We [Pantopolis, editor’s note] publish this appeal of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT), a public appeal “TO ACT” which is addressed to all groups that are on the ground of internationalism, that is to say, of the struggle against imperialist war and for class war, in other words, the struggle for the definitive elimination of capitalism from the face of the Earth.
Aware that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is part of a serious crisis of capitalism, the most important since 1929, that in the present military conflict – for the moment confined to Ukraine – the Western imperialist countries members of NATO and the Russian imperialism trying to attach itself to the tank of Chinese imperialism are confronting each other, the TCI underlines that it is a major step towards the third world war,
In the face of this peril, which is fast approaching, the TCI calls on the revolutionary milieu to form committees of revolutionary struggle against war and capitalism.
“We therefore propose to set up “No War but the Class War” committees wherever we are present and to invite to participate in them individuals and groups who oppose all nationalisms and recognize that the only war worth fighting is the class war to end capitalism and its bloody imperialist conflicts. This will enable the scattered revolutionary minorities of today to combine forces and carry the message of the need to fight to a broader working class.”
As presented, these committees would serve as intermediary, semi-political bodies between organs of proletarian struggle (strike and struggle committees) and internationalist revolutionary grouping organizations.
This implies selection criteria for an unambiguous membership in such committees. On this point, this call for action – or rather REACTING AGAINST to the current passivity of the proletariat – remains unclear.
During the First World War, committees for the resumption of international relations were formed in order to reestablish links between the meager existing revolutionary forces, links broken by the definitive betrayal of social democracy. These nuclei of revolutionary resistance had met in Zimmerwald and Kienthal. In Zimmerwald, it should be remembered, the representatives of internationalism were in two handcarts.
These nuclei were supported by significant working-class minorities who refused to go to war and who, from 1915 onwards, made their voices heard through protest strikes, from Germany to Russia, increasingly taking on a political character.
For the existence of anti-war committees to correspond to a deep historical movement – otherwise, their artificiality would make them deflate like simple balloons – two factors are necessary:
- the occurrence of mass movements (mass strikes) against capitalism and its state in each major country of world imperialism (European Union, Great Britain, Russia, USA and Canada, China, India, industrialized countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Australian island-continent). Faced with the challenge of a third world war, perhaps in the short term, only the massiveness and simultaneity of workers’ reactions can make world imperialism and its different national components back down (temporarily, moreover).
- A proletarian mass struggle without radical political perspectives (seizing political power by destroying the capitalist state apparatus, its police, and armed forces) would be doomed to failure. The call of the ICT underlines the importance of the question of organization, both of the working masses and of its internationalist political expressions. It rightly emphasizes the vital need to organize, or “perhaps to reorganize”, after too long a period of passivity of the world proletariat.
For a fruitful discussion to take place about these “No War but the Class War committees”, two questions are essential:
- what form can the political organization of the proletariat take, in nuclei and parties, whose finality can only be the seizure of power in order to put an end to capitalism?
- Will the workers’ councils (but also sometimes soldiers’ councils), which were the revolutionary form adopted by the proletariat from 1917 to 1921, be the “form finally found of power”, in order to gather millions and millions of proletarians on the five continents?
The emergence of a mass organization of the proletariat in order to destroy the whole of capitalism is the burning question of the 2020s, which must be solved quickly in order to avoid the third imperialist world war.
This call of the ICT only underlines the great delay of the internationalist forces throughout the world in the face of the historical stakes: either a war of extermination of a part or of the totality of humanity or a world revolution whose magnitude can only really be measured on the five continents.
The internationalist forces are very weak, often dispersed, and sometimes eaten away by the most hollow sectarianism. They will only be able to find a capacity to confront each other, to regroup, even to unite, if – hic et nunc – the proletariat wakes up from its long sleep and becomes the only giant able to break the chains of slavery that encircle the surface of the earth.
Pantopolis, 11-4-2022
Complete introduction from “TCI : Contre la guerre, Pour la guerre de classe – Un appel pour agir.” Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version), and improved manually 13-4-2022.
Left wing communism 
Anibal wrote:
Critical appraisal of the text of Pantopolis
What to say? What to in the present?
1) The reaction of Pantopolis has been healthy, it denotes that it is aware that what is happening in capitalism and the class struggle is not something without major importance.
Editing the text of the ICT and responding on what is defended by the ICT is also healthy, obviously.
2) Pantopolis says that these Committees that the ICT calls to create can be artificial and deflate:
“For the existence of anti-war committees to correspond to a deep historical movement – otherwise, their artificiality would make them deflate like simple balloons – two factors are necessary.”
It is so, the important thing is that what eventually can be formed, be they Committees or other forms, be conscious of their limitations and do not practice neither a hollow and immediatist activism nor a substitutionist vanguardism, which constitute something harmful, the best thing is to be able to discuss in public, to show in the public means of each one such discussion and its results, and if that is produced with a solid base, additional steps and measures can be faced.
What should be discarded is to sectariany mount bluff organism with the mere object of showing oneself as radical and responsible.
Pantopolis states:
“For a fruitful debate on these “committees of not war, but of class war” to take place, two questions are essential.
What form can the political organization of the proletariat take, in nuclei and parties, whose aim can only be the seizure of power to put an end to capitalism?
Will the workers’ councils (but also sometimes soldiers’ councils), which were the revolutionary form adopted by the proletariat from 1917 to 1921, be the “finally found form of power”, to unite millions and millions of proletarians on the five continents?
The emergence of a mass organization of the proletariat to destroy the whole of capitalism is the burning question of the 2020s, which must be resolved quickly to avoid the third imperialist world war.”
My answer is that the proletarian movement against capitalism needs mass class organizations, which coordinate the struggle. That was the councils, and whether they are so called or otherwise, they need a revolutionary dynamic and clarity. Moreover, it is normal and pertinent that the internationalist communist minorities organize themselves, that forms of this be concretized, and one of them, desirable, is the formation of the World Party of the Communist Revolution, on serious, rigorous and precise bases: such a party should be involved in the development, clarification and improvement of the proletarian consciousness, in promoting the advance of the positions and methods of struggle of internationalist revolutionary communism, in the world advance of the process of independence of the working class against capital, in its coordination to become a united and capable force. This party does not aspire to take power for itself, but to lead in a world revolutionary sense the process. It is not a Bolshevik, substitutionist model party, but struggles to be a true reference of vanguard of the proletarian class movement, which helps it to defend itself from the bourgeois ideologies and forces, which defends a method of thought and response, which empowers the proletariat to emancipate itself as a class by itself, carry out the insurrection against the states, forces and capitalist relations, and subsequently exercise the international revolutionary proletarian dictatorship, aimed at the emancipation and overcoming of capitalist relations, for which it is necessary to generate and control the world communist production and distribution. If this is not done by the workers councils and the party in its bosom and as a social vector of communist criticism and action, capital wins.
Pantopolis considers that in this decade must be resolved the question of revolution , and if not the Third World War will unfold (“The emergence of a mass organization of the proletariat to destroy the whole of capitalism is the burning question of the 2020s, which must be resolved quickly to avoid the third imperialist world war.”).
I consider that such a war may still take more years, that capitalism is not going to throw itself into it in a few years. The class is in deplorable conditions, in spite of certain movements of struggle in some moments in some points of the planet. But capital still has room for maneuver, generating, obviously, pernicious consequences everywhere and exploiting the proletariat intensely.nuclear weapons will prevent such a Third War? They will not, but their presence and their development means that the blocs in contention will not launch themselves into it at the first opportunity.Strategic nuclear deterrence is not well grasped by many internationalist communist expressions.
See:
Conditions for a third world war. Origins of many confusions.
https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t9052-condiciones-para-una-tercera-guerra-mundial-origenes-de-muchas-confusiones?highlight=guerra
– Likewise Pantopolis states:
“The internationalist forces are very weak, often dispersed, sometimes eaten away by the hollowest sectarianism. They will only be able to find an ability to confront each other, to regroup, even to unite, if – hic et nunc – the proletariat awakens from its long slumber and becomes the only giant capable of breaking the chains of slavery that surround the surface of the earth.”
This is true and evident what Pantopolis says, but if this awakening takes place, it generates better conditions of possibility to overcome this inveterate sectarianism that has done and does so much damage, and for the emergence of new communist expressions, but only that, there is not an ineluctable necessity that imposes an anti-sectarian clarity, what is needed is an international communist unification on methodological bases, of principles, programmatic, tactical and strategic solid, lucid and precise, this is promoted by such an awakening of the proletariat. But sectarianism and confusion, sectarian doctrinarism and confused ideology are powerful cancers that demand a strong and capable reaction from the most healthy and advanced parts of the movement, and a notorious and high demand on the part of the movement and its most active and clarified elements with respect to the internationalist communist groups and parties, which will be in the historical situation of facing the creation of a new proletarian communist International that is effective and not a bluff, nor a make-up maneuver of radicalized reformism, or an opportunist tendency that reiterates the ravages of the Third Communist International.
Source: https://inter-rev.foroactivo.com/t10981-que-decir-que-hacer-en-el-presente-pantopolis (see end of page for english)
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