The IGCL on Marxism and the National Question

» The end of 2017 was marked by the renewal of nationalist quarrels in Europe. After Scotland, and Flanders in Belgium, Catalan separatism resurfaced in its turn, as did, to a lesser extent, Corsican separatism. These independence movements affecting ‘old capitalist nations’ follow the creation of new nations after the explosion of the Eastern bloc, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, former Yugoslavia. Very often, these nationalist movements are supported by extreme right-wing parties, but not always (Catalonia and Scotland). (¹) What do these nationalist movements represent and what are the stakes, and especially what danger do they pose to the international proletariat, and particularly that of the countries or regions under consideration? «

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How to understand ‘May 1968’ in France?

« The struggles of May-June 68 in France have been part of a general wave of labor disputes and protests of various kinds (student claims, protests against the multiple wars in the world, a search for different values ​​and ways of life…) that flourished from the second half of the 1960s until the beginning of the 1970s. All these conflicts expressed the accumulated tensions in society after two decades of very vigorous growth that jostled all the ideas and structures in place. They manifested to the highest degree the contradictions between the rapid development of the productive forces and the obsolete nature of the superstructures that coordinated them: economic, political, ideological, legal, family, cultural, moral super-structures, etc. These blatant inadequacies are at the basis of the explosion and the radical character of all these movements, not in the sense of an exit from capitalism – a perspective that was shared only by a very small minority at that time – but in the sense of challenging old structures that are not adapted to the new realities of the post-war period. The article “The significance of the struggles from 1966 to 1972” tries to draw up its tableau. Its first part is devoted, on the one hand, to the critical discussion of explanations commonly put forward to understand these events and, on the other hand, to lay the foundations of a coherent alternative explanation. »

(From the presentation of Controverses No. 5, May 2018)

The full version of this article has first been published in French on the Controverses website on May 11, 2018: La signification des luttes de 1966 à 1972. Hereafter we present an abridged version by the author. (Note from the editor)

‘Nuevo Curso’: Proletariat, xenophobia and lumpenization

“ From Catalonia to the American Midwest, from “Brexiters” and Corsican separatists to Salvini and the German AfD, all over the world the petty bourgeoisie has played a leading role and has directed reactionary “revolts” under the pretext of the crisis… towards nothing. Not enough, it now enters a new and inevitable phase after the clash with reality: it has no alternative, no future to offer society. Its only option is to revitalize the fantasy of the “people”, interclassist entelechy, (1) a crappy and Utopian version of the nation, now turned into a pure delirium, a zombie political subject. ”

The new issue of ‘A Free Retriever’s Digest’ is out (August – September 2018)

Vol. 2 Issue #4, August 21, 2018.

August – September

36 p. (A4, pdf)

Free for download here

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Correspondence:

Topic: Where is Europe going?

A comment on the political crisis in Germany

Over the month of June the political business of the German bourgeoisie has been dominated by the outburst of a long-smoldering conflict within its government apropos of issues of migration and refugee policies, which has put the historic party alliance between the CDU and its Bavarian junior partner CSU in jeopardy and has risked the fall of Merkel’s coalition government on the very threshold of its first 100 days in office.

Has “German Europe” exhausted itself?

‘Nuevo Curso’ on the EU-summit of 28 – 29 June

» It was after four o’clock in the morning [on Friday, June 29] when the EU summit finally came to a conclusion document for a directive on migration. (¹) The “principle” defended by Italy was enshrined: shipwrecked persons, migrants and refugees arrive, whatever their point of entry, in the EU and before the EU and not before the country of arrival, seeking refuge. The infamous Spanish model of the Detention Centers for Foreigners (²) is enshrined under the name of “platforms” and is possibly extended to Macedonia and Albania. Spain and the countries that organize the new detention centers will receive EU money. Macron stressed that the great success was that asylum had been “mutualized” and therefore has replied to the challenge posed by the German Home Secretary who was putting the German political apparatus in crisis and threatening to sweep Merkel along. (³)

The political crisis in Germany and the tortuous road to a “European bloc”

‘Nuevo Curso’ apropos of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe (June 25, 2018)

1.  The anti-immigrant revolt of the German petty bourgeoisie

» In December last year, we alerted on our Telegram channel that the CSU, the Bavarian party associated with Merkel’s CDU, was turning to the right in an increasingly nationalist discourse. In the context of the stagnation of the bourgeoisie in Germany, which – like the British, Italian or Spanish bourgeoisie at the time – had not yet found the ways and means to renew its political apparatus, the advance of identity politics, beyond the electoral progress of the AfD seemed significant to us. Significant because it pointed out that the nationalist revolt of the European petty bourgeoisie was beginning to condition even the heart of European continental capital. And this up to the point where the “migration question” – the center of all suspicions and fears of the Central European petty bourgeoisie – has come to fracture the most solid German party apparatuses this June.

The Comeback of ‘Controverses’: 1818 – 1918 – 1968 – 2018

Special Attention

Breaking more than a year of radio silence on its web-site, and more than six years after its special edition “From October 1917 to the collapse of the USSR”, (1) the Forum for an internationalist communist Left has brought out a new issue of its revue “Controverses” in French language. AFRD intends to follow its comeback and welcomes this revival by adopting the presentation of its contents.

1 Cahier thématique n°1 : Octobre 1917, http://leftcommunism.org/spip.php?article291&lang=fr (French language; some articles have been translated)

Action against War

Anton Pannekoek in ‘New Review’, 1915 (Fragment)

It is not enough for the workers to oppose war, every war, to refuse to be led astray by the cry of national defense. They must also have the power and the means to prevent war.  (¹)

The new issue of ‘A Free Retriever’s Digest’ is out (June – July 2018)

Vol. 2 Issue #3, May 31, 2018.

June – July

24 p. (A4, pdf)

Free for download here