The publication of our platform (PF) has induced numerous reactions and comments. It is still premature to make a useful presentation in this issue of the journal, if only because of their diversity and heterogeneity. The immoderate use of Facebook and other social networks, which do not allow for the development of real arguments, does not help, far from it – the numerous ’likes’ are not very interesting from the point of view of confrontation and clarification of positions, and even less from a militant point of view, of militant commitment. Undoubtedly also the reflection of many is still in progress. Among the argued reactions, sufficiently developed and whose length allows publication, we have selected the following letter with our response.

Beforehand, we would like to point out two observations, potential criticisms, which are addressed to our document in order to try to clarify the real meaning of its adoption and publication. For the most part, they come from groups, circles, or even militants belonging, or having belonged, to the proletarian camp. In this sense, they have a very particular value for us. The first one, made by several [1], assimilates our platform to that of the ICC: the PF "lacks in my eyes a certain theoretical uniformity: if the first paragraphs (1-9) are free of any trace of ’Luxemburgism’, ’councilism’ and ’kaapedism’ that one finds in the ICC and in its democratic and mechanistic conceptions of the relations between the party and the class, however, in the second part of the document certain formulations and conceptions seem to me to be taken from the doctrinal corpus of the ICC.” (Jr) The second: by adopting a new platform, the IGCL would present itself and aspire to be a new pole of international regroupment, as an alternative, even in competition – for those most contaminated by sectarian vision and disease – with the Internationalist Communist Tendency. It would thus break with its previous orientations towards the proletarian camp and the fight for the party.

Both observations deserve reflection and clarification. The first may have some relevance, at least on a cursory reading of the PF, and we do not reject it out of hand. Even so, our intention – and we believe that the PF responds to our expectation – was, and continues to be, to put all the positions, or class frontiers, that most of the communist groups of today share, into a programmatic framework and a political approach different from that of the ICC’s platform, of economist-councilist order, and with a greater coherence and firmness of principle than that of the ICT [2]. In this sense, from a programmatic and political point of view, we believe that the former is no longer adapted to today’s situation, that of the 2020s, and the latter is incomplete and insufficient. The reader who has read our critique of the ICC’s PF [3] will have noted that the main, central weakness that makes it unsuitable today is its economistic approach, which can be summarized by the presentation and explanation of class frontiers, on trade unions, parliamentarianism, national liberation struggles, etc., only by the opposition between the periods of ascendancy and decline of capitalism, an opposition reduced, moreover, and principally, to the fact that capitalism was able to grant reforms and that capitalism is no longer able to grant reforms. The undeniable coherence of the PF of the ICC is based on an economicist and fatalist vision that is also coherent with its councilist vision, which is evident in its points on the party and class consciousness. Our PF, on the contrary, tries to base the coherence and explanation of the class frontiers from and around the question of the party and class consciousness, and therefore from the history of the class struggle itself. We have not invented anything. We have just been convinced of the political correctness of the principled approach of the successive PFs that the so-called Left of Italy had adopted, in particular in 1945 and in 1952. And we tried to take it up again for the contemporary period, judging that the party of tomorrow could only be based on this approach and these principles.

The second observation is also relevant, and we ourselves have been concerned about the political implications and responsibilities that a relatively developed and argued platform, claiming to supersede the historical inadequacies of the platforms of the 1970s (ICC) and 1980s (ICT) [4] could and would have objectively on our political orientations and activities. If from the constitution of the IGCL in 2013, we were aware that the basic positions we had adopted to establish orientations and interventions, would “require greater development and argumentation in the future”, it was above all the evolution of the historical situation that made the elaboration of a new document indispensable and urgent: the discussions with comrades willing to join the group forced us to distance ourselves from the most councilist positions in our basic positions taken from the ICC; the development of the historical situation, in particular the increasingly strong and direct pressure of the alternative revolution or war on the immediate situation, especially on the conditions of the development of the class struggle, revealed the insufficiencies of the PFs to which we had been referring until then, in particular on the question of class consciousness and the party, in order to be able to orient ourselves in the face of the first gusts of the coming storm.

The decision to adopt the platform was therefore not guided by any pre-established will or plan, but was in fact imposed on us as an urgent necessity. Added to this, of course, was the limited balance-sheet of one of our main orientations, adopted in 2013 and which was partly the basis for the constitution of the group, that of regrouping around the ICT, the only one able to exercise the central role of an international regrouping pole. [5] It must be admitted that we have never succeeded in convincing the comrades of the ICT to assume in a more consistent and ’historical’ way the task that circumstances conferred on it, and still confer on it today, that of an active and decisive pole of regroupment – the comrades of the ICT rather use the term of reference. In our opinion, too often the ICT is satisfied with the simple adhesion of new members to its ranks and neglects to take charge of and direct the debates and the process of political clarification, as well as that of historical reappropriation of the patrimony of the Communist Left, towards all the forces and militants that emerge, including those who are not likely to join its ranks immediately. There is little doubt that this weakness – of the proletarian camp as a whole, not just of the ICT – forces us to try, much more modestly, to fill this absence. In this sense too, we needed a sufficiently developed and precise platform, even if we do not despair of convincing the ICT one day, and above all – even more likely – that it will be convinced by the very development of the historical situation.

Even so, assuming in part what we believe should be the primary responsibility of the ICT, does not detract anything from the particular and central position and responsibility that it still occupies today in the proletarian camp. In this sense, the adoption of our platform only induces an immediate and secondary tactical change of our general intervention towards the proletarian camp. If we were to pretend to be the historical pole, or one of the poles, of international regroupment, that would be to pay oneself with words and not taking into account the reality of the proletarian camp, of the party in the making, and our own reality. We have concluded, for some time now, and the informed reader will have realized it, that we should try to debate and confront the positions present in the proletarian camp, including those of the ICT, without... the components of this camp, including the ICT. This results in a lack and a weakness for the camp as a whole. But we are convinced that without the confrontation of positions – which the comrades of the ICT consider only useless polemics – the struggle for the party and therefore for its program and platform can only fail miserably.

An example? It is enough to see the conditions that prevailed at the constitution of most of the communist parties at the very beginning of the 1920s and the congenital disease of opportunism that resulted in most of the parties of the International. Two exceptions: that of the Bolshevik fraction gathered around the figure of the insatiable polemicist Lenin; and that of the Communist Party of Italy following the polemics and the incessant fights of the abstentionist Fraction gathered around the figure of Bordiga. Our platform responds therefore to two necessities: that the party of tomorrow can be at the level of the historical stakes thanks to the clarity of its program and its positions; to prepare the historical regroupment of the communist forces by assuming from today the confrontation and clarification of the existing positions which, in the last instance, always correspond to problems and stakes that the proletariat finds and will find on the way of the insurrection and of its class dictatorship.