On MeToo and Harvey Weinstein

The overturning of Weinsteins conviction exposes cracks in the orientation of the MeToo movement towards bourgeois justice and the prosecutorial powers of the state. Sexual violence is rooted in the class nature of society. Only the workers can offer a solution 2 social problems.

— ICFI (1953) (@1953Icfi) April 26, 2024

On Rank And File Committees

The task before the working class is to overthrow the labor bureaucracy by building rank and file committees as alternatives to the labor fakers. These committees must struggle to unite all workers internationally.

— ICFI (1953) (@1953Icfi) April 26, 2024

Once Again on the Question of Trade Unions and the Tasks of the Party

We have been made aware of an interesting exploration of the possibilities of international trade unionism in a polemic written against the ICFI from 2020:

"It is necessary to highlight, in this connection, that it is only to the degree that our Party exerts its influence over all organizations of the working class, including trade unions, that the narrow, nationalist perspective upon which these bodies have been hitherto organized, and with which the current union bureaucracies in particular continue to disorient the rank-and-file, will be transcended. This can only be achieved by directly introducing to the rank-and-file slogans to counter the nationalist orientation of traditional trade unionism, particularly within those industries in which the internationalization of production reaches its most advanced organization. (When the UAW bureaucrats attempt to impose wage freezes under the pretext of averting auto factory shutdowns in the United States, we advance among all of the rank-and-file the slogan “sliding scale of internationally indexed wages” to not only undermine the effort to maintain US and Mexican workers in competition against each other, but also build the basis for new organizational forms through common struggle.) ..."

"The more contemporary political struggles within industrial trade unions, which are specific forms of class struggle, must be understood in the context of the expanded accumulation of constant capital (which increasingly replaces living labor while producing a surplus of capital requiring export for valorization), the direct pressure exerted by imperialist capital endowed with ever greater mobility and capacity to “offshore” production, the conscious policy of the ruling class to politically coopt critical layers of organized workers in strategic industries that remain within national borders, etc. These forces magnify all of the conservative social and political elements inherent within industrial unions organized on the basis of the nation state to the point of rendering their politics reactionary.

However, those that see this as “proof” that workers’ unions in general are no longer arenas of revolutionary struggle, that they can offer nothing progressive to workers, etc., and thus elevate the assertion that revolutionary tactics are defined by whether or not they are conducted within or outside a given structure (trade union) to that of a “principle,” not only fail to see that the real process underway is one in which the material basis for this old form of the workers’ mass organizations has been eroded by economic development itself, but also, and this is the critical point, that this process itself contains within it the very solution to the problem.

Just as capitalist production can no longer be conceived within the narrow bounds of the nation state, the mass organizations of the working class, contemporary trade unions, must also transcend these limits both in terms of organizational structure and the slogans revolutionaries raise within them to politically educate the rank-and-file. ..."

"As such, the nationalist orientation and structure of contemporary workers’ organizations forms the outer limit of their politics. The progressive transcending of these limits requires the conscious political intervention of revolutionaries directing the rank-and-file towards overcoming the narrow confines of nationalism. It is worth noting, in this connection, that the strategists of imperialism, who have on more than one occasion proven themselves more “dialectical” than revolutionaries, have already attempted to benefit from this tendency by dispatching their subalterns from within the union bureaucracies throughout the new centers of industrialization in developing economies. Indeed, state-sponsored diplomatic missions from imperialist countries abroad now regularly include reactionary union leaders.

It should be clear, as such, that the new “trade unions” (I am forced to use this term as language, so far as I am aware, has not caught up with the material forces propelling this phenomenon) will (re)develop or organize on an international basis.  This is why transitional slogans like “sliding scale of wages” must be modified to include the international indexation of wages as a means of highlighting the common class interests of workers in imperialist and low wage peripheral countries pitted against each other."

While we would be critical of certain points, such as orienting to "reform" movements in the unions which are often the creations of a faction of the bureaucracy, we recommend a read: 

Once Again on the Question of Trade Unions and the Tasks of the Party

The Young Workers

"Every revolutionary party finds its chief support in the younger generation of the rising class. Political decay expresses itself in a loss of ability to attract the youth under one’s banner. The parties of bourgeois democracy, in withdrawing one after another from the scene, are compelled to turn over the young either to revolution or fascism. Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks." 

The Revolution Betrayed (1936)