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International Committee of the Fourth International

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The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953.

Today, two Trotskyist internationals claim to be the continuations of the ICFI:

  • one with sections named Socialist Equality Party (SEP) which publishes the World Socialist Web Site along with the publishing house Mehring Books, formerly named Labor Publications.[1] This has a youth section, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, and claims on its website to have SEP sections in a number of countries, with the most notable sections being in Australia, Germany and the United States.
  • another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.[2]

History

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1938-61: The Fourth International and USFI vs ICFI

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The Fourth International (FI) was founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his followers, who had previously been organised, since 1923, as the International Left Opposition within the Communist International. its American section was the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), led by James P. Cannon. Its British section was the Revolutionary Socialist League, which merged with the smaller Workers' International League (WIL) in 1944 to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). One of the leaders of the WIL was Gerry Healy, who would later split from the RCP to form "the Club", which became the Socialist Labour League, later (from 1973) called Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). Cannon and Healy were close politically.

In 1953, the US SWP's national committee issued an Open Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World[3] and organised the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). This was a public faction which initially included, in addition to the SWP, Healy's British section The Club, the Internationalist Communist Party in France (then led by Pierre Lambert), Nahuel Moreno's party in Argentina and the Austrian and Chinese sections of the FI. The sections of the ICFI withdrew from the FI's International Secretariat, which suspended their voting rights. Both sides claimed they constituted a majority of the former International.[4][5]

Over the following decade, the ICFI referred to the rest of the International as the "International Secretariat of the Fourth International", emphasising its view that the Secretariat did not speak for the International as a whole.[6]

In 1958, the US SWP adopted a policy of "regroupment": pursuit of former members of Stalinist Communist parties, who had been disillusioned by the Secret Speech.[7]: 844–845  In 1961, Tim Wohlforth, James Robertson, and other SWP members who opposed regroupment created a tendency within the SWP, the Revolutionary Tendency (RT). RT saw the SWP as shifting toward the ISFI, led by Michel Pablo. In 1962, the RT in turn split: Robertson's majority kept the name. Wohlforth's minority renamed itself the Reorganized Minority Tendency (RMT).[7]: 866 

By 1961 the ICFI had split politically: Lambert’s Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) in France and Healy’s Socialist Labour League (SLL) in Britain arguing that a workers' state had not been created in Cuba, putting them at odds with the American SWP and the other organisations in the ICFI.[8] By 1963, the split was also organizational. Each side held a congress at which it claimed to be the majority of the ICFI.[9] On the one hand, the remaining Austrian, Chinese and New Zealand IC groups, which had not already unified, met at a congress with the SWP and voted to take part in the reunification congress. On the other hand, the PCI and SLL called an "International Conference of Trotskyists" to continue the work of the ICFI under their own leadership.[10]

1962-85: The reunified International and the split on ICFI

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In 1962 the ICFI and ISFI formed a Parity Commission to organise a common World Congress. At the 1963 reunification congress, the sections of the IC and IS reunified, with two exceptions: the British and French sections of the ICFI.[11] In June 1963, the reunified Fourth International elected a United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), by which name the organisation as a whole is often still referred.[11][12]

After the American, Austrian, Chinese, Latin American and Swiss parties of the ICFI agreed to reunification with the FI, Healy’s Club (later WRP) controlled the residual ICFI until its fragmentation in 1985.

In September 1964, the SWP expelled Wohlforth and the RMT, who created the American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI) and launched the biweekly Bulletin of International Socialism.[7]: 866, 917–918, 924  [13] ACFI maintained connections with Healy and the rump ICFI, which they considered the legitimate Trotskyist movement. ACFI became the American section of the ICFI.

In 1966, ACFI renamed itself to the Workers League (WL).[7]: 866  In 1973, WL entered serious organizational crisis. About 150 members and most of its founding leaders left. At Healey's insistence, Wohlforth was forced out of leadership.[7]: 927 

1985+: After Healy

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In 1985, Healy was expelled from the WRP.[14] By then, concern as to Healy's financial, political and intelligence links with the Libyan and Iraqi governments had risen within the party to the point at which it imploded. The final straw was an allegation by Aileen Jennings, Healy's former secretary and "close personal companion" over 19 years, that Healy had sexually abused female members of the WRP.[15]

The WRP collapsed into eight or nine competing groupuscules.[16] One faction, under the leadership of Sheila Torrence, retained the name WRP and daily newspaper The News Line. A further split from this, in 1987, was the Healy-loyal Marxist Party, including Vanessa and Corin Redgrave.[17] Both groupuscules maintained small international organisations claiming the name ICFI, the former still extant, the latter moribund by the late 1990s.

Another faction supported the perspective advanced by ICFI and Workers League National Secretary David North who won the support of a majority of sections of the ICFI to expel the WRP from the organization, deciding that any supporters of theirs among the WRP would have to undergo a new application process to be readmitted.[18] They formed the WRP (Internationalist), later renamed the International Communist Party. They argued that “the WRP tended to view the international organization as little more than an adjunct to its own British-based organization”.[19]

In 1995, parties affiliated with ICFI each renamed themselves as Socialist Equality Party. In 1998, the ICFI launched the World Socialist Web Site.[20] ICFI runs the publishing house Mehring Books, formerly named Labor Publications.[21] In 2006, the Socialist Equality Party relaunched its student movement (the Students for Social Equality) as the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE). In 2012, the SEP renamed the ISSE as the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE).[22]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "About Us Mehring Books". mehring.com. Archived from the original on 2016-10-25. Retrieved 2025-11-03.
  2. ↑ "Workers Revolutionary Party - About Us".
  3. ↑ Socialist Workers Party (16 November 1953). "Open Letter to Trotskyists Throughout the World". Militant.
  4. ↑ Pablo, Michel; Frank, Pierre; Germain, Ernest (23 November 1953). "Resolution forming the International Committee". SWP Internal Bulletin.
  5. ↑ "Letter from the International Secretariat "to all Members and All Organizations of the International Committee"". Education for Socialists Bulletin. July 1955.
  6. ↑ "Resolution of the International Committee instructing publication of the documents, August 24, 1973". Workers Press. 29 August 1973.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Alexander, Robert J. (1991). International Trotskyism, 1929–1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement. Duke University Press. pp. 761–951. ISBN 978-0-8223-0975-8.
  8. ↑ The International Trotskyist Movement and the Postwar Revolutions: An Analysis of its Theoretical and Programmatic (Re)Interpretations (1944–1963), Marcio Lauria Monteiro
  9. ↑ The Poisoned Well, Workers' Socialist League, July 1978
  10. ↑ Combats et débats de la IVe Internationale -‘I De la réunification de 1963 à nos jours, François Moreau, juillet 1990
  11. 1 2 Dobbs, Farrell; Hansen, Joseph (Fall 1963). "Reunification of the Fourth International". International Socialist Review.
  12. ↑ Maitan, Livio (October 2006). Per una storia della IV internazionale: La testimonianza di un comunista controcorrente [For a history of the IV International: The testimony of a communist against the tide] (in Italian). Rome. ISBN 9788889772089.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  13. ↑ Tim Wohlforth, The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994; pp. 123–124.
  14. ↑ "Workers' Party Founder is Thrown Out". The Times. London. 24 October 1985. Retrieved 10 May 2016. (subscription required)
  15. ↑ Spencer, John (10 September 1994). "Bedtime stories". The Guardian.
  16. ↑ Malik, Rifat (19 April 1995). "Veterans and students form backbone of radical survivors: What's left?". The Guardian. p. 2.
  17. ↑ Gregson, John (2019), "The Revolutionary Marxists: The Socialist Labour League and International Socialism", Marxism, Ethics and Politics, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 89–134, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03371-2_4, ISBN 978-3-030-03370-5, S2CID 158748605, retrieved 2022-08-30{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  18. ↑ https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/how-the-wrp-betrayed-trotskyism/00.html
  19. ↑ "A Further Comment on the Cause and Significance of the Split in the ICFI". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 2026-04-15.
  20. ↑ "World Socialist Web Site". Archived from the original on 12 December 1998.
  21. ↑ "About Mehring Books,", October 2016.
  22. ↑ "Resolutions of the SEP Congress: Build the International Youth and Students for Social Equality". September 3, 2012.
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