Fourth International

Origins

Trotsky and his supporters had been organised since 1923 as the International Left Opposition, as an opposition within the Comintern. They opposed the bureaucratization of the Soviet Union, which they analysed as being caused by the poverty and isolation of the economy of the Soviet Union|Soviet economy. Stalin's theory of socialism in one country was developed in 1924 as an opposition to Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, which argued that capitalism was a world system and required a world revolution in order to replace it with socialism. Prior to 1924, the Bolshevik's international perspective had been guided by Trotsky's position. Trotsky argued that this theory represented the interests of that bureaucracy in direct opposition to the working class. After the rise of Hitler, with the cooperation of the Stalinist Communist Party of Germany, Trotsky observed that the Comintern had fallen irreedemably into the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Thus he and his supporters founded the International Communist League in 1933. By declaring themselves the Fourth International, the "World Party of Socialist Revolution", the Trotskyists were publicly asserting their continuity not only with the Comintern but also with the earlier Socialist International and the International Workingmen's Association, the first International, which had been led by Karl Marx. Their recognition of the importance of these earlier Internationals was coupled with a belief that they eventually degenerated. Although the Socialist International and Comintern were still in existence, the Trotskyists did not believe they were capable of supporting revolutionary socialism and internationalism. The foundation of the Fourth International was therefore spurred in part by a desire to form a stronger political current, rather than just being seen as the communist opposition to the Comintern and the Soviet Union. Trotsky believed that its formation was all the more urgent for the role he saw it playing in the impending World War II|World War. When founded, in 1938, the Fourth International adopted the ''Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution'' as its central programmatic statement, summarising its strategic and tactical conceptions for the revolutionary period that they saw opening up as a result of the war which Trotsky had been predicting for some years. The Transitional Programme is not, however, the definitive programme of the Fourth International — as is often suggested — but instead contains a summation of the conjunctural understanding of the movement at that date and a series of transitional policies designed to develop the struggle for workers' power. In this it builds on the positions and methods of the earlier Communist International and, as argued by Trotsky, the Transitional Programme is best seen as supplementing the traditional programmatic understanding of the movement. Trotsky developed his positions on the Fourth International in ''In Defense of Marxism'', written in 1939-1940 as a polemic against Max Shachtman and James Burnham's tendency. Trotsky argued that the Fourth International must defend the theoritical heritage of Marxism as a whole, including his analysis of the degenerated workers' state and Lenin's theory of the party, rather than ignoring theoritical differences to maintain a superficial and temporary unity. Shachtman argued that the Soviet Union was not a degenerated workers' state, but a new form of class society, "bureaucratic collectivism". Trotsky opened a public debate with Shachtman and Burnham, leading to their resignation from the international, Shachtman founding his own Workers Party (US). While Cannon later said that he hoped this split would not be permanent, so it proved to be. That Trotsky pursued this debate while under the greatest personal danger exemplifies the importance which Trotsky put on educating the new cadre of the Fourth International. Soon after breaking with the Fourth International, Burnham left Shachtman's group as well, ending up as leading conservative ideologue. Many of Shachtman's supporters went on to be leading members of the neoconservatives, and his theory of "bureaucratic collectivism" was taken up by Tony Cliff and the International Socialist Organization in the form of "state capitalism." The International was hounded by Stalinist GPU agents and repressed by bourgeois democratic countries such as France and the United States. It struggled to maintain contact under conditions of illegality around much of the world during World War II. It was also disorientated by the absence of workers' uprisings, or where they did occur, by their co-option by Stalinist and Social democracy|social democratic groups, leading to new successes for opponents of Trotsky. The International suffered major splits as early as 1940 and most significantly in 1953. Despite a partial reunification in 1963, more than one group claims to represent the political continuity of the Fourth International. The List of Trotskyist internationals |Trotskyist Internationals are split over whether the Fourth International should still be built and if so, which organisation represents its political continuity.

Trotskyism

''Main article: Trotskyism'' The Trotskyists regarded themselves as working in opposition to both capitalism and to Stalinism as embodied by the Soviet Union. Trotsky advocated proletariat|proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and believed that a workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was advanced in opposition to the view held by the Stalinists that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union alone. Furthermore, Trotsky and his supporters harshly criticized the increasingly totalitarian nature of Stalin's rule. They argued that socialism without democracy is impossible. Thus, faced with the increasing lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, they concluded that it was no longer a socialist workers' state, but a degenerated workers' state.

The decision to form the International

In the early 1930s, Trotsky and his supporters believed that Stalin's influence over the Third International could still be fought from within and slowly rolled back. They organized themselves into the International Left Opposition in 1930, which was meant to be a group of anti-Stalinist dissenters ''within'' the Third International. However, Stalin's supporters, who dominated the International, no longer tolerated dissent. All Trotskyists (or people suspected of being Trotskyists) were expelled. As a result, they were forced to regroup into an independent organization, the International Communist League, in 1933. Later, in 1936, this group was renamed the ''Movement for the Fourth International'', as its members agreed that any attempt to dislodge the Stalinist leadership of the Third International was futile, and therefore a new International needed to be established. The foundation of the Fourth International was seen as more than just the simple renaming of an international tendency that was already in existence. It was argued that the Third International had now degenerated completely and was therefore to be seen as a counter-revolutionary organisation that would in time of crisis defend capitalism. It was also argued that the coming World War II|World War would produce a revolutionary wave of class and national struggles, rather as the First World War had done. Stalin, fearing the growing strength of Trotsky's supporters, responded with a political massacre of hundreds of thousands of people within the Soviet Union, as well as the assassination of Trotsky's supporters and family abroad. Stalin attempted to kill not only Trotsky's supporters, but anyone who knew any of his supporters. He had agents go through historical documents and photos in order to attempt to erase Trotsky's memory from the history books. Stalin's supporters even turned to Anti-semitism to whip up sentiment against Trotsky. Nevertheless, the Fourth International was founded at a World Congress held just outside Paris in the home of Alfred Rosmer. Present at the meeting were delegates from all the major countries of Europe, and from North America, although for reasons of cost and distance, few delegates attended from Asia or Latin America.

The Founding Conference and WWII

The International's rationale was to construct new mass revolutionary party|revolutionary parties able to lead successful workers' revolutions. It saw these arising from a revolutionary wave which would develop alongside and as a result of the coming World War. The founding conference, in Paris, adopted the ''Transitional Programme'' as the International's political platform. An International Secretariat was established, with many of the day's leading Trotskyists and most countries in which Trotskyists were active represented. At the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the International Secretariat was moved to New York, where it came under the influence of the Socialist Workers Party (US)|Socialist Workers Party. In 1940, the SWP split with Max Shachtman's group forming the Workers Party (US)|Workers Party, almost the same size as the remaining SWP. The split was centered around the Shachtmanites' disagreements with the SWP's internal policy, but in the background was their rejection of Trotsky's degenerated workers' state analysis of the Soviet Union. Secretariat members who supported Shachtman were expelled, with the support of Trotsky himself. The Fourth International was hit hard by World War II, with many of its European affiliates destroyed by the Nazi Germany|Nazis and several of its Asian affiliates destroyed by the Empire of Japan. The survivors, both in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, were largely cut off from each other and from the International Secretariat. The new secretary, Jean Van Heijenoort (a.k.a. Gerland), was able to do little more than publish articles in the SWP's theoretical journal ''Fourth International''. Despite this dislocation, the various groups sought to maintain links and some connections were kept up throughout the early part of the war by sailors belonging to the US Navy who had cause to visit Marseilles. Contact was also steady, if irregular, between the SWP and the British Trotskyists with the result that the Americans exerted what influence they had to bring the unofficial Workers' International League into the official movement through a fusion with the Revolutionary Socialist League. Gerland, Albert Goldman and Felix Morrow foresaw the revival of Stalinism and social democracy after the war, and argued for transitional politics in response. The SWP under James P. Cannon believed that this would mean the abandonment of building the Fourth International and adhered rigidly to their interpretation of Trotsky's works. They held that capitalism was still a historically limited system and would suffer a major crisis after the war, resulting in a revolutionary situation. The British Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-1949)|Revolutionary Communist Party disagreed and held that capitalism was not about to plunge into massive crisis but rather that an upturn in the economy was already underway. The leadership of the French Parti Communiste Internationaliste argued a similar position until they broke away in 1947. The SWP viewed the above as incorrect and countered by rebuilding the International Secretariat of the Fourth International with Michel Raptis (generally known as Pablo), a Greek resident in France, and Ernest Mandel (sometimes called Germain), a Belgian. They were chosen because they were not prominent members of large parties, but were thought to be loyal to the SWP. Pablo became the new secretary of the International, while Mandel became its chief theoretician. Pablo and Mandel aimed to counter the perceived deviations of the RCP and PCI, initially by encouraging members to vote out their leaderships. They encouraged Gerry Healy's opposition in the RCP, and in France supported elements, including Pierre Frank, Bleibtreu and Favre, opposed to the new leadership of the PCI for different reasons. The Stalinist occupation of Eastern Europe was the issue of prime concern, and it raised many problems of interpretation. At first, the International held that, while the Soviet Union|USSR was a degenerated workers' state, the post-WW2 East European states were still bourgeois entities, because revolution from above was not possible, and capitalism persisted. This position was revised later as the economies of the East European states and their political regimes came to resemble that of the USSR more and more. These states were then described as deformed workers states in an analogy with the degenerated workers state in Russia. The term ''deformed'' was used rather than ''degenerated'', because no workers' revolution had led to the foundation of these states. This issue was not merely an argument over names. Those who argued that the new states amounted to a progressive development, in however limited a fashion, concluded that the Stalinist bureaucracy was not an entirely counter-revolutionary force. To Pablo and Mandel, this meant that they should now undertake long-term entrism of the various sections of the Fourth International into the Stalinist Communist Parties. Another issue that needed to be dealt with was the possibility that the economy would revive. This was initially denied by Mandel (who however was quickly forced to revise his opinion, and later devoted his PhD dissertation to late capitalism, analysing the unexpected "third age" of capitalist development). Some leaders of the RCP (Britain) however anticipated an economic recovery. A polemical article was written in an internal party bulletin by Tony Cliff in 1947, entitled ''http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1947/09/glitters.htm'. In that article, he argued out that an economic revival was already underway, and that the economic perspectives of Mandel were wrong. In the sectarian retrospectives, this was naturally total proof of Mandel's analytical ineptitude, once and for all. However, there was much uncertainty at that time about the future viability and prospects of capitalism, not just among ''all'' Trotskyist groups, but also among leading economists. Paul Samuelson had envisaged in 1943 the probability of a "nightmarish combination of the worst features of inflation and deflation", worrying that "there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced" ("Full Employment after the war", in S. Harris (ed.), ''Post war Economic Problems'') Joseph Schumpeter for his part claimed that "The general opinion seems to be that capitalist methods will be unequal to the task of reconstruction". He regarded it as "not open to doubt that the decay of capitalist society is very far advanced" ("Capitalism in the post-war world", in: ibid.).

The Second World Congress

At the Second World Congress in 1948, Pablo and Mandel attempted to open communications with Tito's regime in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia. It differed from the rest of the "Eastern Bloc" because it was established by the partisans of World War II who fought against Nazi occupation, as opposed to by Stalin's invading armies. The leadership of the British RCP (led by Jock Haston and supported by Ted Grant) were highly critical of this move. By this point the FI was united around the view that the Eastern European countries were indeed deformed workers' states, but still strongly divided about what this meant for the future of Stalinism. Mandel and Pablo increasingly assigned a progressive role to the bureaucracy, and attempted to bridge the gap between Trotskyism and Stalinism. The Congress was also notable for bringing the International into much closer contact with Trotskyist groups from across the globe. The largest groups were the Bolivian Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in what was then Ceylon; the previously large Vietnamese Trotskyist groups had largely been eliminated or absorbed by the supporters of Ho Chi Minh.

The Third World Congress

At the Third World Congress in 1951, Pablo - like many others at the time - envisaged the real possibility of a World War III|Third World War in the near future, in which the official mass communist and social democratic parties would be the only significant force that could defend the workers of the world against the imperialist camp. This was strikingly different to Trotsky's prognosis, who had foreseen an independent role for the Fourth International as a leader of the working class. This was widely accepted within the Fourth International, yet sowed the seeds for the split in 1953. At the Third World Congress, the parties later to become the USFI and ICFI agreed with the perspective of a Third World War and with entryism sui generis. However, the French section disagreed, and held that Pablo was underestimating an independent role for the working class parties in the Fourth International. A Third World War did not happen, of course: However, it should be noted that US strategists seriously considered the possibility of detonating nuclear weapons in China and Korea. This would clearly draw in the Soviet Union. In line with this geo-political perspective, Pablo argued that the only way the Trotskyists could avoid isolation was for the tiny forces of the FI (outnumbered by the official communists by 1,000 to 1 or more) should join the mass Stalinist or Social Democratic parties. This tactic was known as entrism ''sui generis'', to distinguish it from the short term entry tactic employed before World War Two. For example, it meant that the project of building an open and independent Trotskyist party was shelved in France, because it was regarded as not politically feasible alongside entry into the French Communist Party. The leaders of the majority of the Trotskyist organisation in France, Marcel Bleibtreu (also known as Pierre Favre) and Pierre Lambert, would not follow Pablo's line and would agree only to send a fraction of their members inside the Communist Party. The International leadership had them replaced by a minority, leading to a permanent split in the French section. In the wake of the World Congress the line of the International Leadership was generally accepted by groups around the world, including the SWP (US) whose leader, James P. Cannon, http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/slaughter/slaugh05.htmto support the tactic of entrism ''sui generis''. At same time, however, Cannon, Gerry Healy and Ernest Mandel were deeply concerned by Pablo's political evolution. Cannon and Healy were also alarmed by Pablo's intervention into the French section, and by suggestions that Pablo might use the International's authority in this way in other sections of the Fourth International that felt entrism "sui generis" was not a suitable tactic in their own countries. In 1953, Cannon and the SWP issued an Open Letter to Trotskyists and organised the International Committee of the Fourth International. This was a public faction which initially included, in addition to the SWP, Gerry Healy's British section The Club, the PCI in France then led by Lambert (who had expelled Bleibtreu and his grouping), Moreno's party in Argentina and the Austrian and Chinese sections of the FI. The sections of the IC withdrew from the IS, and the IS suspended their voting rights. Both sides claimed they constituted a majority of the former International. Sri Lanka's LSSP, then the country's leading workers' party, took a middle position during this dispute. It continued to participate in the ISFI but argued for a joint congress, for reunification with the ICFI.

From the Fourth World Congress to 'reunification'

''Main article: International Secretariat of the Fourth International'' The parts of the International that were loyal to the secretariat still claimed to be the Fourth International proper, while groups outside called them only the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. They held a Fourth World Congress in 1954 to regroup and to recognise reorganised sections in Britain, France and the US. They remained optimistic about the possibilities for increasing the International's political influence and extended the entrism into Social Democratic Parties which was already underway in Britain, Austria and elsewhere. They proposed undertaking entrism into Communist Party|Communist Parties as well as Nationalist parties in the colonies, pressing for democratic reforms, ostensibly to encourage the left-wing they perceived to exist in the Communist Parties to join with them in a revolution. The Fifth World Congress was held in 1957. Mandel and Pierre Frank appraised the Algerian revolution and surmised that it was essential to orient toward guerrilla revolutions in former colonial states. The Sixth World Congress in 1961 marked a lessening of the divisions between the mainstream in the ISFI and the organisations in the ICFI that were aligned to the SWP (US). In particular, the congress stressed support for the Cuban revolution and a growing emphasis on building parties in the imperialist countries. The supporters of Michel Pablo and Juan Posadas opposed the shift. In 1962 the ICFI and ISFI formed a Parity Commission to organise a common World Congress. At the 1963 congress, a majority of the two sides agreed to reunify. This was largely a result of their mutual support for the Cuban Revolution, based on Ernest Mandel and Joseph Hansen (socialist)|Joseph Hansen's resolution ''Dynamics of World Revolution Today''. This document distinguished between different revolutionary tasks in the imperialist countries, the "workers' states", and the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The fused organisation, formed in 1963, is known as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. However, the "Reunification Congress" was opposed by Lambert's PCI in France and the SLL in Britain, which maintained the ICFI under their own leadership, and by the supporters of Posadas, who had left the ISFI. Those who opposed the reunification from inside the SWP, led by Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson (Trotskyist), formed a 'Revolutionary Tendency' in 1962. They argued that the party should have a full discussion of the meaning of Pabloism and the 1953 split. Along with the remainder of the ICFI, they argued that Cuba's revolution did not prove that the Fourth International was no longer necessary in the colonial countries. In 1964, with Wohlforth laying the evidentiary basis for claims of "party disloyalty" against Robertson, the tendency was expelled from the party.

Other Fourth Internationalists

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International is the only organisation to present itself as itself as "the" Fourth International. For example, the ICFI has described itself as the political continuity of the FI, or as the leadership of it, but it clearly dates its creation as 1953, and numbers its congresses from that decade rather than from 1938. However, some other List of Trotskyist internationals|Trotskyist internationals argue that the FI no longer exists politically, and consequently work to "reconstruct", "reorganise" or "rebuild" it. For example, the "http://www.quatrieme-internationale-posadiste.org/anglais/htlm/central%20page.htm (formed in 1962 when the Latin-American Bureau of the IV International broke from the then international leadership) set out to reorganise the IV International. They, and other 'Fourth Internationalists' outside the USFI, argue that the organisational continuity represented by the 1963 Reunification Congress is secondary. In their opinion, the Fourth International was politically centrist by 1963. Some other Trotskyist groups call for the establishment of a "workers' international" or Fifth International.

See also

List of left-wing internationals

List of Trotskyist internationals

World Socialist Website

James P. Cannon

Ernest Mandel

Michel Pablo

Tony Cliff

Duncan Hallas

References

'''Articles and books'''

North, D. ''The Heritage We Defend''. Detroit, Michigan, 1988.

Benjamin, A (retrieved 2004) http://www.theorganizer.org/FI/ShortHistory.html

Pierre Frank (1979) http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/frank/works/march/(Ink Links)

Robert J. Alexander, International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement.

North, D (1998) http://wsws.org/exhibits/trotsky/trlect.htm

League for a Revolutionary Communist International (1983) http://www.fifthinternational.org/LFIfiles/daficontents.html

Ernest Mandel, The Reasons for Founding the Fourth International And Why They Remain Valid Today http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1980s/fi/index.htm

Francois Moreau, ''Combats et débats de la Quatrième Internationale''. Québec, Vents d’Ouest, 1993. '''Documents'''

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/index.htmdocuments from the Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved December 6, 2005.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/index.htm#tpThe 1938 founding document of the Fourth International and related documents from the Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved April 3, 2005.