Introduction

In May 1999, the members of Internationalist Notes / Notes Internationalistes (Canada) voted and publicised a motion expressing our political solidarity with the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP).

This decision was based on the proximity of our positions to those of a tendency already existing in the proletarian political camp. It was also based on our internationalist conception of revolutionary work. Contrary to the social democratic, Stalinist, and Maoist lies, internationalist communists do not support the absurd chauvinist theory of “socialism in one country”. We take our position from Engels who, as early as 1847, wrote in his “Principles of Communism”:

The communist revolution [...] will not be a purely national revolution.

This position was later taken up in the Statutes of the International Association of Workers (the 1st International) where Marx wrote in 1864:

The emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists...

Thus to solve an international problem, we need a solution and tools of an international scope.

Now, after the first year of correspondence and joint work, we can report, as promised in our preceding issue, on the results of our efforts.

This spring, the first North American conference of sympathising groups of the IBRP was held in Montreal. For a few days, it brought together delegations from the Los Angeles Workers Voice, Internationalist Notes (USA) and Internationalist Notes (Canada), as well as a delegation of the IBRP comprising comrades from the Communist Workers Organisation of Great Britain and the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) of Italy. This meeting was productive. During the same period, bilateral meetings were held between the IBRP and the Circulo Comunista Internacionalista of Colombia and Payke Anternasionalisty of the Iranian diaspora. Moreover, a nucleus of French comrades in political solidarity with the IBRP has also been constituted since then.

Therefore we are publishing below a communiqué of the IBRP relating these positive developments. Also we are republishing the content of the IBRP May Day 2000 declaration in its entirety co-signed by its associated groups (more than 1,000 copies of this document have already been distributed in Canada), with the goal of making the political basis of our regroupment known.

Throughout the world something is moving - A strengthening of the IBRP in North America

The wreck of Stalinism and the storm created by the capitalist crisis are creating new revolutionary forces. In North America and elsewhere this has led to the emergence of solid nuclei who support the International Bureau.

From the 'superstructural' or subjective point of view a new world situation is already appearing. It is obviously the result of the material, objective transformation of the world which are summed up in two great phenomenon:

1. The implosion of the Soviet Empire, presented by the bourgeoisie and its hacks of both left and right as the “end of communism”.
2. Capitalism’s response to the crisis which has gripped it for more than 25 years. This has resulted in the technological and organisational revolution with the consequent breakdown of the old class composition and an increasing “financialisation” of the economy.

These phenomenon have overturned the Stalinist, Trotskyist and social democratic models which claimed that the USSR was “real socialism” or that state capitalist activity was a step towards “socialism”. Today confusion and disorganisation is the characteristic feature of those who followed the old leftists models.

Today ex-Stalinists have become democrats whilst the social democrats are indistinguishable from the conservatives. And as the later move right the Trotskyists have moved further into the reformist territory which social democracy no longer occupies. Whilst the latter might retain the word “revolutionary” it is as a figleaf to cover their (state) capitalist programmes.

Nearly 80 years after the failure of the revolutionary wave which followed the First World War, the Communist Left which played such an enormous part in that class movement has remained marginalized. This is because we have not abandoned the principles of revolutionary Marxism for this or that short-term expedient. But today that marginalisation is beginning to break down. There are many new political forces springing up. Some pay us the back-handed compliment of stealing parts of the programme we have defended throughout the long period of the counter-revolution in order to cling on to the last vestiges of their former state capitalism. Others however, are now arriving on the scene who recognise that only a complete break with their leftist past can allow them to be part of the real struggle for proletarian emancipation. Some of these are now turning to the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.

The International Bureau was formed sixteen years ago by the Communist Workers Organisation (UK) and the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista). This was result of a process of decantation through the International Conferences called by Battaglia Comunista (1977-80). We stress once again that the IBRP does not claim to be the Party rather we work for the future formation of the Party. The proletariat needs both its class wide organisations (the councils) and the centralised coming together of its most conscious elements on an international scale (the Party) if it is to shake off the yoke of capitalism. This international party is not a product of mere will but will grow out of the growing combativity of the working class on an international level. At the same time we recognise that the World Proletarian Party cannot be a product of the last minute. The Bureau therefore exists to provide a focus for all those elements internationally that are coming together to fight capitalism. This is not a matter of creating clones of existing organisations nor simply of formal adherence to a political platform. We aim to foster the development of proletarian organisations rooted in the life of the class wherever they are found and to provide a political framework and platform under which they can begin the process of centralising internationally. To new forces which will inevitably emerge in the class struggle we offer the inheritance of the communist left in terms of programmatic understanding and revolutionary Marxist method. We do not artificially close the process of development of the international party and proclaim ourselves the one true party as do the Bordigists but remain open to the different situations which will arise in the future.

For some years the Bureau has had sympathising elements in North America and at a conference held in Canada this spring we formally constituted as regular sympathising publications of the Bureau Internationalist Notes/Notes Internationalistes of Canada and Internationalist Notes of the USA. The same conference amended the Bureau statutes and laid out a programme of work between North America, Britain and Italy. This will include, not only joint statements on issues of international significance, but also joint projects of publication, translation and education. The aim is not only to establish a process in which the Bureau adherents will work more closely together in both a theoretical and practical sense but also turn the present nuclei in North America into living organisms within the class struggle in those areas. The conference approved the existing Bureau Platform and a North American comrade was elected to the editorial board of our central organ, Internationalist Communist.

Since that meeting other nuclei like Payke Anternasionalisty (Iranian diaspora) and the Circulo Comunista Internacionalista (Columbia) have announced their acceptance of the Bureau Platform and have signed our MayDay 2000 statement. Without ridiculous fanfares which exaggerates the significance of the forces now supporting the Bureau it is clear that this new growth of the IBRP mirrors something that is happening inside the working class on both a material and ideological level. It demonstrates that the one international class which is truly “anti-capitalist” has not disappeared despite the premature obituaries of the bourgeoisie. The primary goal of the IBRP is to help restore within the world working class the perspective that the only real anti-capitalism is international communism.