The extremely fragmented nature of the revolutionary left is obvious to all. So what are the differences between us and the other anti-capitalist groups who support the class struggle?

We are called internationalists because we believe that the interests of the exploited are the same all over the world, and that communism cannot be achieved in a single geographic area, a myth peddled as the truth by Stalinism. We are, therefore, bitterly opposed to Stalinism in all its varieties, for too long taken to be communism, both by the bourgeoisie and many generations of workers who looked to it in good faith when the ownership of industries, distribution, land, etc., went from private to state hands, leaving capitalism’s relations and all its parts (commodities, money, wages, profits, borders, etc.) largely intact. This was not communism but a particular form of capitalism, state capitalism. After 1917 the economic blockade of the Soviet Union and the failure of the world revolution in the West meant that the revolution was transformed into its opposite, eventually becoming an imperialist bloc that would collapse after only seventy years.

In the conflicts between one national bourgeoisie and another, from Palestine to the Basque Country, we are on the side of the proletariat. This means ignoring all territorial claims in favour of fraternisation with the workers in the opposing trenches. This is not to passively ignore the workers who have been victims of military occupation, but revolutionary defeatism for the unity of the class, beyond bourgeois frontiers. So-called wars of national liberation are subtle traps to drag the working class, the dispossessed, behind the chariots of reactionary bourgeois interests.

We see ourselves as a political reference point for the working class, first of all to those sections who are tired of the unions, all unions: this does not mean the fight to defend our immediate interests (wages, hours, workrates, etc.) is over. On the contrary! But the union is no longer the form through which workers can (effectively) organise and carry out these struggles in any way. The unions are now openly a tool to control the class struggle and manage the labour force on behalf of capital, whilst rank and file unions, despite the intentions of their militants, are a blunt instrument for workers, because they put forward radical economic demands without questioning the legal and economic framework imposed by the bourgeois state. The activity of rank and file unions has been further shown up by the crisis, which has severely restricted the opportunity for their reformist political practice.

For us the real alternative to unions is the ‘self-organisation of the struggle’, which has to start spontaneously from the working class, outside of and against the unions, to choose for themselves the most effective forms of mobilisation, which of necessity go beyond compatibility with the system. The struggle for immediate interests must not, however, ever forget that the general interests of the class lies in the overthrow of capitalism, and this must be constantly linked to it.

We are anti-parliamentarian: the idea of pushing these institutions in a proletarian direction "from inside", means mistakenly seeing them as a neutral entity, when in fact they are the structures which the bourgeoisie gives itself in order to impose its rule. The participation in bourgeois parliaments and legislatures of the various communist parties, is the result of renouncing – for ever – the revolutionary perspective and means acceptance of democratic peace (which ultimately rests, let’s remember, on bourgeois guns).

The overthrow of capitalism is only possible through a revolution, i.e. the conquest of political power by the proletariat, outside and against all bourgeois pseudo-democratic channels (elections, reforms, etc.) mechanisms which are specially designed to avoid any radical change in society. The forum of our "democracy", the bodies of power of the revolution, will instead be the workers’ councils, mass meetings in which delegates will be entrusted with specific mandates and will be recallable at any time. But these organizations will never become real bodies of proletarian power, without the approval of a clear programme aimed at the abolition of exploitation and, therefore, the elimination of classes, for a society of "freely associated producers" who work for the human needs. This programme does not fall from the sky, but is articulated by that section of the working class which tries to grasp the lessons of past struggles, regrouping themselves at an international level to form a party that fights within the workers’ councils against capitalism for socialism. This is not a party of government that would replace the class, but a party of agitation and political leadership on the basis of that programme. Only if the most advanced sectors of the proletariat recognise themselves in the political leadership of the party will we be on the road to the revolutionary socialist transformation.

The Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) was founded with these objectives during the Second World War (1943) and immediately condemned both sides as imperialist. Its roots are in the Italian Communist Left, which from 1920 condemned the degeneration of the Communist International and Stalinization imposed on all the parties that belonged to it. In the Seventies and Eighties it promoted a series of conferences that led to the creation of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party and finally the Internationalist Communist Tendency (2009).

We are for the party, but we are not the party or its only embryo. Our task is to participate in its construction, intervening in all the struggles of the class, trying to link its immediate demands to the historical programme; communism.

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Read more

• ICT Platform (2020)
• IBRP Platform (1997)
• For Communism: An Introduction to the Politics of the ICT
• Navigating the Basics
• Introductions to Our Positions
• The IBRP becomes the ICT
• Books and pamphlets