capitalist dictatorship, such as Stalinism and fascism". It is also hostile to the unions, seeing them as "organs of capitalist order within the proletariat".
Instead it believes in the self organisation of the working class, electing its own leaders outside of parliament, in workers' councils. This organisation of the working class needs to be done on an international level; the revolution can only succeed if it is a world wide revolution, leading to the overthrow of all existing states and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat on a world scale.
In their opinion, once this has been established, capitalist social relations will be abolished: these include wage labour, national frontiers and commodity production. Instead all economic activity will be oriented "towards the full satisfaction of human needs". The ICC sees its own role in this process as the vanguard of the workers' movement, in which it neither organises the working class nor takes power in its name, but actively participates within the movement.
[edit] Criticism
Critics of the ICC accuse it of paranoia in the way it handles dissenters and critics.
One of the ICC's concepts is the idea of "parasitism", the belief that other socialist/communist groups and individuals are parasites of the working class. Ex-ICC member 'Ingram' characterised this idea as a mythical category invented by the ICC to enable them to label anyone they dislike or who threatens their collective delusion [1].
