Throughout 2018, our website has published several articles dedicated to the 80 years of the foundation of the Fourth International. They approached the context and objectives of its foundation, the causes of the 1953 crisis and its consequences in the scattering of the Trotskyist forces. Just as the debates held by the IWL-FI with other organizations that claim Trotskyism. In this article, we want to make an overview of these articles and their conclusions.
By: Alejandro Iturbe
The foundation of the Fourth International was the result of long years of Leon Trotsky’s activity and struggle, just as of the forces that called themselves “Trotskyists” by 1938. It began by late 1923, through the Left Opposition with a battle within the USSR, the Bolshevik Party and the Third International against the Stalinist bureaucratization and its theoretical and political consequences. Later, Trotsky was expelled from the Bolshevik Party, the Third International and the USSR, between 1927 and 1929, and these forces went on to call themselves International Left Opposition within the Third. From 1933, the Left Opposition was reinforced after Stalinism’s criminal policy that contributed in Germany to the triumph of Nazism. Here, Trotsky concluded that the Third was dead as a revolutionary organization.
Since then, five years of regrouping forces passed. Seeking agreements with other organizations and doing intense theoretical-political elaboration. For example, The Revolution Betrayed and The Transitional Program, which was written as the main document to be adopted by the Foundation Conference.
A Necessary Task in a Very Difficult Context
The Fourth was born in a very unfavorable context of class struggle: the triumph and consolidation of Stalinism in the USSR and the Nazi-Fascist advance in Europe. It was born persecuted by imperialism and mainly by Stalinism. Thousands of Trotskyists died in concentration camps in Siberia. Some of Trotsky’s closest collaborators were murdered abroad, like his son Leon Sedov and his secretary Rudolf Klement (killed during the preparation of the foundation conference).
This context determined that the Fourth was born weak organizationally. They were less than six thousand members, distributed as follows: The United States 2,500; Belgium 800; France 600; Poland 350; Germany 200 (120 were imprisoned); England 170; Czechoslovakia 150-200; Greece 100; Brazil 50; Chile 100; Cuba 100; South Africa 100; Canada 72; Holland 50; Australia 50; Spain 10-30; Mexico 150; plus an undetermined numbered of “clandestine adherents” in the USSR.
However, it was a necessary task: the theoretical and programmatic heritage of Marxism and the experience of the Russian Revolution, which had been deformed to its bones by Stalinism, had to be defended. At the same time, this was about fighting a new counterrevolutionary phenomenon within the workers movement: the Stalinist bureaucracy and the terrible consequences of its action for workers and masses. The Fourth has had, since its foundation, the same strategic objective than the Third: to lead the working class in the process of the World Socialist Revolution. In this path, a new task was added: a political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist regime in the USSR to recover the worker state as a lever of world revolution. It was a defensive task (to sustain a guiding thread) and, at the same time, preparatory of an embryo of leadership for the revolutionary processes that would unavoidably come in the future. [1].
Not by chance, Trotsky, one of the greatest leaders of the Russian Revolution, who had commanded millions in the Red Army, considered the regrouping of the few thousand militants as “the most important work of my life, more than 1917, the civil war or any other”. And his role in this “work” was “indispensable” because in 1917, Lenin was leading the revolution, now, only he could carry this out. [2].
Pabloism
In August 1940, Ramon Mercader, a Stalinist agent, murdered Trotsky in his house in Coyocacan (Mexico). With this crime, Stalinism sought to cut the “guiding thread” with Marxist heritage and the October experience represented by Trotsky. At the same time, it left the young Fourth without its main leader, the one with qualitative theoretical-political level and revolutionary experience. World War II also diminished the militant forces, with many European sections in hiding, the countries occupied by Nazis, and the SWP (already weakened by a split of a petty bourgeois wing in 1940) persecuted for its standing before the war.
In this framework, the II Congress was carried out in 1948. It regrouped the Trotskyist forces. The North American SWP was the strongest Trotskyist party with the most experienced cadres (several of them educated by Trotsky). However, due to a deviation it did not adopt the building of the International as their main task. Their leaders saw the Fourth as a party federation, not as a centralized international leadership. This way, centralization was assumed by the Greek Michel Raptis (Pablo) and the Belgian Ernst Mandel, along with a group of very young leaders with few experience, like the Argentinian Nahuel Moreno and the French Pierre Lambert.
This weak and unexperienced leadership suffered hard pressures and tests without Trotsky. On one hand, the war brought on a great revolutionary upsurge in Europe and other regions of the world, as Trotsky had foreseen, and the emergence of new worker states that joined the USSR. On the other, against these prognostics, the Fourth did not win mass influence or influence in these processes and it continued as a small nucleus. On the contrary, Stalinism, which had led the defeat of Nazi-fascism and built the new worker states, became the unquestionable leadership of the worker and mass movement worldwide.
In this context, the new leadership of the Fourth (Pablo and Mandel) did not pass the test and (from the III Congress in 1951) they adopted a more opportunist course based on impressionist and mistaken characterizations (the “unavoidability of World War III” between imperialism and the USSR, where the Stalinist bureaucracy would supposedly play an “objectively revolutionary” role). They decided Trotskyists had to do “long term entryism” within Stalinist Communist Parties. [3]. Among the political consequences of this orientation, they refused to defend the withdrawal of the Red Army when the political revolutions began in East Berlin (1953) and Hungary (1956). This characterization and this policy of capitulation would extend to nationalist bourgeois movements and other currents without a Stalinist origin, like Castroism. The SWP, Moreno and Lambert opposed to these characterizations and policies.
The Bolivian Tragedy of 1952
“The most tragic consequence of this policy was the betrayal of the Bolivian revolution. In 1952, there was a typical workers revolution in Bolivia. Workers organized militias, defeated militarily the police and army, and the COB (Bolivian Workers’ Federation) emerged as a dual power body. Mines were nationalized and the peasant revolution burst, invading the great land properties and occupying lands. Until 1954, the main Bolivian armed forces were the worker militias led by the COB.
From the 1940s, the Bolivian Trotskyist organization (POR) had been winning influence among the workers movement. In their rank and files they had important miner, factory worker and peasant leaders. Their main leader, Guillermo Lora, was the writer of the Pulacayo Theses, an adaptation of the Transitional Program to Bolivian reality, voted by the Miners Federation. […] In the 1952 revolution, the POR co-led the militias and was co-founder of the COB. It had mass influence in Bolivia.
Sadly, the POR, following the orientation of the International Secretariat (IS) of the Fourth, led by Pablo, did not defend for the COB to seize power. On the contrary, it provided support with criticism to the bourgeois MNR government (a nationalist bourgeois movement). Without the revolutionary orientation, the mass movement was disarmed and demobilized, and the revolution was dismounted in a few years.” [4]. Nahuel Moreno and his organization in Argentina fought harshly this orientation of the IS proposing to adopt the slogan “All power to the COB”.
The 1953 Crisis
Besides these serious political mistakes, the international leadership led by Pablo used a detrimental method: it intervened in the French section, removing most of its leadership (which did not agree with his policy), and attempted to form a secret faction in the North American SWP. Most of the French Trotskyists (led by Pierre Lambert), the English (led by Gerry Healy), the USA SWP, and part of the South American Trotskyists led by Nahuel Moreno broke with the International Secretariat (IS) led by Pablo and created the International Committee (IC) in 1953.
The years that followed were of dispersion. Despite the forces left with Pablo and Mandel being minority, the majority did not organize in a centralized way as the “true Fourth” to revert the dispersion, mainly due to the SWP’s responsibility. Once again, Nahuel Moreno had to fight this “pro-federation” deviation of the SWP.
Despite a partial regrouping attempt in 1963 (around the characterization of Cuba as a new worker State), the crisis was not overcome and the dispersion of the forces that claimed to be Trotskyists increased. Therefore, the Fourth International does not exist today as a unified organization, although its programmatic proposals have survived history.
The Strategy of the IWL is to rebuild the Fourth
The Morenist current joined the USec (United Secretariat) in 1964, which had been formed a year before [5]. It took time to do so because it considered that this reunification had to be done solely over the bases of a very critical balance of Pabloism, which did not take place.
While it remained within the USec, they always fought the successive deviation and capitulations pushed by the majority of the leadership, now led solely by Ernst Mandel (“Mandelism”) [6], like Guerrilla, Vanguardism, and adaptation to bourgeois democracy [7].
In 1979, the Morenist current was organized as the Bolshevik Fraction (BF) within the USec. When the political discussion on the character of the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and its government (and what policy to hold before it) was taking place, the FSLN arrested and expelled the members of the Simon Bolivar Brigade (SBB), which had been pushed by the BF. They were handed over to the Panama police, which tortured them. The USec sent a delegation to Nicaragua, which supported the government’s decision and did not defend the members of the SBB (among them, militants and leaders of their international organization).
Besides, the USec adopted a resolution to forbid the building of Trotskyist parties in Cuba and Nicaragua. The BF broke with the USec. After a failed attempt of international merger with Pierre Lambert’s current, in 1982, the IWL-FI was founded with the forces of the BF and Latin American sectors that came from Lambertism [8].
From its founding and statutes, the IWL-FI (despite being the strongest and most dynamic Trotskysit current during these years) never self-proclaimed to be “the Fourth”. It always stood in service of the strategic task of rebuilding the Fourth International,
“The International Workers League (Fourth International)- IWL(FI), has the main purpose of overcoming the leadership crisis in the world workers movement and to build the Fourth International with mass influence. Only this way, solving the leadership crisis of the proletariat, through the permanent mobilization of the workers and exploited of the world against imperialism and the bourgeoisie could lead to the victory of the international socialist revolution and the establishment of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” [9]. For the IWL-FI, this is the “main task of all”, the priority task that we pose to revolutionaries around the world. We do not only pose it to those who vindicate Trotskyism, but also to the new generations of fighters.
How to carry out this rebuilding?
From its foundation, the IWL-FI has attempted several approximations with other international and national organizations to explore the possibilities of merger. Some worked out, but several others failed. With what criteria we approached these approximations in the past and we will continue to do so in the future?
“We have always held that merging processes must be solid, prepared and deeply discussed, and if necessary, slow. In this sense, we propose clear criteria. The first is that the rebuilding of the Fourth must be based on a program”, which implies a common understanding of world reality and a common strategy before it [10].
It is also necessary to agree on the standings of the main facts in class struggle, mainly the revolutionary processes, to be able to act together on them. On the contrary, the programmatic agreement remains only words.
A third necessary criteria is that the relation between organizations must be honest and without disloyal maneuvers, to delimit differences and even to reach the conclusion that an immediate merger is not possible, but it may be possible in the future. This last part excludes the small sectarian organizations or the greater “Trotskyist sects” (national or international) for whom “everything goes” in other to parasite other currents and recruit some of their members.
Finally, as a very important aspect: “We defend the worker and revolutionary moral”, which “for us constitute a point in the program. The deep degeneration of the Trotskyist organizations, resulting from the great crisis, the pressures of Stalinism in the past, and the ‘opportunist gale’ in the past two decades, have also produced a methodological and moral degeneration” [11]. In the past decades, we have watched an alarming increase in fights for the apparatus; assaults to party and union headquarters; parliamentarian representatives and money; accusations without proof and slandering; and even physical aggressions between organizations that claim to be revolutionary. We stand categorically against those methods that characterize deep moral degeneration. From these criteria, we analyze some of the currents that vindicate the Fourth International.
The USec
Just as we have stated, the Cuban Revolution and the acknowledgement of Cuba as a new worker state pushed the regrouping of a significant part of the Trotskyist forces of the world into the United Secretariat in 1963. Michel Pablo, separated from its rank and file, Ernst Mandel led the USec.
Mandel did not have authoritarian methods like Pablo, but he sustained a central element of Pabloism: his completely impressionist analysis and characterizations and the elaboration of orientations that adapted to the ruling “fashion” among the left vanguard at each moment, and from there he capitulated to the different bureaucratic and petty bourgeois leaderships.
In the 1960s, this led Mandelism to capitulate to the Cuban Castrist leadership and the Guerrilla organizations. It pushed Guerrillas and led the Latin American sections to adventures that took a high toll in lives and members (like the PRT-ERP in Argentina and the POR-C in Bolivia). [12]. In the 1970s, there was a general shift towards a “vangaurdist” standing: the task was not to agitate slogans that emerged from the deepest needs of the workers and masses, but the campaigns that impacted the “new mass vanguard” [13]. Both lines were fought by Morenism and the SWP.
In the second half of the 1970s, this policy took another turn: “democratism” as the impression of the influence on the European left of the so-called “Euro Communism”. Before this pressure, Mandel adopted democratist standings. In his text “Socialist democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat” (1979), later on adopted by the USec congress, presented a model of dictatorship of the proletariat that was a capitulation to Euro Communist and Social Democracy. Against this text, Nahuel Moreno wrote Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In it, he analyzed and defended the essence of this political regime and made a prognostic: if Mandel and Mandelism deepened this path, they would abandon the revolutionary side and go on to reformism. Sadly, this prognostic was fulfilled years later.
Almost at the same time, Mandelism expressed their policy of capitulation to petty bourgeois and bureaucratic leaderships leading a revolutionary process again, by supporting the Nicaraguan bourgeois government of the FSLN.
A Leap in Quality
Moreno’s prognostic was completely fulfilled from the XIV Congress of the USec (1995). Daniel Bensaïd, who had come to be the main leader, provided the theoretical-political framework. In his report, Bensaïd analyzed that restoration of capitalism in the USSR and the other ex-worker states represented a “great world transformation”, a real “change of epoch”. For the USec, the epoch defined by Lenin of “wars, crises and revolutions”, open with World War I and the Russian October (imperialist and revolutionary epoch) had ended [15]. Bensaïd considered that we had entered a much defensive epoch, with a “crisis in the socialist project”, which required “building a new program”.
By considering there was an “eclipse of the strategic reason”, the USec eliminated the axis of the Transition Program written by Trotsky: the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this framework, among other slogans to push mobilization, they proposed some like radicalizing [bourgeois] democracy; democratizing the UN; creating new international financial “democratic” institutions; etc. The USec had stopped being a revisionist Trotskyist organization to become directly a reformist organization that acted to join the capitalist system and the democratic bourgeois institutions as its “left foot”.
From there, whether to participate in bourgeois governments becomes a “tactic” issue, not a principled one. Bensaïd expressed this in his debate with DS (Socialist Democracy, used to be the USec section) on whether to enter the Lula bourgeois administration in 2003 [16]. Afterwards, in 2014/2015, the USec leadership pushed the support of its Greek militants to the bourgeois Syriza administration.
A New Type of Party
Along with this qualitative and regressive change in the theoretical-political grounds, the USec abandoned the task to build revolutionary parties according to the Leninist model. Its main organization, the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), dissolved in 2009, to found that same year the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). Its general proposal went on to be the building of “broad parties”, in common with “revolutionaries and honest reformists”, which implied the acceptance of a reformist program.
In Portugal, they are part of the Left Block that supports the Antonio Costas bourgeois administration. In the Spanish State, they are part of Podemos, which joined the bourgeois government of Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón. In Italy, they joined Rifundazione Comunista, which supported the Romano Prodi bourgeois government. And in Greece, as we saw, they joined Syriza. In Brazil, this was expressed in the building of the PSOL. In some cases, like in Greece, this generated crises and debates with militant sectors (OKDE-Spartacus) and in Italy, Rifundazione Comunista disappeared. However, they have never done a serious balance on this disastrous policy. They actually continue applying it in the Spanish State, Portugal and Brazil. Their broad parties went from “anti-capitalists” to “anti-austerity”, in a dynamic of lowering the program and shifting to the right.
The USec (today called the International Committee of the Fourth International) is no longer a Trotskyist revolutionary organization. Therefore, it cannot be considered as a possible participant of a process to rebuild a revolutionary Fourth International. Even if it insists in presenting itself as the “continuity” of the Fourth and usurping its name.
Furthermore, they act as a regrouping pole of other international and national organizations (some of which vindicate Trotskyism), who then grow closer to their reformist standings and proposals. We believe that those who, within the USec or its “area of influence”, honestly believe they are “helping to rebuild the Fourth” are completely mistaken: a true rebuilding of the Fourth may only come from a harsh fight against the theoretical, programmatic and political standings of the USec.
The Heirs of “The Militant”
The Militant was an internal tendency of the English Labour Party (LP), founded by the Trotskyist Edward “Ted” Grant (1913-2006), in 1964 [17]. After oscillating in its standings, it founded the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) that became in 1956 the section of the Pabloist Fourth in Great Britain. The RSL adhered to the “sui generis entryism” conception and policy and applied it in the LP: in 1960, there was a first entryism in the Labor youth and then the building of The Militant as a long-term policy, waiting for the “radicalization” of LP and capitalizing its “mass breaks”.
Ted Grant did not enter the USec with the 1963 regrouping, and he began developing his own international organization: the Committee for a Workers International (CWI). One of its characteristics, as we saw, is to transform the entrysim tactic in mass organizations with bureaucratic leaderships into a permanent strategy, Pablo-style [18]. In 1992, the CWI determined to end entryism in LP, but Ted Grant opposed to this and remained outside the organization. With a minority of members, he began to build the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).
The Pabloist conception of this current led Alan Woods, Ted Grant’s successor as the main leader of IMT, to follow the same path that Pablo had followed with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Woods abandoned the fight for power for the workers and became adviser of the Hugo Chaves bourgeois government in Venezuela. In fact, he was the “official Trotskyist” of Castro-Chavism. For example, he is the only “Trotskyist” author that may sell his writing in the Book Fair in La Habana [19]. Today, he has taken some distance from the Nicolas Maduro administration, but he supported repression and still vindicates the “Bolivarian process”, despite the disaster it led to.
The sector that continued as CWI, led by the English Peter Taaffe, despite having left the LP in England and going on to build the Socialist Party (SP), they hold as one of their main policies long-term entryism in reformist and electoral organizations with petty bourgeois and bureaucratic leaderships, like the Brazilian PSOL. They even supported Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton in the last primaries of the North American Democrat Party. Another important difference is that, before the struggle of the Palestinian people, the CWI calls to form an alliance with the “Israeli proletariat”, when this proletariat is actually the social bases for the imperialist Zionist enclave and its broad majority defends this genocidal State.
The FT-PTS
As we said in one of the articles of this series about the 80 years of the Fourth International, “The differences with the Trotskyist Faction (FT) emerged from the very origin of the Party of Socialist Workers (PTS), a break with the Argentinean MAS and the IWL-FI in 1988, which began the building of the FT with sections in Latin America and some groups in Europe” [20].
The main differences of the PTS/FT were expressed in hard criticism to Nahuel Moreno’s works. He had carried out studies on the Second post-war revolutionary processes and formulated critical aspects of the Theses of the Permanent Revolution, written by Trotsky in 1930. Specially his revaluation of the “democratic revolutions” that overthrew dictatorial regimes or liberated colonies from imperialism.
According to the PST/FT, these works were a stage or semi-stage conception that abandoned Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution and led to the building of centrist organizations. Therefore, it was necessary to break with Morenism and retake the building of “Trotsky’s true Trotskyism”. In the mentioned article, we answer extensively to this debate with the FT.
They considered there was no divergence between reality and theory. Everything had been foreseen in Trotsky’s writings and there was nothing to worry about, to reflect or to correct. The birth of the PTS was closely related to this method of turning Marxism into a “biblical dogma”, instead of a living science that must permanently verify its theoretical constructs in reality to improve them and/or modify them (completely or partially). A method that led them, years later, to deny that capitalism had been restored in China. They still deny restoration is complete in Cuba.
This theoretical-political discussion became more intense on the revolutionary process in the Arab world at the end of 2010, with the overthrow of the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali that then extended to Egypt, Libya and Syria. The FT refused to qualify these processes as “revolutions” and to have a specific revolutionary policy before them and the civil wars that began in Libya and Syria. The proposed not to act within the military field that fought the Kaddafi and Assad dictatorships.
A 180-degree Shift
Until this point, in the debate between the IWL and the FT, the FT always criticized us from the “left” and the “extreme Trotskyist orthodox”. However, in the more recent debates, the FT continues criticizing as harshly as before, but we now see they are more to our “right” and they use previously unthinkable arguments. The parting point is that they adopted the “characterization” (common in most international left) of a “reactionary wave” worldwide. Given the balance of power with the enemy is very unfavorable, unitary tactics are mandatory.
Closely related to this, the most important FT sections have turned their activity towards an electoral-parliamentary axis as the center of their activity. The Brazilian MRT clearly expresses this, by requesting to enter the PSOL and running with candidates in this party [21]. Consequently, with this location as a PSOL “satellite”, one of the main axis of agitation of the MRT and the FT is “Free Lula” and “Lula for president”.
MRT’s policy represents the FT as a whole, particularly their main party, the PTS in Argentina. The “symptoms” are not as evident as the MRT due to the greater influence of the Argentinean organization (even among worker structures) and because it achieve electoral successes through the Left and Workers Front (FIT), which attempts to sustain a “Trotskyist profile”. However, it is clear: based on electoral successes, the PTS has been acting for years as an electoral and parliamentary organization [22].
The theoretical-political differences we hold with the FT are deep. However, even if they decreased, this organization has a disloyal method to relate (like “secret entryism” within Trotskyist organizations). Although it is greater, the FT has methods of parasite sects. This makes it impossible to have any approach on serious and honest bases. Furthermore, it determines that in these conditions, the FT may only play a negative and destructive role in the process of advancing in the rebuilding of the Fourth International.
National-Trotskyism
From the 1953 crisis, a deep deviation began in some organizations, which we have named national-Trotskyism. Currents that focus their efforts almost exclusively in the development of their national organization of origin instead of the building of an International and its leadership team. This process accentuated with the organizations that did not enter the regrouping in 1963, like the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of Great Britain, led by Gerry Healy, and the French PCI (then OCI) of Pierre Lambert. Although both developed groups in other countries, they were not true internationals, they were collaterals that turned around the “mother party” and were strongly centralized by their leadership.
These national-Trotskyist organizations present some common characteristics: they are built around an “infallible leader” and they have an extremely bureaucratic internal functioning. Therefore, any political difference with this leader and his team generally ends with expulsions, with the grouping of the “defense of the organization”. The combination of this internal functioning with the lack of control of an International is explosive.
The WRP had become, during the first half of the 1970s, into the main Trotskyist organization in the world (over 5,000 militants) with influence in important worker structures. In 1985, Healy received a very serious moral accusation: sexual harassment and forcing several members of the party to have sex with him. Most of the leadership defended him and the party ended up exploding in numerous, small factions. [23].
The Lambertist OCI first adapted to the French bureaucratic union apparatus (mainly Worker Force) and then completely capitulated to the people’s front bourgeois government of François Mitterrand (since 1981) [24]. The OCI had achieved certain development, but after successive expulsions and breaks, it has been much reduced. In this process, it adopted the name PT, with a very low program. Its international current has almost disappeared.
Currently, a clearly national-Trotskyist organization is the Workers Party (Partido Obrero-PO) from Argentina, an organization with a Lambertist origin that never gave importance nor dedicated efforts to build an International. Besides the characteristics we stated (“infallible leader” and internal bureaucratic methods), we must add bureaucratic methods in mass movement and its organizations. Regarding its day-to-day policy, the PO (although it attempts to sustain a Trotskyist profile and militancy in the structures) has also turned in to an organization with an axis of electoral-parliamentary activity.
Some Conclusions
Until the 1960s, Nahuel Moreno characterized there was a “Trotskyist movement”. He defined that, beyond the differences, it was “a current, independent of bureaucratic apparatus, although without organizational unity”. This movement no longer exists as such: as part of the ‘opportunist gale’ that swept the left since the 1990s, important sectors of this movement have “crossed the line” and abandoned the revolutionary field, becoming lines of transmission (and living at the expense) of bourgeois democracy and parliaments, State funds or bureaucratic union apparatus.
Some have done it explicitly, like the USec. Others shamefully continue to claim Trotskyism but advance (slower or faster) in this direction. Besides the theoretical differences we have with them, incompatible differences are imposed before the specific political processes. Many of these organizations capitulated to Venezuelan Chavism, Syriza in Greece, PT and Lula in Brazil, and they still do. It suffices to see that in Brazil, most currents that vindicated Trotskyism have joined the PSOL, are in the “Free Lula” campaign and criticize the PSTU for being “sectarian” when it faces this policy. With several of them, we have differences on the disloyal method and the “everything goes” moral.
We are completely aware that the IWL-FI also suffered the consequences of the “opportunist gale” and after Nahuel Moreno’s death, we went through a deep crisis that practically led to its disappearance. However, self-critically analyzing the mistakes and seeking to correct them, we have begun to overcome this crisis and its sections and militants seek to actively intervene and build in the actual class struggle processes. With a Trotskyist revolutionary policy, its sections and militants are in the front line of the reorganization processes of workers and mass movement, like the CSP Conlutas in Brazil, CoBas in the Spanish State, No Austerity in Italy, Sitrasep in Costa Rica, among others. Besides, since we consider that Marxism is not a dogma, but a living science that must be enriched by the study of new facts in reality, we are in a process of updating the Transitional Program.
Objectively, due to democratic centralism, its program and sustaining the dictatorship of the proletariat as the strategy, due to its correct policy before the processes and its defense of revolutionary morals, the IWL-FI is today the only Trotskyist international revolutionary organization worthy of this name. It is a verification, a regretful one, of the reality of the “Trotskyist forces”.
In the framework we have analyzed, to propose a possible strategic immediate regrouping with other forces that call themselves Trotskyists would be mistaken and irresponsible. May be in the future, class struggle may allow this approach with some of the organizations we have analyzed. If this possibility is posed in the future, we will act as we have done in the past: with seriousness, honesty and loyalty, to attempt to carry it out. We will do so with the criteria that we have stated in this article. Therefore, we consider that a true rebuilding of the Fourth International today depends on building the IWL-FI.
[1] On the mater of the foundation of the Fourth International as the continuity of the Third International, see the article by Alicia Sagra: https://litci.org/en/to-rebuild-the-fourth-in-continuity-with-the-third-international/.
[2] Quoted by Eduardo Almeida, in: https://litci.org/en/the-fourth-international-80-years-part-i/.
[3] On this process see: https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/80-anos-de-la-cuarta/la-lucha-la-reconstruccion-la-iv-internacional-papel-del-parte-i/
[4] Idem.
[5] See https://litci.org/en/the-fourth-international-80-years-part-i/.
[6] Pablo was opposed to the 1963 re-merger. He went on to act as assessor of the Algerian FLN government and began to build a small international organization. He was formally expelled from the USec in 1964.
[7] Regarding some of these debates we recomend to read Nahuel Moreno’s books El partido y la revolución, from 1973 (known as “Morenazo”) and Dictadura revolucionaria del proletariado, from 1980, both re-edited by Editora Lorca, 2010.
[8] See https://litci.org/es/menu/teoria/historia/nahuel-moreno-nuestra-experiencia-con-el-lambertismo/
[9] http://phl.bibliotecaleontrotsky.org/arquivo/estatutosLIT.pdf
[10] On these criteria and the bases of this program see: https://litci.org/es/menu/teoria/el-proyecto-estrategico-de-la-lit-ci-es-reconstruir-la-iv-internacional/
[11] Idem.
[12] The PRT-ERP was acknowledged as the official Argentinean section of the USec in 1969, in detriment of the Morenist organization (PRT-La Verdad). It broke with the USec and Trotskyism in 1973.
[13] In debate with these standings and with a balance of the Guerrilla experience, Nahuel Moreno wrote and presented to the X Congress the already mentioned document known as the “Morenazo”, then re-edited as El partido y la revolución.
[14] Statement of the Bolshevik Faction (1979).
[15] For a deeper analysis on this subject see: https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/80-anos-de-la-cuarta/la-lucha-la-reconstruccion-la-iv-internacional-papel-del-parte-ii/
To read Daniel Bensaïd directly, see: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?rubrique4 and http://danielbensaid.org/Uma-nova-epoca-historica?lang=fr
[16] On this subject see: http://danielbensaid.org/Carta-a-Democracia-Socialista?lang=fr
[17] On the trajectory of Ted Grant, The Militant and his current see: https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/80-anos-de-la-cuarta/tendencia-marxista-internacional-tmi-del-entrismo-permanente-al-abandono-la-dictadura-del-proletariado/
[18] Idem.
[19] See article “Alan Woods: el ‘trotskista oficial’” in Correo Internacional No 14 (December, 2015).
[20] https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/80-anos-de-la-cuarta/fraccion-trotskista-pts-del-sectarismo-propagandistico-al-oportunismo-electoralista-parte-i/
[21] On this part of the debate with the FT-PTS, see: https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/80-anos-de-la-cuarta/fraccion-trotskista-pts-del-sectarismo-propagandistico-al-oportunismo-electoralista-parte-ii/
[22] Idem.
[23] One of them, led by Bill Hunter, entered the IWL-FI and formed the International Socialist League (ISL).
[24] See article on Lambertism quoted in note 8.
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