25 Facts About Fourth International

Fourth International is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of world socialism via international revolution.

The Fourth International was established in France in 1938, as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Communist International as effectively puppets of Stalinism and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.

The Fourth International struggled to maintain contact under these conditions of crackdowns and repression during World War II due to the fact that subsequent proletarian uprisings were often under the influence of Soviet-aligned Stalinists and militant nationalist groups, leading to defeats for the Fourth International and the Trotskyists, who subsequently never managed to obtain meaningful influence.

In line with Trotskyist theory and thought, the Fourth International tended to view the Comintern as a degenerated workers' state.

However, although it regarded its own ideas as more advanced and thus superior to those of the Third Fourth International, it did not actively push for the Comintern's destruction.

Related searches

Fourth International suffered a major split in 1940 and an even more significant schism in 1953.

Fourth International moved from there to France, Norway and finally to Mexico.

Fourth International was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico in August 1940.

Foundation of the Fourth International was therefore spurred in part by a desire to form a stronger political current, rather than being seen as the communist opposition to the Comintern and the Soviet Union.

The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, a left split from the Social Democratic Party of Germany founded in 1931, co-operated with the Fourth International Left Opposition briefly in 1933 but soon abandoned the call for a new Fourth International.

The "First International Conference for the Fourth International" was held in Paris in June 1936, reports giving its location as Geneva for security reasons.

Foundation of the Fourth International was seen as more than just the simple renaming of an international tendency that was already in existence.

Fourth International had agents go through historical documents and photos to attempt to erase Trotsky's memory from the history books.

Fourth International's rationale was to construct new mass revolutionary parties able to lead successful workers' revolutions.

An Fourth International Secretariat was established, with many of the day's leading Trotskyists and most countries in which Trotskyists were active represented.

In May 1940, an emergency conference of the Fourth International met at a secret location "somewhere in the Western Hemisphere".

At first, the Fourth International held that, while the USSR was a degenerated workers' state, the post-World War II East European states were still bourgeois entities, because revolution from above was not possible, and capitalism persisted.

Fourth International regarded it as "not open to doubt that the decay of capitalist society is very far advanced".

In line with this geopolitical perspective, Pablo argued that the only way the Trotskyists could avoid isolation was for various sections of the Fourth International to undertake long-term entryism in the mass Communist or Social Democratic parties.

The Fourth International leadership had them replaced by a minority, leading to a permanent split in the French section.

Cannon and Healy were 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 entryism "sui generis" was not a suitable tactic in their own countries.

In June 1963, the reunified Fourth International elected a United Secretariat of the Fourth International, by which name the organisation as a whole is often still referred.

In uniting the large majority of Trotskyists in one organisation, the Fourth International created a tradition which has since been claimed by many Trotskyist organisations.

Many Trotskyist groups have been active in anti-fascist campaigns, but the Fourth International has never played a major role in the toppling of a regime.

The ICFI claim that "the [early] Fourth International consisted mainly of cadres who remained true to their aims" and describes much of the Fourth International's early activity as "correct and principled".

Related searches