We welcome the membership of the group Klasbatalo of Canada to the ICT [1]. In fact, it objectively strengthens not only the ICT but also the Communist Left as a whole. First, it is important to quickly clarify to some uninformed readers the subtleties of the development of the Communist Left in Canada. They may remember the original Klasbatalo of the 2000s; the one that had dissolved in 2013 at the same time as the International Fraction of the Communist Left (ex-IFICC) to form our group, the IGCL. Initially, this new Klasbatalo was reformed – more or less formally – by comrades who had resigned from the IGCL in 2014 and 2015. Rightly, and responsibly – we even encouraged it in its time – they contacted the ICT as the article tries to explain. Subsequently, other comrades joined the group to begin discussions with the ICT for their membership. We can regret that the use of the name Klasbatalo may lead to confusion, especially since the comrades do not make any critical assessment of the Klasbatalo of the 2000s, nor do they position themselves in relation to its history and its impact on the Canadian and especially Montreal milieu. Do they claim it? And if so, to what extent? On what positions? What political weaknesses? Nevertheless, their membership in the ICT is in itself a step forward in the fight for the party.

We hope to be able to develop fraternal relationships, especially since we are present in the same city as the comrades, Montreal. This would break with the sectarian and opportunistic policy, sometimes even directly provocative and hostile, that the former ICT group in Canada, the IWG, had pursued against us at the time. Our understanding and practice of international regroupment – which, we repeat once again, must be articulated around the ICT – turns its back to any spirit of competition or rivalry with it, particularly to win members. However, very often in North America, it tends to consider the question of grouping only from the perspective, at the least reductive, of the accession of new members to its own ranks, which leads it to consider any open and public debate aimed at breaking politically with leftist positions and clarifying the positions of the Communist Left as a whole as superfluous. This can only weaken the forces and militants who join it in the long term. In the past, this lack of political rigour in the integration of new members had left the door open for the IWG (...) "to go with the movement too often in a sort of left populist way and did not always make their own distinctive and revolutionary contribution" according to the ICT itself. To be precise, its former group in Canada adopted "too often" leftist, Maoist-type positions, interventions and practices with which its main members had never really broken and against which we had warned the ICT at the time.

To date, Klasbatalo version 2 completely ignores the existence of the IGCL in Montreal when we could jointly develop a political space and dynamic of the Communist Left as a whole. For example, and despite our invitations, it refuses to participate in our public meetings. Similarly and more importantly, the ICT article does not report the content of the discussions on the platform before the integration. While it points out that the discussion required "to make further minor changes to [Klasbatalo’s] Platform" – a platform never published to our knowledge. What were these changes? Secondly, are there two platforms, one of the group and the other of the ICT? If so, why? And what are the differences between the two? There is no doubt that the report of these discussions could serve as a reference for other circles or individuals and ’open’ the debate to the proletarian camp, in particular to its components that are part of the struggle for the formation of the party, to its partidist forces.

Our past experience with the IWG and the weaknesses of the ICT’s intervention in regroupment encourage us to be vigilant and critical from the outset. We would not want the mistakes and abuses of various kinds that the ICT and its former group in Canada had experienced to happen again. On several occasions, it criticized us in internal correspondence for interfering in what was none of our business. However, the politics and the future of the main organization of the Communist Left today are also our business. Not only because this policy, via the IWG and... the beginnings of this 2nd Klasbatalo, has had various direct negative practical consequences on our own existence in Canada, but also and especially because the proletarian camp, the party in the making, is at stake as a whole. The life and proper functioning of the ICT is also our business and should be that of all those who really fight for the party.

So, greetings to Klasbatalo! Critical greetings, but fraternal greetings.