Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives' 1935 article by Leon Trotsky, "Open Letter For The Fourth International", that details part of the long, arduous, and frustrating struggle to bring forth the Fourth International under extremely adverse circumstances.
COMMENTARY
This year marks the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International by Leon Trotsky and those internationalist forces that were struggling to create a new revolutionary international during difficult times- including the abandonment of revolutionary struggle by the Stalinists of the Communist International (3rd International) and the Socialist International (2nd International). That long ago unsuccessful effort by Trotsky and the Fourth International awaits its future vindication. Below is a commentary by Trotsky at the time of it's founding.
Delivered: October 1938.
First Published: Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940, pp.141-142.
Translated: By Fourth International.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On October 28, 1938 an inspiring mass meeting in New York celebrated the founding of the Fourth International as well as the tenth anniversary of the Trotskyist movement in this country. American imperialism would not permit Trotsky to be present at that memorable celebration. But an electrical transcription of Trotsky’s speech to the meeting helped to bring him closer.
Trotsky never wasted words; the celebration became for him the occasion to press home two fundamental thoughts. First, the unique nature of the revolutionary party and the relation between the individual and the party: “For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.” Second, such a party cannot be destroyed by Stalin’s murder gangs: “It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them.” Thus did Trotsky, in advance, armor us against deserters and the GPU – EDITORS of FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Comrades and Friends:
I hope that this time my voice will reach you and that I will be permitted in this way to participate in your double celebration. Both events: the tenth anniversary of our American organization as well as the foundation congress of the Fourth International deserve the attention of the workers incomparably more than the war-like gestures of the totalitarian chiefs, the diplomatic intrigues, or the pacifist congresses.
Both events will enter history as important milestones. No one has now the right to doubt that.
It is necessary to remark that the birth of the American group of Bolshevik-Leninists, thanks to the courageous initiative of Comrades Cannon, Shachtman, and Abern, didn’t stand alone. It approximately coincided with the beginning of the systematic international work of the Left Opposition. It is true that the Left Opposition arose in Russia in 1923, but regular work on an international scale began with the Sixth Congress of the Comintern.
Work Began in 1928
Without a personal meeting we reached an agreement with the American pioneers of the Fourth International, before all, on the criticism of the program of the Communist International. Then, in 1928, began that collective work which after ten years led to the elaboration of our own program recently adopted by our International Conference. We have the right to say that the work of this decade was not only persistent and patient, but also honest. The Bolshevik-Leninists, the international pioneers, our comrades across the world, searched the way of the revolution as genuine Marxists, not in their feelings and wishes, but in the analysis of the objective march of events. Above all were we guided by the preoccupation not to deceive others nor ourselves. We searched seriously and honestly. And some important things were found by us. The events confirmed our analysis as well as our prognosis. Nobody can deny it. Now it is necessary that we remain true to ourselves and to our program. It is not easy to do so. The tasks are tremendous, the enemies – innumerable. We have the right to spend our time and our attention on the jubilee celebration only insofar as from the lessons of the past we can prepare ourselves for the future.
The Party Is Everything
Dear friends, we are not a party as other parties. Our ambition is not only to have more members, more papers, more money in the treasury, more deputies. All that is necessary, but only as a means. Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves. The old Internationals - the Second, the Third, that of Amsterdam, we will add to them also the London Bureau are rotten through and through.
The great events which rush upon mankind will not leave of these outlived organizations one stone upon another. Only the Fourth International looks with confidence at the future. It is the world party of Socialist Revolution! There never was a greater task on the earth. Upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility.
Our party demands each of us, totally and completely. Let the philistines hunt their own individuality in empty space. For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.
Yes, our party takes each one of us wholly. But in return it gives to every one of us the highest happiness: the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future, that one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind, and that one’s life will not have been lived in vain.
The fidelity to the cause of the toilers requires from us the highest devotion to our international party. The party, of course, can also be mistaken. By common effort we will correct its mistakes. In its ranks can penetrate unworthy elements. By common effort we will eliminate them. New thousands who will enter its ranks tomorrow will probably be deprived of necessary education. By common effort we will elevate their revolutionary level. But we will never forget that our party is now the greatest lever of history. Separated from this lever, everyone of us is nothing. With this lever in hand, we are all.
Stalin Cannot Frighten Us
We aren’t a party as other parties. It is not in vain that the imperialist reaction persecutes us madly, following furiously at our heals. The assassins at its services are the agents of the Moscow Bonapartistic clique. Our young International already knows many victims. In the Soviet Union they number by thousands. In Spain by dozens. In other countries by units. With gratitude and love we remember them all in these moments. Their spirits continue to fight in our ranks.
The hangmen think in their obtuseness and cynicism that it is possible to frighten us. They err! Under blows we become stronger. The bestial politics of Stalin are only politics of despair. It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them. Friends, we will repeat again in this day of celebration ... IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO FRIGHTEN US.
Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik party and to transform the first Workers’ State into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own program and to transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years! Only ten years! Permit me to finish with a prediction: During the next ten years the program of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth and heaven.
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES!
LONG LIVE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!
L. TROTSKY
Coyoacan, D. F.
October 18, 1938
COMMENTARY
This year marks the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International by Leon Trotsky and those internationalist forces that were struggling to create a new revolutionary international during difficult times- including the abandonment of revolutionary struggle by the Stalinists of the Communist International (3rd International) and the Socialist International (2nd International). That long ago unsuccessful effort by Trotsky and the Fourth International awaits its future vindication. Below is a commentary by Trotsky at the time of it's founding.
Delivered: October 1938.
First Published: Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940, pp.141-142.
Translated: By Fourth International.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On October 28, 1938 an inspiring mass meeting in New York celebrated the founding of the Fourth International as well as the tenth anniversary of the Trotskyist movement in this country. American imperialism would not permit Trotsky to be present at that memorable celebration. But an electrical transcription of Trotsky’s speech to the meeting helped to bring him closer.
Trotsky never wasted words; the celebration became for him the occasion to press home two fundamental thoughts. First, the unique nature of the revolutionary party and the relation between the individual and the party: “For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.” Second, such a party cannot be destroyed by Stalin’s murder gangs: “It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them.” Thus did Trotsky, in advance, armor us against deserters and the GPU – EDITORS of FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Comrades and Friends:
I hope that this time my voice will reach you and that I will be permitted in this way to participate in your double celebration. Both events: the tenth anniversary of our American organization as well as the foundation congress of the Fourth International deserve the attention of the workers incomparably more than the war-like gestures of the totalitarian chiefs, the diplomatic intrigues, or the pacifist congresses.
Both events will enter history as important milestones. No one has now the right to doubt that.
It is necessary to remark that the birth of the American group of Bolshevik-Leninists, thanks to the courageous initiative of Comrades Cannon, Shachtman, and Abern, didn’t stand alone. It approximately coincided with the beginning of the systematic international work of the Left Opposition. It is true that the Left Opposition arose in Russia in 1923, but regular work on an international scale began with the Sixth Congress of the Comintern.
Work Began in 1928
Without a personal meeting we reached an agreement with the American pioneers of the Fourth International, before all, on the criticism of the program of the Communist International. Then, in 1928, began that collective work which after ten years led to the elaboration of our own program recently adopted by our International Conference. We have the right to say that the work of this decade was not only persistent and patient, but also honest. The Bolshevik-Leninists, the international pioneers, our comrades across the world, searched the way of the revolution as genuine Marxists, not in their feelings and wishes, but in the analysis of the objective march of events. Above all were we guided by the preoccupation not to deceive others nor ourselves. We searched seriously and honestly. And some important things were found by us. The events confirmed our analysis as well as our prognosis. Nobody can deny it. Now it is necessary that we remain true to ourselves and to our program. It is not easy to do so. The tasks are tremendous, the enemies – innumerable. We have the right to spend our time and our attention on the jubilee celebration only insofar as from the lessons of the past we can prepare ourselves for the future.
The Party Is Everything
Dear friends, we are not a party as other parties. Our ambition is not only to have more members, more papers, more money in the treasury, more deputies. All that is necessary, but only as a means. Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves. The old Internationals - the Second, the Third, that of Amsterdam, we will add to them also the London Bureau are rotten through and through.
The great events which rush upon mankind will not leave of these outlived organizations one stone upon another. Only the Fourth International looks with confidence at the future. It is the world party of Socialist Revolution! There never was a greater task on the earth. Upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility.
Our party demands each of us, totally and completely. Let the philistines hunt their own individuality in empty space. For a revolutionary to give himself entirely to the party signifies finding himself.
Yes, our party takes each one of us wholly. But in return it gives to every one of us the highest happiness: the consciousness that one participates in the building of a better future, that one carries on his shoulders a particle of the fate of mankind, and that one’s life will not have been lived in vain.
The fidelity to the cause of the toilers requires from us the highest devotion to our international party. The party, of course, can also be mistaken. By common effort we will correct its mistakes. In its ranks can penetrate unworthy elements. By common effort we will eliminate them. New thousands who will enter its ranks tomorrow will probably be deprived of necessary education. By common effort we will elevate their revolutionary level. But we will never forget that our party is now the greatest lever of history. Separated from this lever, everyone of us is nothing. With this lever in hand, we are all.
Stalin Cannot Frighten Us
We aren’t a party as other parties. It is not in vain that the imperialist reaction persecutes us madly, following furiously at our heals. The assassins at its services are the agents of the Moscow Bonapartistic clique. Our young International already knows many victims. In the Soviet Union they number by thousands. In Spain by dozens. In other countries by units. With gratitude and love we remember them all in these moments. Their spirits continue to fight in our ranks.
The hangmen think in their obtuseness and cynicism that it is possible to frighten us. They err! Under blows we become stronger. The bestial politics of Stalin are only politics of despair. It is possible to kill individual soldiers of our army, but not to frighten them. Friends, we will repeat again in this day of celebration ... IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO FRIGHTEN US.
Ten years were necessary for the Kremlin clique in order to strangle the Bolshevik party and to transform the first Workers’ State into a sinister caricature. Ten years were necessary for the Third International in order to stamp into the mire their own program and to transform themselves into a stinking cadaver. Ten years! Only ten years! Permit me to finish with a prediction: During the next ten years the program of the Fourth International will become the guide of millions and these revolutionary millions will know how to storm earth and heaven.
LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES!
LONG LIVE THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!
L. TROTSKY
Coyoacan, D. F.
October 18, 1938
Here is an introduction to Workers Vanguard's commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the Fourth International that gives a little more historic detail about that founding.
ReplyDelete*******
Workers Vanguard No. 922 10 October 2008
70th Anniversary of Founding of Trotsky’s Fourth International
September 3 marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International, world party of socialist revolution. The founding of the Fourth International was a culmination of the fight led by Leon Trotsky to defend the program of Bolshevism (i.e., genuine Marxism). We print below “A Great Achievement,” by Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, announcing the Fourth International’s founding. The piece originally appeared in the October 1938 issue of New International; it is reprinted from the Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38).
Trotsky was instrumental, along with Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders, in the founding of the Third (Communist) International in 1919. World War I had exposed the complete bankruptcy of the Second International, whose sections—with such notable exceptions as the Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian parties—betrayed Marxism by supporting their own bourgeoisies in the war. Meanwhile, the October Revolution was met with a bloody civil war, where the forces of counterrevolution were allied with 14 invading capitalist powers. Trotsky led the Red Army to victory in the Civil War. But the Soviet workers state was bled white, many of its best proletarian fighters having fallen in the struggle to defend the Revolution. By 1923, the Bolsheviks were also faced with the failure of socialist revolutions in the West, especially in Germany. It was under these dire conditions that a conservative, nationalist bureaucratic caste emerged, effecting a political counterrevolution in 1923-24 and consolidating power in the Soviet Union.
Against the Stalinist dogma put forward in late 1924 of “socialism in one country,” which liquidated the program of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, Trotsky and the Left Opposition fought for Leninist internationalism. In retaliation, a series of Stalinist bureaucratic measures would lead, by 1928, to Trotsky’s exile to Alma-Ata and his expulsion from the Soviet Union in February 1929.
But at the 1928 Sixth World Congress of the Comintern held in Moscow, American delegate James P. Cannon and Canadian delegate Maurice Spector read copies of Trotsky’s Critique of the Congress’ draft program, published later in The Third International After Lenin. It was a searing indictment not only of the policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy within the USSR, but also of its disastrous policies internationally. It dealt in particular with the lessons of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, with Stalin & Co.’s policy of liquidation of the Chinese Communist Party into the bourgeois-nationalist Guomindang, which in turn resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Communists and trade unionists.
Trotsky’s Critique won Cannon and his allies to the Left Opposition, for which they were expelled from the American Communist Party in October 1928. The direct corollary to “socialism in one country” was the transformation of the Comintern from an instrument of world revolution into an instrument of the nationalist policies of the Kremlin Stalinist bureaucracy. In 1930, the International Left Opposition was founded in order to wage a factional struggle to restore the Third International to its revolutionary purpose. But by 1933, Stalin’s Comintern could not be awakened by what Trotsky called “the thunder of fascism”—the victory of Hitler’s Nazis without a shot being fired by the powerful, pro-socialist German workers movement.
When this catastrophe did not give rise to outrage, or even significant dissent, within the ranks of the Third International, Trotsky concluded that that body had proved itself utterly dead as a force for revolution. He called for the building of a new, Fourth International. In 1935, the Third International at its Seventh Congress explicitly codified its program of class collaboration with the policy of the “People’s Front.” The Stalinized Comintern went on to play an aggressive counterrevolutionary role in the Spanish Civil War, slaughtering revolutionary fighters in order to appease the “democratic” imperialists and head off proletarian revolution in Spain.
The founding conference of the Fourth International was held in Périgny, France, on the eve of the interimperialist Second World War, as the Trotskyist movement faced murderous repression internationally at the hands of capitalist regimes of all stripes, from fascist to bourgeois-democratic, and the Stalinists.
The conference adopted as its basic programmatic document Trotsky’s “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International,” popularly known as the Transitional Program. Trotsky considered the founding of the Fourth International the most important work of his political life. Writing in 1935 (printed in Trotsky’s Diary in Exile—1935), he noted:
“Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command…. The same could by and large be said of the Civil War….
“But now my work is ‘indispensable’ in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve.”
In 1940, the dirty work of a Stalinist assassin would finally silence this great revolutionary. But it could not obliterate his massive volume of revolutionary work, including the construction of the Fourth International. Indeed, Trotsky’s final fight was against a petty-bourgeois minority in the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) that, as the Second World War got under way, wanted to jettison the program of unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state.
Unlike the Second and Third Internationals, the Fourth International never betrayed; it was destroyed in the early 1950s by the liquidationist forces led by Michel Pablo. Faced with the onset of the imperialist Cold War and the creation of Stalinist-ruled deformed workers states in East and Central Europe, the Pabloites denied the need for a Trotskyist vanguard. The Pabloites looked to the Stalinists, social democrats and, eventually, Third World nationalists, arguing that they could be pressured to outline a “roughly” revolutionary course.
The struggle against Pabloism in the Fourth International was led by Cannon, albeit partially, belatedly and on the SWP’s own national terrain. The SWP would later take quite another tack, that of seeking “convergence” with the Pabloites in the 1963 “reunification,” which formed the “United Secretariat” (USec). It is beyond the scope of this introduction to deal in a substantive or thorough fashion with the post-World War II Pabloite degeneration of the Fourth International. We refer readers to “Genesis of Pabloism” (Spartacist No. 21, Fall 1972), Prometheus Research Series No. 4, “Yugoslavia, East Europe and the Fourth International: The Evolution of Pabloist Liquidationism” (March 1993).
The forebears of the Spartacist League, the Revolutionary Tendency (RT), waged a fight within the SWP against, among other things, its perversion of revolutionary Trotskyism in order to unify with Pablo and his ilk. For this, the RT was bureaucratically expelled from the SWP, which quickly degenerated from centrism into outright reformism (see our 1984 pamphlet The Socialist Workers Party: An Obituary).
Comrade Trotsky insisted that revolutionaries must swim against the stream, as indeed he did and as we strive to do in order to reforge a Fourth International that Trotsky would recognize as his own.