Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and by some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and of 3L: Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists also criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of world socialism via international revolution. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938, as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Communist International as effectively puppets of Stalinism and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own competing Fourth International.
The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established circa 1972 and disbanded 1989.
The Socialistiska Partiet was a Swedish Trotskyist political party, the Swedish section of the Fourth International.
The Communist League was a small Trotskyist organisation in Britain. Better known as Movement for a Socialist Future, it split from the Marxist Party in 1990, claiming to hold more closely to the ideas of Gerry Healy, who had died the previous year. In 1994, it published a strongly positive biography of Healy, with a foreword by Ken Livingstone. The same year, it founded a small international organisation, which it declared the Fifth International of Communists. It produced the magazine Socialist Future Review.
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.
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.
Marxist Working Group was a left communist group in Sweden. The group emerged from a split in the VPK branch of Birka-Vasa in 1974. Since the late 1960s a section of the Birka-Vasa branch had developed left communist leanings. By 1974 they broke away, and the majority of them joined MA. Many had been part of the branch board of VPK Birka-Vasa 1969-1974.
The Japan Revolutionary Communist League is a Trotskyist group in Japan.
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 and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International. In 2003, the United Secretariat was replaced by an Executive Bureau and an International Committee, although some other Trotskyists still refer to the organisation as the USFI or USec.
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 , earlier known as the International Spartacist tendency 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 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.
Workers' Power is a Trotskyist group which forms the British section of the League for the Fifth International. The group publishes the newspaper Workers Power and distributes the English language journal Fifth International.
The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by groups of socialists to create a new Workers' International.
The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) was an international association of Trotskyist political parties. Today, two groups claim to be the continuation of the CWI.
The Pathfinder tendency is the unofficial name of a group of historically Trotskyist organizations that cooperate politically and organizationally with the Socialist Workers Party of the United States and support its solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the Communist Party of Cuba.
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 Trotskyists.