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What then was this new-born International?
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Of course, it had a programme: a consistent set of analyses, of perspectives and methods of struggle. This alone was an enormous
asset.
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Even Leopold Trepper, the organiser of the 'Red Orchestra', one of the largest intelligence networks during World War II (an
instrument which the Stalinist bureaucracy also put to work for the benefit of the imperialist camp fighting against Hitler),
paid tribute to the Trotskyists in his memoirs: They waged a total war against Stalinism and they were alone to do so..., but
they should never forget that they had a huge advantage over us, a consistent political system which could replace Stalinism....
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Of course, the Trotskyists do not forget that. They know that this is an enormous asset. But they also know that it is not
enough to have the right ideas, nor even a consistent programme, in order to convince.
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When the Fourth International was declared in 1938, so was its weakness. Trotsky had no time for complacency. This weakness was
his starting point when he wrote The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a political crisis of the
leadership of the proletariat. This was the very first sentence in the Transitional Programme, the founding programme of the
Fourth International.
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No, there was no worldwide party of proletarian revolution. In fact Trotsky was probably more isolated than he had ever been. He
had failed to set up a leadership. He had failed to win over to his perspectives even one section of the real working-class
movement. He had failed to provoke any breaks from the leaderships of the Second and Third International, or from the trade
union movement.
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In terms of numbers, the new International was minute even though it had already militants and sections scattered all over the
world. In 1936 a first conference for the launching of the Fourth International had gathered in Paris representatives from nine
countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USSR and USA. By the time of the launching
conference, there were already groups in twenty-two other countries who sent apologies. Some of these groups failed to make it
to the launching conference because of the conditions in which they operated - dictatorship and repression. But for most of them
it was because of their extreme weakness. And yet, already, there were Trotskyist militants in all five continents.
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But numbers were not the main weakness of the new International, which lay in the kind of militants whom it brought together, in
their social and political background, in their political experience, in their relationship with the proletariat and with the
working-class movement.
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There were exceptions though, like James Cannon, one of the founders of the American Communist Party, who had come over to
Trotskyism in 1928. Che'n Tu-hsiu, the founder of the Chinese Communist Party, who joined Trotskyism after the defeat of the
Chinese Revolution in 1927, could have been another exception. However, being jailed by Chiang Kai-shek and then isolated in
China under Japanese occupation (where he died later), he remained cut off from the new International and was unable to help it.
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The overwhelming majority of the Trotskyist militants were intellectuals. Most of those who had previous political experience
had come out of the social-democracy not of the communist parties. At best they had been members of the latter for a short
period, but at a time when these parties were already controlled by the Stalinist bureaucracy. What little politics they had
learned in those parties had nothing to do with Leninism and bolshevism.
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Most of the militants who had come out of the Third International a few years before to join the Left Opposition had already
left. Yet they would have been best qualified to pass on to the younger militants the real revolutionary traditions of
bolshevism and of the Third International. Many had been murdered by Hitler's thugs or, more often, by Stalin's - like the
Russian militants, like Trotsky's son Leon Sedov, like the German militant Rudolf Klement. Others like Andres Nin in Spain had
slowly drifted to the right.
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The fact was that in 1938 the Fourth International was no stronger than the Left Opposition had been in 1933. Moreover three
quarters of those who had made up the Left Opposition in 1933 had since broken away from Trotskyism.
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Trotsky was clear about the people whom he was regrouping within the Fourth International. His assessment of them is spelled out
consistenly. In 1939, he noted: This environment creates special groups of elements around our banner. There are courageous
elements who do not like to swim with the current - it is their character. Then there are intelligent elements of bad character
who were never disciplined, who always looked for a more radical or more independent tendency and found our tendency, but all of
them are more or less outsiders from the general current of the workers' movement. Their value inevitably has its negative side.
He who swims against the stream is not connected with the masses. Also the social composition of every revolutionary movement in
the beginning is not of workers. It is the intellectuals, semi-intellectuals, or workers connected with the intellectuals who
are dissatisfied with the existing organisations... We are all very critical toward the social composition of our organisation
and we must change it; but we must understand that this social composition did not fall from heaven, but was determined by the
objective situation and by our historic mission in this period.
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Without doubt the objective situation accounted for the social and political composition of the newly- born Fourth
International. Ten or fifteen years earlier a period of retreat had started for the working-class movement as well as a period
of decline for the revolutionary movement. When one defeat follows another, when fascism is spreading over the world, when the
official 'Marxism' is the most powerful organisation of deception of the workers, was Trotsky's own description of this period.
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By the time the Fourth International was founded, Stalinism had succeeded in isolating the revolutionary marxist movement from
the real working-class movement. On one hand, this was done physically by jailing or murdering the best elements of a whole
generation. On the other hand, politically Stalinism laid claim to be the inheritor of the Russian Revolution and of bolshevism
in front of the working class worldwide.
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During the decisive years of the struggle aginst the Left Opposition within the Third International, the Stalinists had taken an
ultra-left course - that of the 'Third Period'. This falsely radical course was a temporary one which only served to pave the
way for the ultra-opportunistic course that followed - that of the 'Popular Front'. But because of this apparent radicalism,
Stalinism had succeeded in trapping the Left Opposition in a position where it looked more moderate and less revolutionary,
eventually isolating it.
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The objective conditions explained the state of the revolutionary movement. But having assessed the situation, the task of the
revolutionaries was, as Trotsky pointed out himself, to change it. This is what the Trotskyists either found to be impossible or
found themselves to be unable to do. They failed then and they have failed in the 50 years since.
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It was the situation of the Fourth International which made such a tragedy of Trotsky's murder. Trotsky was not only a leader of
outstanding intellectual capacity - although this alone would have made his death an immense loss for the movement. Above all he
was the only representative of the revolutionary tradition in the Fourth International comprised as it was of men and women with
no such tradition, whatever their individual qualities. In addition to his intellect Trotsky alone embodied the experience of
the movement without which it was impossible to define a policy for the class. He alone had enough credibility and prestige for
such a policy to attract the militant generations of the Third International either during or after the war.
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He was the only one who could pass on the experience accumulated by the revolutionary proletarian movement, particularly that of
the Russian Revolution and of Bolshevism. His death broke a vital link with this experience. This was obviously the reason for
his murder in Coyoacan on 21 August 1940.
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