The death agony of the Fourth International

 I have recently read 'The death agony of the Fourth International - and the tasks of Trotskyists today' A wordy title for a book to say the least. For those familiar it is an obvious play on the full title of the transitional program by Leon Trotsky - The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International.

Written by Workers Power - now known as Red Flag in 1983 it is a very good explanation of the demise of the Fourth Internationals origins and its ultimate demise. I do not agree with their conclusions in the book which led of course to them renaming their international the League for a Fifth International, however their insights into the Fourth International itself are illuminating and something that all Trotskyists need to back to and tackle today as the issues have not been resolved.

They start quite correctly by looking at how the Fourth International came to exist in the first place. initially a tendency within the Communist International and therefore the mass communist parties that had developed after the Russian revolution of 1917, arguing correctly at the time to reform the International and only after the huge betrayals of Stalin and by extension the International is the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany was a break and a new international required.

This historical juncture though was marked by both mass social democratic parties and mass or semi mass communist parties throughout the world and with a few notable exceptions, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Bolivia which much smaller agitational groups around the new international, struggling with perspectives and orientation, with groups of varying characteristics involved initially, including many centrist groups which later parted ways.

 This was a necessary break and with a figure like Trotsky to coalesce around able to give it a theoretical backbone the international was able to develop its own identity, but with both the assisation of Trotsky and a changed world post war in which his perspectives were not borne out. The post war boom of capitalism in the west and the expansion of Stalinism, meant that the fourth international began very quickly to loose its way. in essence, it forgot why it existed!

It became a power struggle of various factions, no figure had the political authority to carry it, so organisational maneuvers became the order of the day, from the antics of Cannon and his interference in the British section, even before the founding congress in 1938 to the split and subsequent reunification of the International secretariat and the International committee. 

This has been the legacy of not just those organisations directly descended from the fourth international but has been inbedded in the trotskyist movement throughout its history. Most recently seen in the most obvious way by the moves of the refounded CWI.

 A movement specifically set up to inject democracy back into the workers movement has been severely lacking in democracy from the offset. The Bolsheviks of which all Trotskyists would agree is the basis for their organisation, prior to the rise of Stalinism  was an open and democratic organisation with a thriving and living internal life with open disucssion and differences, which helped the organisation truly become the revolutionary and democratic force it was, a lesson that the Trotskyist movement is sorely lacking and strongly needs to relearn in order to build a dynamic international capable of the task of transforming society.