We reproduce here after the article in Italian Vita di Partito – that we have translated – from Battaglia Comunista (January 2016) which presents the General Assembly of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Italian group of the Internationalist Communist Tendency) which has just been held. It is followed by a short statement from us.

Life of the Party (Battaglia Comunista).

At the beginning of December, the General Assembly of the PCInt militants has been held. Various themes of discussion have been addressed during the two days.

The first day essentially dealt with technical-organizational questions. The organization of the group of translators to Italian and the report of our delegates to the central Bureau of the Internationalist Communist Tendency reflect the image of an international organization which is strengthening within a process of maturation and confrontation with individuals who are coming closer (see the internationalist comrades of Greece) and a growing number of high quality articles and texts which come from the different national sections and which deserve to be translated whether to circulate internally or to be on the site and in the regular press.

On the other hand and unfortunately, we had to note the growing economic difficulties for our press, in particular Battaglia Comunista, which should be reorganized to face the new demands of propaganda in a period dominated by the new means of communication and a new approach, above all by the new generations, with regard to paper printing.

A great attention has been brought to the process of political formation, in particular of the new young comrades who come closer to us and who need serious basic positions. To this end, we have decided that the fundamental reference of the political formation for 2016 which will develop with bi-weekly meetings, will be the book Contro venti e maree [Against the wind and the tides] edited for the 70 years of the life of the Party.

The second day mainly dealt with the political questions of the present phase of the crisis and a beginning of work on the theme “Leninism today”.

In regards to the crisis, the so-called recovery and war, it has been underlined how the war underway is actually a small world war apparently led against ISIS but which, in reality, the imperialist bandits line up the one against another in a dynamic which sees taking shape what could become in a more or less near future two opposed imperialist poles, on the one side China, Russia, Iran and on the other the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and a part of Europe (which is also dependent on Russia’s oil and gas). The relations and dynamics are extremely complex. However the war confirms itself as being the extreme response of capital to its crisis which it only succeeds to overcome at the price of massive destructions and devaluations of constant and variable capital. The recovery itself which seems to appear in the United States is one demonstration of it: they speak of a GDP increase of 2.5%, a figure which would have been ridiculous twenty years ago. But at what price? An intense fall in wages, thousands of bankruptcies, concentrations and mergers; enormous rise of public and private debt; increased importance of speculative and financial capital in relation to that invested in production. Finally, this small recovery which is going to slightly relieve the worst crisis of capitalism since 1929 is based on debt, low salaries, devaluation of capital and it will prepare new policies which will attack even more the labour force as the winds of war are reinforced. In this context, the work of a small revolutionary minority like ours is and remains vital: to keep alive the program and the perspective of the socialist alternative to this mode of production which is falling into the spiral of a profound and violent crisis.

A new year of internationalist militantism is opening. Each one of us is called on to accomplish their task for the common ideal.

Fraternal Salutation and Political Support to the PCInt and the ICT

For any political group that defends the necessity of political organizations of the proletariat and that struggles for the formation of its political vanguard in the Party, the holding of congresses, conferences or general meetings of other communist groups are important moments on which they have to reflect and take a position. The balance-sheet that Battaglia Comunista (BC) presents of its December general assembly is quite short. Apparently, this meeting has also been the occasion to develop and refine the analyses and political orientations for the present period.

On the basis of the report, we salute the step forwards to international unity and centralization of the ICT that this meeting could realize. We attach even more importance to it since, as our sympathizers and regular readers know, we have an important divergence with the ICT on the method of formation of groups at the international level and, ultimately, of the international party. Faithful to the lessons and the tradition of the Communist International and to the “Italian Left”, we both agree and defend the need for an international centralization of the party around a unique program. But, we differ on which way to get there. In broad outline, the ICT thinks – we hope we don’t misrepresent the position of the comrades – that the process leading to the future party must base itself from “national” organizational experiences which have developed a certain experience and rooting within the working class. For the ICT, any artificial and premature international centralization should be avoided at the risk of blocking the process of development and growth of each local group. For our part, we claim the position developed by the Bordigist current (PCInt-Communist Program) and the “historical” ICC which both defend that any communist group must right away constitute as an international group, at the international level, whatever is its immediate reality, as limited and local as it may be. The formation of the organization consequently follows a somewhat different path in particular with respect to the centralization of each group. If the latter try to adopt at once an international centralized functioning on the basis of a unique program valid for all territorial “sections” or nuclei, the ICT adopts a lesser centralization in the functioning allowing more autonomy to the “national” groups and a greater “liberty” in regards to their political positions and experiences.

Thus, from our point of view, each step forwards, as during this meeting, that the ICT makes towards a greater international centralization and unity – including if it does not consider them as we do – is to be saluted and encouraged.

We also note the economic difficulties of the newspaper Battaglia Comunista because of the new techniques which go with the development of the Internet. For us, beyond the fall of “paying” readers and the change of habits of the new generations, these difficulties are also and above all the product of the ideological bourgeois utilization of the new technologies to reinforce as never before both the state stranglehold over all sectors of society as well as the mystifying cult of individualism.

Finally, we support the decision to make the book Contro venti e marée (Against Winds and Tides) a reference for the sympathizers and young militants of BC. This book, unfortunately only in Italian to date, gathers the essential of the texts and resolutions of the PCInt throughout its history since 1943. As such, it constitutes the “theoretical and political corpus” of the so-called “Damenist” current. It should be one of the main references not only for the sympathizers and members of the ICT but for the whole Proletarian Camp, for the organizations and the militants which constitute it. We call on all the comrades and readers who can read Italian to get it and to read it. It is a genuine weapon for the class fight.

The analysis of the situation that the comrades present is of big interest for us in two ways. At first in itself because it draws political orientations which respond to the questions with which any “conscious” worker and, even more, any revolutionary organization is confronted. But also for our group since we are presently debating in a contradictory way about the analysis of the development of the imperialist rivalries and on the validity of the concept of historical course. We refer our readers to the article in this issue about the imperialist rivalries which defends a different position that we can summarize as belonging to the historical ICC’s method of comprehension while other comrades within our ranks defend the analysis put forwards by the ICT.

Nevertheless we are homogeneous on the denunciation of the imperialist war as “extreme response of capital to its crisis”, the link that BC makes between the terrible worsening of the economic dead end and present wars, and the denunciation of the American economic pseudo-recovery.

For us, the political positions of the ICT, whether we share them or not, are a constant reference which impels our discussion and our process of political clarification. It should be the same for any group or militant of the Proletarian Camp and even the revolutionary milieu. In any case, this is one more reason to call the attention of our sympathizers and readers to the political meaning of the General Assembly of the PCInt and to its political positions.