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The living link between the militants of the Fourth International and the revolutionary generation of the 1920s broke with
Trotsky's death.
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The leaders of the Fourth International who became the official trustees of Trotsky's heritage were not in a position to pass on
the organisational and practical revolutionary experience of the best years of the Third International, let alone build on it.
At best, those who remained loyal to Trotskyism to the end only maintained the revolutionary link on a theoretical level by
upholding the letter of the revolutionary programme. Compared to so many others who ended up rejecting Trotskyism altogether,
this is not to be scorned. If there are still today militants and groups all over the world who see themselves as Trotskyists,
as revolutionary communists fighting for the proletarian revolution, it is due to these comrades. But this is far from
sufficient to establish a new worldwide party of the proletarian revolution, which was the goal and the very reason for
launching the Fourth International.
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In the years following Trotsky's death, the militants and the organisations which made up the Fourth International had to
confront the dramatic conditions created by the World War. But this alone cannot justify everything that happened, in particular
the ineffectiveness of the Fourth International in the immediate post-war period. For it was for just such a period that the
Fourth International had been created in the first place.
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The Fourth International and the Trotskyist movement remained an ideological current which could claim supporters all over the
world. But their numbers were always small and they never had either weight or impact in the working class or in the
working-class movement, nor even any real links with them.
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The real class struggle went on even though the revolutionary marxist current had no part in it. This lack of real involvement
gave the Trotskyist movement that particular flavour which its opponents have used time and again as evidence that Trotskyism is
a thing of the past and can only survive in the shape of small, impotent and ridiculous sects.
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Without going into details over the history of the Fourth International, it is true that this can often be reduced to long
strings of quarrels over definitions and slogans, of splits which are such a joy for our opponents and such a pain for our
friends. Militants who have neither weight in the real class struggle nor links with the real working-class movement can be
easily tempted into using words as a substitute for deeds. As long as one does nothing, talking bears no consequences. Why
should militants avoid splitting when their impact remains insignificant whether they split or not?
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But the worst aspect of this history has been that since Trotsky's death, the policy of the Fourth International, of most of its
national sections and later of the various splits which have claimed its heritage, has been a long process of drifting behind
more politically influential currents in the name of 'efficiency'.
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These trends were justified in a number of ways. Sometimes they were described as mere tactics, sometimes they were given a
political or theoretical justification. But they all led one way or another to abandoning in whole or in part the very principle
of revolutionary communism: the duty to preserve, to defend and sometimes to establish from scratch the organisational and
political independence of the proletariat, in particular the duty to preserve the independence of the workers' revolutionary
party whatever the need may be for long or short-term alliances.
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On the contrary these trends involved tail-ending political forces which either no longer represented the working class or
indeed had never represented it. They ended up not only lining up Trotskyist militants behind these political forces but also
actually helped to impose the anti-proletarian policy of these forces on the working class.
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This was the case for instance during World War II, in German-occupied France, several Trotskyist groups lined up behind the
'Resistance', i.e. behind the Stalinist and Gaullist nationalists.
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Again it was the case around 1950, when Michel Pablo advocated that the Fourth International should integrate itself into the
Stalinist and social-democrat organisations. His argument was that in the years and, as he wrote, even in the centuries to come,
only these organisations would be able to play a revolutionary role, in spite of themselves. The turn advocated by Pablo was not
only due to a reaction of panic among revolutionaries who had to face the very difficult situation created by the Cold War. It
was also an extreme but logical consequence of the opportunist line followed over the previous decade.
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In subsequent years the United Secretariat of the Fourth International and Pablo himself were to give up bit by bit the policies
and theories which they had conceived in the 1950's. But they did not give up their systematic search for political forces which
could replace the revolutionary proletariat as well as the revolutionary communist party. They actually renounced building it
even though most of the time they would not admit it.
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Hence the Trotskyists tried to jump on the bandwagon of a whole string of leaders and organisations - Tito, Mao, the Algerian
FLN, Castro, Ho Chi-Minh, Arafat, the South-African ANC, the New-Caledonian nationalist Tjibaou, the Irish Sinn Fein, etc..
These are only a few examples amongst many similar cases.
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It must be said that every one of these attempts was opposed by one section or another of the Trotskyist movement. But most of
the time they were opposed in the name of a different but similar choice. Such was the case for instance with the two factions
of the French 'Parti Communiste Internationaliste', the forunners of today's LCR and PCI, which fought one another in the 1950's
because one had chosen to support the Algerian FLN whereas the other one supported the MNA. Yet both the FLN and the MNA were
nationalist organisations which had nothing to do either with socialism or with the proletariat.
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As a result, fifty years after its foundation, the Fourth International has little to show for itself. Its audience in the
working class has not grown, nor has its impact in the class struggle. And its ranks are no more numerous, only, probably,
somewhat more divided.
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Having said that it must be pointed out, specially for the benefit of those who snigger whenever they hear the word Trotskyism,
that it is the only current which has survived to the left of Stalinism. This fact alone is evidence of the validity of the
Trotskyist programme. It is also to the credit of militants who defended this programme against grossly mistaken policies
despite difficult circumstances.
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However, the Internationalist Communist Union has developed outside the various organisations claiming allegiance to the
tradition of the Fourth International. This was the only way for us to carry out a policy free from any compromise over the
fundamental question of the political and organisational independence of the revolutionary proletariat. But the ICU has
developed on the basis of the Trotskyist programme and, despite deep differences, has tried to maintain as many links as
possible with the Trotskyist movement. The existence of militants and organisations which kept defending the Trotskyist
programme all over the world - however contradictory their policies may have been in relation to the programme - has been an
important help for us. We are conscious of this fact and we acknowledge it.
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For this reason we consider ourselves as part of the Trotskyist movement and we feel in solidarity with it despite all its
weaknesses. For this reason we are Trotskyist, fully and without reservation.
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