ICT organizational structure

Hello comrades. I have a question about how the ICT promotes political homogeneity within its ranks and amongst different sections.

I understand that the sections of the ICT have a fair amount of autonomy in the sense that there isn't a centralized organ that is elected from all of the members that tries to coordinate the actions of all of the sections or facilitate the process of political homogenization. I think for this reason some have referred to the ICT as federalist in practice.

The ICT platform states:"...organisation and centralisation on an international scale. The process of moving from today's fragmentary struggles of revolutionary forces scattered throughout the globe to tomorrow's political and military battles of the international revolutionary party demands the maximum of effort by communists to secure political homogenisation and the organisation of new cadres. The formation of the International Party of the Proletariat will come about through the dissolution of the various 'national' organisations which have worked together and are in agreement about the platform and programme for revolution"

How does the ICT envision this process of centralization coming about? Some organizations (the ICC for example) are centralized from the start. What in the present conditions prevents the centralization that the ICT platform states is necessary?

What happens if/when militants within any section of the ICT begin to diverge from the theory or praxis outlined in the shared platform (ie heteroginisation)? How can the other sections respond to this?

Fraternal regards,

Stavros

Forum: 

Stavros

Your real question is at the end of your enquiry which is what prevents the ICT from centralising itself now. The answer is that in common with all other revolutionary minorities we are not sufficiently strong nor well enough planted in the life of the class to make such a claim. And this is a corollary of the fact that the class is not generally moving in an anti-capitalist direction. We have some way to go before that will be a reality. In the meantime our affiliated groups have to find the best means, enter the most productive dialogues, theoretically share their acquisitions with not only those they encounter on the class war battlefield but also with the rest of the ICT through the central body of coordination which we set up in 2006 called the International Bureau. This is made of of delegates from each of our affiliates. This oversees the discussion within the ICT, produces common documents, statements on events of major international significance and deals with relations with other international bodies or tendencies. We think this is the only logical way to proceed at the given level of class consciousness and struggle. As these develop we hope the numbers in are affiliates and the numbers of our affilitates will grow. This in itself will naturally drive forward the tendency to centralisation. However to artifically impose such centralisation now (as many of our sympathisers want us to do) would be a mistake. By allowing our comrades in different places to react as they see fit we bring to the ICT a wider range of experience which in the long run can only make it a more fitting instrument to be one of the contributors to a future international and internationalist body which has real roots inside the working class.