Organizational history
The International was formed in 1932, following a fringe meeting at the Socialist International conference in Vienna in 1931. The IRMC underwent a variety of names. It was initially called the Committee of Independent Revolutionary Socialist Parties and later the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Unity, but throughout the period it was generally known simply as the London Bureau (and nicknamed by some the 3½ International, in an analogy with the so-called 2½ International of 1921-3), although its headquarters were transferred from London to Paris in 1939 (on the grounds that in addition to the French affiliate, five parties-in-exile had their central committees there). Its youth wing was the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations.
For a period, the IRMC was close to the Trotskyist movement and the International Left Opposition. In the early 1930s, Leon Trotsky and his supporters believed that Stalin's influence over the Third International could still be fought from within and slowly rolled back. They organised themselves into the International Left Opposition in 1930, which was intended to be a group of anti-Stalinist dissenters within the Third International. Stalin's supporters, who dominated the International, would no longer tolerate dissent. All Trotskyists, and those suspected of being influenced by Trotskyism, were expelled. [1]
Trotsky claimed that the Third Period policies of the Comintern had contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and that its turn to a popular front policy (aiming to unite all ostensibly anti-fascist forces) sowed illusions in reformism and pacifism and "clear[ed] the road for a fascist overturn". By 1935 he claimed that the Comintern had fallen irredeemably into the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy. [2] He and his supporters, expelled from the Third International, participated in a conference of the London Bureau. Three of those parties joined the Left Opposition in signing a document written by Trotsky calling for a Fourth International, which became known as the "Declaration of Four". [3] Of those, two soon distanced themselves from the agreement, but the Dutch Revolutionary Socialist Party worked with the International Left Opposition to declare the International Communist League. [4]
The Spanish section merged with the Spanish section of ICO, forming the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). Trotsky claimed the merger was to be a capitulation to centrism. [5] The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, a left split from the Social Democratic Party of Germany founded in 1931, co-operated with the International Left Opposition briefly in 1933 but soon abandoned the call for a new International.
The secretariat of the International Centre remained with the British Independent Labour Party (ILP) for all but one of the eight years 1932–1940. Fenner Brockway, ILP leader, was chairman of the Bureau for most of this period, while in 1939, Julián Gorkin of the POUM became its secretary. By this time, the Bureau had member parties in more than 20 countries, including the Netherlands, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the United States, and Palestine.
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 Workers' Party of Marxist Unification was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke.
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.
Maurice Spector was a Canadian politician who served as the chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and the editor of its newspaper, The Worker, for much of the 1920s. He was an early follower of Leon Trotsky after Trotsky's split from the Communist International.
Hendricus Josephus Franciscus Marie Sneevliet, known as Henk Sneevliet or by the pseudonym "Maring", was a Dutch communist politician who was active in both the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. As a functionary of the Communist International, Sneevliet guided the formation of both the Communist Party of Indonesia in 1914, and the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. In his native country, he was the founder, chairman, and only Representative for the Revolutionary Socialist (Workers') Party (RSP/RSAP). He took part in the Communist resistance against the occupation of the Netherlands during World War II by Nazi Germany, for which he was executed by the Germans in April 1942.
The Right Opposition or Right Tendency in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in autumn of 1928 in regards to the opposition against certain measures included within the first five-year plan, an opposition which was led by Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union that did not follow the so called "general line of the party". It is also the name given to "right-wing" critics within the Communist movement internationally, particularly those who coalesced in the International Communist Opposition, regardless of whether they identified with Bukharin and Rykov.
The Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Opposition)), generally abbreviated as KPO or KPD(O), was a communist opposition organisation established at the end of 1928 and maintaining its existence until 1939 or 1940. After the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to power in January 1933, the KPO existed only as an illegal and underground organization. The group initially sought to modify, later to replace, the mainstream Communist Party of Germany (KPD) headed by Ernst Thälmann. The KPO was the first national section affiliated to the International Communist Opposition (ICO).
The Communist League was one of the first Trotskyist groups in Britain, formed in 1932 by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain in South London, including Harry Wicks, who had been expelled after forming a loose grouping inside the CPGB known as the Balham Group. This became the British Section of the International Left Opposition and adopted the name Communist League in June 1933. They published a monthly newspaper, Red Flag, and a quarterly journal, The Communist.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party was a Dutch socialist political party, that has been variously characterized as Trotskyite and syndicalist. In 1935 it merged with the Independent Socialist Party (OSP) to form the Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party, but most of the former OSP members left the united party the same year. Henk Sneevliet was the RSP/RSAP's undisputed leader throughout its existence, as well as its only Representative.
International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations was an international organization of socialist youth, formed in 1934. It functioned as the youth wing of the London Bureau.
The Independent Socialist Party was a revolutionary socialist political party in the Netherlands.
Harry Wicks was a British socialist activist.
The Marxist Group was an early Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom.
Centrism has a specific meaning within the Marxist movement, referring to a position between revolution and reformism. For instance, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and British Independent Labour Party (ILP) were both seen as centrist because they oscillated between advocating reaching a socialist economy through reforms and advocating revolution. The parties that belonged to the so-called Two-and-a-half and Three-and-a-half Internationals, who could not choose between the reformism of the social democrat Second International and the revolutionary politics of the Communist Third International, were also exemplary of centrism in this sense. They included the Spanish Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Poale Zion.
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
Denzil Dean Harber was an early British Trotskyist leader and later in his life a prominent British ornithologist.
The Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) was a radical left group in the United States, lasting from 1935 through 1946. It was led by Hugo Oehler and published The Fighting Worker newspaper.
The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by groups of socialists and communists to create a new workers' international.
The Maximalist Italian Socialist Party or PSIm, was the residual part of the Italian Socialist Party in exile following the split that occurred during the first phases of the Socialist Convention of Grenoble, held on 16 March 1930, by Pietro Nenni and the fusionist fraction.
