Scanning the site meter the other night, I noticed that someone had accessed the blog via Technorati, after typing International Communist Current into the Technorati search engine.
Curious to see who else blogs about Planet ICC, I found this blog post from a Singaporean tourist who, visiting London in the aftermath of the terrorist bombings in London on July 7th, bought a copy of the ICC journal, 'World Revolution', at Camden Market, and decided to mention the event in her blog. Being of a skeptical bent, I was a tad suspicious that it may be a spoof and/or pisstake of the ICC - it happens only because they are such a threat to global capital, and because they represent the genuine revolutionary current amongst the proletariat - but this quote below was a dead giveaway to the authenticity of the piece:
" . . . I saw an elderly couple selling this just outside the station. I wanted to take a picture with the old lady but she refused. This mild-mannered lady then asked me to buy a copy of the paper from her for 75p. She's from the International Communist Current. Then, 少爷 and I decided that we should have beer, while I read the paper. I was trying to make sense of who's exploiting who in this encounter."
The insistence on anonymity on the part of the ICC members; the blog's physical description of those ICC members (they look like everyone's favourite aunt and uncle) and that final scene in the pub when you are drinking a beer, trying to plow through the inpenetrable jargon of ICC-speak and, being a wee bit embarrassed, mumbling to your drinking companion sitting next to you: "Maybe if I get drunk enough, I'll be able to understand it better . . ." (but he's not listening to you, 'cos he's giving himself a headache trying to understand a footnote in the latest issue of Aufheben) all point to the authenticity of the encounter.
I await with baited breath the future two page write up in the ICC press of this historic meeting of Left Communism and the proletariat of the Asian Tiger economies. I'll even get the beers in so that I can properly understand the article.
12 comments:
This ranks as one of my favourite blog posts of all time - thanks Darren for lighting up my hangover-ridden Friday morning! I may even get round to blogging myself again some day.
I've never seen anyone hawking ICC papers in the street here in New York City. The only "communists" who do that sort of thing here are followers of Trotsky or Mao. (And they'll only do it these days if there's some big boring demo where they can hang out.)
There are only two places where I've been able to find ICC publications in New York. The first is the famously radical-studenty Saint Marks Bookstore in the East Village, the second is a small magazine store on the corner of 11th Street and Sixth Avenue, in the West Village. At the small magazine store, the only person I've ever seen at the register is an elderly woman who looks as though she could be anybody's favorite great aunt. (Hmm...)
I was getting worried that international finance, corporate rule, neo-liberal globalisation and the project for a new americann century were getting way too big for their boots, but hallelujah, salvation is at hand. long live the ICC and all who travel in her vanguard's guard van.
ps reidski - get yer finger oot ya lazy james hunt
you can get this paper at wordpower in Edinburgh but I don't think they have any members here. Funnily enough one of my work colleagues is an ex-ICC member. When he gets pissed he likes to boast how he is the most left wing guy on the planet. When he said he was in "a group called the ICC you will never have heard of" I replied, "ah, the Bordigists". I think he was a bit taken aback.
Alister, you actually know the real name of an ICCer? Bloody hell, that puts you one up on the rest of us.
I think the ICC used have a presence in Aberdeen, but they split off to form the Communist Bulletin Group, who I understand dissolved into other fractions/factions etc etc years ago.
Ask him if he knows anything about the ICC typewriter. I always wanted to hear the uncensored story about that.
Well, he was in the Italian ICC. He went British SWP>Italian CP>Italian ICC>Burnt out anarchist.
Well, he was in the Italian ICC. He went British SWP>Italian CP>Italian ICC>Burnt out anarchist.
The Italian ICC?
I am impressed. If only because he was so 'simon pure' (copyright spgb) he couldn't even bring himself to join the IBRP, which of course is the largest left communist grouping in Italy.
The only place to go after burn out anarchism is the studied ennui of the spgb - pass on our details. ;-)
We had some Sparts in Cape Town and they were creepy, both Americans, I think, and you could only contact them by leaving a voicemail on a phone line in Johannesburg. I just remember them for their whiny "Comrades! When the revolution comes the trade union leaders will hang from the highest lampposts!"
It was interesting to read this post as I had just written about them on my blog: http://redstarcoven.blogspot.com/2005/11/first-starbucks-strike.html
Ingram,
I'm happy to pull up a chair and listen in on any stories about Planet ICC. You do know that by posting a comment on a post that is a gentle piss take of the revolutionary milieu, you are inviting a denunciation in their press?
I remember the Communist Bulletin. I bought a job lot in Bookmarks - in their old Finsbury Park bookshop - in the late eighties as a callow youth. I was at that difficult age where I was too old for Shoot magazine, but too young for People's Friend (surely the name of an old Chartist journal?) and I had to settle for political literature.
I think the Communist Bulletin was the first Communist Left literature I ever read, and as someone who six months previously thought the intellectual heavy stuff was reading an issue of the Militant all the way through without having to stifle a yawn, it was certainly a bit of a crash course in the nether world of ultra-left politics.
I remember your name as well as - I think - Sinclair, McIntosh and Rowntree. That may just be my memory playing tricks on me. ;-)
Am I right in thinking that the CBG were based in Scotland? Aberdeen and/or Edinburgh. I don't even think the ICC has even one member in Scotland these days - their people travel up from England if anyone displays a scintilla of interest in their politics.
Saying that, it has to be said that they have got one of the best looking websites on the fringes of working class politics. It puts the rest of us to shame.
Just a shame that on the few occasions when I have been in the company of ICCers and their sympathisers, I've never had a decent conversation with any of them which touches on being a everyday normal human being. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but they have that whiff of cultism about them.
You are obviously a moron.
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