‘A Free Retriever’ goes online

Since the beginning of this year A Free Retriever’s Digest has completed its try-out period. It continues as a bimonthly digital revue, and is henceforth accompanied by this online blog.

The ‘Free Retriever’ project aims at presenting publications relevant to discussions within the proletarian internationalist milieu in general, and among the groups and circles who claim adherence to the internationalist communist left(s) in particular. ‘A Free Retriever’s Digest’ wants to provide comments, critiques and a space for discussion, both as a bimonthly digital revue and an online blog.

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The new issue of ‘A Free Retriever’s Digest’ is out

Vol. 2 Issue #2, March 31, 2018.

36 p. (A4, pdf)

Free for download here

Syria: The Real Significance of the US Bombardment

F.D.  (Battaglia Comunista) on the Syrian War campaign

The “surprise attack” in Syria by the USA, the UK and France on Saturday April 14, highlights the level of escalation of the inter-imperialist tensions and confrontations currently attained. As one of the first groups in the internationalist communist Left, the ICT has published a statement, which analyses this situation as an expression of the tendency towards a generalizing of local and regional wars, and clearly points out what is at stake. We recommend this important contribution to our readers.  (AFRD)

Bombardment in Syria: What is to be done in face of war?

‘Nuevo Curso’ apropos of the US “surprise attack” of April 14

» We woke up this morning with the news of the allied attack on Syria. The USA, French and British armies have launched more than 100 shells on Syrian soil, including Damascus and Homs. The objectives, according to the official versions, were the sites and arsenals of chemical weapons. The situation had reached a point of no return and all the actors expected an imminent attack. (¹)

This attack is another example of the criminal development of war tensions around the world. Each of the imperialist capitalisms both in the region – Syria itself, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, even Greece and Egypt, now in the second row – as well as in the capitalist centers – France, USA, Great Britain, Germany – they see in the Mediterranean Levant a strategic border where their respective ambitions collide.

Have we escaped a new world war?

‘Nuevo Curso’ on the latest escalation of war tensions over Syria

» Inter-imperialist tensions have been growing for the past six months: Korea, Turkey, the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Syria and Yemen… The economic press is already talking about the globalization of war and the decomposition of Europe as the main risk in the immediate future. The big media are again asking about the possibility of a world war with a naturalness that has not been seen in thirty years. In the background, yet very visible, the trade war feeds new “doctrines of national security” (¹) from China to the US, from Russia to South Africa, which gives each clash of interests the potentiality of escalating and incorporating agents into a chain reaction.

France: strike at the SNCF, struggles and conflicts in all sectors, students and pensioners’ demonstrations

An intervention by the IGCL (March 28, 2018)

We reproduce the leaflet that the International Group of the communist Left (IGCL) has been distributing in France before the start of the strike of April 3^rd at the state railway company, the SNCF, followed by its evaluation in a communique of April 10, after a week of ‘union action days’. (AFRD)

“The workers at SNCF are presently suffering a direct attack by the Macron government, meaning: by the state and the French ruling class. The difficulty for French capital is that it happens while various sectors or factories have been on strike these last weeks and months or are passing through more or less open conflicts in the midst of a generalized increasing discontent in front of the many measures adopted by the government.

First Skirmishes of the Massive Confrontations between the Classes

‘Revolution or War’ on the class struggle

» As weak and limited as it may appear at first glance, the international dynamic of workers’ struggles continues on all continents. Without being exhaustive, it is interesting to make a quick list of some of them in order to draw a vision and a general understanding. Greek workers went on a massive strike against Syriza’s imposition of the austerity bill from the European Union. Similarly in Tunisia protests against unemployment and austerity spread throughout the country during the month of January. The masses of workers have not forgotten that such demonstrations led to the overthrow of Tunisian President Ben Ali. In Iran demonstrations erupted throughout the country at the end of December against unemployment and austerity measures. There were 3,500 arrests and three deaths. It was the same in many countries, from India, in Sudan to Iraqi Kurdistan … In December, thousands of demonstrators clashed with the police around the Argentine parliament in Buenos Aires to prevent the adoption of a new ’reform’ against pensions. In January, in Korea Hyundai car workers rejected the agreement signed between management and the union and went on a wildcat strike. It was the same in gold mines in South Africa. At the announcement of the cuts at Carrefour, 28 supermarkets in Belgium went on wildcat strike on January 26.

‘Nuevo Curso’ on the trade war, the imperialist tensions and the EU

Topic: the international Situation

The following three articles by ‘Nuevo Curso’ highlight the latest developments at the international scene at the level of the trade war that has been resuscitated by the US administration’s recent tariff measures on steel and aluminium trade; the discord that cuts through the European Union at different levels simultaneously, faced with the attempt the relaunch its French-German axis after the installation, after 6 months, of a new edition of the ‘grand’ coalition government under Merkel, and the subsequent ‘winter offensive’ by the German bourgeoisie to make up for the lost time and ground.

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Willy Huhn (1948): ‘Lenin as a Utopian’

Documents of the historical communist Left

» The first characteristic of Utopian socialism resides in the superstition of the power of science. A rational system is supposed to change the social world in such a decisive way that something ethically better and socially sound will be effected. The practical consequence from this conviction is that the scholars have to take the fate of humanity into their hands, or rather onto their heads.

With the first Utopian of Western history, Plato, the philosophers are at the helm of the State, and the island “Utopia” of Thomas More is governed by a “class of scholars”. Do not the intellectuals raise a similar claim – once the juridical intelligentsia (Engels has at one occasion treated this “lawyers’ socialism” exhaustively) (¹) and presently the technical or even the economical intelligentsia (technocracy and bureaucracy)?

The Utopians are searching for a “social science” in order to create new social conditions with its help. This action departs from their intellectual initiative, relies on the insight and the power to act of the intelligentsia, whereas the proletariat “offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement”, as the “Communist Manifesto” states. (²)  

The impact of the Russian revolution in Germany 1914 – 1918

Presentation at the ‘internationalist week’ in Toulouse, 3 – 11 November 2017 (Revised version)

 

“Old mole History, you have bravely worked! At this moment the slogan, the call resounds again over the international, the German proletariat, that only the great hour of a worldwide turning point can bring: imperialism or socialism! War or revolution! There is no third!”

(Rosa Luxemburg, “Der alte Maulwurf”, Spartakusbriefe No. 5, May 1917)

“Doubt is out of the question. We are on the threshold of a world proletarian revolution.”

(Lenin, “The crisis has matured”, October 20 (7), 1917 in the newspaper Rabochy Put – “The Workers’ Path” – No. 20)

On August 4^th, 1914, German Social-Democracy – considered the “jewel of the organization of the conscious proletariat” (¹) – capitulates without condition by subjecting itself with body and soul to its bourgeoisie. It votes unanimously for the war credits. Opposed to this vote, Karl Liebknecht was obliged to side with it by discipline, which he very quickly will consider as “a grave error” on his part. Only on December 2^nd, 1914, he publicly votes against. He is disavowed by all SPD deputies, including the so-called left around Ledebour and Hoffmann who would form the USPD in 1917.