League for the Fifth International
Encyclopedia
The League for the Fifth International (L5I) is an international grouping of revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
Trotskyist organisations around a common programme and perspectives. The group has sections in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
, and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
as well as supporters in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
.
Early years
L5I was founded as the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International. Its first member groups were Workers Power in Britain, the Irish Workers GroupWorkers Power (Ireland)
Workers Power is a small Trotskyist political group in Ireland.The party was founded as the Irish Workers Group, which developed as a factional grouping in the Socialist Workers' Movement in the 1970s. It was formed as a separate organisation after being expelled from that group in 1976. It...
, Pouvoir Ouvrier in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and Gruppe Arbeitermacht (GAM) in Germany. After a congress in 1989 the organisation adopted a common programme, the Trotskyist Manifesto, and a democratic centralist constitution, under which each national section agreed to be bound by the decisions of the international organisation as a whole.
Anti-capitalist movement and fighting for a Fifth International
In the late 1990s the League was quick to respond to the development of the anti-capitalist movement, launching the youth group RevolutionRevolution (political group)
Revolution, or Revo, a revolutionary socialist youth organization, was founded in the UK by Workers Power, part of the League for the Fifth International...
as an independent organisation in 1997. They actively participated in each stage of the movement, from the summit sieges of the late 1990s and early 2000s and the social forum conferences, which began with the World Social Forum
World Social Forum
The World Social Forum is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemonic globalization...
in 2001. Of particular note in the summit siege phase, was the leading role its relatively young Czech section and Revolution played in protests against the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
in 2000 and its participation in the famous direct action protests against the G8
G8
The Group of Eight is a forum, created by France in 1975, for the governments of seven major economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1997, the group added Russia, thus becoming the G8...
in Genoa in 2001.
In this time the League developed the slogan of a 'new, Fifth International
Fifth International
The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by sections of the far-left to create a new Workers' International.-Previous Internationals:...
', which called on mass organisations of the working class to form a new global party, while also maintaining that such a party should adopt a revolutionary programme. The call for a Fifth International expressed the League's view that the Fourth International
Fourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
, founded by Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
in 1938, had degenerated into non-revolutionary fragments since the end of the Second World War and now a new international must be built, with new forces, but one that expressed continuity with the Trotskyist tradition. This was originally expressed in the book published by the British and Irish sections called The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today.
This orientation to larger forces, in a period quite different from when the Trotskyist Manifesto was published, necessitated, for the League, developing a new programme From Protest to Power: A Manifesto for World Revolution, in which its fundamental ideas were re-elaborated. It also changed its name to the League for the Fifth International. It regards this programme as a new "transitional programme", based on the method of Trotsky's original from 1938, but applied to the current global political situation.
The League and Revolution have both argued that young people in the anti-capitalist movement should form a new revolutionary youth international. Successes at the Paris European Social Forum
European Social Forum
The European Social Forum is a recurring conference held by members of the alter-globalization movement . In the first few years after it started in 2002 the conference was held every year, but later it became biannual due to difficulties with finding host countries...
in 2003 led to youth groups in Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, and the mass Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
group SEGI
SEGI
Segi is a Basque pro-independence and revolutionary left-wing organization. It forms part of the Basque National Liberation Movement and is aligned with Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak and Batasuna....
signing the youth international statement. Although neither of these groups made any further contribution towards the League's goal of founding a Fifth International.
Through this work the group has steadily regenerated its ranks with younger members but has not made substantial steps forward towards its goal of a Fifth International. Although, their work has led to some on the right wing of the movement such as Bernard Cassen
Bernard Cassen
Bernard Cassen is a founder of ATTAC and director general of Le Monde diplomatique newspaper, from 1973 to January 2008.-References:**...
of ATTAC to warn of the dangers of the “nagging temptation of the fifth international
Fifth International
The phrase Fifth International refers to the efforts made by sections of the far-left to create a new Workers' International.-Previous Internationals:...
". In addition, more recently, the academic and activist Samir Amin
Samir Amin
Samir Amin is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.- Biography :Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother . He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat...
, has joined their call for a Fifth International - but does not give it the same Trotskyist content as the League.
Faction fight over world perspectives and the resultant split
In July 2006 the League expelled its Australian section, its sympathising group in Ireland and a large minority of its British section. The International Faction was planning to split the organisation on the eve of its Seventh Congress in Prague.In the previous two years, the International Faction (first as a tendency), had struggled against the perspectives and orientation of the League. In particular, they rejected the view that since the turn of the century there had been an intensification in class struggle, that the world economy was either "stagnant" or demonstrated a "tendency towards stagnation" in the imperialist heartlands, which the League had summarised as marking a "pre-revolutionary period". Instead, they argued that capitalism had entered on a "long upward wave" following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeats of the working class movement in the 1970s/80s and that the League had exaggerated the extents to which breaks had occurred in social democracy. The League regarded the credit crunch, global financial crisis and recession as vindicating its analysis and published a critique of the theory of the long wave in its book The Credit Crunch - a Marxist Analysis:.
The International Faction subsequently launched a new group Permanent Revolution. This followed the expulsion of some members of the League's Austrian section,.
Post-split growth
In May 2007 the League announced the formation of fraternal relations with an organisation in Sri Lanka called the Socialist Party of Sri LankaSocialist Party of Sri Lanka
The Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, which has declared fraternal relations with the League for the Fifth International in May 2007, is an Autumn 2006 split from the United Socialist Party in Sri Lanka which is part of the Committee for a Workers International. The party has members in several unions,...
. This group was formed by a split from the United Socialist Party
United Socialist Party (Sri Lanka)
The United Socialist Party is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka. It is a member of the Committee for a Workers' International. It is led by Siritunga Jayasuriya and publishes a monthly paper, Sentharakai .-History:...
. A few weeks later they announced the formation of new group in Pakistan called the Revolutionary Socialist Movement, created by activists who had been involved in the lawyers and democracy protests around the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is the current Chief Justice of Pakistan.He became chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court in 2005 and soon became not only a central figure in the nation's political struggles but an icon to the country's legal profession and others campaigning for the rule of law...
. These groups have since become full sections of the League, and a sympathizing groups formed in the USA and Lebanon. Numerically the League states that it is several times as large as during the 2006 split due to both recruitment to existing sections and new sections being added.
Organisation
The supreme decision making body of the League and all its members is its international conference, which elects an international leadership committee. Each section of the League is completely subordinate to the international decisions made by the League, even if they have voted nationally not to agree with that position they must enact the policy of the League while arguing their position internationally, and as such the League is democratic centralist in the tradition of the pre-war Fourth InternationalFourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
.
What happened in the Soviet Union?
The League views the Russian revolution to have degenerated because of the takeover of the party by the non-revolutionary Stalinist leadership. The League, and Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, saw the Soviet state as having become "bureaucratically deformed" before it degenerated under the Stalinist leadership. The League disagrees with the argument associated with Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff , was a Trotskyist who was a founding member of the Socialist Review Group which went on to become the Socialist Workers Party...
, who considered the revolution doomed when world revolution did not occur in the period after the First World War, and who also see it as degenerating into state capitalism. The League views it as still possessing post-capitalist property relations and was therefore a degenerated workers state (degenerated because it was once a healthy workers state, then deformed, before the Stalinist caste takeover). Before the state degenerated in the thirties, Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and the Left Opposition
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
had the programmatic demand to "reform" the "bureaucratically deformed" state by revitalising the Soviets and bringing more democracy to the party. In the thirties Trotsky viewed the USSR as being unable to be reformed, and therefore needing a political revolution
Political revolution
A political revolution, in the Trotskyist theory, is an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact...
, hence was degenerated. The League largely agrees with Trotsky's analysis although disagrees about the exact time of degeneration.
Eastern Europe and states "degenerate from birth"
The League differs from other groups in that it calls Eastern European states "degenerate from birth" rather than deformed. It also viewed Josip Broz TitoJosip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
in Yugoslavia as a "disobedient Stalinist" whose actions moved Yugoslavia in a direction towards, not against, imperialism. This is against groups such as the US SWP and eventually after the Third World Congress, the Fourth International
Fourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
, who viewed Tito as an unconscious Trotskyist and sent greetings to the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) asking to attend their conference in order to help them in a revolutionary path. This analysis by the Fourth International which originally came from Michel Pablo
Michel Pablo
Michel Pablo was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis , a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin.- Early activism :...
was the reason they saw the Eastern European states as having only quantitative deformations, not being qualitatively degenerate. The FI thought there was a possibility that the communist parties in Eastern Europe would break with Stalin as the YCP and Tito had done, and through this become revolutionary. The League disagrees, and sees while breaks like Tito were possible, these parties would remain bureaucratic, and while they could, in order to defeat both a revolutionary workers movement and imperialism trying to remove them, proform a social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
and create post-capitalist property relations, there would need to be a political revolution
Political revolution
A political revolution, in the Trotskyist theory, is an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact...
against them as they were a bureaucratic caste, like Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Because of this (i.e., these states never having a period of revolutionary workers control, unlike the USSR which had revolutionary workers power from 1917 when the Soviets and revolutionary Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
party had power) these states were classed as "degenerate from birth" instead of "degenerated", although the tasks for revolutionaries in them - political revolution
Political revolution
A political revolution, in the Trotskyist theory, is an upheaval in which the government is replaced, or the form of government altered, but in which property relations are predominantly left intact...
- remained the same. This is just a "linguistic" difference in order to show the historical circumstances these states came into existence by. Workers Power printed The Degenerated Revolution in 1982 as the culmination of their break from Cliffism and towards Trotskyism.
"The Death Agony of the Fourth International" & the need for a Fifth International
The League views the Fourth InternationalFourth International
The Fourth International is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky , with the declared dedicated goal of helping the working class bring about socialism...
as degenerating when at its Third World Congress when it adopted the position that the Stalinist parties in Eastern European countries like Yugoslavia could regenerate and were roughly 'blunt instruments' for carrying out the proletarian revolution. As a result, the League has started deep entryism in social democratic and Stalinist parties.
As they regard both sides of the 1953 split in the Fourth International to have affirmed this stance, which they regard as a fundamental breach with Leninism and Trotskyism, and as they believe all the major forces having emerged from the Fourth International to be implementing this false 'processist' methodology today, they call for a new Fifth International to be built by the working class forces fighting neoliberalism worldwide, including from the workers' trade unions, parties and other forces participating in the World Social Forum and analogous continental formations like the Asian and European Social Forums.
Workers Power (UK) published a book in 1983, called "Death Agony of the Fourth International" which remains the group's major work on analysing the post war Trotskyist movement.
Other theory
The League empathises the transitional programme and having articles with transitional demands in them in their publications. They also believe in permanent revolution (i.e., not stageist, and in the impossibility of the bourgious in semi-colonial countries leading revolutions). They believe imperialism is world capitalism, like Lenin, rather than just militarism and war. They see the current stage of their life as being a 'fighting propaganda group', and thus intervene intro struggles such as the June 2007 Communication Workers UnionCommunication Workers Union (UK)
The Communication Workers Union is the main trade union in the United Kingdom for people working for telephone, cable, DSL and postal delivery companies, with 215,000 members....
strike where they call for rank and file committees, organised balloting with other public sector unions and an all out strike.
Publications
The League publishes a quarterly English language journal entitled Fifth International. The majority of writers for this appear to be from the British group, although other sections publish journals in their own languages. Revolutionärer Marxismus is the German language journal. The League has previously published first the journal Permanent Revolution which was more theoretical looking at tactics that communist organisations use, theories of imperialism, and similar questions. This was followed by Trotskyist International, which although still theoretical, looked also more at current affairs.The League also has published many pamphlets on a variety of issues. In 2007 in republished The Road to Red October, a short history of the Russian Revolution. Among these publications is its transitional programme, From Protest to Power.
Member organisations
- ArbeiterInnen Standpunkt — AustriaAustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
- Workers Power — BritainUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
- Socialistická organizace pracujících — Czech RepublicCzech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
- Cinquième Internationale — FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
- Gruppe Arbeitermacht — GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
- Arbetarmakt — SwedenSwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
- Socialist Party of Sri LankaSocialist Party of Sri LankaThe Socialist Party of Sri Lanka, which has declared fraternal relations with the League for the Fifth International in May 2007, is an Autumn 2006 split from the United Socialist Party in Sri Lanka which is part of the Committee for a Workers International. The party has members in several unions,...
— Sri LankaSri LankaSri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the... - Revolutionary Socialist Movement — PakistanPakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
- Workers Power (US)Workers Power (US)Workers Power was a short lived Trotskyist faction in the late 1970s and early 1980s.In the 1970s the Third Camp group International Socialists carried out its most successful work within organized labor within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, helping to organize rank-and-file opposition...
- United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... - League members from LebanonLebanonLebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
- League members from IrelandIrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
Groups that have a common history
- Permanent Revolution Tendency
- Pouvoir Ouvrier
- Der Neue Kurs
- Communist Workers Group