Reforge the Fourth International!

(Quote of the Week)

In 1938, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky sent greetings to a public meeting of the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party marking the founding of the Fourth International and the tenth anniversary of the birth of the American Left Opposition. As Trotsky stressed, the indispensable instrument in the fight for a socialist future for humanity is the international revolutionary proletarian party, built in the course of sharp political struggle against the misleaders of the working class.

We are not a party like other parties. Our ambition is not only to have more members, more papers, more money in the treasury, more deputies. All that is necessary, but only as a means. Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves. The old Internationals—the Second, the Third, that of Amsterdam, we will add to them also the London Bureau—are rotten through and through.

The great events which rush upon mankind will not leave of these outlived organizations one stone upon another. Only the Fourth International looks with confidence at the future. It is the World Party of Socialist Revolution! There never was a greater task on the earth. Upon every one of us rests a tremendous historical responsibility....

The fidelity to the cause of the toilers requires from us the highest devotion to our international party. The party, of course, can also be mistaken. By common effort we will correct its mistakes. In its ranks can penetrate unworthy elements. By common effort we will eliminate them. New thousands who will enter its ranks tomorrow will probably be deprived of necessary education. By common effort we will elevate their revolutionary level. But we will never forget that our party is now the greatest lever of history. Separated from this lever, every one of us is nothing. With this lever in hand, we are all.

—Leon Trotsky, “The Founding of the Fourth International,” 18 October 1938, printed in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1938-39)