The regroupment of Canadian and American supporters of the IBRP in a single unit now known as the Internationalist Workers Group (IWG) has been accomplished without the participation of the U.S. Workers Voice, formerly known as the Los Angeles Workers Voice (LAWV). Up until a recent time, the IBRP had considered the L.A. group as an organisation politically sympathetic and working towards closer relations and eventual integration with the Bureau as a whole. It is important to clarify that this is no longer the situation. The IBRP no longer endorses the L.A. group as being able to genuinely represent its political positions, aims or method of work.

In April 2000, at a meeting of North American sympathisers of the IBRP in Montreal, the LAWV delegates had agreed that all U.S. comrades would work together towards transforming Internationalist Notes (U.S.), then published by a single comrade in Wisconsin into a regular publication for distribution through the whole of the United States. In practice this decision was fought against by LAWV who revealed they had no intention of breaking with their previous localism, a localism which is accompanied by a resistance to having their own work move on to a politically coherent and clearly-defined organisational level. Thus, although LAWV formally agreed to work in tandem with the Bureau the differences between us were growing rather than diminishing. Rather than tackle these differences politically as they emerged, LAWV preferred to pretend they did not exist and instead produced a smokescreen of diversions and virulent attacks on the IBRP comrade elsewhere in the USA, including demanding his expulsion from the Bureau.

This the IBRP declined to do but still hoped to bring the comrades to a wider view of their work. In some ways this appeared to succeed in that they agreed to take on the work of publishing Internationalist Notes Volume 3. When it finally came out however, it was labelled 'U.S. Workers Voice Magazine' and all reference to the existence of other IBRP supporters in the U.S. was omitted, including acknowledgement of the articles contributed. All this was no accident. To the criticism that there should be a collective discussion of all U.S. comrades on the contents of the publication, LA replied that from now on 'the majority' (i.e. themselves) would decide. This was their idea of resisting 'authoritarian' practice!

By this time, theoretically there was little to distinguish this effort as a publication of the Communist Left. Important political disagreements had been added to organisational ones. LA quite suddenly reversed there previous position on the Russian Revolution, now claiming that it had ended because of "the bureaucratic statist usurpation of soviet power by the Bolshevik party-controlled Council of People's Commissars in 1918''. The IBRP countered that: "When you write that the Russian Revolution ended in 1918 you basically make common cause with the anarchists and councilists who also reject the need for proletarian organisation other than the councils. We take our stand on the fact that the Russian Revolution was only the first step in the world revolution. This was not only the position of the Russian leadership but also Rosa Luxemburg. Although it could be argued that the process of revolution was going into reverse once the Civil War started, this for us is not the significant factor. The significant issue was the international class struggle. To say that the Russian Revolution was over before any proletarians in the other countries even responded is not the basis of the internationalism which the Communist Left has defended all these years."

Consequently, the Bureau decided to formalise its relations to LA on a new, external basis, i.e. recognize the de facto split. Its approach to the inevitable break was as friendly and non-sectarian as possible in such a situation. It wrote: "Perhaps you are of "the Communist Left" in general but not of our tendency? Perhaps you may develop towards us in the course of time or perhaps you may develop towards another tendency. The important thing is that you develop. For our part we intend to remain in contact with you (as we would any emerging tendency) debating the main lessons of proletarian history and sending comments on your publications. We may even ask you to join us in common international declarations if there is enough agreement. We would encourage you to investigate all the tendencies of the Communist Left with the aim of clarifying your own political basis (...) We wish you every success with your work of political clarification and look forward to amicable relations in the future."

Then, post hoc, as it had never been part of the discussion, The New Internationalist, LA's current publication accused the IBRP of being 'non-working class' not to mention favouring Bolshevik methods of 'top-down elitism and commandism'. The LA group had evidently decided to resort to lies and slanders to pre-empt all further discussion. What they object to is not a Bolshevik model of organisation but any organisation which goes beyond their little group. As it is the U.S. Workers Voice remains a loose grouping of individuals which does not consistently hold a clear set of positions but continuously show themselves unable to work with anyone outside their immediate circle.

To this unfortunate development has been added an equally unfortunate intervention by Internationalism, the New York based American section of the International Communist Current (ICC). In a so-called defence of the revolutionary milieu, the ICC launches an offensive against what it calls the 'LAWV's parasitic attacks against the IBRP'. The ICC obviously has an axe to grind and uses all kinds of criticisms, some true and some false, to make a case against our ex-fellow travellers. One of the accusations is that " they held secret and private political and organisational discussions in Los Angeles". As usual with the ICC there is always a clear lack of proportion in their accusations. Though the LA group is clearly localist, the ICC needs to add accusations on in its effort to characterize them as parasites so as to give support to their own sectarian theory of parasitism. How else could the LA people meet other than privately as the closest IBRP supporter was many hundreds of miles away? This has permitted the LA group to respond to the ICC accusation in a way that can imply that the IBRP could have demanded some kind of mandatory observation at those meetings. They also accuse the ICC of supporting the repression of the Kronstadt rebellion as a 'tragic necessity' which is an outright slander. Thus the attitude of both sides in this 'polemic' is of little promise for those of us who expect clarification from debates between revolutionary organisations.

In effect, the ICC's intervention in this affair has nothing to do with the defence of the revolutionary 'milieu' as it calls it. Not long ago, its British affiliate accused our own comrades of the CWO (British section of the IBRP) of falling victim of 'political parasitism' (see World Revolution # 190)! In fact, the ICC is trying to use its theory of parasitism, which usually permits it to scape-goat (whatever the initial intentions of the theory's principles) most of its ex-members and almost any group that is not in the ICC, to quell its own crisis caused by the recent expulsion/split of a good number of its leading members. In speaking of this grouping, Internationalism actually uses the word 'filth'... In any event, the new IWG and the IBRP, after having made these necessary observations on our recent developments known, have no intention of falling into this category of so-called 'polemics' which are of no use for political clarification and thus of no interest to the revolutionary movement and the international working class. We go forward.