Several days ago, we criticized a misleading article published by the Spanish organization of the International Confederation of Labor (ICL-CIT). As we have pointed out many times, this is a different international organization, not related to the International Workers' Association which we are a part of and which was founded with a different purpose than the IWA.

The IWA, founded in 1922, was formed as a vehicle for workers to organize horizontally – not led by vanguards or communist parties of any stripe. This was partly a response to the attempts of the Bolsheviks to gather international organizations under its leadership.

Unfortunately, some people think they should repeat the mistakes of the past and attempt to integrate with Marxist-Leninist parties. Below we link to an article written by a comrade from Bangladesh. Probably many members of ZSP might disagree with some ways of expressing certain points – for example including the words „the Theoretical Bankruptcy of Anarchists” in the title – words which can be used against anarchists in general, not just the individuals who themselves are too mixed up to understand the point. However, in general it is good to hear the words of comrades from Asia and most of them have been warning that the CIT is in bed with unions run by authoritarian communists, sometimes directly linked with various parties.

It is a mistake however to treat CIT as anything related to anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism. Although there might be some totally confused people there who exhibit the aforementioned theoretical bankruptcy, the genesis of CIT is exactly to reverse the decision to found the IWA on the anti-party, anti-Bolshevik principle and revert to the bankrupt strategies of common fronts without any position of the role of the state. Or, as we see in Poland, even common organization with the right and the bosses.

In the article published by the comrade from Bangladesh, we see a solidarity statement from a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party of Bangladesh. A flaw of the article is not to explain this more as we assume that many readers just don't know much about politics in Bangladesh (or elsewhere).
The Communist Party of Bangladesh which operates several organizational fronts – for example, a student „wing” or a trade union „wing” which is the Workers' Trade Union Center. The Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre is the organization in that sector aligned to the Communist Party of Bangladesh. The leadership of the union are all affiliated to the Communist Party.

The person who signed the letter which appear is a member of the Presidium. The Presidium is the leadership ABOVE the Central Committee – in other words, those elected by the Central Committee to oversee the party, such as the General Secretary.

It should be totally obvious for anybody who hasn't fallen victim to the brainfog of the architects of ICL/CIT that this sort of labor organization has nothing to do with the traditions of anarcho-syndicalism, which was born in an attempt to encourage workers to stay away from exactly these types of structures and situations.

Good for our comrade from Bangladesh to point it out. Our comrades from Myanmar and Indonesia have also pointed out similar ties with ICL/CIT and the Marxist-Leninists of their countries. This work, as we know, started even before the foundation of this international organization and was spearheaded by the FAU in Germany, which supported integration with both Marxist-Leninist organizations and those practicing cross-front politics.

We condemn these strategies as both a strategic dead-end and leading and misleading people as to the actual aims of anarcho-syndicalism.

The link to the article written by our comrade from Bangladesh is found below.

https://redandblackanarchists.com.au/bolshevik-confusion-and-the-theoret...