We have received the Appeal for the “anti-war congress” to be held in Prague. [1] We won’t be able to be physically present when it takes place. Had we been able to, we would have intervened, criticizing the political approach and framework on which it is based, and defending our positions on proletarian internationalism in the present historical situation, that of the march to generalized war that capitalism is trying to impose.

First of all and for information about the IGCL, it should be indicated that since its constitution in 2013, we have based all our activities and political orientations on the actuality of the historical alternative international proletarian revolution or generalized imperialist war. So much so, in fact, that we have entitled our regular journal Revolution or War.

Proletarian Internationalism and the Present March toward Generalized War

The outbreak of imperialist war in Ukraine was the first expression that capitalism, being unable to overcome its economic contradictions, is engaged decidedly on a march towards generalized imperialist war, a Third World War. In this sense, the war in Ukraine was not a local imperialist war like its predecessors. It marked a break with the past. What followed, the way it unfolded and has continued to this day, its implications in terms of imperialist alignments and polarization, as well as policies of generalized rearmament and military production, and then the war in the Middle East, have confirmed this dynamic towards war.

This dynamic compels all bourgeoisies to redouble their specific attacks on their own proletariat. Under normal circumstances – that is outside of revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situations – the class struggle, i.e. the struggle between the classes, can only be redoubled and exacerbated at the initiative of the bourgeoisie. This is not only due to the economic crisis, but also, and increasingly so, due to the needs of war. The war in Ukraine has had immediate practical consequences for the world proletariat – inflation for example – and even more dramatically for the proletarians of Ukraine and Russia. The explosion in arms spending and the development of war economies in all countries can only aggravate the exploitation of labor by capital, and impose even greater sacrifices on the proletariat. It is therefore on this perspective of massive confrontations between classes, provoked by the bourgeoisie for the needs of its march to all-out war, that revolutionaries must base their political orientations and interventions today. Also, it is only on its own class terrain that the proletariat can slow down, then oppose, the march towards war, while clearing the way for proletarian revolution and the destruction of all capitalist states.

We are well aware of the current limits of proletarian struggles, despite the massive mobilizations in Great Britain and France in 2022 and 2023, or the revival of significant workers’ struggles in the USA, to name but a few of significant examples. Yet the difficulties of mass mobilization of the proletariat must not distract us from the class struggle, nor lead us to look for substitutes or recipes to replace mass proletarian struggle with minority actions in the anarchist or leftist mode, even under the pretext that they might serve as an example or a “collective awakening”, to borrow an expression from the call to the congress.

However, this is precisely what seems to emerge from the political content of the Appeal. Since the vast majority of the “participants” claim to be anarchists, it is unlikely that we will be able to convince the congress as a whole of its non-class, non-revolutionary approach and to adopt another one.

An “Anti-war” Congress that Turns its Back on Proletarian Internationalism

The name itself poses a problem. The formula “anti-war congress” is more than confusing, and leaves the door wide open to concessions to bourgeois and petty-bourgeois pacifism, including the most radical. Since “anti-war” has no class reference or meaning, it follows from the outset that the congress does not have as its basic criterion a specifically class or proletarian delimitation and orientation. Yet only the proletariat, as both exploited and revolutionary class, can oppose imperialist war. The experience of 1917 and 1918, particularly in Russia, shows us that the revolutionary proletariat does not fight war per se. It is not “anti-war” per se. It fights against the concrete economic and political consequences that imperialist war, or the march to imperialist war, impose on it. It is a struggle against the material situation in which it finds itself, and of which it becomes more or less conscious depending on the moment and the situation, and not a struggle for an idea, in this case the one of anti-war. “Anti-war” and “proletarian internationalism” are not synonymous. They are opposites in class terms. It is one or the other.

Under these conditions, oblivious to the proletariat and real class struggle, the claim “to combine theoretical background with practical activities.” is at best an empty phrase, if not a bluff. Indeed, how can we combine the theoretical backgrounds of anarchism, as espoused by the majority of participating groups, with those of other revolutionary groups claiming to follow historical materialism?

This non-class phraseology advocating the combination – the superseding? – between anarchist and Marxist theoretical premises quickly finds its political translation: first and foremost, it matters to “preserve political autonomy”, with no further clarification. Whose autonomy? From what? Autonomy of the proletariat vis-à-vis all bourgeois political forces, including its most radical, trade unions and leftists, Stalinists, Trotskyists and... anarchists included, at least for the latter most of its main organizations? No, not at all. It matters “to organize outside the political parties”, with no further mention or reference to their class character. In short, this is the classic anarchist position, which can only lead to defeat for the proletariat and class betrayal, in particular of the principles of workers’ insurrection and the destruction of the bourgeois state on the one hand, and of proletarian internationalism on the other, as demonstrated by the Spanish experience of the CNT in 1936.

Already, we are seeing:

 that the Appeal is in no way based on the proletariat’s ability to develop its struggles against the attacks, which are diverse and varied depending on the country, the local situation and the moment, which are all part of the march to generalized war;

 that it effectively rejects the indispensable role of revolutionary minorities – and for us, of the proletarian political party, the Communist Party – in providing orientations and slogans for action tailored precisely to the situations and the shifting balance of power between the classes that will ultimately decide which way the historical alternative of revolution or war is resolved.

This ability of revolutionary political minorities to materialize and exercise vanguard political leadership throughout the proletarian struggle is made possible, provided they fight for it, by the permanent link they establish between their intervention in class struggles and the principles of workers’ insurrection, destruction of the capitalist state and exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat – in other words, with the communist program that these minorities materialize and express most clearly. As in the revolutionary wave of 1917-1918, it was not around the anti-war struggle, which was tantamount to pacifism no matter how radical the phrase and “actions”, that revolutionaries ended up rallying, including those anarchist militants who remained individually faithful to internationalism. It was around the slogan of transforming imperialist war into civil war. By adopting the slogans of workers’ insurrection and dictatorship of the proletariat, including by joining the Communist Party or the Communist International, which defended and materialized these slogans, many of them made an explicit or de facto break with anarchism. Anarchism, as a political current and around the figure of Kropotkin, had betrayed the principle of proletarian internationalism as early as 1914, which later made almost all the anarchist groups participate to the 2nd imperialist World War.

Which way to go and what is to be done?, asks the Appeal. Its penultimate paragraph refers to direct action, mentioning only individual actions that should be coordinated to “strive for a qualitative shift”. It is not a question of coordinating and adding up a succession of individual acts, but of taking part in the collective struggle of the proletariat in the face of the sacrifices of various kinds that the bourgeoisie of each country is already imposing and can only accentuate for the needs of the war. [2] The end of the Appeal itself expresses confusion and political impotence when it calls for “a collective awakening” as “the only way out of the nightmare of capitalist wars and capitalist peace”. And what is this collective awakening for? To “see and sabotage the whole machinery of war...” Insofar as the Appeal ignores any reference to the struggle of the proletariat, sabotaging the whole machinery of war is emptied of any class meaning, if such a formula, which is confused to say the least, can have one; or even if such a slogan can at any given moment have any meaning at all. However, the reality of the current balance of forces between the classes is not that of a “pre-revolutionary” period when the proletariat is mobilized en masse and permanently, during which it is sufficiently strong, as in 1917 in Russia, “to sabotage the war, to prevent the proletarians from being sent to the slaughter, to block the supply and transport of weapons, to organize desertions, mutinies and fraternization among the proletarians in uniform on both sides of the front line, to turn our guns against the organizers of the massacre” [3], which the congress wants to talk about. In such a pre-revolutionary situation, revolutionary insurrection is no more than a question of timing and tactical opportunity. In the reality of today’s unfavorable balance of power, it is nothing of the sort and what remains is the radical phrase of direct action against the war. As a result, the Appeal – if it is a “sincere” appeal, i.e. one that does not aim to reintroduce a kind of radical bourgeois (leftist) pacifism under an “anti-war” phraseology – ends with an admission of impasse and impotence from the proletariat’s point of view, even before the congress is held.

We are well aware that any call for a conference or other event in order to establish a proletarian political space serving as a reference and rallying point, in the broadest sense, for the proletariat as a whole in face of imperialist war, cannot meet with total agreement from the outset. Participating groups, particularly communists, may have to make “concessions”. Yet these concessions cannot be on the principles. Further, the conference or call for it must represent a step towards the affirmation of an internationalist political pole or camp. The internationalist conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915 and 1916 must be historical references for us. The Manifesto of the former was criticized by the Zimmerwald Left, which was unable to impose its vision. Nevertheless, it signed the Manifesto because “is a step forward towards a real struggle against opportunism, towards a rupture with it. It would be sectarianism to refuse to take this step forward …” (Lenin, A First Step, 1915)

We do not believe that the call for the congress constitutes a step forward in the current situation. At best, it can only be a source of political confusion and leftist, activist adventurism. We call on political groups and individuals wishing to position themselves on the real terrain of proletarian internationalism to break with the content and spirit of the Appeal, while proposing a new one based unequivocally on class struggle. We know that our proposal can only lead to a very clear delimitation and separation from most of the anarchist groups present.

For our part, and to this day, we have joined the call launched at the start of the war in Ukraine by the Internationalist Communist Tendency for the formation of No War But the Class War struggle committees. [4] These committees, to which the ICT had established 12 points or criteria for participation, are based, as their name indicates, not on any “anti-war struggle” but on opposition to imperialist war through class war. In so doing, any pacifist illusion that the anti-war formula allows is clearly excluded. Seeking to inscribe themselves on the terrain and timing of the class confrontations that the march to war imposes and will impose, these committees are situated from the outset as moments of mobilization and extension of workers’ struggles, i.e. on the concrete, or material, terrain of the antagonism between classes as it unfolds according to place and time. The fact that the NWBCW initiative has remained limited to date, largely due to the very limits of workers’ mobilizations, in no way detracts from their validity for the class struggle of today and tomorrow.

Of course, this experience is not exclusive to us. Any other initiative, call for a conference or other, would be welcome, provided it is clearly on the terrain of class struggle and proletarian internationalism. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case with this congress. Its Appeal proves to be an impossible compromise between anarchism and revolutionary positions. When it is explicit on political positions and orientations, anarchist positions prevail.

As a result, the anti-war congress is destined at best for political impotence, at worst for radical pacifism and leftist activism. Unless, it rejects the “anti-war” terrain and takes up the one of proletarian internationalism.