Campaign for a new worker's international
The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by groups of socialists and communists to create a new workers' international.
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The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by groups of socialists and communists to create a new workers' international.
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There have been several previous international workers' organisations, and the call for a Fifth International presupposes the recognition of four in particular, each of which regarded itself as the successor to the previous ones:
Although it still exists, the fragmentation of Trotskyism has resulted in the call for a fifth international.
In November 1938, two months after the founding congress of the Fourth International, seven members of the Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification on trial in Barcelona declared their support for a "fighting Fifth International". [1] The Argentine Trotskyist Liborio Justo called for a Fifth International when he broke from Trotskyism in 1941. [2] Another call for a Fifth International was made by Lyndon LaRouche after leaving the Spartacist League in 1965. [3] Later, a "Fifth International of Communists" was founded in 1994 by several small former Trotskyist groups around the Movement for a Socialist Future.
In 2003, the League for a Revolutionary Communist International called for the formation of the Fifth International "as soon as possible – not in the distant future but in the months and years ahead". [4] The group became the League for the Fifth International (L5I), which as of 2010 has sections in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Pakistan, Sri Lanka (the Socialist Party of Sri Lanka), Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The League for the Fifth International campaigns in the European Social Forum and the international labour movement for the formation of a new International. Splinter group the Communist Workers' Group in New Zealand also argues for a Fifth International.
Hugo Chávez announced in 2007 that he would seek to create a new international: "2008 could be a good time to convoke a meeting of left parties in Latin America to organise a new international, an organisation of parties and movements of the left in Latin America and the Caribbean". [5] [6]
The League for the Fifth International critically supported the proposal. [7]
Poet Allen Ginsberg mentions a Fifth International in "Footnote to Howl", the final part of his poem "Howl". [8]
The card game Illuminati by Steve Jackson Games features the Fifth International as a "communist" and "conservative" group. [9] [10]
In the novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein while discussing the different political ideologies of Professor de la Paz, Wyoming Knott, and Manuel O'Kelly-Davis as they attempted to design a revolution that would work to free Luna from Luna Authority control. The character Wyoming Knott identified herself as a Fifth Internationalist but stated she was "no Marxist".
Chronologically by ideology:
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg.
The Fourth International (FI) was established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was an international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism, and which was led and controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress in 1920 to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the dissolution of the Second International in 1916.
The Fourth International Posadist is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was founded in 1962 by J. Posadas, who had been the leader of the Latin America Bureau of the Fourth International in the 1950s, and of the Fourth International's section in Argentina. Between their split from the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1962 and Posadas' death in 1981, Posadists developed a strain of communism that included several fringe ideas, which brought them into conflict with more mainstream left-wing groups.
The League for Socialist Action (LSA) was the premier Trotskyist organization in Canada for much of the 20th Century. Throughout its history the LSA went through many different names and iterations. In chronological order it was known as: the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) of Canada, the Workers Party of Canada, the Socialist Policy Group, the Socialist Workers League, the Revolutionary Workers Party, The Club, the Socialist Education League, and the League for Socialist Action.
The Revolutionary Workers League was a Canadian Trostkyist party formed on 8 August 1977 by the fusion of the Revolutionary Marxist Group and its Quebec counterpart, the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionnaire, with the League for Socialist Action. The organization marked the reunification of the Canadian section of the Fourth International and had a membership of several hundred people. The group published a monthly newspaper in English, Socialist Voice, as well as a French-language publication, La Lutte Ouvrière.
The International Revolutionary Marxist Centre was an international association of left-socialist parties. The member-parties rejected both mainstream social democracy and the Third International.
The Irish Workers' Group (IWG) was a Marxist political party in Ireland. It originated as the Irish Workers Union, which later called itself the Irish Communist Group, and contained a variety of people who all considered themselves to be Marxists. Some were from an Irish Republican background, and some, including Gerry Lawless, also became involved in Saor Éire.
A political international is a transnational organization of political parties having similar ideology or political orientation. The international works together on points of agreement to co-ordinate activity.
Harry Wicks was a British socialist activist.
The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism. It consists mostly of social-democratic, socialist and labour political parties and organisations.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat (ISFI) and the International Committee (ICFI), reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued the work of the dissolved First International, though excluding the powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement. While the international had initially declared its opposition to all warfare between European powers, most of the major European parties ultimately chose to support their respective states in World War I. After splitting into pro-Allied, pro-Central Powers, and antimilitarist factions, the international ceased to function. After the war, the remaining factions of the international went on to found the Labour and Socialist International, the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, and the Communist International.
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, social democratic, communist and anarchist groups and trade unions that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St. Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.
Orthodox Trotskyism is a branch of Trotskyism which aims to adhere more closely to the philosophy, methods and positions of Leon Trotsky and the early Fourth International, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx than other avowed Trotskyists.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
During the trial Poum defendants stressed that, while they 'admired Trotsky,' they regarded his Fourth International as too academic and favored a fighting Fifth International.
