Fourth International.

[RedGuevara]

I have been reading some of Trotsky's works recently and have heard the term Fourth International. I was wondering what exactly the Fourth International was? Please excuse my ignorance. Thank you.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The Fourth International was an international of Trotskyist parties and militants, founded after the members of the International Left Opposition (the original Trotskyist organisation, conceived of as a faction in the Third International, but mostly expelled from that body in the thirties) had decided that the degeneration of the Third (Communist) International could no longer be fought from inside the ComIntern itself and that an independent international organisation of revolutionary communists was necessary. This caused a split with a section of the ILO - prominently including A. Nin - who wanted to regroup inside the rightist "International Communist Opposition" and who favoured closer ties to the centrist London Bureau.

The Fourth International was always a tiny organisation, compared to the remnants of the Second International and the Third International and its successors. During the Second World War, its central bodies met rarely if at all, and there was no effective coordination between national sections. After the war, de facto authority in the central bodies of the FI was assumed by the chief of the International Secretariat, Pablo, whose bureaucratic methods and attempts to position himself as an advisor to various centrist and bourgeois parties resulted in the definite end of the FI as a single organisation.

Today, two organisations claim to be the Fourth International, the United Secretariat, a continuation of the International Secretariat led by Pablo, and the La Verite group around the late Lambert.

[RedGuevara]

Okay that makes more sense. I have a lot to learn but that helps clear up a few things as I'm reading. So as of today there hasn't been a spark to recreate the 4th International or even create a new International?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

There have been so many sparks you would think there is a fire somewhere - but no, it's just fireworks. There are many, many Trotskyist organisations that consider themselves closest to the spirit of the Fourth International, but they tend to be either tiny or social-democratic.

The British Workers' Power group wanted to form a Fifth International, which is sort of dickish, trying to one-up all of us, on the basis of the fairly amorphous and petit-bourgeois "anti-globalisation movement". So far they haven't had much success.

[RedGuevara]

Hmm well solidarity seems to be our hardest task to achieve when it comes to Marxism.

[Geiseric]

The fourth was founded as the third found itself unable to put up a fight against fascism in Germany Due to Stalinism. Otherwise Vincent's first post was pretty good.

[Fred]

The fourth was founded as the third found itself unable to put up a fight against fascism in Germany Due to Stalinism. Otherwise Vincent's first post was pretty good.

Well, to clarify a bit further, it was worse than that. It was really when there was no opposition within the Comintern (aka the "Third International) to the "third period" policies that led to, among other things, the debacle in Germany. That was when Trotsky declared it was "dead" as a revolutionary organization and needed to be buried and replaced with a new international.

[Fred]

The Fourth International was an international of Trotskyist parties and militants, founded after the members of the International Left Opposition (the original Trotskyist organisation, conceived of as a faction in the Third International, but mostly expelled from that body in the thirties) had decided that the degeneration of the Third (Communist) International could no longer be fought from inside the ComIntern itself and that an independent international organisation of revolutionary communists was necessary. This caused a split with a section of the ILO - prominently including A. Nin - who wanted to regroup inside the rightist "International Communist Opposition" and who favoured closer ties to the centrist London Bureau.

The Fourth International was always a tiny organisation, compared to the remnants of the Second International and the Third International and its successors. During the Second World War, its central bodies met rarely if at all, and there was no effective coordination between national sections. After the war, de facto authority in the central bodies of the FI was assumed by the chief of the International Secretariat, Pablo, whose bureaucratic methods and attempts to position himself as an advisor to various centrist and bourgeois parties resulted in the definite end of the FI as a single organisation.

Today, two organisations claim to be the Fourth International, the United Secretariat, a continuation of the International Secretariat led by Pablo, and the La Verite group around the late Lambert.

The FI did have sections with a mass following in some countries. Vietnam and Ceylon comes to mind, I think maybe Bolivia was another. The thing these countries had in common was no large Stalinist Party standing i the way. But yes, overall the FI was small.