The Fourth International (FI) is a Trotskyist political international that was founded in 1963.
Following a ten-year schism, in 1963 the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) reunited.
In 2003, the United Secretariat was replaced by an Executive Bureau and an International Committee, although some other Trotskyists still refer to the organisation as the USFI or USec.
History
Background
The ISFI was the leadership body of the Fourth International, established in 1938. In 1953 many prominent members of the International, and supported by the majority of the Austrian, British, Chinese, French, New Zealand and Swiss sections together with the U.S. Socialist Workers Party organized against the views of Michel Pablo, a central leader of the ISFI who successfully argued for the FI to adapt to the growth of the social democratic and communist parties. This led to disagreements between supporters of the ISFI and those parties on how to build revolutionary parties. These tensions developed into a split, leading to the suspension of those parties which had formed the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) late in November 1953.
Over the following ten years a majority of the two sides developed similar approaches to a number of major international problems: opposing Stalinism during the 1956 crises in Poland and Hungary, and supporting the Algerian War of Independence and the 1959 Cuban Revolution. At the same time, parties in the ISFI had retreated from Pablo's orientation to the communist parties. In 1960, the sections of the ICFI and ISFI reunited in Chile, India and Japan. In 1962, the political convergence between the majorities on both sides was strong enough for the ISFI and ICFI to establish a Parity Commission to prepare a joint World Congress. That congress aimed to reunify the Fourth International.
Lead-up to reunification Some groups on both sides did not support the movement towards reunificationCombats et débats de la Quatrième Internationale: 1963 to Present. In the run-up to the 1961 congress of the ISFI the supporters of the Argentine Juan Posadas, a leader of the Latin American Secretariat, found themselves in agreement with the supporters of Michel Pablo in stressing the primacy of the anti-colonial revolution: the majority in the ISFI placed a greater emphasis on developing activity in EuropeCombats et débats de la IVe Internationale -‘I De la réunification de 1963 à nos jours. However, Posadas and Pablo developed different reactions to the split in Stalinism: Posadas tended towards Mao Zedong, while Pablo was closer to Nikita Khrushchev and Josip Broz Tito.History of the International Workers’ LeagueThe degeneration and collapse of the Fourth International: in defence of our heritage, Revolutionary Communist International, 04 July 2025
A similar development happened on the ICFI side. By 1961 the ICFI had split politically, the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) in France and the 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.The International Trotskyist Movement and the Postwar Revolutions: An Analysis of its Theoretical and Programmatic (Re)Interpretations (1944–1963), Marcio Lauria Monteiro By 1963, the split was also organizational. Each side held a congress at which it claimed to be the majority of the ICFI.The Poisoned Well, Workers Socialist League, July 1978 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, Pierre Lambert's PCI and Gerry Healy's SLL called an "International Conference of Trotskyists" to continue the work of the ICFI under their own leadership.Combats et débats de la IVe Internationale -‘I De la réunification de 1963 à nos jours, François Moreau, juillet 1990
Seventh World Congress: Reunification The June 1963 Reunification Congress,Farrell Dobbs & Joseph Hansen, "Reunification of the Fourth International", International Socialist Review, Fall 1963; Livio Maitan, "Per una storia della Quarta Internazionale", Rome, 2002. the seventh, in Rome represented a large majority of the world's Trotskyists in its ranks.
Among ICFI and ISFI groups, only the PCI and the SLL refused to attend; the supporters of Posadas had left in 1962. The congress elected a new leadership team including Ernest Mandel, Pierre Frank, Livio Maitan and Joseph Hansen, who moved to Paris to co-edit World Outlook with Pierre Frank.
It also adopted a strategic resolution drafted by Mandel and Hansen, Dynamics of World Revolution Today"Dynamics of World Revolution Today", International Socialist Review, Fall 1963. which became a touch-stone document for the International over the following decades. It argued that "three main forces of world revolution—the colonial revolution, the political revolution in the degenerated and deformed workers' states, and the proletarian revolution in the imperialist countries—form a dialectical unity. Each force influences the others and receives in return powerful impulses or brakes on its own development." Reflecting on the Cuban Revolution, accomplished without a revolutionary party, is also concluded that "The weakness of the enemy in the backward countries has opened the possibility of coming to power with a blunted instrument." This view was reinforced the following year, through the United Secretariat's resolution On the Character of the Algerian Government"On the Character of the Algerian Government", World Outlook, 21 February 1964. drafted by Joseph Hansen.
The Reunification Congress also adopted a resolution on "The Sino-Soviet Conflict and the situation in the USSR and the other workers' states"."The Sino-Soviet Conflict and the situation in the USSR and the other workers' states", International Socialist Review, Spring 1966. The resolution noted the declining authority of the Kremlin both inside the Communist parties and with anti-imperialist movements such as those in Cuba and Algeria. It viewed 'de-Stalinisation' as a defensive liberalisation by the bureaucracy. The Sino-Soviet split was viewed as reflecting "the different needs of the bureaucracies headed by the two leaderships (...). The search for agreements and above all an over-all agreement with imperialism on the part of the Soviet bureaucracy contradicts the search by the Chinese leaders for more aid and for better defenses against the heavy pressure of imperialism." Pablo's tendency had drawn more optimistic conclusions about the impact of de-Stalinisation. It presented a counter-resolution, but only won minority support along with some places on the International Executive Committee: it publicly broke with the International a year later, claiming that Pablo had been ousted.
After 1963 Lambert's Internationalist Communist Party (PCI) in France and the Socialist Labour League (SLL) in Britain did not take part in the reunification congress, and continued the ICFI banner under their own leadership, opposing key elements in the reunification documents, including the view that the 26th of July Movement had created a workers' state in Cuba. They argued instead that Cuba's revolution did not bring power to the working class; the SLL believed that Cuba had remained a capitalist country.Cliff Slaughter, Revisionism and the Fourth International, Labour Review, Summer 1963. In their view, the International's support for the Cuban and Algerian leaderships reflected a lack of commitment to the building of revolutionary Marxist parties. While not rejecting eventual reunification in principle, the continuing ICFI argued that a deeper political discussion was needed to ensure that "Pablo's errors" were not deepened.Trotskyism Betrayed: The SWP accepts the political method of Pabloite revisionism, 1962, Socialist Labour League
Those within the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who broadly shared this view formed a "Revolutionary Tendency" led by Tim Wohlforth and James Robertson in 1962. They argued that the party should have a full discussion of the meaning of Pabloism and the 1953 split. Along with the remainder of the ICFI, they argued that Cuba's revolution did not prove that the Fourth International was no longer necessary in the colonial countries. However, differences inside the Revolutionary Tendency developed."Call for the reorganization of the minority tendency in the SWP", Trotskyism versus Revisionism, Vol. 4 In 1964, with Wohlforth laying the evidentiary basis for claims of "party disloyalty" against Robertson, the tendency was expelled from the party. In the opinion of Robertson's group, Wohlforth conspired with the SWP leadership to get Robertson's group expelled.Harry Turner, Marxism versus Ultraleftism, p. 89
The ICFI unsuccessfully repeated its appeal for a deep discussion with the reunified Fourth International ("United Secretariat") at the end of 1963, and on later occasions.Gerry Healy, Letter of September 27, Trotskyism versus Revisionism, Vol. 4. Its 1966 conference called for a Fourth International Conference.Resolution in Trotskyism versus Revisionism, Vol. 5 The ICFI approached the secretariat again in 1970, requesting "a mutual discussion that might open the way to the Socialist Labour League and its French sister organisation, the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste, reunifying with the Fourth International".Bob Pitt, Gerry HealyRise and Fall , June 2002, on the What Next? website. Similar approaches were rejected in 1973.Jack Barnes, letter in Trotskyism versus Revisionism, Vol. 5.
A further departure was registered in 1964 when the only mass organisation within the International, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon, was expelled after entering a coalition government in that country. The ISFI had sharply criticised the LSSP's parliamentary tactics in 1960, and the LSSP had been absent from the 1961 congress, but was represented at the 1963 congress by Edmund Samarakkody.Robert J. Alexander, "Trotskyism in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka: Split and Decline of Ceylon/Sri Lanka Trotskyism", in International Trotskyism 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement, Duke University Press, 1991.
By 1964 the LSSP's leadership abandoned the party's longstanding opposition to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), completing a political turn it had attempted in 1960, until the Sixth World Congress condemned the LSSP for offering support to the SLFP. In 1964, the International also opposed the entrance of the LSSP into a coalition government, with Pierre Frank addressing the LSSP's June 1964 conference to explain the United Secretariat's views. The International severed relations with the LSSP; it supported a split at the LSSP conference, supported by around a quarter of its membership and led by Bala Tampoe, a trade union leader, and 14 members of the LSSP's central committee. Tampoe and other LSSP dissidents organised the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary), which became the Ceylonese section of the International.
Eighth World Congress: Anti-imperialist focus