On Trotsky’s Call for the Fourth International

(Letter)

29 November 2007

Dear Comrades,

In Part Two of “The Development and Extension of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution” (WV No. 902, 9 November 2007), the following sentence is so telescoped that it misses the key point as to why Trotsky called to build the Fourth International:

“By 1933, Stalin’s Comintern could not be awakened by what Trotsky called ‘the thunderbolt of Fascism’—the victory of Hitler’s Nazis without a shot being fired by the powerful German workers movement. The CI had proved itself utterly dead as a force for revolution.”

What made the victory of the Nazis “without a shot” decisive was that following the collapse of the German section it became clear that there was a complete strangulation of all signs of political life in the sections of the Third International. Trotsky wrote in “It is Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew” (15 July 1933):

“The Moscow leadership has not only proclaimed as infallible the policy which guaranteed victory to Hitler, but has also prohibited all discussion of what had occurred. And this shameful interdiction was not violated nor overthrown. No national congresses; no international congress; no discussions at party meetings; no discussion in the press! An organization which was not roused by the thunder of fascism and which submits docilely to such outrageous acts of the bureaucracy demonstrates thereby that it is dead and that nothing can ever revive it.”

From that point on, the task of the International Left Opposition was preparation of a new international, which culminated in the founding of the Fourth International in 1938.

Comradely,
Keith Markin