Fourth International - Second World Congress

Second World Congress

The Second World Congress in April 1948 was attended by delegates from 22 sections. It debated a range of resolutions on the Jewish Question, Stalinism, the colonial countries and the specific situations facing sections in certain countries. By this point the FI was united around the view that the Eastern European "buffer states" were still capitalist countries.

The Congress was especially notable for bringing the International into much closer contact with Trotskyist groups from across the globe. These included such significant groups as the Revolutionary Workers' Party of Bolivia and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in what was then Ceylon, but the previously large Vietnamese Trotskyist groups had mostly been eliminated or absorbed by the supporters of Ho Chi Minh.

After the Second World Congress in 1948, the International Secretariat attempted to open communications with Josip Broz Tito's regime in Yugoslavia. In their analysis, it differed from the rest of the Eastern Bloc because it was established by the partisans of World War II who had fought against Nazi occupation, as opposed to by Stalin's invading armies. The British RCP, led by Jock Haston and supported by Ted Grant, were highly critical of this move.