Dear reader,
After a certain time since the publication of the last issue, you now have in your hands the 13th issue of the International Communist Review. We are able to resume our activity after proceeding to a necessary recomposition of the journal and solving certain issues that have arisen following the outbreak of the imperialist war in Ukraine, with the sharpening of the inter-imperialist antagonisms, the intervention of the US-NATO-EU in this region and the unacceptable military intervention of Russia on 24 February 2022. This triggered an intense debate and the sharpening of the political confrontation in the ranks of the international communist movement and in the ranks of our journal. Thus, for the correct functioning and continuation of this effort, it was deemed necessary to proceed to the further enrichment of the Founding Declaration of the "International Communist Review", on which the journal is based. After necessary consultations, the Founding Declaration was updated at the end of last year with new elements, taking into account the current international developments, and it reads as follows:
"The review should express a specific, clear-cut, ideological-political position, defending the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the need for a socialist revolution and the construction of the communist society. The framework of this review embraces the following principles:
A) Working with a strict reference to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.
B) Accepting the leading role of the working class in the revolutionary process.
C) Defending the Leninist party principles.
D) Struggling against the international and regional imperialist institutions, i.e. NATO, the EU, the IMF etc., as well as imperialist wars, such as the one that broke out in Ukraine in 2022 between the USA-NATO-EU and capitalist Russia for the control of the markets, raw materials, and transport networks of the country. We refuse to support any side in this and similar conflicts and wars, without in any way diminishing our determination to struggle against US imperialism and NATO. Our Parties consider that imperialism cannot be reduced to the practice of an aggressive foreign policy, that it is the most reactionary and final stage of capitalism in which monopolies prevail.
E) Approaching in a friendly manner, without excluding criticism, the historical experiences of the international communist movement, starting from Paris Commune followed by the October Revolution, the Third International and the socialist experience in the USSR and in other countries. We stress that socialism is governed by principles and scientific laws, i.e. workers’ power, the socialization of the means of production, and central scientific planning. The Communist Party, under the particular conditions each time, assumes the responsibility to educate and equip the working class to tackle difficulties, delays or temporary setbacks in the construction of the new society, taking the necessary measures to consolidate and expand the socialist relations of production. Based on this, positions such as that a market socialism can be built by maintaining capitalist enterprises and mechanisms, by maintaining wage labour by owners of means of production and land, by treating labour power as a commodity and by capital’s exploitation of wage labour are rejected.
F) Struggling for socialism as the only alternative against capitalism, in a revolutionary way.
G) Rejecting participation in bourgeois governments as well as entering into cooperation and alliances with bourgeois parties. We defend the political and ideological independence of the working class.
H) Fighting against the tendencies inside the working class movement such as social democracy, any kind of opportunism, reformism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and liberalism.
I) Struggling against fascism and its causes, against racism and xenophobia, by the side of refugees and immigrants that are uprooted by imperialist wars and the poverty caused by the capitalist system. We reject the false “anti-fascism” and the various “anti-fascist fronts” used by bourgeois and opportunist political forces to entrap workers’–people’s forces into bourgeois management, detaching fascism from the capitalist system that gives rise to it and uses it when needed.