Fourth International

Related Topics:
Left communist - Communist Workers International

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The Fourth International has been the international organisation of Trotskyist communists. It was founded in 1938 in Paris, with the backing of Leon Trotsky, when many leading Marxists considered the Stalinist Comintern (the Third International) incapable of leading the international working class.

Related Topics:
Trotskyist - Communist - 1938 - Paris - Leon Trotsky - Stalinist - Comintern

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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 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.

Related Topics:
1923 - International Left Opposition - Bureaucratization - Soviet economy - Socialism in one country - 1924 - Theory of Permanent Revolution - World revolution - Bolshevik

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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.

Related Topics:
International Communist League - 1933

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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 Workingmens 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.

Related Topics:
Revolution - Socialist International - International Workingmens Association - Karl Marx - Socialism - Internationalism

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Transitional Programme for Socialist Revolution - Communist International

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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.

Related Topics:
In Defense of Marxism - Max Shachtman - James Burnham

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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.

Related Topics:
Bureaucratic collectivism - Workers Party (US)

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Soon after breaking with the Fourth International, Burnham left Shachtman's gropu 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."

Related Topics:
Neoconservatives - International Socialist Organization

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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 democratic groups, leading to new successes for opponents of Trotsky. The International suffered major splits as early as 1940 and most significantly in 1953.

Related Topics:
GPU - Bourgeois democratic - France - United States - World War II - Social democratic - 1940 - 1953

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More than one group still claims to be the Fourth International; after 1953, the Trotskyist movement split over whether the International should still be built and if so, which organisation represented its continuation.

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