Fourth International

Fourth International

The Fourth International (FI) (founded in 1938) is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky (Trotskyists), with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism. Historically, the Fourth International was established in France in 1938: Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Comintern or Third International to have become "lost to" Stalinism and incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own, competing "Fourth International".

Today, there is no longer a single, cohesive Fourth International. Throughout the better part of its existence, the Fourth International was hounded by agents of the Soviet secret police, repressed by capitalist countries such as France and the United States and rejected by followers of the Soviet Union and later Maoism as illegitimate – a position these communists still hold today. It struggled to maintain contact under these conditions of simultaneous illegality and scorn around much of the world during World War II, because when workers' uprisings did occur, they were usually under the influence of Soviet-inspired, anarchist, social democratic, Maoist, or militant nationalist groups, leading to further defeats for the FI and its Trotskyists, who never gathered similar support. Even after the Soviet repudiation of Stalin and de-stalinization, Trotskyism continued to be regarded as politically discredited and there was very little renewed support for Trotskyist ideas, particularly when it came to those already committed to another form of communism. Ideologically, Maoists, left communists, and anarchists all consider Trotskyism, and thus also the Fourth International, to be ideologically bankrupt and impotent. Despite this, many parts of Latin America and Europe continue to have large Trotskyist groupings, with followings both young and old, who are attracted to its "anti-Stalinist" positions and its rhetoric of workers' internationalism. Quite a few of these groups carry the label "Fourth Internationalist" either in their organisation's name, major political position documents, or both.

The Fourth International, in line with its Trotskyist underpinnings, tended to view the Comintern as worthy of conditional support even considering its corruption, and although it regarded its own ideas as more advanced and thus superior to those of the Third International, it did not actively seek the Comintern's destruction. It has not succeeded in capitalizing on the renewed interest in socialism and do not operate as a cohesive entity in the manner of the prior internationals. The FI suffered a major split in 1940 and an even more significant split in 1953. A partial reunification occurred in 1963, but the international never recovered enough to re-emerge as a single transnational grouping. Trotskyists' response to that situation has been in the form of its broad array of Trotskyist Internationals, almost all of whom are bitterly divided over which organisation represents the "true" Fourth Internationalist political continuity.