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 a reunified Fourth International 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 denounced the international and 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 American activist Lyndon LaRouche after leaving the Spartacist League in 1965. [3] Later, a "Fifth International of Communists" was founded in 1994 by the Movement for a Socialist Future and several small former Trotskyist groups. In 2015, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement called for the formation of a Fifth International based on Maoism–Third Worldism. [4]
In 2003, the League for a Revolutionary Communist International, originally founded in 1989, called for the formation of the Fifth International "as soon as possible – not in the distant future but in the months and years ahead". [5] The group became the League for the Fifth International (L5I), which as of 2010 had sections in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. [6] L5I describes itself as "an organization of communists and Trotskyists". [5] L5I campaigns in the European Social Forum and the international labour movement for the formation of a new international. The Communist Workers' Group in New Zealand, which splintered from L5I, 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". [7] [8]
The League for the Fifth International critically supported the proposal. [9]
Poet Allen Ginsberg mentions a Fifth International in "Footnote to Howl", the final part of his poem "Howl". [10]
The card game Illuminati by Steve Jackson Games features the Fifth International as a "communist" and "conservative" group. [11] [12]
Robert A. Heinlein references a Fifth International in the novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress . While the novel's characters are discussing their different political ideologies as they attempt to design a revolution, the character Wyoming Knott identifies herself as a "Fifth Internationalist" but states she is "no Marxist".
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin’s desired “heir” would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted ".
The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
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 Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989.
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.
Permanent Revolution was a Trotskyist group formed in July 2006 by expelled members of the League for the Fifth International (L5I). It took its name from Leon Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. The group dissolved itself on 28 March 2013.
The Japan Revolutionary Communist League is a Trotskyist group in Japan.
The Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States. RWL formed in the late 1970s, when its members split from the Spartacist League/U.S.. RWL still has about 20 active members.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is a public faction of the Fourth International founded in 1953. Today, two Trotskyist internationals claim to be the continuations of the ICFI; 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 League for the Fifth International (L5I) is an international grouping of revolutionary Trotskyist organisations around a common programme and perspectives.
The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) abbreviated as ICL(FI), earlier known as the international Spartacist tendency (iSt) is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL (FI) in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name.
James Patrick Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
The Revolutionary Communist Party was a British Trotskyist group, formed in 1944 and active until 1949, which published the newspaper Socialist Appeal and a theoretical journal, Workers International News. The party was the ancestor of the three main currents of British Trotskyism: Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party, Ted Grant's Militant and Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers Party.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. The SWP began as a group which, because it supported Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was expelled from the Communist Party USA. Since the 1930s, it has published The Militant as a weekly newspaper. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.
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.
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.
