Fourth International

For the Fourth International, "the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves" and "socialism will be international or it will not exist."

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15th World Congress - February 2003

FI Statements

Fourth International

At the heart of the anti-capitalist fightback

The Fourth International was created on the eve of the Second World War when fascism was on the rise across Europe and war-mongering was sweeping the social democratic parties. Stalin’s control not only of the Soviet Union itself but of Communist Parties across Europe meant that they turned their back on the key task of uniting the worker’s movement against fascism and the world was plunged into war.

The Fourth International refused to compromise with capitalism either in its fascist or democratic variants. This was not at all a question of being soft on fascism but of understanding both that the only way it could be defeated was by the unity of all workers. We also understood that for the ruling classes across the world, the drive to war was not motivated by a dislike of fascist policies - many of which they themselves had supported in other guises - but in their own self interests.

We stood firm to our double motto "the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves" and "socialism will be international or it will not exist."

Of course many of the predictions made by Trotsky when he founded the Fourth International were proved wrong by history. But what was absolutely vindicated were his key political judgements, judgements which remain key to guiding our activity and analysis today.

That it was necessary to have a political revolution in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (The theory of political revolution)

That the Third International could no longer be reformed and it was necessary to build a new one (The Founding of the Fourth International)

That the only solution to the poverty and degradation in the colonial countries was socialist revolution - that the national bourgeois’s could not be trusted to play a progressive role (The theory of Permanent Revolution)

That given that in most situations the majority of working people will follow their traditional leaderships it is necessary for revolutionaries to attempt organise action around slogans that these leaders - be they social democratic or Stalinist - cannot but support. Within these broad campaigns it is then more possible for revolutionaries to gain an audience for their ideas. (The theory of the United Front)

That in order to win political leadership it was necessary for revolutionaries to adopt an approach which built bridges between demands raised in the immediate struggle and demands which pointed towards a socialist solution. (The method of the transitional programme)

Today the Fourth International is present in more than 40 countries in the world. It has played an important role in Europe in mobilising against the wars in the Balkans and in the creation of International Workers Aid for Bosnia. Militants of the Fourth International were crucial in the formation of the Euromarches movement which called massive demonstrations at the time of the European summits in Amsterdam in 1997 and Cologne in 1999. These mobilisations against the neo-liberal offensive and its consequences of Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Social Exclusion were the first manifestations of a continent wide response which is so desperately needed.

A response has been needed too at a political level. The fact that Social Democratic governments are in place in most European countries has certainly not led to a remission in the offensive against the working class. In most countries, these governments have been elected precisely because they are seen as surer hands to carry through the next phase of the assault than their discredited Conservative/Christian democrat rivals.

A political opportunity exists therefore to make a credible electoral challenge if the left can overcome its divisions. In many countries this is further enhanced by the disintegration of the Communist Parties since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the relative openness of some currents previously influenced by them.

This challenge has been taken up by our comrades:

In Italy through their participation in Refoundatione Communista;

In France by the joint electoral slate of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionare (LCR, French Section of the Fourth Internarional) and Lutte Ouvriere (another far left grouping) in the European Elections;

In Denmark by the work of the Socialist Workers Party (SAP Danish Section of the Fourth International) in building the Red Green Alliance;

In Portugal where the comrades of the PSR (Portuguese section of the FI) together with a Maoist current the UDP and a current of CP influenced intellectuals have send up a new political organisation, the Block, which won a Parliamentary seat in the last elections in October 1999;

In Brazil where we have participated since the beginning in the creation of the PT - the Worker’s Party but also, since the rightward lurch of its leadership, in building a left to it.