The Crisis in the Marxist Left and the Tasks of the ICL

In the previous point we projected that the coming period will be one of reactionary capitalist offensives. As the U.S. tears up the post-Soviet liberal world order, the working class and petty bourgeoisie internationally will face a drastic contraction in their economic and social conditions. We also discussed how the current leaders of the working class, whether in the West, China or the Global South, are actively sabotaging the necessary struggle against U.S. imperialism. Against this path of capitulation, we laid out the broad strokes of an alternative program to unite the proletariat, confront the coming onslaught and open the road to workers power.

But here we run up against the problem that has plagued the Marxist movement ever since the degeneration of the Comintern: the crisis of revolutionary leadership. How can we translate our program for the coming period into reality? It goes without saying that the ICL as a tiny international organization does not have the means to exert any kind of decisive influence on the struggle of the masses. However, this does not mean that we can satisfy ourselves with making broad statements as we sit back and observe events unfold before our eyes. It is essential to situate our small International within the political context and understand how we can advance our broader goals, starting from current objective conditions.

In the words of Trotsky, “To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one’s own place—that is the first duty of a revolutionary” (My Life, 1930). This is what I will strive to do in this report.

There Is a Problem with the Left

The first thing to understand when approaching our tasks is that the ICL is one small piece of a large matrix of splintered Marxist organizations. As everyone knows, our current weakness is largely the product of our disorientation over the past 30 years. At our 2023 conference, we made a sharp political turn. But we cannot in the short term erase the accumulated consequences of our past mistakes. It is because of these that we find ourselves with a small and aging party, overwhelmingly confined to Western imperialist countries, mostly cut off from the left and with very little material ability to impact the class struggle.

However, when we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, it is obvious that the Marxist movement as a whole isn’t in a much better state. In fact, it is no great mystery that the entire movement has been in a deep and continual crisis. Some parties have collapsed, others have seen numerous splits leading to more and more parties with ever smaller numbers that cannot convincingly explain what distinguishes them from the others.

It is true that some organizations sometimes achieve success in recruitment. But the real measure of success for a revolutionary organization is not the number of members at a given time but its impact on the class struggle. And it is in this regard that the bankruptcy of the left is most apparent. In none of the great conflicts of the past decades have Marxists played any kind of decisive role in pushing forward the interests of the workers and oppressed.

Today Marxists clearly have far less influence on the working class than they did in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. The truth, which is rather obvious but something everyone denies, is that no Marxist organization has been spared the crisis shaking the movement. If there were any one tendency that had a uniquely correct orientation over the course of decades, it would not be a mystery and they would stand out quite clearly.

Why We Can’t Ignore Other Groups

Generally speaking, the practice in the left is to ignore other organizations of a similar or smaller size. However, as much as it would be nice to overlook the left and directly impact the masses, this is impossible. Not only do we not have the social weight to be able to achieve broad influence, but the existing organizations, which are often orders of magnitude larger than us, stand as barriers. There is no possibility of us recruiting in a linear way to the point where we can impose ourselves as a decisive force on the left.

Even if we were much bigger it would be wrong to ignore other organizations. Firstly, because it is utterly irresponsible to stand before the working class without being able to clearly and convincingly explain why two organizations that appear to have similar politics do not unite.

But more importantly, there is a political reason for the disunity of the left today. It is not the product of misguided individuals or wrong organizational practices but reflects the political crisis of an epoch. It is not possible to divorce the construction of a party from the task of clarifying and overcoming the political reasons at the root of the left’s disunity. When you think about it, this is obvious. To successfully build a revolutionary workers party, you need to understand why everybody else so far has been failing. And you cannot do that if you ignore what others are doing.

For all these reasons, the perspective of the ICL is to work toward a political realignment in the international left. We must seek to regroup the truly revolutionary elements that are today spread across various organizations as a result of coincidence and political unclarity. Our objective is not ultimately to win one or two members from other organizations but to engage in a genuine fusion process with much larger forces.

What Has the ICL Achieved So Far?

Here it is legitimate to ask what a small party such as ours can contribute to this process. I have already mentioned how our long-drawn-out internal crisis has left us in a weak position. However, unlike everyone else we have confronted the reasons for our crisis. As far as I know, no other tendency has gone through a deep review and re-evaluation of their work to the extent that we have. Everyone maintains the illusion that they, unlike everyone else, have been right all along. But more than just recognize that we were wrong, we have sought to explain the fundamental political reasons behind our disorientation. And surprise, surprise, it turns out that our disorientation is inherently connected to that of the rest of the left during the post-Soviet period.

The basic problem is simple enough. The Marxist left has been unable to root its tasks in a correct understanding of the world situation. In our document “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power” (Spartacist No. 68, September 2023), we explain how the post-Soviet order has been characterized by the hegemony of the United States, a fact obvious to anyone who cared to look. We explained how the hegemony of the United States and its alliance with the other imperialist powers were necessary conditions for the era of globalization. Finally, we showed how liberalism was the dominant ideology of the period and expressed the material interests of U.S. imperialism. The conclusion that flowed from this analysis is that the task of revolutionaries internationally was to fight against the U.S.-dominated world system, and the way this was posed concretely was in the struggle to break the working class from the influence of liberalism.

At the heart of our understanding is the fact that the workers movement’s association with liberalism—whatever the specific form it took in a given country—was the main factor driving the divisions within the left. Ultimately this is because liberalism in this period reflected loyalty to the U.S. world order, which was plundering the planet. The only way to unite the proletariat internationally was in struggle against this world system and against liberalism. To paraphrase Lenin, unity with liberals means splitting the international working class.

After we published our 2023 conference document, many leftists asked us what we mean by liberalism and why we’re making such a big fuss about it—indeed, it is not easy to understand something when you are submerged in it. Today, however, as the liberal facade of the world order comes crashing down, everyone is commenting about liberalism and its failure. Suddenly everyone is making similar statements to us. That said, these comments are reactions to the empirical evidence standing in front of everyone’s eyes and are not derived from a material analysis of the inner dynamics of the U.S.-led world order.

What Has Changed and What Hasn’t

All this goes to say that for less than two years the ICL was able to identify the task of communists in a world order that lasted more than 30 years. By no means is this a great success. We had only a very short period of time in which to implement our perspective for the post-Soviet period, and now already we must readjust.

Today our overriding task can no longer be reduced to breaking the workers movement from liberalism. Both the working class and the ruling class are decisively turning away from liberalism. It is true that here and there the liberal establishment is still mounting a resistance. But these are leftovers from the previous epoch that will be swept away soon enough.

This does not mean that we are back at square one. The fact that we were able to draw lessons from the previous epoch gives us an important advantage over the rest of the left. Crucially, we understand that opposition to U.S. imperialism remains the key to the political unification of the world proletariat.

In the U.S. itself, the working class will be squeezed in the name of the reactionary foreign ambitions of the ruling class. In the imperialist countries allied to the U.S. and in many U.S.-aligned semicolonies, the ruling classes continue to be fundamentally tied and subordinate to the current order—we can see this clearly through their worship of NATO and similar U.S. alliances. Until this decisively changes, fighting the U.S. will be an integral part of fighting the domestic capitalist class of these countries. As for oppressed countries and workers states that are threatened by economic asphyxiation and military aggression, it goes without saying that fighting the current imperialist system is essential. There our tasks will be to contrast our proletarian strategy with that of the rulers of these countries, who will conciliate the U.S. by holding back the masses from engaging in revolutionary struggle.

Everywhere opposition to U.S. imperialism remains central. It is in this great struggle that we can unify the working class across borders. And it is this struggle that will be essential to forging a unified international vanguard of the working class.

Understanding the Coming Crisis

Another key advantage we have is that we can explain the inner dynamics of the current turmoil shaking the world. And unlike everyone else, we can consciously prepare for what is to come. As the saying goes, in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

As far as I know, no one has yet seriously tried to explain what the end of liberalism will concretely mean for the left. To understand the sheer scale of the shock to come, we must understand how tied and dependent the left has become to the status quo. Whether in the West or in the Global South, the left has not built itself up in opposition to liberal movements and institutions. In fact, it has mainly functioned and grown by serving as the left flank of liberalism. Its activities have been overwhelmingly concentrated on campuses, in liberal social movements and in the orbit of NGOs. These are all sectors facing catastrophic collapse.

Throughout the West there is a looming crisis in higher education, a sector that has become a gigantic parasite dependent on extorting money from ever-growing numbers of foreign students. In the coming era, the bourgeoisie will have no interest in having so many people study subjects that are not useful to its strategic interests and will seek to drastically clamp down on the number of students. As we are already seeing, this will go hand in hand with a crackdown on radical political activity on campuses. What Trump has done to Columbia, cutting its funding and demanding that it increase the repression of the Palestinian movement, shows what is to come. Given that the campuses are probably the largest source of recruitment for leftist parties internationally, and that academic careers are a key source of influence and income for radicals, these shocks will have a profound impact.

In the Global South, many leftist organizations are intermingled with the NGO sector. Today this entire ecosystem faces collapse. In the blink of an eye, Trump destroyed USAID, the largest single donor of foreign aid. Soon afterward, Keir Starmer mimicked his master and cut the British foreign aid budget by 40 percent—and this came from a government full of liberal lawyers and NGO workers. In Argentina, left groups often rely on social work to build their influence among the masses; now Milei is gutting the funding for such programs along with every other legacy of Peronist governments. Once again, all these signs are only indicators of what is to come as international tensions mount and budgets get squeezed.

Some of the larger Marxist parties concentrate much of their activity on the electoral field. Of course, it is necessary to participate in elections. But a drift toward electoralism and the dependence on state subsidies that come with this are mortal dangers, particularly in a period of great political shocks. In South Africa and India, the Communist parties are utterly opportunist, buried deep in the politics of liberal coalitions and parliamentarism. They have directly participated in despicable crimes against the masses in order to satisfy their coalition partners and narrow electoral interests. As the political center of gravity moves to the right, these parties will be kicked to the curb and find themselves isolated, hated by the bourgeoisie as well as by the masses.

Parties like the KKE in Greece strike a more orthodox pose. But it, too, has become increasingly dependent on and oriented toward elections. At the same time, it has betrayed genuine possibilities to lead mass struggle against the imperialist oppression of Greece, undermining its credibility and influence in the working class.

Many left organizations retain cadre and in some cases a mass membership in the workers movement. However, this does not necessarily translate into real influence among the proletariat. Many of the French Trotskyist organizations have significant numbers of cadre in industry, but their policies are totally divorced from the dominant sentiments in the class. Their constant push to throw the vanguard of the working class onto the offensive has bred demoralization and isolated the left. This is not helped by the fact that the French left generally refuses to oppose liberal pillars such as the European Union, leaving the field open to the right, which has become the dominant force among workers.

In other cases, such as Britain, the left’s influence in the working class is essentially concentrated in the trade-union bureaucracy, which itself sits atop a hollow shell standing miles away from the sentiments and needs of their working-class membership. As soon as the pressure mounts, these positions will crumble.

When it comes to the liberal movements that have punctuated the post-Soviet period, whether for immigrant rights, black lives, environmentalism or LGBTQ+ rights, they will face both the hostility of an insurgent right wing as well as total abandonment from the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, which had been their base of social support. This is not to say that these causes will no longer be of central importance, but simply that these movements will go through a period of deep crisis and will need to be rebuilt on fundamentally different and more durable foundations. Again, this will have profound consequences for the left parties that have orbited such movements.

Every single one of these examples points to left organizations being faced with existential shocks in the coming period for which they are utterly unprepared. It is important that we ourselves take stock of what is to come, understand that our own status quo is going to change radically and do what we can to prepare ourselves and others.

Defensive, Offensive or Abstentionist?

In a sense, it can seem somewhat surprising that the left has not given more thought to the consequences of the coming shocks. After all, there is generally little controversy over the fact that we are entering a period of acute crisis. Many, like us, consider that we are in the early days of a devastating economic depression. It is also impossible to deny that in the U.S. and much of Europe the right is on the offensive. But for most of the left, none of these factors point to a worsening of their own situation. In fact, most see the coming period as one of great opportunity for the revolutionary left. We do not think this is the case at all.

Of course, we do not deny that eventually crisis will lead to offensives by the working class and openings for revolutionaries. Rather, our difference lies in the short-term prospects for the class struggle, especially in Europe and North America.

We draw our prognosis not from our wishes but from the outcome of struggle in the past few years. Since the end of the pandemic, there has been a whole series of important class battles around the world. In many cases the working class had a distinct chance of turning the tide of reaction and emerging onto the political scene as a decisive factor. In every case we fought as hard as we could for this outcome. However, the verdict is now in and nowhere was the working class able to achieve a decisive victory.

In France and Britain, strike waves ended in defeat. In the U.S., the ruling class essentially bought social peace by bribing the upper layer of the working class. In Greece, the Tempe struggle was allowed to evaporate into an apolitical movement. The uprisings in Iran, Kenya and Nigeria were crushed. In Bangladesh, the Yunus government is now in charge and the revolutionary impulse of the masses has been tamped down for the time being. As for the Palestinian struggle, a huge international movement spread across the world following October 7, but today this movement has collapsed and Gaza finds itself more isolated than ever in the face of the Israeli genocide.

In politics timing is crucial. The failure of the working class to capitalize on the openings it had, hampered at every step by its leadership, has meant that the initiative has decisively passed into the hand of the U.S. ruling class. Now Trump is launching a full-blown international and domestic offensive. This in turn will have an impact on the political situation around the world. For a time, workers will be on the back foot, worried about their own future and reluctant to go on the offensive. These are the clear signs we are getting everywhere from our comrades in the working class. As the economic crisis intensifies, the ICL insists that the orientation must be to the defensive. In the U.S. and everywhere else we say: Brace for impact!

The working class must defend its economic conditions. Unions must be strengthened and brought to a position where they can effectively combat the coming offensive. The Palestinian struggle must regroup and reorient radically. The trans movement, the immigrant movement, the black struggle—all need to take stock of their current isolation and forge ties with the workers movement. To be on the defensive does not mean to stop the struggle. It means struggling to defend the positions conquered by the oppressed as they come under attack.

Needless to say, this is not the stance taken by anyone else. Whereas we think that Europe is on the verge of a sharp shift to the right, the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas in Argentina considers that “Europe is probably the epicenter of this new wave of class struggle” (revolutionpermanente.fr, 22 March, our translation). Like many others, it considers the growth in the Left Party vote in Germany to be a sign of political awakening and radicalization of youth. In France its sister organization, Révolution Permanente, is multiplying its calls for a great democratic struggle against the Fifth Republic.

What is shocking is that these various prognoses and perspectives are not based on the belief that the working class is moving toward the left—they know this isn’t the case. Rather, it is a reaction to layers of the liberal petty bourgeoisie that are vibrating to their impending political doom. Of course, we must seek to connect with these layers. But we want to calm them down and organize them for what is to come, not throw them into battle as a tidal wave of reaction is about to come crashing down.

We see similar tendencies in the United States. The left has issued countless calls for broad movements to defend immigrants and other victims of the Trump offensive. However, all these calls aim to resurrect the movements of the liberal era, a hopeless and bankrupt enterprise in the current period. Any successful struggle must take as its starting point the sharp shift to the right that has occurred in the U.S.

When it comes to the newly proclaimed Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), they are also extremely optimistic. The central course they advocate is to build a revolutionary party. Fair enough, but what does this mean? It means join the RCI. OK, and what course should the unions follow according to the RCI? Beyond the occasional bombastic call for occupying factories, they have no perspective. But what should the oppressed do faced with a wave of reaction? Join the RCI, of course. How to fight austerity and war? Join the RCI. And what does the RCI do? It reads books, sells papers once a week and makes long analyses of the world. As for seeking to play any kind of decisive role in the class struggle? That’s not for them. First, they must have 10,000 members.

An important Trotskyist organization bucking the trend of fatuous optimism is Lutte Ouvrière in France. No one can accuse them of being optimistic. They predict wars and crisis and believe nothing much can be done about it. For them the task is simply to hold to the ideas of communism and wait for better times (sounds familiar). Needless to say, in a period of acute crisis, when the working class is facing devastating attacks, it will have little good to say about those who abstractly preach about the future and provide no concrete road out of the hell it faces today.

A prognosis is only a prediction. It is normal to make mistakes. There are many things we will get wrong. The problem is not so much making mistakes but insisting on a course shown by events to have been wrong. Events today already clearly show that the working class is on the back foot. Yet most persist in denying this reality. This can only lead to disaster. To go on the offensive in a period of reaction is always what causes the greatest losses in the ranks of the vanguard. As for the abstentionists, this may seem like a safer course, but the truth is that in times of crisis this is a declaration of bankruptcy.

Right now, one of our key roles is to warn and orient the vanguard elements of the working class and try to knock some sense into the left. At the moment, we insist on defensive struggles. But it will be just as important to recognize when the situation changes and to rapidly readjust. As Trotsky once wrote, “There is nothing more dangerous, at the time of sharp turns of history, than to hang on to the old customary and comfortable formulas; this is the direct road to decay” (“KPD or New Party [III],” 29 March 1933).

Perspectives for the ICL

I think it is fair to posit that decay is exactly what awaits much of the left today. The combination of the collapse of the liberal world order—for which it is not prepared—and political disorientation—thinking that down means up and up means down—will necessarily produce a deepening of the crisis in Marxist parties. It is likely that we will witness the organizational collapse of many of these parties. In any case, we can expect the situation in the left to become much worse before it gets better. In no way is any of this good for the working class—or for the ICL for that matter.

We should not expect great breakthroughs in the immediate future. Any openings we have will be tempered by the generally reactionary context. We must also understand that knowing tough times are ahead does not in any way make us immune to the coming shocks. Like the left in most countries, our party was built in a period of relative peace and democratic liberties. We cannot know exactly how it will react under increased pressure. Like the working class as a whole, our comrades will be affected by the attacks of the bourgeoisie. With the working class, we will bear these attacks. But we will do so with an understanding of the general course of events and armed with a clear view of our own place in the course of historical development—as a pole of proletarian clarity among the confusion and crisis.

In order to play this role, we propose three broad orientations around which to organize our work.

1. Political Clarification

First, we must continue our work of political clarification and theoretical preparation. In a period of great disorientation and turmoil, it is essential to help the workers movement orient itself. We have already started this in different ways. We have published key theoretical articles about the countries where we have sections as well as on other vital issues such as China, India, Palestine and the trans question. We continue this work at this plenum by adopting a fundamentally new approach to the national question in Ireland.

We must also continue to devote a substantial amount of resources to corresponding and debating with other tendencies. Our new publication, Spartacist Letters, is aimed at pursuing discussions with other organizations and individuals. While this work has been modest, I think it sets a positive example of how to conduct substantial and constructive debates.

As the left sinks deeper into crisis, we must do everything we can to limit the loss of Marxist cadre. It does not help the workers movement for organizations to collapse and demoralize their activists because of scandals, fights over bureaucratism or personalist conflicts. At bottom, these are just symptoms of broader disorientation. We must help the elements who are determined to fight for revolution to understand the fundamental reasons behind the havoc within their organizations and to fight for political clarification on essential questions.

2. Orient to the Working Class

Our second focus must be to orient to the proletariat. Our small roots in the working class give us key insights into its moods and aspirations and are essential to orienting our party.

This work also provides us an important terrain on which to test our ideas and build our influence among workers. In this work we can see concretely how the intervention of revolutionaries can have an impact on the balance of class forces at the workplace and in the class struggle. In the last few years, we have gained a lot of experience in conducting this work. We must continue to train and recruit proletarian cadre, the backbone of any revolutionary organization.

It is not the case that because the working class is turning to the right in many countries we must step away. Quite the contrary. It is more important than ever to develop our influence among workers. Orienting to the working class is inherently linked to defending the most vulnerable in society. With the liberals abandoning the cause of immigrants, women, black people and the LGBTQ+ movement, only the working class can serve as a reliable rampart against reaction. It is essential to build solid alliances between oppressed sectors and the proletariat. This must be an integral part of our orientation in the coming period.

3. Orient to the Global South

Finally, it is crucial to extend our links in the Global South. In many parts of the world, the Marxist left is practically nonexistent. In many others, the organizations that do exist are nationally isolated. This is often the case even when they are part of international tendencies. Generally, the left in the West, which dominates many of the international Marxist tendencies, devotes a very small proportion of their material and political resources to work in the Global South. Meanwhile, it is in the Global South that much of the working class is concentrated and where there is the most potential for proletarian uprisings.

The ICL has in the past period taken important steps toward the Global South. The first and most important of these has been to correct our approach to the national question and to place the fight against imperialism at the center of our perspective. We have also organized many trips, increased the amount of material we translate into foreign languages and written a number of key articles. We must redouble these efforts. Now that we have largely finished the work of reorienting our national sections, we must concentrate on extending our political reach across borders. This effort must not be that of a handful of specialists but must be shouldered by the entire party. Every comrade is expected to learn about other countries and help the party extend its reach internationally.

Each of these three orientations is integrally linked to the others. By advancing all of them together, we aim to position the ICL to play a key role in regrouping the vanguard elements in the period of turmoil and chaos that stands before us. These are our current tasks; they are ambitious yet rooted in the current conditions of the class struggle, the general state of the left and in our small but determined forces.