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The Rise and Fall of the Communist International

Ted Grant — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:59 +0000

The Third International has been officially buried. In the most undignified and contemptible fashion it would be possible to conceive, it has passed off the stage of history. Hurriedly and without consultation with all the adhering parties, not to speak of the rank and file throughout the world, without any democratic discussion and decision, as the result of the pressure of American imperialism, Stalin has perfidiously abandoned the Comintern.

To understand how it is that this organisation which aroused the terror and hatred of the whole capitalist world has come to such an inglorious end at the bidding of capitalism, it is necessary to review briefly the stormy rise and even stormier decline of the International. The decree for its dissolution was merely an acknowledgement of what has long been known to all informed people; that the Comintern as a factor making for world socialism was dead and had departed forever from its original aims and purposes. Its demise was predicted and foreseen long in advance.

The Third International grew out of the collapse of capitalism in the last war. The Russian revolution sent a wave of revolutionary fervour through the ranks of the working class throughout the world. To the war-weary, disillusioned and embittered masses, it came as a message of hope, of inspiration and courage, it showed the way out of the bloody chaos into which capitalism had plunged society. It was born as a direct consequence of the betrayal and breakdown of the Second International which supported the ruling classes in the last war.

The breakdown of imperialism and capitalism was signalled by the revolutions in Germany, Austria, Hungary, revolutionary situations ‚In Italy, France and even Britain. The spectre of socialist revolution hung all over Europe. The memoirs and writings of nearly all the bourgeois politicians of that time bear witness to the despair, the lack of confidence of the bourgeoisie in the face of the fact that they had lost control of the situation. Social democracy saved capitalism.

The powerful trade-union and socialist bureaucracies placed themselves at the head of the upsurge of the masses and diverted it into harmless channels. In Germany, Noske[1] and Scheidemann conspired with the junkers and capitalists to destroy the revolution. The soviets of workers, soldiers, sailors, peasants and even students, which had issued from the November revolution of 1918, held power in their hands. The social democrats handed the power back to the capitalists.

Gradually, slowly, peacefully, as their theoretical conceptions explained it, they would transform capitalism into socialism. In Italy, by 1920 the workers had seized the factories. Instead of leading the workers to the conquest of power, the Socialist Party bade them cease ‚unconstitutional‘ procedure. So it was throughout Europe. The results of this programme are evident today. The worst tyranny and the bloodiest war in the history of capitalism. But precisely because of the breakdown of international socialism in the Second International, which had betrayed Marxism, the Third International was formed.

As early as the beginning of the last war (First World War) Lenin had courageously issued the call for the Third International. The Third International was formally inaugurated in March 1919. Its declared aims and objects were the overthrow of world capitalism and the construction of a world chain of united soviet socialist republics to join up with the USSR, which itself was not conceived as an independent entity but merely as the base for the world revolution. Its fate would be determined and was bound up with the fate of the world revolution.

The formation of the Third International swiftly led to the creation of mighty communist parties throughout the most important countries in the world. In Germany, France, Czechoslovakia and other countries, communist parties with a mass membership were created. In Britain a small communist party was formed which wielded considerable influence. The success of the world revolution in the next period seemed assured by the development of events. The communist parties in Europe were steadily increasing in numbers and influence at the expense of the social democracy.

The last war had not succeeded in solving any of the problems of world capitalism. In fact it had aggravated them. Capitalism had broken down at its ‚weakest link‘ as Lenin expressed it. The attempts to destroy the young Soviet Republic by the wars of intervention had completely failed. German capitalism, the mightiest in Europe, found itself stripped of its resources, part of its territory, burdened with staggering reparation payments, and generally placed in an impossible position. British and French imperialists, the ‚victors‘ in the last world war, were in a position fundamentally not much better.

Encouraged by the Russian revolution, the colonial and semi-colonial masses were stirring and preparing to revolt. The masses at home were restless and uneasy and the economic position of Anglo-French imperialism had worsened considerably in comparison with that of Japanese and American capitalism. It was on this international background that the crisis broke out in Germany in 1923. Germany with her high productive capacity was crippled by the restrictions imposed by Versailles[2] and had now become the weakest link in the chain of world capitalism.

The failure of Germany to pay the instalments on the reparations resulted in the French capitalists marching into the Ruhr. This helped to complete the collapse of the German economy, and the German bourgeoisie endeavoured to unload the burdens onto the shoulders of the working and middle classes. The mark fell in value from 20 to 40 to the pound in January, to 5 million in July and 47 million at the end of August. The indignant German masses turned towards communism.

As Brandler, the then leader of the Communist Party, stated at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern: ‚There were signs of a rising revolutionary movement: We had temporarily the majority of the workers behind us, and in this situation believed that under favourable circumstances we would proceed immediately to the attack…‘ But unfortunately the leadership of the International failed to stand up to the test and take advantage of the opportunity. Success in Germany would inevitably have led to victory throughout Europe. But as in Russia of 1917, so in Germany of 1923, sections of the leadership vacillated.

Stalin, with his organic opportunism, urged that the German party be ‚curbed‘ from taking any action. The result was that the favourable opportunity to take power in Germany was missed and the communists in Germany suffered defeat. For similar reasons the revolution in Bulgaria also suffered shipwreck. But the defeats of the revolution in Europe caused by the failure of the leadership inevitably led to serious consequences. As Lenin had written, urging the necessity to prepare for the insurrection, in Russia in 1917: ‚The success of the Russian and world revolution depends upon two or three days‘ struggle.‘

The failure of the world revolution and the isolation of the Soviet Union, taken in conjunction with its backwardness, the weariness and apathy of the Soviet masses who had gone through years of war, terrible privations and suffering during the course of the civil war and the intervention, their disillusionment and despair at the failure of their hopes of aid from the workers of Europe: all this led inevitably to reaction within the USSR.

Reflecting at the time, perhaps unconsciously, the interests of the reactionary and conservative bureaucracy which was just beginning to raise itself above the Soviet masses, Stalin for the first time in 1924 came forward with the utopian and anti-Leninist theory of ’socialism in one country‘. This ‚theory‘ sprang directly from the defeat which the revolution had suffered in Germany. It indicated a turning away from the principles of revolutionary internationalism on which the Russian revolution had been based and on which the Communist International was founded.

Stalin, at the funeral of Lenin in January 1924, from force of habit following in the tradition of the Russian revolution declared: ‚In leaving us Comrade Lenin enjoined on us fidelity to the Communist International. We swear to thee, Comrade Lenin, to devote our lives to the enlargement and strengthening of the union of workers of the whole world, the Communist International.‘ At that time he had not the slightest notion of whither the theory of socialism in one country would lead the Soviet Union and the Comintern.

The history of the Comintern since those days has been largely bound up with the fluctuating policies of the bureaucracy of the USSR. Lenin had insistently linked the fate of the Soviet Union with that of the world working class, and principally of its vanguard the Comintern. Even the oath of the Red Army pledged the red soldiers to loyalty to the international working class. Indeed the Red Army was not regarded as an independent ’national‘ force, but as one of the instruments of the world revolution.

Of course, all this has long since been altered by Stalin. Trotsky, in conjunction with Lenin who, in his last years, viewed the developing situation with alarm, had already begun the struggle against the bureaucratisation of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet State in 1923. Lenin was warning of the dangers of degeneration which threatened the Soviet state.

On the background of the growing reaction, nationally and internationally, the struggle between the internationalists and the Thermidorians[3] entered into an acute stage. Trotsky, in alliance with Lenin, had demanded the restoration of complete democracy within the Bolshevik Party and the soviets. Lenin, in pursuit of this objective, had demanded the removal of Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the party because he had become the focal point around which the bureaucracy was crystallising.

After Lenin’s death, Zinoviev, Kamenev[4] and Stalin, ‚the troika‘ secured a decision disregarding Lenin’s advice by the Central Committee and commenced a campaign against Lenin’s ideas which were being put forward by Trotsky, with the spurious invention and legend of ‚Trotskyism‘. The fate of the Comintern was linked with the fate of the Bolshevik Party of the Soviet union which, through its prestige and experience, was naturally the dominant force in the International.

The transition from the policy of world revolution to that of socialism in one country expressed a sharp turn to the right in the Comintern. In Russia, Zinoviev and Kamenev were forced into opposition by the anti-Marxian policy now being developed by Stalin. They were thrust into an alliance with Trotsky and his supporters. Stalin, together with Bukharin, opposed the policy of industrialising Russia through a series of five year plans suggested by the Left Opposition led by Trotsky and came out with his famous aphorism at the plenary meeting of the Central Committee in April 1927 that ‚to attempt to build the Dnieperstroy hydro-electric station would be the same thing for us as for a muzhik[5] to buy a gramophone instead of a cow‘.

As late as the end of 1927, during the preparations for the Fifteenth Party Congress, whose task was to expel the Left Opposition, Molotov said repeatedly: ‚We must not slip down into poor peasant illusions about the collectivisation of the broad masses. In the present circumstances it is no longer possible.‘ Inside Russia the policy was to allow the kulaks (rich peasants) and the Nepmen (capitalists in the towns – so-called after the New Economic Policy of 1921), full scope for economic development. This policy was perfectly typified by the slogan coined by Bukharin with the full support of Stalin, given out to the peasantry: ‚Enrich yourselves!‘

The policy of the Comintern was now pushed far to the right with the preoccupation of Stalin to find allies to ‚defend the Soviet Union from attack‘. The Comintern was already being reduced to the role of a border guard. The disagreements within the Bolshevik Party and the International flared up over the question of the Chinese revolution and the situation in Britain. In China during 1925-7 the revolution was stirring up the millions of Asia into action. The Comintern, instead of relying on the workers and peasants to carry through the revolution, as was the Leninist policy in Russia, preferred to rely on the Chinese capitalists and generals.

The Left Opposition warned of the consequences of this policy. The Chinese Communist Party was the sole workers‘ party in China and had a dominating influence over the working class; the peasantry were looking towards the example in Russia to show them the way out of their centuries-long suffering at the bands of the landlords, through the seizure of the land. But the Comintern stubbornly refused to take the road of working-class independence which Lenin had insisted on as the prerequisite for communist policy in relation to the bourgeois-democratic and anti-imperialist revolutions in the East.

Meanwhile a similar policy was pursued in Britain where the masses were undergoing a process of intense radicalisation. As a means of struggling against intervention against the Soviet Union the Russian trade unions made an agreement with the General Council of the TUC. The tendency towards revolutionary developments in Britain is seen in the fact that a million members, a quarter of the trade-union membership, were organised in the Minority Movement[6]. Trotsky, analysing the situation in Britain, had predicted the outbreak of a general strike.

The task of the Communist Party and the Communist International should have been to prepare the workers for the inevitability of a betrayal on the part of the trade-union leadership. Instead, they sowed illusions in the minds of the workers, especially as the trade-union bureaucrats had covered themselves with the agreement with the Russian trade unions, whose prestige they utilised as a cloak. After the betrayal of the 1926 general strike by the trade-union bureaucracy, Trotsky demanded that the Russian trade unions should break off relations with the TUC. This Stalin and the Comintern refused to do.

After using the Anglo-Russian Committee for as long as they needed, more than a year after the General Strike, the British trade-union leadership broke off relations. The Comintern let out a howl that they had been betrayed. But meanwhile the young Communist Party of Great Britain which should have increased its membership by leaps and bounds as a result of these great events, was paralysed and disorientated by the policy of the International, was completely discredited and dwindled in influence among the masses. These further defeats of the International, due directly to the policy of Stalin and the bureaucracy, at first sight paradoxically, increased the power of the bureaucracy within the Soviet Union.

The Soviet masses were further disheartened and disillusioned by these new defeats of the international proletariat and suffered a further decline in spirits. The defeats which had been a direct consequence of the policy of Stalin and the bureaucracy further strengthened its hold on the Soviet Union. The Left Opposition led by Trotsky which had correctly analysed and forecast these developments was now expelled from the Bolshevik Party and from the International.

The internal results of Stalin’s policy now began to bear fruit in the alarming growth of the strength and influence of the kulaks and of the Nepmen. The Soviet Union stood on the brink of disaster. In panic and terror Stalin and the bureaucracy were compelled to adopt a caricature of the very policy for which Trotsky and his co-thinkers had been expelled. In Russia the Five Year Plans against which Stalin had so strenuously fought were introduced.

It is on the basis of this planned production that the Soviet Union achieved its greatest successes and on which the present day USSR bases itself in war. Meanwhile the panic turn to the left internally was reflected in a panic turn to the left internationally. Stalin had burned his fingers badly in his attempts to lean on capitalist elements in China and to conciliate social democracy. Now he veered the International sharply in the opposite direction. In violation of its statutes the International did not hold a conference for four years. A new conference was called which introduced officially the programme of the Communist International. It also proclaimed the end of capitalist stability and the beginning of what was termed the ‚Third Period‘. This was supposed to usher in the period of the final collapse of world capitalism. At the same time the social democracy, according to the once-famous (but now buried) theory of Stalin, was supposed to have transformed itself into ’social fascism‘. No agreements were now possible with ’social fascists‘ who constituted the main danger confronting the working class and must be destroyed.

It was just at this period that the unprecedented slump of 1929-33 affected the world. In particular it hit Germany. The German workers were thrust into a position of degradation and misery and the middle classes were ruined. Germany’s unemployment figure rose steadily till at the peak it reached 8,000,000. The middle class, having failed to receive anything from the revolution of 1918, and disappointed with the failure of the communists in 1923 to take power, now in anguish and despair began to look for a solution to their problems in a different direction.

Subsidised and financed by the capitalists, the fascists began to secure a mass basis in Germany. In the elections of September 1930, they secured nearly six and a half million votes. Despite their expulsion from the Communist International, Trotsky and his followers still considered themselves as part of it and insistently demanded that they be allowed to return to the ranks. At the same time they subjected the suicidal theory, which had now been adopted by the Comintern, to a sharp criticism. In place of it they demanded a return to the realistic Leninist policy of the united front[7] as a means of winning the masses in action and through their own experience, to communism.

With the victory of Hitler at the polls Trotsky sounded the alarm. In a pamphlet entitled The Turn in the Communist International – the Situation in Germany he issued a signal for a campaign, which was carried on for three years by the International Left Opposition of the Comintern, as the Trotskyists looked on themselves. In Germany, France, USA, Britain, in far away South Africa, and in all countries where they had groups, the Trotskyists conducted a campaign demanding that the German Communist Party set into motion a campaign for a united front with the Social Democrats to prevent Hitler from coming to power.

At the direct instructions and bidding from Stalin and the Comintern, the German Communist Party denounced this policy as a counter-revolutionary ’social fascist‘ one. They insistently fought against social democracy as the ‚main enemy‘ of the working class and argued that there was no difference between democracy and fascism. In September 1930, the Rote Fahne,organ of the German CP proclaimed: ‚Last night was Herr Hitler’s greatest day, but the so-called election victory of the nazis is the beginning of the end.‘

Right throughout these years the Comintern continued its fatal course. When Hitler organised a referendum in 1931 to oust the Social Democratic government in Prussia, at the direct insistence of Stalin and the Comintern the German communists voted with the nazis against the social democrats. As late as May 1932, the British Daily Worker could proudly indict the Trotskyists for their policy in Germany thus: ‚It is significant that Trotsky has come out in defence of a united front between communist and social democratic parties against fascism. No more disruptive and counter-revolutionary class lead could possibly have been given at the time like the present.‘

Meanwhile Trotsky had written four pamphlets and dozens of articles and manifestos; everywhere the international Trotskyists explored every avenue to exert pressure on the Comintern to change its policy. In vain. In January 1933 Hitler was enabled to take power without any organised opposition whatsoever in a country with the most highly organised working class and with the strongest Communist Party outside of Russia.

For the first time in history reaction was enabled to conquer power without any resistance on the part of the working class. The German CP numbered 6,000,000 supporters, the Social Democracy numbered 8,000,000 – together they were the mightiest force in Germany. By this betrayal, the German CP was doomed forever.

But the Comintern was far from recognising the nature of the catastrophe. Instead, it solemnly endorsed the policy of the German CP and of the International as having been perfectly correct. An organisation which cannot learn from the lessons of history is doomed. As a force for world socialism, the Communist International was dead. The International Left Opposition broke away and proclaimed the necessity of a new international. But what was apparent to the vanguard who had abandoned the attempt to reform the Comintern, could not be apparent to the broad masses. Only great events could teach them.

The Communist International continued to carry on this false policy right up to 1934. When the fascists in France, encouraged by the successes of fascism in Austria and Germany, conducted armed demonstrations for the overthrow of the Liberal government and parliament, the CP issued orders to demonstrate with them. But now the full danger which Hitler represented to the Soviet Union was apparent to everyone. Stalin and the bureaucracy became panic-stricken. Contemptuous and cynical of the capacity of the Comintern as an instrument of world revolution, Stalin more openly converted it into an instrument of Russian foreign policy.

An organisation in class society which ceases to represent the working class inevitably falls under the pressure and influence of the bourgeoisie. Stalin, in his search for allies, now turned to the bourgeoisie of Britain and France. The ‚Popular Front‘ policy was initiated and endorsed at the last Congress of the International held in 1935. This policy of coalition with the Liberal capitalists is one against which Lenin had struggled all his life. It represented a new stage in the degeneration of the Comintern and the first workers‘ state.

With the rise of Hitler, again due to the policies of Stalin, the stranglehold of the bureaucracy within the Soviet Union was further increased. Higher over the Soviet masses has the bureaucratic caste raised itself and increased its power. But this progressive degeneration has had qualitative changes. From merely being incapable of insuring anything but defeats for the world working class, Stalinism has become opposed to the workers‘ revolution in other countries. The Moscow trials, the murder of the old Bolsheviks, the purges, the murder and exile of tens of thousands of the flower of the Russian communist workers, completed the Stalinist counter-revolution within the Soviet Union.

Events in France and Spain[8] are fresh in every revolutionary’s mind. The Comintern played the main role in destroying the revolution which could have been accomplished. Indeed, it revealed itself as the fighting vanguard of the counter-revolution. The defeats of the world working class inevitably led to the new world war. Ironically, the war was ushered in by a pact between Hitler and Stalin. Thus Stalin dealt new blows to the world working class and the Comintern. It now executed a somersault and conducted a campaign for peace in the interests of Hitler, with a skilful counterfeit of a ‚revolutionary‘ policy.

As Trotsky forecast in his prediction of the Stalin-Hitler agreement in an article written in March 1933:

„The fundamental trait of Stalin’s international policy in recent years has been this: that he trades in the working-class movements just as he trades in oil, manganese and other goods. In this statement there is not an iota of exaggeration. Stalin looks upon the sections of the Comintern in various countries and upon the liberating struggle of the oppressed nations as so much small change in deals with imperialist powers. When he requires the aid of France, he subjects the French proletariat to the radical bourgeoisie. When he has to support China against Japan, he subjects the Chinese proletariat to the Kuomintang. What would he do in the event of an agreement with Hitler? Hitler, to be sure, does not particularly require Stalin’s assistance to strangle the German Communist Party. The insignificant state in which the latter finds itself has moreover been assured by its entire preceding policy. But it is very likely that Stalin would agree to cut off all subsidies for illegal work in Germany. This is one of the most minor concessions that he would have to make and he would be quite willing to make it. One should also assume that the noisy, hysterical and hollow campaign against fascism which the Comintern has been conducting for the last few years will be slyly squelched.“

This policy of Stalin and the ’stinking corpse‘ of the Comintern suffered irretrievable ruin when the nazis invaded the Soviet Union. The Comintern had to execute a right about turn and convert itself once again into a doormat for Roosevelt and British imperialism. But with the increased dependence of Stalin on American and British imperialism, has come the increased pressure on the part of capitalist ‚allies‘. American imperialism especially has demanded the ending of the Comintern as a final guarantee against the danger of social revolution in Europe after the downfall of Hitler.

The long drawn-out pretence is over. Stalin has dissolved the degenerate Comintern. In doing so he openly announces his stepping over to the side of the capitalist counter-revolution as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But the imperialists, in forcing Stalin to make this trade in return for concessions and bargains on their part, have not understood the consequences this will have. It cannot and will not prevent the coming of new revolutions throughout the world. In the less than two decades since the beginning of its degeneration, the Comintern has ruined many favourable situations in many countries.

The coming decades will witness many revolutions with the breakdown and collapse of capitalism. Even the violently disturbed epoch of the period between the wars will seem comparatively tranquil compared to the period which lies ahead. On this background of storms and upheavals a real instrument of world revolution will be created. What the workers lacked in the last decades, outside Russia, was a workers‘ Bolshevik Party and a Bolshevik leadership. The great days of the Comintern of 1917-23 will live again. The growth in support for the ideas of Marxism internationally, based on the traditions of Bolshevism, the rich experience of the past, and learning the lessons of defeats of the working class, can once again lead the oppressed to the overthrow of capitalism and to the world socialist republic.

Go back to The Unbroken Thread contents page or go on to next section Why Hitler Came to Power

Notes

[1] Right wing SPD leaders. Gustav Noske, as minister of war, organised suppression of the January 1919 uprising of the German workers and sanctioned the murder of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Philipp Scheidemann became Chancellor in 1919. The Junkers were reactionary Prussian aristocrats who dominated the military and civil service until the 1930s. See: Germany – From Revolution to Counter-Revolution by Rob Sewell (Fortress).

[2] The Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 imposed harsh terms on Germany at the end of the First World War.

[3] From Thermidor: a term used to describe political reaction without a social counter-revolution. Derived from analogy with the shift of power in the French revolution in the month of Thermidor (July) 1794 when the radical Jacobins led by Robespierre were overthrown by a right wing coup, whilst leaving the fundamental gains of the (capitalist) social revolution intact. Thus Thermidorians: supporters of political reaction in Russia.

[4] Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev were Old Bolsheviks. The former was the first president of the Communist International, the later was one-time deputy to Lenin. Both were opposed at the time to the Soviet seizure of power in October 1917. Later, together with Stalin, they blocked the implementation and denied the existence of Lenin’s Testament, which called for Stalin’s removal as General Secretary. Both were executed in the 1936 purge trials.

[5] A Russian term for peasants.

[6] An organisation that brought together the left in the British trade unions in the 1920’s. It was initiated and largely led by the Communist Party.

[7] The united front was conceived as a temporary agreement between mass workers‘ organisations, for action on specific issues, while retaining independence of programmes.

[8] Popular front governments were elected in Spain in February 1936 and in France in June 1936. As in Spain, the French workers immediately moved into action, occupying factories, establishing workers‘ committees. In both countries the popular front government acted as a strike breaking force, in Spain opening the way for Franco’s fascist uprising in July 1936.

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Why we need a communist international

Alan Woods — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:38 +0000

Communism is internationalist, or it is nothing. Already, at the dawn of our movement, in the pages of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explained that the workers have no country.

The founders of scientific socialism were not working to create a German party, but an international. Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht devoted their lives to the same objective.

Their internationalism was not a caprice, or the result of sentimental considerations. It flowed from the fact that capitalism develops as a world system. Out of the different national economies and markets there arises one single, indivisible and interdependent whole – the world market.

Today, this prediction of the founders of Marxism has been brilliantly demonstrated, in almost laboratory fashion. The crushing domination of the world market is the most decisive fact of our epoch.

There is no more modern book than Marx and Engels’ Manifesto. It explains the division of society into classes; it explains the phenomenon of globalisation, crises of overproduction, the nature of the state and the fundamental motor forces of historical development.

However, even the most correct ideas can achieve nothing unless they find an organisational and practical expression. That is why the founders of scientific socialism always worked tirelessly for the creation of an international organisation of the working class.

Marx and Engels played a key role in the formation of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), known today as the First International. In the beginning, that organisation had a very heterogeneous composition. Marx and Engels were obliged to fight to establish ideological clarity.

The battle for ideas was conducted on two fronts: on the one hand, they had to combat the reformist ideas of the opportunist trade union leaders.

On the other hand, they were obliged to wage a constant battle against anarchist, ultra-left and sectarian tendencies. Things have not changed very much today. The communists are faced with exactly the same problems and have to fight against the same enemies. The names may have changed but the content is just the same.

But Marx and Engels did not confine their work to the theoretical struggle. The International did not stand apart from the everyday problems of the working class. It was constantly engaged in practical work in the workers’ movement.

Contrary to the mendacious presentation of bourgeois enemies of communism, there was absolutely nothing authoritarian in the methods of Karl Marx. On the contrary, in dealing with workers with reformist leanings, he showed immense tact and patience. He wrote to Engels:

“It was very difficult to frame the thing so that our view should appear in a form acceptable from the present standpoint of the workers’ movement. […] It will take time before the re-awakened movement allows the old boldness of speech. It will be necessary to be fortiter in re, suaviter in modo [mild in manner and bold in content].”

That is very good advice for communists today who wish to conduct serious work in the mass organisations of the working class.

The end of the First International

The International made great strides forward. But the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 dealt a mortal blow to the organisation. The orgy of reaction that ensued made it impossible to function in France, and everywhere the International was persecuted.

But the real reason for its difficulties is to be found in the upswing of capitalism on a world scale that followed the defeat of the Commune. Under these conditions, the pressures of capitalism on the labour movement resulted in internal quarrels and factionalism.

Feeding off the general atmosphere of disillusionment and despair, the intrigues of Bakunin and his followers intensified. For these reasons, Marx and Engels first proposed moving the headquarters of the International to New York, and finally decided that it would be better to dissolve the International, at least for the time being. The IWA was formally wound up in 1876. For a time, there was no international.

The Second International

The IWA succeeded in laying the theoretical foundations for a genuine revolutionary international. But it never was a real mass workers’ international. It was really an anticipation of the future.

The Socialist International (Second International) was launched in 1889, and began where the First International had left off. Unlike the First International, it had a mass base. In its ranks were the mass parties and trade unions in Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, and other countries.

The period of 1871-1914 was the classical period of Social Democracy. At least in words, it stood on the basis of revolutionary Marxism. However, it was the misfortune of the new International to arise during a period of tremendous capitalist upswing.

On the basis of a long period of economic growth, it was possible for capitalism to give concessions to the working class, or, more correctly, to its upper layer. Gradually, a privileged labour aristocracy took shape.

The Social Democratic leaders became convinced that it was possible to achieve their objectives without a revolution. They came to believe that slowly, peacefully, gradually, by means of reforms, the problems of the working class could be resolved.

They contrasted this ‘practical’ politics to what they considered to be the outdated theories of Marxism, although they continued to echo the language of class war in May Day speeches.

Men like the former disciple of Marx, Eduard Bernstein, tried to provide a theoretical basis for this backsliding by attempting a revisionism of Marxism.

But the material basis for the national-reformist degeneration of the Second (Socialist) International was rooted in the objective conditions of capitalism, which seemed to provide evidence that the revisionists were correct.

However, the whole edifice of reformism was blown sky-high in 1914, when the leaders of the International voted for the war credits and supported “their” bourgeoisie in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War.

The war, and the Russian Revolution that flowed from it, heralded the beginning of a new and stormy period of revolution and counter-revolution. It was on this material basis that a new workers’ international was born.

The Communist International

Already in 1914, Lenin drew the conclusion that the Second International was dead as an organ for changing society. He proclaimed the new Third International, although at that time the numbers of revolutionary internationalists were pitifully small.

The internationalist tendency was isolated from the masses, who were under the influence of the social chauvinist leaders and intoxicated by the fumes of patriotism. Great events were required to change the situation. This occurred in 1917 with the outbreak of revolution in Russia.

Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian working class to the conquest of power and in 1919 they were able to declare the founding of the Third (Communist) International.

The Comintern, as it became known, stood on a qualitatively higher level than its two predecessors. Like the IWA it stood for a clear revolutionary, internationalist programme. Like the Second International, it had a mass base of millions.

Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the Communist International maintained a correct revolutionary line. It seemed that the fate of the world revolution was in good hands.

However, the isolation of the Russian Revolution under conditions of frightful material and cultural backwardness reflected itself in the bureaucratic degeneration of the Revolution.

The bureaucratic faction led by Stalin gained the upper hand, especially after Lenin’s death in 1924. The rise of Stalinism in Russia stifled the tremendous potential of the Third International.

The Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union played havoc with the inexperienced and immature leaderships of the Communist parties abroad.

‘Socialism in one country’

In 1928, Trotsky predicted that the acceptance of the ‘theory’ of socialism in one country would inevitably lead to the nationalist degeneration of the Communist parties. That prediction has been entirely validated by history.

That so-called theory marked a decisive break with Leninist internationalism. It was an expression of the national limitedness of the outlook of the bureaucracy, which looked on the Communist International merely as an instrument of the foreign policy of Moscow. Having used the Comintern for his own cynical purposes, Stalin dissolved it in 1943 without even the pretence of a congress.

Trotsky and the Left Opposition attempted to defend the spotless traditions of October against Stalinist reaction. They stood for the Leninist traditions of workers’ democracy and proletarian internationalism. But they were fighting a losing battle against the powerful tide of history.

In 1938, Trotsky proclaimed the Fourth International, offering a clean revolutionary banner to the new generation. But it was destroyed by the mistakes of its leaders after Trotsky’s assassination.

Without the guidance of Trotsky, the Fourth International ended up as an abortion. Decades later, all that is left of that organisation is a myriad of splits and sectarian groups, each one more bizarre than the other.

They have achieved nothing except to sow endless confusion and discredit the very idea of Trotskyism in the eyes of many working-class militants.

Today, what remains of the Fourth International are the ideas of its founder, Leon Trotsky, which retain all their relevance and importance. These ideas were kept alive by the tireless work of the late comrade Ted Grant and are represented today by the International Marxist Tendency.

Degeneration of the Communist Parties

We are proud of our ideological heritage. However, we must face facts. Today, 150 years after the founding of the First International, due to a combination of objective and subjective circumstances, the revolutionary movement has been thrown back, and the forces of genuine Marxism reduced to a small minority.

The reasons for this are to be found mainly in the objective situation. Decades of economic growth in the advanced capitalist countries have given rise to an unprecedented degeneration of the mass organisations of the working class. This has isolated the revolutionary current, which everywhere has been reduced to a minority of a minority.

The collapse of the Soviet Union set the final seal on the degeneration of the former Stalinist leaders, most of whom have capitulated to the pressures of capitalism and passed over openly to the camp of reformism.

But there is another side to the coin. The present crisis exposes the reactionary role of capitalism, and places on the order of the day the revival of international communism.

The tide of history

For decades we have been obliged to swim against the current. But now the tide of history has begun to turn.

Everywhere, beneath the superficial veneer of calm and tranquillity, there is a seething undercurrent of rage, indignation, discontent and above all frustration at the existing state of affairs in society and politics.

Even in the United States, there is widespread discontent and a questioning of the existing state of affairs, which was not present before.

All the attempts of the bourgeoisie to restore the economic equilibrium only serve to destroy the social and political equilibrium. The bourgeoisie finds itself trapped in a crisis for which it has no solution. That is the key to understanding the present situation.

The crisis finds its expression in instability in every sphere: economic, financial, social, political, diplomatic and military.

The future that this system offers can only be one of endless misery, suffering, disease, wars and death for the human race. In the words of Lenin: capitalism is horror without end.

It is an irony of history that the leaders of the mass workers’ parties are clinging to decrepit capitalism and the market even when they are collapsing before our eyes.

The only solution

The central problem can be simply stated. It is a problem of leadership. In 1938, Trotsky stated that the crisis of humanity can be reduced to the crisis of the proletarian leadership. That completely sums up the present situation.

Lacking a solid base in Marxist theory, the so-called Left has capitulated and given up the fight for socialism. In its place, there is a gigantic vacuum. But science teaches us that nature abhors a vacuum. This confronts us with a very concrete challenge.

The workers and youth fervently desire to change society. But they can find no organised expression for their efforts. At every step, they find their path blocked by the old bureaucratic organisations and leaderships that have long ago abandoned any pretence to stand for socialism.

All over the world, a new generation of class fighters is rapidly taking shape on the basis of the crisis of capitalism. This is bringing about a profound change of consciousness, especially among the youth.

The latest polls from Britain, the USA, Australia and other countries provide us with a very clear indication that the idea of communism is spreading rapidly.

These young people do not need to be convinced. They are already communists. But they see no alternative in any of the existing organisations. On the contrary, they are repelled by them.

They are looking for a clean banner, an organisation that has broken radically with treacherous right-wing reformism and cowardly ‘left’ opportunism.

The potential for communism is enormous. Our task is to make this potential a reality. But how is this to be achieved?

We are faced with a flagrant contradiction. Today the ideas of Marx are more valid and necessary than ever. But ideas, in and of themselves, are insufficient.

We have to take the necessary practical measures to find this new generation of communists and recruit them to our banner. This necessarily means that we have to provide the ideas with concrete, organisational expression.

The need for a new international is not an arbitrary decision. Nor is it the expression of any subjective desire or unthinking haste. It is something that is clearly demanded by the whole situation.

Is the time right for such a bold step? For some people, of course, the time will never be right. They will always find a thousand reasons why we should delay taking a decision. But we cannot make a programme and policy out of hesitation and doubt.

It may be objected that our numbers are too small for us to take such a step. But every revolutionary movement in history has always begun as a small and seemingly insignificant minority.

In 1914, the forces at Lenin’s disposal were pathetically small. But that did not deter him from proclaiming the need for a new communist international. There were many doubts, even among his own supporters, but history proves that he was right.

It is quite true that our forces are very small when compared to the enormous task in front of us and we have no illusions on that score. But that situation is already beginning to change significantly.

We have important work to do, and that work, which is reaching a decisive stage, is already bearing important fruit. That is clearly shown by the remarkable success of the ‘Are you a Communist?’ campaign.

We are growing rapidly everywhere. That is no accident. We are now swimming together with the current of history. Above all, we have the correct ideas. That is ultimately the only guarantee of success.

What is required is a genuine communist party, which bases itself on the ideas of Lenin and the other great Marxist teachers, and an international on the lines of the Communist International during its first five years.

That is the task we have set before us. It is an absolutely necessary and urgent task that admits no delay.

From small beginnings, under the most difficult conditions imaginable, the International Marxist Tendency has already built an organisation of thousands of the best workers and youth in many countries.

This is a great achievement. But it is only the beginning. The time has now come to take a decisive step: the launching of the Revolutionary Communist International.

We appeal to every worker and young person who agrees with this aim to help us to achieve our final goal: the victory of international socialism.

Against capitalism and imperialism!

For the socialist transformation of society!

Join us in the struggle for world revolution!

Workers of the world, unite!

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Our origins and history: the unbroken thread of revolutionary communism

Alessandro Giardiello — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:24 +0000

On 23 November 2024, the Italian section of the Revolutionary Communist International launched the Revolutionary Communist Party. We appeal to all communist militants who are critical of Stalinism to join us in the task of building the party. The following article was written by Alessandro Giardiello in the run up to the launch of the RCP, in order to offer a summary of our origins and history.

What do we propose? Nothing less than the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of communism; a classless society without gender, national or religious oppression, capable of harnessing the resources needed to cure an increasingly sick planet.

In other words, we fight for a society based on the needs of the masses and not on the profits of a tiny minority. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to abolish private ownership of the means of production and the existence of nation states, which have become an absolute obstacle to the development of a peaceful and harmonious society.

In this, we draw on the political and theoretical contributions of Marx and Engels – the ideas that inspired the October Revolution – and the school of revolutionary strategy represented by the first four congresses of the Communist International, held when Lenin was still alive.

We also take inspiration from the struggle waged by Trotsky against Stalinism, first by forming the Left Opposition and then by founding the Fourth International.

For reasons we will explain in this text, after Trosky had been assassinated by a Stalinist hitman in 1940, the new International proved inadequate. We only recognise its founding congress of 1938, and in particular its political manifesto, The Transitional Programme, which was drafted by Trotsky himself.

After the death of Trotsky, along with many of the leaders of the Russian Opposition in the gulags of Siberia, or at the hands of Stalinist goons, the Fourth International did not have the cadres with the experience to cope with the new political situation.

Comrade Ted Grant was the only one who led a battle against the deviations of leaders like Pablo, Cannon, Mandel, Maitan, Pierre Frank, etc. We will thus make reference to many of Ted Grant’s works, collected in Il lungo filo rosso, published by our printing house in 2007. Those documents, articles and political contributions represent a wealth of ideas that we are absolutely determined to bring to life in the new party and the new International.

Some in the movement call us ‘Grantists’, others, more generically, Trotskyists, Marxists or revolutionary Marxists. We do not oppose any of these labels. We make them all our own. But we prefer to call ourselves communists. This was the same decision Ted Grant made 80 years ago, in 1944, when he called his party the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Stalinism usurped the term ‘communist’ and discredited it in the eyes of millions of proletarians. Today too, the Chinese regime continues to call itself ‘communist’ and adorns itself with a red flag and a hammer and sickle. But it has restored capitalism, and bases its power on the unbridled exploitation of the Chinese proletariat, which is not so different from the exploitation Engels described 180 years ago in The Condition of the Working Class in England.

Ted Grant, the WIL and the RCP

The founder of our movement, Isaac Blank, known as Ted Grant, was a young South African who moved to London at the age of 21 with the clear intention of joining the Trotskyist movement. He had read the US Trotskyist newspapers that were sold in a left-wing bookshop in South Africa and came to support their ideas, which he continued to do throughout his life. As Ted Grant liked to say: “When certain ideas get into your blood they never leave you”.

When he arrived in London in 1934, he and his group of 30 comrades immediately began to build the forces of revolutionary Marxism with the tireless enthusiasm that was characteristic of him. In 1938, however, they refused to accept the diktat imposed by James Cannon, who was then secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the American section of the Fourth International. Cannon came to Britain with the aim of imposing a merger of the three different Trotskyist groups that existed in England at that time (plus one in Scotland) without a principled political basis.

The bureaucratic manoeuvres of Cannon and other leaders of the Fourth International against Ted Grant and his group are amply explained in The History of British Trotskyism, which readers can find in Il lungo filo rosso, and which has also been published by our English-language publishing house, Wellred Books.

In summary, the organisation founded by Ted Grant, Jock Haston, and Ralph Lee – the Workers International League (WIL) – by not accepting Cannon’s bureaucratic manoeuvres, found itself excluded from the founding congress of the Fourth International in 1938.

At that congress, the mishmash set up by Cannon, which took the name Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL), was recognised as the official section of the Fourth International in Britain. Precisely because it was plagued by numerous political differences, it found itself making every possible political mistake during the Second World War, applying Lenin’s position of revolutionary defeatism in a formalist and sectarian manner. During the Second World War, these gentlemen found themselves campaigning around the slogan: “Hitler’s victory is the lesser evil” in the factories and workplaces. This was an absurd position which was in conflict with that which Trotsky, in his exile in Coyoacán, Mexico, had elaborated in the ‘proletarian military policy’.

Trotsky’s policy consisted of joining the allied armies (made up of conscripts), fighting the military hierarchy by demanding the election of officers and workers‘ and trade unions‘ control over soldiers‘ conditions, and openly propagandising for the ideas of communism, nationalisation of the means of production, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, a workers‘ government, and the conduct of a revolutionary war against Hitler’s army.

While the RSL, the official section of the Fourth International in Britain, rejected Trotsky’s line, the WIL (which was not even granted the status of a sympathising section) did extraordinary work in the British Army. As Ted Grant put it, our comrades, though “illegitimate children of the Fourth International”, were the only ones who carried forward the military policy drawn up by Trotsky.

The result was that while the RSL disintegrated, the WIL grew stronger organisationally and politically to the point that in March 1944 it was able to annex what little remained of the RSL and found the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The RCP was recognised as the British section of the Fourth International… but the manoeuvres of the Fourth’s leaders, driven by resentment and prestige politics, had only just begun.

The causes of the degeneration of the Fourth International

After the war ended, the new leaders of the Fourth International continued to repeat, parrot-like, the perspective developed in 1938 by Trotsky in The Transitional Programme:

„The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.

“The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. […]

“The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the bureaucracies of the Second, Third, Amsterdam and Anarcho-syndicalist Internationals, as on their centrist satellites; on reformism without reforms; democracy in alliance with the GPU; pacifism without peace; anarchism in the service of the bourgeoisie; on ‘revolutionists’ who live in deathly fear of revolution. All of these organisations are not pledges for the future, but decayed survivals of the past. The epoch of wars and revolutions will raze them to the ground.”

These words, absolutely correct in 1938, ceased to be true in the wake of the war. The leaders of the Fourth International, instead of making a concrete analysis of the concrete situation, clung to Trotsky’s words. The reality was that the war had produced new and unforeseen developments that not even a revolutionary of Trotsky’s genius could have foreseen.

Thus it was that Pablo, Cannon and their comrades – despite the fact that reality was going in a completely different direction – continued to defend a ‚catastrophist‘ line. In essence, they predicted a future of precipitous and permanent crisis for the capitalist system, the consequence of which would be imminent clashes between the forces of revolution and reaction, embodied in the formation of new Bonapartist dictatorships. The possibility of a stabilisation of capitalism, and the emergence of bourgeois parliamentary democracies, did not enter their minds.

Ted Grant was the only Trotskyist leader in Europe to put forward the latter hypothesis, a detail that is omitted by many biased so-called ‚historians‘ of the Fourth International, who feign ignorance of this small detail.

Pierre Frank, in his 1979 book on the history of the Fourth International (The Fourth International: the Long March of the Trotskyists), doesn’t even mention the existence of the WIL or the RCP, despite the fact that the RCP was the most important section of the Trotskyist movement in Europe during the war.

The same dishonest approach is shown by Livio Maitan, one of the main leaders of the Fourth International, who in one of his books states the following:

„Among the political leaders and economists of Marxist inspiration, no one, at least to our knowledge, foresaw at the end of the 1940s or at the beginning of the 1950s the prolonged boom that would involve the capitalist countries for about a quarter of a century surpassing all historical precedents.“ (L. Maitan, Storms in the World Economy, DataNews 1998, p. 11).

Not only does he pretend not to remember Ted Grant’s positions but, true to his style, he is rather forgiving of the mistakes he and his cronies made:

„According to the hypothesis that we continue to regard as far from groundless, a different course and a different perspective would have been possible. […] There was no misunderstanding on our part of the involutional turn marked by the events of 1948. […] We tended, however, to relativise these assessments, hypothesising a chronicisation of economic stagnation and fragility, over and above the evolving balance of power in the political arena. In this sense there was one-sidedness, a substantial inadequacy of our analysis“. (L. Maitan, The Road Taken, p. 167-168).

Maitan was a master at construing glaring errors with devastating consequences as minor blunders.

To be fair, positions similar to those of the British RCP were also defended by a minority of the American SWP, led by Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, albeit on less consistent grounds (this was partly for objective reasons linked to the persecution that the American Trotskyists suffered at the hands of the state apparatus).

It was left to Ted Grant and the comrades of the RCP to lead the battle against the degeneration of the Fourth International after the end of the war.

Here are some key passages. In March 1945, in a text called The Changing Balance of Power in Europe and the Role of the Fourth International, Ted Grant modified Trotsky’s 1938 perspective and the one he had elaborated in June 1942 in Preparing for Power:

“[T]he counter-revolution of capital in its early stages, will, within a short period of time following the establishment of military government, assume a ‚democratic‘ form. The bourgeoisie will combine the granting of illusory concessions with reprisals and repressions against the revolutionary forces.

“The approaching revolution in Europe can be no other than the proletarian revolution. However, in its early stages it is inevitable that the old organisations of the proletariat should succeed in placing themselves at the head of the masses. […]

“It is possible, on the basis of the support rendered to world imperialism by Stalinism and classical reformism (and this is one of the objective factors to be reckoned with) that world imperialism can succeed, for a period, in ’stabilising‘ bourgeois democratic regimes in certain countries.”

The following year in Economic Perspectives 1946, he wrote:

„The Fourth International will only discredit itself if it refuses to recognise the inevitable recovery, and it will disorientate its own cadres as well as the broad masses by predicting a permanent slump and slow rhythm of recovery in Western Europe, when events are taking a different shape.“

The polemic would continue in August 1946 with the text Democracy or Bonapartism in Europe – A Reply to Pierre Frank:

“Frank attempts to equate all regimes in Western Europe to ‚Bonapartism‘. His generalisations go even further: he argues that there have been Bonapartist regimes in France since 1934; that it is impossible to have any but Bonapartist or fascist regimes until the coming to power of the proletariat in Europe. This, if you please, in the name of ‚the continuity of our political analysis for more than ten years of French history‘! Such complacency reduces theory to formless abstractions and conceals inevitable and episodic errors, thus making them into a system. It has no place in the Fourth International.

“Comrade Frank indiscriminately mixes the terms bourgeois democracy with Bonapartism, not explaining the specific traits of either. He interchangeably speaks of ‚Bonapartism‘, ‚elements of Bonapartism‘ and he contrasts democratic liberties with ‚a regime which one can correctly define as democratic.‘ Yet the reader has to seek in vain for a definition of his ideal ‚democratic regime‘ as distinguished from the very real bourgeois democracy. He denies the existence of democratic regimes in Europe today because ‚there is literally no place for them.‘ […]

“The British RCP has characterised the regimes in Western Europe (France, Belgium, Holland, Italy) as regimes of counter-revolution in a democratic form. […]

“Events in Italy have demonstrated the remarkable foresight of Trotsky. The bourgeoisie has been compelled to allow the jettisoning of the king and the Stalinist-socialist traitors have headed off the developing proletarian revolution into the channels of a ‚parliamentary and democratic state‘.”

The conditions for a new upward cycle of capitalism and an economic boom were laid by the defeat of the revolutionary processes of 1943-45 in Greece, Italy, France and Belgium (responsibility for the diversion of these into dead ends lay with the Stalinists); the destruction of productive forces and annihilation of surplus labour during the war; plus a gigantic flow of US investment into Europe through the Marshall Plan.

This had the political effect, there having existed more room for reformists to carry out part of their programmes, of allowing the social democrats and Stalinists to gain ground. In addition, the Stalinists benefited from the enormous prestige enjoyed by the Red Army after its victory against the Nazis at Stalingrad. It was no coincidence that the communist and social democratic parties became mass parties. This process had the same basis more or less everywhere, with obvious differences depending on the country.

For a whole period, all this barred the way for the development of the Fourth International. It found itself with a mass base in only two countries in the world, both of which were semi-colonies: Bolivia and Sri Lanka.

In an interview with marxist.com in 2004, Comrade Ted Grant, referring to the leaders of the Fourth International, said:

“They were completely ultra-left. They thought that revolution was just around the corner. They tried to deny that there was any economic recovery – when there clearly was. They talked about an economic collapse. We said that, on the contrary, for a number of reasons (which I later explained in my document Will there be a slump?) there would be an economic recovery – although none of us thought it would last as long as it did.

“Therefore, for a period, only modest gains could be made. It was mainly a question of educating the cadres, preserving our forces and winning the ones and twos or perhaps small groups here and there, and preparing for a change in the situation.

“But Mandel, Pablo and co. would not accept the facts. They denied the possibility of democracy in Europe, and predicted Bonapartist (dictatorial) regimes. We opposed this madness, pointing out that there was a Labour Government in Britain and the Communist Parties were in the government in France and Italy – carrying out a counterrevolutionary policy, of course. But it was, as we explained, counter-revolution with a democratic guise. They understood nothing of all this.”

The leaders of the Fourth International such as Mandel, Pablo and Cannon denied reality for at least 15 years. There were those who were even worse: Pierre Lambert, one of the leaders of the majority of the French section which was expelled from the Fourth International in 1952, continued to deny that there had been any development of the productive forces throughout the 20th century until the day he died in 2008.

In the meantime, the Red Army was forming states modelled on the USSR (which we call proletarian Bonapartist or deformed workers‘ states) throughout Eastern Europe. In 1949, the Chinese Stalinists, led by Mao, seized power.

Pablo came to the conclusion that the Stalinist bureaucracy was playing a revolutionary and not a counter-revolutionary role, as Trotsky had claimed. The thesis Pablo developed in the early 1950s was that the Stalinist bureaucracy, from being a “parasitic excrescence”, as Trotsky had called it in The Revolution Betrayed, had become a legitimate stage along the road to socialism, a transition that would last for centuries (Where Are We Going?, January 1951).

This analysis had the inevitable effect of provoking an abrupt reorientation towards the Stalinist bureaucracy. Tactically, they turned to ‘deep entrism’ in the communist parties.

In addition, they developed illusions about Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia, which they considered a relatively healthy workers‘ state. In answer to this, we refer the reader to the letter written by Jock Haston to the leaders of the Fourth International.

Pablo and Mandel argued, after Stalin’s death in 1953, that a period of ’self-reform‘ of Stalinism was opening.

Pablo declared that Stalinism and petty-bourgeois nationalism could play a progressive role in the transition from capitalism to socialism. This led the POR (the Bolivian section of the Fourth International) to support the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) in the 1952 Bolivian revolution, thus leading the proletariat to defeat. The theses of the Third World Congress of the Fourth International, held in 1951, openly spoke of giving ‚critical support‘ to the MNR in its chapter on Bolivia.

In this context, Ted Grant opposed the Fourth’s entrist tactics during the 1940s. This, along with all the other divergences mentioned above, led to Ted’s second expulsion from the Fourth International in 1950 at the hands of Gerry Healy, who had become Pablo’s puppet within the RCP in Britain and bureaucratically taken control of the party.

From the 1953 split to the 1965 expulsion

At the end of 1953, Cannon led a split from the Fourth International to form the International Committee of the Fourth International. This was joined by Healy in Britain, Lambert in France, and later Moreno in Argentina.

Cannon attributed the split to Pablo’s adaptation to Stalinism. This adaptation certainly cannot be denied. But Cannon had totally supported it up to that point. In fact, the whole leadership of the Fourth, including Healy and Lambert, had supported the line of the 1951 Third Congress.

The real reason for Cannon’s 1953 split had much more to do with his organisational method, which we would call commandism. According to Cannon, the international leadership should not meddle in the internal affairs of the American section and should always support the positions of the party majority.

Cannon suspected that Pablo shared and actively supported the positions of the minority in the American SWP, led by George Clarke, who was later expelled in November 1953. This was the real reason for the split.

Cannon had always been animated by the idea of the US section being the ‚leading section‘, i.e. that the SWP should lead the Fourth International. In this, however, he was limited by the repressive Voorhis Act, which prevented US political parties from belonging to international organisations.

As a matter of fact, Cannon’s plan failed and the International Committee did not hold a single congress in ten years. In 1963 it reunified with the Fourth International, returning to the mothership, but not before his antagonist Pablo had been marginalised by the international leadership.

In 1956, Ted Grant and his comrades formed the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). They knew Cannon and Healy far too well to give the slightest credence to their break. However, Healy’s exit from the Fourth left the International without a section in Britain. An appeal was made for the RSL to become the official section. But by this point, Ted Grant had not only failed to resolve his differences with the leadership: they had widened. He now had no confidence in Mandel, Maitan and co.

In discussion with the comrades, however, it was decided that the RSL, being internationally isolated, had little to lose. It could not be ruled out that, by fighting an opposition battle in the Fourth, they could meet worthy militants in other countries.

At the Sixth Congress of the Fourth International in 1961, comrade Ted Grant led a counter-attack during the economic debate and tabled weighty amendments to almost every item on the agenda.

This battle culminated at the Eighth Congress in 1965, where Ted presented an alternative document called The Colonial Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Dispute.

This document aimed to combat the Maoist, Castroist and guerillaist illusions that were beginning to make their way into the leadership of the Fourth International.

As a result of that debate, Ted Grant was expelled from the Fourth International for the third and final time.

In his latest book, Livio Maitan once again distorts the facts. Let us read this masterpiece of hypocrisy:

„As far as Britain was concerned, the congress decided not to recognise either organisation as a section, which resulted in the splitting of the RSL, of which Ted Grant was the best-known leader, also represented at the congress by Peter [Taaffe]. The RSL would later give rise to ‚The Militant‘ tendency, destined to take a prominent role on the Labour left. Personally, I must admit that I underestimated Grant’s ability to build a substantial organisation. I had good personal relations with him, but I was impatient with his habit of punctiliously quoting Trotsky in almost every speech and it put me in a good mood to see him arrive at meetings with a valise full of books and documents.“ (L. Maitan, Towards a History of the Fourth International, p. 171-172).

Maitan speaks of a split, but it is quite clear that by not recognising either of the British organisations, the Eighth Congress was in fact expelling what had been the official British section since 1957: the RSL, Ted Grant’s organisation.

In The Colonial Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Dispute, one can see an anticipation of the disagreements that later arose on the subject of rural guerrilla warfare during the Ninth Congress of 1969.

Ted Grant wrote as early as August 1964:

“Those comrades who have newly discovered the peasantry and the semi-proletariat and even the village proletariat as the main revolutionary force in these colonial revolutions, have not understood the real significance of the role which these classes have played. Where the proletariat is led by a conscious revolutionary party, the petit-bourgeois in town and countryside, under the firm leadership of the proletariat, can support the victory of the working class and the installation of its revolutionary dictatorship, i.e. in the sense of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in Trotsky’s expression, according to the norm.

“Thus these classes can play the key role of the reserve troops of the revolution, of the battering ram, but the sharp point of the revolution can only be a revolutionary consciousness of the industrial working class.” (The Colonial Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Dispute)

Responsibility for the disastrous guerrilla tactics, which cost the lives of many young Trotskyists in Argentina and beyond, must be attributed first to Maitan, who headed the Fourth International in Latin America, and secondly to Mandel, the main leader of the Fourth International after Pablo’s exit in 1965.

Throughout the Fourth there was a real Castro fever. There were great expectations for the Organizacion Latinoamericana de Solidaridad (OLAS), formed in Cuba in 1967, with the aim of promoting armed struggle and the establishment of new socialist states.

Third Worldist and Focoist conceptions were incorporated by the leaders of the Fourth, who forgot all of Trotsky’s teachings on the subject.

The same Moreno who, in 1973, wrote a fiercely critical document against rural guerrillaism (A Scandalous Document), had, in previous years, given uncritical and total support to focoist conceptions, as discussed in this critical article by comrade Francesco Giliani.

Compare the clear-cut words of Ted Grant in The Colonial Revolution with what Moreno wrote that same year:

„Our admiration, respect, and recognition towards them as leaders of the Latin American revolutionary process has no limits. In the case of Fidel Castro, we have no doubt in considering him, along with Lenin and Trotsky, one of the greatest revolutionary geniuses of this century.“ (N. Moreno, ‘Two methods for the Latin American revolution’, Estrategia, new series, 1964).

Pure adulation! Castro did not reciprocate such generosity of judgement: not only did he persecute Trotskyist activists in Cuba, but in his speech at the Tricontinental in January 1966 he stated – before representatives of revolutionary and national liberation movements from 82 different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America – that the Fourth International was “repugnant and nauseating” and had become “a vulgar instrument of imperialism and reaction”.

Contrary to the high expectations that the Fourth’s leaders had placed in it, OLAS was never an instrument for the extension of the armed struggle. Che Guevara’s death in Bolivia, in an action that we do not hesitate to describe as desperate, put an end to any focoist ambitions of the Cuban regime, which now began to look towards Khrushchev’s USSR.

The truth is that the leaders of the Fourth International had totally lost faith in the revolutionary potential of the workers‘ movement in Europe. This process culminated just as the working class in Europe was showing its revolutionary character, with May ’68 in France, the Hot Autumn in Italy, and the other great movements of the industrial proletariat across Europe.

The Fourth International had once again demonstrated its total inadequacy. Returning it to a Trotskyist programme was impossible. Ted Grant and the other comrades decided to turn their backs on it once and for all, and never retraced their steps. The balance sheet of that experience was collected in Ted’s 1970 text, The Programme of the International, which states:

„The analysis of this document shows that for 25 years, the USFI [United Secretariat of the Fourth International] has staggered from one mistake to another. From one wrong policy to its opposite, and then a higher level of mistakes back again. This is the mark of a thoroughly petit bourgeois tendency. As far as this grouping is concerned, at least its top leadership, this has now become organic. The whole outlook has been moulded by the mistakes of a quarter century, and become part and parcel of their methods of thinking, of their habits of work, and their whole outlook. Even to dignify this tendency by calling it centrist would be a compliment.“

Ted’s goal became to build a new International based on the authentic ideas of Lenin and Trotsky.

In 1964, Ted Grant founded the newspaper Militant, and began to build an organisation that, through a skilful combination of independent work and Labour Party entryism, managed to grow significantly.

By the 1960s and 1970s, the conditions for entrism were maturing all over Europe. In Britain in 1970, the comrades first took control of the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS). Later they grew to influence numerous Labour Party branches and constituencies. The tactic was so successful that, by the 1980s, our organisation led Liverpool city council and had three MPs at a national level (Terry Fields, Dave Nellist and Pat Wall).

Control of the LPYS allowed us to make contact with a number of young socialist activists who were being radicalised internationally, through meetings of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY). The Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI), the youth wing of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), also joined IUSY in the 1980s.

In Spain, in the fight against Franco’s dictatorship, a left-wing tendency developed in the Socialist Youth of Spain (JSE). Thanks to the tireless work of Alan Woods, who moved to Madrid in 1976 and stayed there for seven years, its leaders, Luis Osorio and Alberto Arregui, joined our organisation. We also recruited comrades from the socialist youth in Germany and Sweden, creating the Committee for the Workers‘ International (CWI) in 1974. In 1974 the Militant had 600 comrades. This had grown to 8,000 just ten years later.

In the late 1980s in Britain, we led a mass movement of over 10 million who refused to pay the infamous Poll Tax. That movement brought down Thatcher who had ruled the country for 11 years. In those years, books were written about the Militant. Italian newspapers such as L’Unità, La Repubblica and the Corriere della Sera regularly wrote articles about the Trotskyists in the Labour Party.

The collapse of Stalinism and the ‘red 90s’

The Militant found itself playing a role that went far beyond its numerical strength. It had large influence in trade unions, and controlled trades councils, shop stewards‘ committees and other workers‘ organisations, etc.

The organisation formally had 8,000 militants. It was probably the largest Trotskyist organisation in the world. Despite this, there was a huge disproportion between its organised size and its strategic goal of the socialist transformation of society, for which it was necessary to win over the majority of the proletariat.

Moreover, in the 1980s, the objective conditions began to become more unfavourable. Unfortunately, several of Militant’s leaders either did not realise this or unconsciously concealed the problem.

Peter Taaffe and others lulled themselves into revolutionary illusions. On the other hand, comrades like Ted Grant and Alan Woods were beginning to realise that the situation was not as positive as it seemed on the surface, and that many problems were building up in the organisation.

This provoked a debate in the organisation’s leadership group, with a majority led by Peter Taaffe and a minority led by Ted Grant and Alan Woods.

Taaffe, as general secretary, thought he could voluntaristically overcome the difficulties and contradictions the organisation was facing, making extremely optimistic assumptions about the objective situation, even going as far as to speak of the “red ‘90s”!

Ted Grant and Alan Woods, for their part, warned the organisation of the consequences that were being produced by this exposure to the pressure of the movement – a lowering of the theoretical and political level, a decline in participation in the branches, economistic and ‘movementist’ tendencies. In a word, the focus was becoming ‘building the movement’ at the expense of actually building the organisation. Organisational shortcuts were being sought to solve political problems.

Zinovievist tendencies thus developed. This term refers to the role played by Zinoviev, the president of the Communist International who, after Lenin’s death, used administrative methods to resolve political disputes. His method was characterised by a harsh, commandist style of leadership whereby, instead of convincing comrades as was the norm in Lenin and Trotsky’s time, the leadership gave orders and imposed decisions from above.

The consequences of the defeat of the miners in 1985, one of the most serious defeats that the British workers‘ movement had suffered, were not fully recognised by the Militant, which spoke of a ‚draw‘. Neither did Taaffe take note of the other defeats that had taken place in the rest of the world, from FIAT in Italy in 1980, to the civil servants in France, or the air traffic controllers in the USA, among others.

The crash of the stock exchange on Black Monday in October 1987 was seen as proof that capitalism was heading towards a deep crisis of overproduction like the one Marx predicted, which it was claimed would soon open the way to new pre-revolutionary situations.

“After all, the Bolsheviks were not 8,000 like us in February 1917,” was the statement made at a meeting by Bob Labi, a leader of the majority faction in Militant. He forgot one small detail, namely that the Bolsheviks had been the traditional, mass organisation of the Russian proletariat even before the war.

At the same time the Spanish section, the second most important section of the International with around 1,000 members, was leading a movement of millions of students in 1987. And a year later, on 14 December 1988, Spain saw one of the most important general strikes in its history, with the participation of 10 million workers. These events only served to inflame enthusiasm.

But these were counter-tendencies to an objective situation that was generally moving in totally the opposite direction. With an ebb in the class struggle and with the capitalist system stabilising, Taaffe’s idea of our forces launching new workers‘ parties by abandoning entrism was totally misplaced. It generated harmful illusions. It was for this reason that Ted Grant and Alan Woods opposed it, and certainly not because they believed that entrism could yield significant results at that time.

The coup in the USSR and the collapse of Stalinism

But the central debate was about Stalinism. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR, which took place between August and December 1991, definitively shifted the balance in favour of capitalism, which saw new potential markets of over two and a half billion consumers open up before it. This inevitably had an incredibly politically demoralising effect on most communist activists.

The prospect of the emergence of a crisis of overproduction was pushed back at least twenty years, to 2008 when it finally erupted. In the meantime, the period represented a breath of fresh air for the capitalist system. What attitude did the two fractions of the CWI have towards this issue?

Alan Woods and Ted Grant wrote a text entitled, The Truth about the Coup. It explained that, during the 1991 coup in Russia, there was, on one side, a Stalinist faction led by Ianaiev, and on the other pro-capitalist protests led by Yeltsin.

On the other hand, an article published in Militant on 22 August 1991 dealing with the same events, repeated the word ‚people‘ 13 times. It spoke of “people power”, the “Soviet people”, the “Russian people”. What was striking about these articles was the absolute lack of class content. In fact, the point was that the working class was almost completely absent from these demonstrations: there were strikes recorded only in two factories in Leningrad and among a of section of the miners in Kuzbass and Vorkuta.

The Taaffist majority sided with Yeltsin, which was tantamount to siding with the counter-revolution. The minority appealed for independent action by the proletariat. This did not mean supporting the Stalinists‘ coup, but promoting workers‘ mobilisation independent of the two sides in the struggle. We quote from The Truth About the Coup:

“In the next paragraph, however, the authors… drag in yet another profound contradiction, that ‘these developments [the fall of the Stalinist regimes] remove a major obstacle to the politicisation of US workers and greater readiness to accept socialist ideas.’

“One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. The overthrow of Stalinism, in and of itself, does not in any way predispose US workers to accept the ideas of socialism. That depends on who does the overthrowing and for what purpose. This assertion about US workers, more than anything else, reveals the complete lack of understanding of the IS majority faction.

“Had the bureaucracy been really overthrown by a revolutionary movement of the working class, that would have had an extremely revolutionary effect on the psychology, not only of the workers of the USA, but everywhere.

“But the fact that this task was accomplished by the forces of the bourgeois counter-revolution has precisely the opposite effect. And all the ‘contradictory’ twisting and turning in the world will not alter this fact. How does the victory of Yeltsin and the pro-capitalist gangsters ‘predispose the US workers to accept socialist ideas?’ It will merely reinforce the propaganda of the bourgeois that ‘socialism is finished’, ‘nationalisation does not work’ and the ‘market economy is the only possible economic system’.”

A glaring mistake, but the Taaffites were not the only Trotskyist organisation to make it. The Morenistas in Argentina and the Lambertists in France, groups that were considerable in size (around 6,000 members), confused capitalist counter-revolution with political revolution or an unspecified ‚democratic revolution‘.

Lambert had developed the ‚line of democracy‘ in 1984. So had Moreno. In a series of seminars of the mid-1980s, he questioned Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution in favour of the concept of ‚democratic revolution‘. Meanwhile, the less said the better about the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International and the French Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) which saw in Gorbachev’s Perestroika a process of self-reform of Stalinism.

All these organisations, which had some clout in the 1980s, paid dearly for these mistakes.

Eventually, Ted Grant and Alan Woods were expelled from the CWI in 1992. Once again, they had to rebuild the organisation from scratch.

Thus, in 1992 the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) was born in Tarragona. In addition to the British minority were almost all of the Spanish, Italian, Pakistani and Mexican sections and minority fractions from Sweden, Germany, Greece, France and Denmark. It was a new beginning.

After a long process lasting thirty years, which we will discuss in future articles, we have accumulated crucial theoretical and political capital and experience on the basis of which we have now launched the new Revolutionary Communist International, which sets as its goal the task of becoming a decisive factor in the construction of a new revolutionary International and a mass force, without which it would be impossible to pave the way for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a communist society.

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