How big are 'Trotskyist' parties?

[Blanquist]

Can someone give, or wager a guess, as to the membership size of Trotskyist parties?

Which claims the most membership? What is the average?

I'm taking about parties like the SEP in the US, LO in France, IMT or CWI in UK etc etc.

Thank you.

[Ostrinski]

They seem to be the most popular strata of leftist group among student circles.

[seventeethdecember2016]

I believe President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil is a Trotskyist, or at least from a Trotskyist party. Trotskyism seems to be on the rise in Algeria, France, and South America.

Perhaps a real Trotskyist can give better information.

[seventeethdecember2016]

I believe the Workers Party of Brazil is the largest Trotskyist party in the world.

[Geiseric]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_%28ICR%29

the PT in Algeria has 50,000+ members and is going to be the majority in parliament next election. Their leadership is pretty much fully Trotskyist.

France has a section of the 4th International with several thousand members, but you'd find most Trotskyists in unions or workers parties as a minority, often with their own press and propaganda engines. But we have a news letter that everybody gets which are printed in France.

The 4th International (La Verte) is the group i'm in, and we're expanding at a pretty fast rate seeing as we were formed in the 90's. I guess we have the right politics >.>

[Geiseric]

I believe President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil is a Trotskyist, or at least from a Trotskyist party. Trotskyism seems to be on the rise in Algeria, France, and South America.

Perhaps a real Trotskyist can give better information.

The president is in the Workers Party but he's reformist. My comrades in brazil are trying to fix that by hopefully gaining the PT leadership with policies that are revolutionary, but it's frustrating according to a friend.

[Aurora]

I dunno about SEP or Lutte Ouvrier but i recall hearing that Socialist Appeal(IMT) is tiny only like 30 members and the SPEW(CWI) was like 2000 a couple years ago, no doubt bigger now. It's hard to judge membership though as organisations like to exaggerate their influence and some groups like the SWP(IST) have a very loose definition of membership.

[Tim Cornelis]

I believe the Workers Party of Brazil is the largest Trotskyist party in the world.

The Brazil Workers' Party is actually a reformist social-democratic party which used to have Trotskyist members (entryism), but the Trotskyists were expelled from the Workers' Party. Now they have two senators.

I'll look up the name of the party.

EDIT: It's the Socialism and Freedom Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_Freedom_Party), which is part of the Socialist Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Democracy_(Brazil)).

[honest john's firing squad]

Can someone give, or wager a guess, as to the membership size of Trotskyist parties?
two students and a printing press

[daft punk]

I dunno about SEP or Lutte Ouvrier but i recall hearing that Socialist Appeal(IMT) is tiny only like 30 members and the SPEW(CWI) was like 2000 a couple years ago, no doubt bigger now. It's hard to judge membership though as organisations like to exaggerate their influence and some groups like the SWP(IST) have a very loose definition of membership.

The SWP has a pretty loose definition of most things!

[Franz Fanonipants]

I guess we have the right politics >.>

lol yeah thats why capitalism has been overturned by global networks of trot agents wait

[Prometeo liberado]

Isn't Solidarity(US) a trot organization? I have been met them but know next to nothing of them other than they were or are trots.

[Ocean Seal]

In the US the ISO is the largest revolutionary party circa 1000 members.

[daft punk]

With regards numbers, in the CWI, I dunno, all I know is it fell a lot after the 1990s, the peak was around 1980-90. When I first joined, they had so many members there were loads of separate branches in a major city. The reason membership declined, apart from the split, was just the general decline of the left globally after 1989. One reason, paradoxically, and the left coms should take note, was the USSR going capitalist.

[Q]

It's hard to judge membership though as organisations like to exaggerate their influence and some groups like the SWP(IST) have a very loose definition of membership.

Correct. According to their Internal Bulletin number 2 of November last year (they publish three a year, in the months before their annual conference) “registered membership” is at 7,127 but the CC’s financial report in IB No3 (December 2011) paints a rather different and more realistic picture. A table is published showing that since January 1 2009 there are 2,010 new ‘members’ old enough to set up a direct debit, yet only 542 of them (27%) pay membership subscriptions. So, as usual, states the CC, “In the first three months of 2012 we plan to launch a new subs drive. We hope to ask every member who is paying subs to raise them and to ask those not paying subs to start.” (Note the word, “hope”. Not only do most ‘members’ not pay dues: a good proportion of them cannot even be contacted!)

It ought to be pointed out that a “registered member” is anyone who has signed a membership application form within the last two years, irrespective of whether they are ever heard of again.

The CC reports: “This year’s subs drive, which took place from January to March 2011, was the most successful in a decade.” However, “As has been the pattern in previous years, membership subs have since declined … This decline is only partly counteracted by the recruitment of new members (who typically join on lower levels of subs).” Surely there is a connection here with the SWP’s ridiculous membership (non-)requirements.

So, let's extrapolate that 27% dues paying members to the whole 7,127 and we get 1,924 actual members. That is: Members who support the organisation financially. The core of active members (selling the paper, coming to meetings, etc) is most likely even smaller.

[kashkin]

In Australia, IIRC the Trot parties are the largest. Socialist Alternative has around 250 members. I could be wrong though.

[black magick hustla]

algeria's PT is a mass party, which i guess dispells the stereotypes of trotskyists being first world students lol

[TheGodlessUtopian]

No leftist group is exactly large. From what I have seen Trot groups are small while M-L groups are smaller. In many Western nations this has almost always been the case.

Also, by Party do you mean just nationally or the numbers for members in the entire international party?

[Q]

In the Netherlands likewise the International Socialists (Dutch franchise of the SWP UK) is probably the biggest with around 200 members, certainly the most visible at national demo's. Then there is the Stalinoid NCPN and they youth club CJB, the anti-globalist/anarchist Doorbraak ("Breakthrough"), the Mandelite-Fourth International SAP/Grenzeloos, a Dutch dependence of the ICC, several local anarchist and AFA groups, of course the Dutch CWI group and even the IMT planted their flag in recent years.

All in all, I think the Dutch revolutionary left counts around a thousand activists, including those that are not part of any group.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think that Militant tendency in the UK had something like 10,000 members at it's peak. Or maybe that was another group. *shrug*

I have no idea about any other Trot group.

[Kronsteen]

Parties, like people, tend to lie about their size.

Here in the UK, the SWP (part of the IMT) claimed until recently to have 10,000 members. Now they say it's more like 5000...plus 1000 or 2000 who're effectively members but haven't renewed their membership.

I'd say the real figure is about 4000. The issue of nonregistered members is a real one - and includes myself.

The CWI - aka the SPEW aka the SP - probably have around 2000.

All the others have less than 200, and most of those less than 50.

[Blanquist]

Why is there so few? I know they would claim that the quality of 'cadre' matters more then quantity but it's still so pathetically small.

How is it even possible to be so small?

[Geiseric]

Size doesn't matter if there's a productive cebtralised group that's democratic and dedicated. Sonetimes I've seen groups with a large but unproductive membership. I was kidding btw.

[Homo Songun]

Why is there so few?What else can you expect from a politics that raises factionalism to the level of political principle? I mean this earnestly, not as a rhetorical jab.

But the truth is that the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and to a lesser degree, the Dengist turn in China, destroyed the left as a whole, without regard to sectarian affiliation. The Trots are no exception. Before this, the Muscovites as well as the anti-revisionists certainly dwarfed the Trotskyist left. The Muscovites in particular by orders of magnitude. This isn't a judgement so much as an observation really, but it does contain an element of irony in the case of the "state-capper" types.

The only people who weren't devastated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and actually expanded in the '90s were the "altermondialista" style anarchists and certain "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" style parties typified by Peru and Nepal.

This is old news, though. Most recently, the left overall seems to be on an upswing: in the West, as a dialectical response to the Arab Spring and the economic collapse; and in the Global South due to the persistence of the Maoist and/or guerrilla movements as well as the so-called 'Pink Tide' in Latin America in equal measure.

[gorillafuck]

in America I think the largest socialist party is the ISO, but they're known for basically just trying to get people to join regardless of politics. in Britain I think the largest socialist party is the SWP but I'm not positive. in Algeria the biggest CP is trotskyist and same with Sri Lanka I think. there might be a couple more countries with situations like that that I don't know about. aside from that they are outnumbered in membership by formerly soviet allied Marxist-Leninist parties.

[Luís Henrique]

The Brazil Workers' Party is actually a reformist social-democratic party which used to have Trotskyist members (entryism), but the Trotskyists were expelled from the Workers' Party. Now they have two senators.

That's not really true.

Three Trotskyist organisations have left the PT (forming the PSTU, the PSOL, and the PCO); more than being expelled, they created a situation in which their permanence in the party was politically impossible. Other Trotskyist organisations remain within the PT, namely Mandelists, Lambertists, and Posadists.


EDIT: It's the Socialism and Freedom Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_Freedom_Party), which is part of the Socialist Democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Democracy_(Brazil)).

It would be the other way round: one of the splits of Democracia Socialista is a tendency (among with many others) within the PSOL.

Luís Henrique

[jookyle]

Doesn't SPUSA have mor members than any other American socialist group.

[Geiseric]

SP USA isn't a trotskyist group nor are they marxist. Confused self proclaimed "leftists," go to it with good intentions but the organization as a whole is a wheel of the democratic party machine. also the PT in Algeria is Lambertist in terms of the international that the leadership is affiliated to, thought i'd mention because "trotskyist," can mean so many things. in brazil the pt has different trotskyist groups inside of it, including more lambertists.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

The Spartacist League in the US probably has around 200 members -- But these are real members -- cadre -- and the ICL has, at a guess about 400 members in about a dozen countries. The Internationalist Group has maybe 30 members in the US. The Bolshevik Tendency seems to have almost disappeared, with a couple of members in the Bay Area, and maybe 15 in Canada. The SEP? No idea, but I would be shocked if they had more than 20 (and comrades, these guys are con artists, not leftists of any kind). The Spark? No freaking idea -- dozens? Revolutionary Regroupment? Maybe 5 to 10. LRP is also quite small (and not really Trotskyist), less than 40 certainly. These are educated guesses -- I might be off by a little.

The Brazilian PT, is not, nor was it ever a Trotskyist group. It is a reformist outfit to the core. The ostensible Trots that enter it, are swallowed whole and either get spit out or digested. I remember hearing Mandelites speak in loving tones about it in the 90s -- It was predictable that Lula would simply administer capitalism for the bourgeoisie. Calling the ISO or the British SWP Trotskyist is a real reach. I mean check out what the comrade above said about membership --- you sign, you are in. Not exactly Leninist norms! But also, Cliff's positions on the USSR, IMO, took him out of the Trotskyist category more that half a century ago.

[Sentinel]

Here in Sweden the Socialist Justice Party (Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna, Swedish section of the Committee for a Workers' International) is the largest Trotskyist grouping, and also the largest leftist party outside the parliament. We've got a few hundred members and over two thousand people subscribing to our newspaper.

We currently hold five local councillor seats, two in Haninge south of Stockholm and three in the northern city of Luleå. As we have grown a lot in that region recently, I'm expecting us to score additional ones at least on the west coast (around Gothenburg) in the next elections, but there is still two years to that.

Aside from us, there are a couple of other trotskyist parties and groups. The most prominent of these, I guess, is the Socialist Party, which belongs to the Fourth International (USFI). They have also held councillor posts, but no longer do.

Workers Power (Arbetarmakt, League for the Fifth International) and International Socialists (International Socialist Tendency) have smaller, but active, groups. Finally there's also the remnants of the Swedish section of the International Marxist Tendency, with a group called Socialisten, but I don't know much about their activities.

I've heard that they had a split, with some of them now working within the Left Party and some in the Social Democrats.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Parties, like people, tend to lie about their size.

Here in the UK, the SWP (part of the IMT) claimed until recently to have 10,000 members. Now they say it's more like 5000...plus 1000 or 2000 who're effectively members but haven't renewed their membership.

I'd say the real figure is about 4000. The issue of nonregistered members is a real one - and includes myself.

The CWI - aka the SPEW aka the SP - probably have around 2000.

All the others have less than 200, and most of those less than 50.

One point-the British SWP is not part of the IMT. The International Marxist Tendency", led by the late Ted Grant and Alan Woods, split from Militant Tendency/CWI.

I think, but am not sure, that the SWP's international is the IST. The US ISO was affiliated w/them but were booted out. I believe Revolutionary Socialists in Egypt are part of the SWP international. I think the US ISO has an affiliate in Greece.

Trainspotting!

[eyeheartlenin]

In the US the ISO is the largest revolutionary party circa 1000 members.

In the town where I live, in a coalition in defense of choice (the right to an abortion) a few years ago, the local ISO'ers were opposed even to raising the demand for national health care. Around here, they are timid social dems. The ISO may have a thousand members, but that is owing to the fact that they recruit by saying, "If you like this forum/newspaper/etc., you should join the ISO." They are also awfully sweet on the Democrats; here in the US, the Cliffites (of the ISO) famously hailed Obama's election as "transformative." So far, the only thing that's been transformed by the Democrats in power is US poverty numbers, which are currently worse than they were under G.W. Bush, the liberals' nemesis.