Fourth International (post-reunification) - After 1963

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, but discussions continued on the topic. The PCI and SLL maintained the ICFI under their own leadership, opposing key elements in the reunification documents, including the view that the July 26 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. 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 reunification in itself, the continuing ICFI argued that a deeper political discussion was needed to ensure that Pablo's errors were not deepened.

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. 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.

The ICFI unsuccessfully repeated its appeal for a deep discussion with the reunified Fourth International at the end of 1963, and on later occasions. Its 1966 conference called for a Fourth International Conference. 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". Similar approaches were rejected in 1973.

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.