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The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953. Today, two Trotskyist internationals claim to be the continuations of the ICFI; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.
History
1963–1971
Within the SWP, as well as within the rest of the ICFI, an opposition to the reunification came together. Some of the Latin American sections of the ICFI also left the ICFI to join the USFI, allowing the SWP and its allies to claim that a majority of the sections of the ICFI had joined the USFI. In the eyes of the ICFI, the Latin American sections had adopted Pabloism and were dependent on their connections to the SWP.
Within the SWP, some members who had studied the meaning of the 1953 split opposed the reunification. These were gathered around Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson in the Revolutionary Tendency. They echoed the SWPs Open Letter, arguing that the leaders' turn to Pabloism coincided with the introduction of Stalinist ideas, followed by an expulsion of those members who exposed the leadership's lack of principles. The SWP had supported the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro. However, Robertson's followers embarrassed Wohlforth and the SLL by suggesting that the SWP could not be saved. With Wohlforth laying the evidentiary basis for claims of "party disloyalty" the RT leaders were expelled from the party, forming Spartacist.
Wohlforth now led a Reorganized Minority Tendency until the tiny group of 9 people was also expelled from the SWP early in the fall of 1964. Wohlforth and his associates went on to found the American Committee for the Fourth International, the official organ of which was a bimonthly mimeographed publication, the Bulletin of International Socialism, launched on September 24, 1964.
One result of this Congress was the expulsion of the Spartacist tendency after the failure of Robertson to attend a conference session. Robertson said this was due to exhaustion; the IC argued that Roberton's alleged refusal to apologise reflected a rejection of communist methods, and he was asked to leave. The Spartacists would go on to form the International Spartacist Tendency. The ICFI now claims that the Sparticists were never interested in an agreement, and desired to go off in their own direction.
If the Sparticists did not desire to break off into their own organization, the ICFI now argues, a misunderstanding at the conference could have been solved. The ICFI also says the Sparticists are nationalist in their orientation, refusing to be controlled by an international organization, as well as supporting politically affirmative action, black nationalism, Stalinist regimes and denying the existence of globalization.
1985–present
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By the end of the 1970s, the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s had subsided. Membership of the ICFI fell, and the WRP leadership was not prepared. It entered into alliances with nationalist leaders in the under-developed countries.
This aroused the consternation of some members throughout the ICFI. The WRP had gained members and prominence in Great Britain, but the leadership increasingly went its own way against the ICFI as a whole.
This conflict erupted in the mid-1980s and ended with the disintegration of the WRP. The various currents of the WRP attempted to found their own ICFIs each claiming to be the official one, yet they did not break with their old policies systematically and won no new international support. They disintegrated, and as of 2006, only two active ICFIs survives, one led by David North of what was then known as the Workers' League in the United States. North and his supporters gained the allegiance of half of the remaining national sections, with the Greek, Spanish and Peruvian sections splitting and the German, Australian, and Sri Lankan sections, as well as a fraternal grouping in Ecuador, supporting North. The other ICFI is based on the surviving group that still holds the name of WRP and refers to itself as the British section of an ICFI, with other sections in Russia/Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Greece. The Russian section is called the Workers Revolutionary League which is the Soviet section of the ICFI and has members in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. (Source 'Marxist Review' September 2008 Volume 23 Issue Number 8)
Anticipating an outbreak of US militarism after the collapse of the USSR, the ICFI associated with the SEP prepared for a new radicalization of the working class. For this reason, its sections reorganised into Socialist Equality Parties throughout the world.
After a year of internal discussion, in 1998 the ICFI launched the World Socialist Web Site.
Current sections
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- Australia - Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
- Canada - Socialist Equality Party (Canada)
- France - Socialist Equality Party (France)
- Germany - Socialist Equality Party (Germany)
- Sri Lanka - Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka)
- Turkey - Socialist Equality Group
- United Kingdom - Socialist Equality Party (UK)
- United States - Socialist Equality Party (United States)
There are also groups working to build SEPs in other countries:
- Brazil - Socialist Equality Group
- India - ICFI / WSWS Supporters - India
- Ireland - Socialist Equality Group
- New Zealand - Socialist Equality Group
- Pakistan - Marxist Voice
- Romania - ICFI / WSWS Supporters - Romania
- Russia and Ukraine - Young Guard of the Bolshevik-Leninists
Major publications
- "The Heritage We Defend", a review of the postwar history of the Fourth International, by David North.
- How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism Archived 2017-09-18 at the Wayback Machine
- The ICFI Defends Trotskyism Archived 2017-09-17 at the Wayback Machine
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 1: The Fight Against Pabloism In The Fourth International (1974) ISBN 0-902030-54-X, this volume contains documents from the period leading up to the 1953 split in the Fourth International and includes James P Cannon's Open Letter.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 2: The Split In The Fourth International (1974) ISBN 0-902030-55-8, this volume contains documents from the 1953 split in the Fourth International.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 3: The Socialist Workers Party's Road back to Pabloism (1974) ISBN 0-902030-56-6, this volume contains documents from the struggle within the International Committee against the turn by the most of its sections towards reunification with the International Secretariat.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 4: The International Committee Against Liquidationism (1974) ISBN 0-902030-57-4, this volume contains documents from the 1963 reunification of most of the ICFI with the United Secretariat.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 5: The Fight for the Continuity of the Fourth International (1975) ISBN 0-902030-72-8, this volume contains documents from the 1966 World Congress of the ICFI.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 6: The Organisation Communiste Internationaliste Breaks with Trotskyism (1975) ISBN 0-902030-73-6, this volume contains documents relating to the 1971 split by the French Organization Communiste Internationaliste (OCI) with the ICFI.
- Trotskyism vs. Revisionism Volume 7: The Fourth International and the Renegade Wohlforth (1984), this volume contains documents from the political struggle waged within the Workers League against Tim Wohlforth, who deserted his post as national secretary in 1973.
- Marxism, Opportunism and the Balkan Crisis: Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International (1994) ISBN 0-929087-69-0
- Globalization and the International Working Class: A Marxist Assessment (1998) ISBN 978-0-929087-81-8, the ICFI analysis of the globalization of the world economy and its impact to the working class movement.
See also
References
- Tim Wohlforth, The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994; pg. 123.
- Wohlforth, The Prophet's Children, pg. 124.
- "The Significance and Implications of Globalisation". World Socialist Web Site. 4 January 1998.
- North, David (7 October 1982). "A Contribution to a Critique of G. Healy's "Studies in Dialectical Materialism"". Fourth International. 13, No.2 (Autumn 1986): 16.
- "The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (Britain)". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
- "Oppose Imperialist War and Colonialism! Manifesto of the International Committee of the Fourth International on 1 May 1991". World Socialist Web Site. May 1991. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
- North, David (February 2022). "The fight for Trotskyism and the political foundations of the World Socialist Web Site". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
- "A historic advance in the fight for Trotskyism: The International Committee of the Fourth International accepts application of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Grubu to become its section in Turkey". World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. 27 June 2022.
External links
- The 'Open Letter' to Trotskyists Throughout the World SWP resolution, 1953
- For Early Reunification of the World Trotskyist Movement SWP resolution, 1963
- David North, The Founding of the ICFI
- David North, About Cannon's Open Letter
- David North, The 1985 Split Archived 2010-04-12 at the Wayback Machine
- David North, The Workers' League becomes the Socialist Equality Party
- World Socialist Web Site Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
- "Gelfand's Open Letter to the SWP leadership"
- Gelfand Case: A Legal History of the Exposure of US Government Agents in the Leadership of the Socialist Workers Party by Alan Gelfand (1985), Vol. 1 ISBN 978-0-929087-02-3, Vol. 2 ISBN 978-0-929087-03-0
- FBI file on Jack Soble, GPU agent References to GPU assassin Zborowski begin on page 17 (also at top of page 41); references to "SOFIE" (a.k.a. Sylvia Franklin) who acted as Trotsky's secretary in Coyoacán, begin near the bottom of page 27 to page 28, also on pages 49 to 50.
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