Sun Jul 13, 2025
July 13, 2025

Revolutionary Communist League dissolved

Revolutionary Communist League (LRC) historic French organisation of the so-called United Secretariat (USec) of the IV International has just held its XVII Congress which voted its dissolution to give way to a “new anticapitalist organisation”. What follows is an article on this issue by Alberto Madoglio, member of the leadership of PdAC (Party of Communist Alternative), Italian section of the IWL-FI.


From 24th to 27th January, in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris, the XVII Congress of the Revolutionary communist League (LCR) was held and the broad majority (over 8O% of the representatives) of those present took up the decision to initiate the process of creating “a new anticapitalist party” and consequently to dissolve the LCR


It is stale news that LCR (the same as the international, tendency of which it is part, the United Secretariat – USec) is no longer a consistently revolutionary organisation. We cannot, however, stand unmoved in view of the definite split of the last vestige of political heritage of communism taking place in the year 2008, exactly forty years after the foundation of this party that, with the impulse of the 1968 “French May” was for a long time one of the greatest forces of the world extreme left.


The process initiated by the French representatives is not altogether new. For years now, particularly from the early nineties, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we have been witnessing these political experiences that pose themselves as the solution of the “crisis of representation” and pretend to give political proposals for the problems that workers all over the world have been suffering after the 60-70 revolutionary wave drew to an end and after Stalinism crumbled down


Reality, however, proved over and over again that these projects were vain for their failure was inscribed in their DNA. That was what happened to the Zapatista movement guided by sub commander Marcos, who not only failed at ending the domination of Mexican bourgeoisie but never even managed to restore the political and social dignity of the indigenous population of the country. The same fate befell the political project of the Brazilian PT that had created so many illusions in the world through the experience of the “participative budget” and of the Social World Forum of Porto Alegre. However, once they reached power with Lula, the PT proved to be the one who would best ensure the interests of capitalism in the South American subcontinent.


Not to mention Italy, where 25 years of propaganda of the PRC (Communist Re-foundation Party) finally transpired a direct participation in one of the mot anti-workers government that Italy has had since the end of the II World War.


It is not only the experience of the past that leads us to say that this new project that will be born on the ashes of the LCR is doomed to fail: it the – above all – a criticism of the proposed policy adopted that leads us to this conclusion.


If the analysis that LCR makes of the crisis of capitalist society and the bankruptcy of the traditional workers’ organisations, even if absolutely superficial might be, in general lines, shared and if the demand of struggle for socialism could induce us to emit a positive judgement of this political attempt, a more thorough reading of the theses accepted leaves no doubt as to the liquidating meaning of this decision.


First of all, the call for socialism is totally separated from the struggle for the conquest of political hegemony of politically active sectors of the working class, by means of a programme of transitional demands aimed at the destruction of political, economic and social hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the substitution of the dictatorship of a privileged minority by the dictatorship of the immense majority of the population. Consequently, this call is reduced to a reference to socialism as an abstract horizon of mankind, combined with reformism of current society. This combination has always been characteristic for reformism and centrism of these last two centuries.


On the other hand, the vindication of the experience of Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution” and his attempt at building “21st Century Socialism” show how these theses are far from communists theorised on and what they practised with Marx, Lenin and Trotsky and with October.


A confirmation of the narrow limits of this perspective may be found reading the proposal adopted on the attitude to be assumed in the forthcoming municipal elections where the options are simply a possible agreement between the local government and the Socialist Party or with the CPF (Communist Party of France). Or even, the possibility of simple support from outside to a local government of centre-left, also in this case without excluding the support for the Socialist Party.


As for the eventuality of supporting a centre-left government, documents limit themselves to stating that this option divided anticapitalist and anti-liberal forces in Brazil and in Italy, but they do not say that this policy is actually unsustainable. The LCR comrades, therefore, seem to be inspired in the experience of their Italian cousins of Critical Left (or the other way round) who have spent two years supporting the Prodi administration in the Parliament in a determining way (remember the different occasions in which the Senate, not participating directly in the casting of the votes, contributed indirectly to save the swaying Prodi). And also that, after having broken off with Communist Re-Foundation, they said they would assess “case by case” to see if they would support the centre-left executive or not, and because of this they defined their organisation as “tendential (sic!) opposition”.


That is why the organisation proposed by Critical Left is very similar to the one adopted in France. The text passed at their founding assembly (last December) says, “Marxism is not the only theory of liberation to be regarded as reference” and they propose the constitution of a generic “anti-capitalist network” in split from any reference to Trotskyism regarded as a valid revolutionary Marxist programme.”


In the theses for the VIII World Congress, International Workers’ League spoke of the “opportunist gale” to indicate a political phenomenon that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, swept away different tendencies of the world workers’ movement, making them directly or indirectly responsible for the anti-worker policies of the bourgeoisie. Almost twenty years later, the effects of this “gale” can still be felt.


Those harbouring any illusions about the crisis of Stalinism and the definite treason of social democracy may produce “innovations” in policies or in organisation do not show any alternative way to reach our goal (alternative system) but once more dooms the young, the workers, the women and all the oppressed to new and more devastating defeats.

That is why the struggle for the construction of real communist parties in each country and a revolutionary communist international is increasingly becoming the great need that cannot be postponed. Only a party founded on a genuine class programme can produce a concrete response not only to end the slavery of the proletariat, but also to the oppression of gender, racism, xenophobia and the devastation of the environment that a society founded on profit jeopardises every day.

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