The Covid lockdowns and restrictions have produced a very unusual situation for the ICT. We’ve almost stopped face-to-face meetings, though we have managed to attend and address some demonstrations and had a small number of suitably socially-distanced meetings in various places. We’ve cut back on our physical publications, because we don’t have as many opportunities at the moment to distribute them — though, again, we have managed to intervene with leaflets and papers in some places, most notably Aurora#52 at demonstrations over NHS pay, and the leaflet produced jointly by the comrades of the Internationalist Workers’ Group and Klasbatalo in North America in response to the murder of George Floyd and the wave of protests sparked by it.

The curtailing of opportunities for physical meetings had led to a rise in our online activity. The internet is of course a very useful communication tool. It allows revolutionary organisations to make contact with people who are in locations where there are no militants. We have been holding more meetings on the internet, which has allowed comrades from different countries and regions to interact in a way not possible with physical meetings. We’ve also been concentrating on publishing more than usual on the website and trying harder to share our content, including some written by sympathisers, on social media.

Of course, many of our sympathisers and contacts, and the people we don’t know who read what we publish, have been spending more time on the internet due to Covid restrictions, reading, thinking about, and discussing, the ICT’s analysis.

Perhaps it is aspects of the world situation that people are seeking perspectives on, whether that’s capitalism’s responsibility for the rise of viruses like Covid and the ecological catastrophe that is ravaging the planet; or the social and economic consequences for a global capitalist economy in deep economic crisis and weighed down by debt; the imperialist proxy wars that continue at the same time as the ominous sharpening of rivalry between the waning US super-power and the rising challenge from China; or simply the declining prospect for the world's wage-workers and the majority of humanity which in itself indicates the need for the capitalist profit system to be replaced by a world community which decides for itself what and how to produce on the basis of social need and impact on the wider environment. This, of course, cannot be done without a political and social revolution and without a revolutionary organisation able to exert a clear political and practical guide. This is what the ICT is working to bring into existence.

And this is why, beyond the increasing tally of internet readers, we have been encouraged in recent months by a growing number of people contacting us to discuss, to help, and to join the organisations that make up the ICT. The latter is an important decision: to coin a phrase it is "one small step for the individual", but eventually it will lead to "a giant leap for humankind."

How to Find and Contact the CWO:

We publish in a variety of formats. Apart from the paper publications of the ICT’s constituent organisations, our main publishing tool is the website – leftcom.org. If you like our output, if you read our articles and think we are saying sensible things, then please, consider opening up a dialogue with us. You can contact us in many different ways.

• Email: uk@leftcom.org
• Facebook: @cwouk
• Twitter: @cwouk
• Instagram: @cwo.official
• Telegram: t.me
• Post: BM CWO, London, WC1N 3XX

We currently are holding discussions with contacts on Zoom and Discord; if you would like to talk to us on either of these platforms, please contact us and we can try to arrange a meeting.

If you’re not in the UK, you can get in touch with the various affiliates or sympathiser groups of the ICT directly:

• for Italy, contact Battaglia Comunista (PCInt) via email (it@leftcom.org), Facebook or Twitter, or by post to PCInt, Ass. Int. Prometeo - Via Calvairate, 1 - 20136 Milano.
• for Germany, contact the Gruppe Internationalistischer KommunistInnen (GIK) via email (de@leftcom.org), Facebook or Twitter.
• for Canada, contact Klasbatalo via email (ca@leftcom.org), Facebook or Twitter.
• for the US, contact the Internationalist Workers’ Group (IWG) via email (us@leftcom.org), Facebook or Twitter, or by post to IWG, P.O. Box 14485, Madison, WI 53708.
• for France, contact Bilan et Perspectives via email (fr@leftcom.org) or by post to Bilan et Perspectives, Michel Olivier" 7, rue paul Escudier, 75009 PARIS
• for Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere in Oceania, contact our sympathiser-group the Internationalist Communists Oceania (ICO) via email (internationalistcommunists@gmail.com), their website, on Facebook or Twitter.

For anywhere not on that list, you can contact the nearest affiliate and we might be able to put you in touch with comrades speaking languages beyond English, Italian, German and French, including: Swedish, Spanish, Farsi, Polish, Russian, Dutch, and Portuguese.

How to Help the CWO:

If there is a CWO section nearby, you can simply join our comrades in their activities. But even if you are the only left communist in your city or village you can still contribute:

• You can take out a subscription to the ICT’s various publications, and you can buy our books. You can donate to the organisation via the ‘Donate’ buttons (currently, one for the CWO and one for the IWG) on the website. All this will help us with printing costs – we don’t make profit and we have no paid organisers.
• If you know of somewhere you think will stock our publications – a radical bookshop, a newsagent, a social centre, anywhere that people may be open to a radical critique of capitalism – then finding out if they would take our material and letting us know would be helpful.
• Want to help spread the internationalist message on the streets? We produce stickers and may be able to send you some.
• You can like and share our social media posts on whatever platforms you use. You can discuss the content you see on social media. You can also comment on our articles on our website.
• You could consider writing something for us. If there is a situation or issue that you think is important then talk to us and we may be able to publish something you write about it.
• Finally, you can take our publications and talk about our analyses and perspectives in your workplace, university, school, neighbourhood or at protests and picket lines. It is not an exaggeration to say that humanity faces a stark choice of a future communist society or an acceleration of the manifold crises of capitalism. The working class is the only force in society that has the power to change the destructive course we are embarked upon. But there is no automatic link between a worsening situation for humanity and the consciousness that the working class can provide the solution. Revolutionary organisations are an integral part of the generalisation of class consciousness. The ICT sees itself as a component of a future international organisation of the working class, and works towards that end, but we do not think that we can act without the class. It is the working class that will make the revolution and the idea of communism must exist in the class, not just in the organisation of revolutionaries.

Further Steps to Joining the CWO:

If you have already been in contact with us and think you want to join the CWO, and you haven’t already done this, or if you are new to us but already convinced that you want to join the organisation, we’d ask you to read our Political Platform and our basic document For Communism. You can then either write or email us to discuss what you think before you go any further, or just make contact with the organisation which will put you in touch with the local section; you can start taking part in their activities if you are not already doing so. If you are still comfortable with that, and the local organisation is with you, then you are given the Statutes, which are our rules for members. If you can live with them you are then proposed for candidacy as a CWO member. After this candidacy period if you still want to be a member of the organisation, the question of you becoming a full member is decided by a general meeting of the organisation.

We look forward to hearing from you!