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Other documents in English
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Fifty years after the foundation of the Fourth International - What perspectives for internationalist revolutionaries today? Pamphlet published by the ICU
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winter 1988
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The impetus of the American working-class movement.
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The working-class movement on which Trotsky based his hopes of rebuilding an International had one distinctive section - the new
militant generation in the United States, pioneers, lifelong union and political agitators, propagating the class struggle.
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In Europe the working-class movement was busy rebuilding its links and activity underground. Meanwhile, in America, also deeply
in crisis although in a different way, the movement was acting openly and on a mass scale.
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In the USA, in the context of the depression, the upsurge of unionisation was taking on an objective political character. Many
struggles were taking place, often offensive in nature, starting locally and spreading far and wide. For instance the 1934
national textile strike started in the deep South but flooded the rest of the country, involving over 400,000 strikers. It used
the 'flying squadrons' technique: the strikers went from mill to mill; once one was closed down, they jumped into their cars and
drove to the next textile centre, pre-empting any attempt by the police to prevent pickets being set up.
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From 1934 to 1936, communist militants - both Stalinists and Trotskyists - played their part in the wave of strikes over the
recognition of the CIO (Congress for Industrial Organisation), the new industrial union set up as a challenge to the old AFL
(American Federation of Labour). Through this intervention the American communists were trained in the class struggle.
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These struggles nourished the revolutionary imagination and stimulated the activity of the American Trotskyists, most of whom
were intellectuals isolated from the working-class movement. Trotsky suggested to them that: Do you not think it would be
feasible to make a general census of the party and establish who are all the comrades not bound by their jobs to a certain
locality, especially New York? The comrades on relief could then be distributed throughout the provinces in provincial
industrial centres. The best thing, it seems to me, would be to create from these comrades two or three, or so, special brigades
and to send them out for the 'conquest' of a certain town or of a certain branch of industry in this town.
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In 1939, at a time when Trotsky was mostly involved in trying to orientate the work of his American comrades, he stressed time
and again the need for them to find a way to the members of the American Communist Party.
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The long list of obstacles and difficulties which he kept getting in response to his arguments did not deter him. He knew every
item on the list and could even think of a few more. But his line of reasoning was consistently the same: the communist movement
which existed around the Third International was the only fertile soil in which the Fourth International which he wanted to
build could grow.
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Of course the task was difficult, in two different ways: The first task is to compromise this party in the eyes of the workers.
The second is to win as many as possible from the ranks of the party. And yet it had to be done with great patience, without
ever giving up, always bearing in mind the fact that a worker who is awakened by an organisation is thankful to it and it is not
easy to break with it, particularly if he cannot find a new road. We consider him as lost too prematurely. It is not correct.
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Just as the Third International had emerged from the Second, Trotksy's Fourth International could only emerge from the Third, by
attracting the best elements among the masses, the militants and even its leaders. Where else could the necessary forces be
found? There was an absolute necessity to find the means to reach the real living movement - the parties and militants of the
Third International who were the only ones still having communist ideals and skills.
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