The last IC was a special edition devoted to Battaglia Comunista’s VIth Congress. As a result of this we have a backlog of material to publish. However, this heftier than usual issue also reflects the growing international work of the IBRP, something which has also helped delay us going to press.

It is no coincidence that as capitalism’s global crisis brings new depths of misery and poverty to the world proletariat there is increasing interest in the Communist Left from around the globe. Many of the groups and individuals who have written to us recently have been moved by the futility of left capitalist reformism to break with the social democratic, Trotskyist or other organisations they once belonged to and are now searching for political clarity. From the USA and Canada, through Russia to Iran and Sweden, militants moving into the proletarian camp are confronted with a so-called Communist Left divided into a variety of groups and tendencies. For newcomers the differences are not always apparent and their significance sometimes remains elusive. In particular, explaining what divides the International Bureau and the ICC has become almost a routine task - hence the inclusion of our letter attempting to do just that for comrades in Russia. Of course, it is ultimately up to those who may now offer broad allegiance to the “Communist Left” to decide for themselves on the significance of these differences but the fact that they are differences of practice as well as theory is underlined by the polemic between the ICC in Italy and the International Bureau there over Battaglia Comunista’s Proletarian Struggle Groups (GLP). We include Battaglia’s response to the ICC’s attacks and the general introduction simply in order to “set the record straight”

Needless to say, however, the letters and articles from the MLP (Marxist Labour Party) in Russia and Peyke Anternasionalisti (Internationalist Messenger) from Iran are interesting in their own right. They bear out what we have always argued: that picking up the historical and methodological threads of the Communist Left is not just a matter of accepting a set of political tablets set in stone. What we are seeing is a process in which we certainly have to actively participate but which also involves a political maturation - in the sense of being able to organise on the basis of the revolutionary programme and develop a real political life inside the working class - which is essentially the same for all of us.

Part and parcel of such a life is also to provide a marxist analysis of what is going on in the realms of capitalist political economy. The article from Prometeo on the background to European Monetary Union and the run-up to implementation of the Euro continues our analysis of the economic crisis, a crisis whose centralising and “globalising” imperative has reduced the ability of individual states to manage their economies and which in Europe is driving them towards a supra-national political state. Far from being a movement towards some sort of Kautskyian ultra-imperialism, what we are witnessing is the economic and political realignment of imperialism in the wake of the dismantling of the old Russian bloc. As we write the Nato alliance, which in the past was supposedly protecting Europe from Russia’s “evil empire”, is raining bombs inside Europe itself as Russia looks on helplessly. This is the might of the USA asserting itself and threatening the future Euro bloc if it should dare to break away from US tutelage and pose as a military threat to the US in the way it is doing economically. But capitalist political economy obeys its own logic, regardless of the will of politicians and one thing is sure - Europe will never have quite the same relationship with the US after the present bombings which are a grotesque reminder that, sooner or later, in the imperialist epoch capitalist competition means world war.

Whilst the reality of capitalism daily confirms the analysis of the internationalist communist left, the final article shows that the left wing of capitalism - in this case Trotskyism - is moving from counter-revolutionary incoherence to... counter-revolutionary incoherence. It is from an entirely different base that the new world party of the proletariat will be formed. This issue of IC is an indication of some of the forces who will be involved.