Video & Statement of the ICOR Main Coordinator Monika Gärtner-Engel on the 10th anniversary of ICOR

Dear friends and comrades around the entire world! Today the ICOR is ten years old and sends you warmest revolutionary greetings on this occasion! On October 6th, 2010, 90 years after the October Revolution and the founding of the Second International in Berlin, we celebrated its founding in an international festive ceremony. The Founding Resolution summarized: "The time is ripe to counter highly organized, globally linked international finance capital and its imperialist world system with something new - the organized power of the international revolutionary and working-class movement and of the broad masses in a new stage of the cross-border cooperation and coordination of the practical activity.” Words were followed by deeds! The ICOR has been consolidated and strengthened. Founded by 41 revolutionary organizations and parties on four continents, it has grown to include more than 60 member organizations on all five continents of the world. Congratulations on these successful ten years and many thanks to all ICOR organizations for their great efforts, their persistent work; many thanks to all those for their selfless commitment in taking over functions and responsibilities - from the first groundbreaking Main Coordinator Stefan Engel to the newest pending ICOR admission applications from Portugal and Siberia; to all friends of the ICOR and all allies all over the world. The basis for the growth and attraction of the ICOR are the far-sighted fundamental guidelines and principles decided ten years ago, when they are actually being lived and realized:

• In the face of many remaining differences among the revolutionaries of the world, common organization on the basis of ideological-political core questions: revolutionary overcoming of the capitalist/imperialist system; perspective of socialism/communism; necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat; leading role of the working class; a clear dividing line to revisionism, anarchism and Trotskyism.
• Each organization decides itself in which activities of the ICOR it participates – however, if a commitment is made, it must be carried out reliably!
• Ideological-political unification step by step with seminars, the right of every organization to make monthly contributions to discussion on the website and, last but not least, with resolutions which only become valid with the majority consent of the ICOR organizations. In the year 2020 alone, 15 resolutions on the burning issues of the time were drawn up on the initiative or with active participation of many ICOR organizations.

• Financial independence. Everyone pays a self-defined contribution - but this reliably. The ICOR finances its work exclusively from membership dues, donations and imaginative financial activities. It is free of debt.

• Proletarian culture of debate, mutual respect and attention to the sovereignty of the member organizations.

• Policy of open doors for membership or cooperation with others.

The main task of the ICOR is the practical coordination and cooperation on these foundations. It has already taken important steps in this direction:

• On four international days of struggle of the ICOR - May Day, March 8th, the days of commemoration and struggle against war and the environmental day of struggle - the ICOR organizations strive to become active together on the basis of a common call with demonstrations, awareness-raising meetings and publications.

• Practical solidarity in the struggle for democracy, freedom and socialism with the climax of the solidarity pact with the Kurdish liberation struggle; the construction of the health-care center with 177 brigadists under most difficult conditions, today a maternity clinic in Kobane, where thousands of babies have been born in the meantime.

• A highlight was undoubtedly the ensemble for the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution - starting with publications and activities in the individual countries, an international seminar with 60 participating organizations from 40 countries and the climax of activities and demonstrations in St. Petersburg from 05.11. to 09.11.2017.

• The continental coordinations organize joint campaigns or also seminars, such as on the environmental issue, on new phenomena in the imperialist world system, for example on the controversially discussed question of the new-imperialist countries.

• ICOR organizations appear together militantly and critically at international conferences such as the World Climate Conferences of the UN.

• The ICOR initiated and supported campaigns with other revolutionary associations like with the ILPS against nuclear power in the year 2011.

• It is an active partner and driving force of non-party affiliated associations worldwide. For example, the important international coordination of miners and automotive workers or at two world conferences of grassroots women so far.

• Oriented toward the future are the conferences of peasants and agricultural workers, which have already been held several times regionally and are planned as worldwide events in the future.

• Together with the ILPS, the ICOR has meanwhile taken the initiative and created essential preconditions for the worldwide building of an antifascist and anti-imperialist united front.

These jointly achieved successes cannot be valued highly enough. They stand out attractively from the deserved decline or the splits of revisionist, Trotskyist or sectarian-separatist alliances. Without exaggeration and with pride we can therefore say today: the ICOR has become the living and initiative exponent of the revolutionary associations of the world. Without splits, signs of disintegration or liquidationist quarrels. But nothing would be more foreign to the ICOR, nothing would be more inappropriate than complacency. Considering the tasks that the future poses for the revolutionaries of the world, the ICOR is still in its infancy and still has a lot to learn and build up. It faces enormous challenges to put its guidelines and principles into practice consistently and at all times. Above all, it must further develop actual practical cooperation and coordination. It must be even more determined to identify, discuss and clarify the present burning ideological-political questions on time and to work consistently on awareness-building and organizing. We are currently experiencing the deepest world economic and financial crisis, intensified by the corona pandemic. The transition to a global environmental catastrophe is accelerating. Mass poverty, mass unemployment, millions of refugees, hunger, epidemics and wars are attacking and threatening the foundations of human life. The inter-imperialist competitive struggle with the growing number and aggressiveness of the various imperialist forces is intensifying and extremely dangerous. The exploitation and oppression of the international working class are being pushed to the extreme. The double exploitation and oppression of the masses of women and the brutal violence against them is intensifying. The youth are only provided with a future in capitalist barbarism! The ruling powers respond to class and mass struggles with state terror, the fascistization of the state apparatus and the suppression of the revolutionary forces. One of their main methods today is openly reactionary or modern-looking anticommunism. Its representatives pretend to be critical of capitalism, but declare it to be without alternative, all efforts to find a revolutionary perspective to be pointless, and they rant against the alleged "Stalinists" and "Maoists". Today anticommunism is more and more proving to be a decisive obstacle in the consciousness of the masses, for the development of class consciousness and for the decision to fight for democracy, freedom and socialism. Primarily for this reason, scientific socialism still has a relatively weak influence in the world's major struggles and movements. However, in the deepened crisis-proneness of the imperialist world system, the ruling powers are often no longer able to govern in the old way. The masses increasingly do not want to live in the old way. In more and more countries, general societal crises are emerging and worldwide the accelerated tendency towards an general societal crisis of the imperialist world system. The working class, especially the international industrial proletariat, is making its voice heard with determined struggles. Women are rising worldwide, especially in mass movements against discrimination and violence against women. Environmental activists are increasingly recognizing the need for society-changing orientation. The youth of the world rebel against exploitation and oppression, against racism, fascism, state terror, militarism, environmental destruction and anticommunist patronizing. The biggest problem in these diverse struggles is the often missing or too weak forces of Marxist-Leninist party building in the individual countries as well as effective international cooperation. Our entire attention must be focused on the dialectics of targeted party building in the individual countries and the decisive strengthening of our international cooperation in the ICOR and the anti-imperialist united front. The ICOR looks optimistically to the future. We live, work and fight for our socialist, communist ideal of freedom. The political situation in the world is crying for a solution. Never before, alongside the immense destructive forces, have the material conditions for the construction of socialism been so pronounced as today. Let us work even more resolutely to fulfill our historical societal role! Let us take the 10th anniversary of the founding of the ICOR as the occasion for a great initiative: Revolutionary organizations of the world - join the ICOR and the anti-imperialist united front! Draw your consequences from the fact that today the imperialist world system can only be fought and defeated in a coordinated way across borders. Overcome skepticism or doubts and place your trust in the power of our common, critical-self-critical process of learning! We call upon the member organizations of the ICOR:

• Be determined in winning members - for the party in your own country, for the ICOR and the anti-imperialist united front.

• Invest more efforts of your parties in the international work!

• Strengthen your initiative and activity in the actual practical coordination and cooperation, especially on the continental and regional level.

• Let us identify, discuss and clarify the ideological-political core questions in the preparation of the international socialist revolution even more consistently .

2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, the establishment of the world's first dictatorship of the proletariat. Wouldn't this be an excellent opportunity for the ICOR organizations to meet with other revolutionaries of the world to discuss the lessons of the Paris Commune, to apply them to today and to join forces even more closely? We do not yet know how the corona pandemic will continue - but we will find ways and means. The international revolutionary and working-class movement can, must and will become a force superior to imperialism. Forward with the building of ICOR, the anti-imperialist united front and strong revolutionary parties in all countries! Workers of all countries and oppressed peoples, unite! Forward in the struggle for democracy and freedom, forward to international socialist revolution!