Trotsky's founding of the Fourth International in September 1938, including the 1933 break with the Comintern after the German catastrophe, the International Left Opposition, the Transitional Programme, the Founding Conference at Perigny, and the rival socialist tradition the new International represented

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to outline the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 and to explain its political significance. Strong answers integrate the International Left Opposition origin, the 1933 break with the Comintern, the Movement for the Fourth International (1936-1938), the September 1938 Founding Conference, and the Transitional Programme as the founding document.

The answer

The International Left Opposition (1930)

The International Left Opposition was founded by Trotsky in April 1930, while at Prinkipo, as a faction inside the Communist International (Comintern). Its members were the small groups of Trotskyists expelled from the national Communist Parties from 1928. The largest groups were in France (Pierre Naville, Alfred Rosmer, then later Pierre Frank), Germany (Kurt Landau), the United States (the Communist League of America led by James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman), Belgium, and Spain.

Trotsky's policy through 1929 to 1933 was to seek reform of the Comintern from within. The Left Opposition would prepare the cadres for a future correction of line.

The German catastrophe of January 1933

Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and the collapse of the German Communist Party (KPD) without significant resistance through February-March 1933 destroyed Trotsky's reform perspective. The KPD had been the largest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union and the centre of Comintern hopes. Its policy of treating the Social Democrats as "social fascists" and refusing the united front had been Comintern doctrine since 1928.

Trotsky's pamphlet What Next? (January 1932) had warned that Hitler would come to power if the working-class parties did not unite. The pamphlet was vindicated. The KPD's collapse without a fight, and the Comintern's congratulation of the KPD's line afterwards, convinced Trotsky that the Comintern was politically dead.

The call for a new International

In July 1933 Trotsky's article "It Is Necessary to Build Communist Parties and an International Anew" called for a Fourth International. The decision was a major doctrinal break. The Comintern (founded 1919) was the institutional inheritance of the October Revolution. To call for its replacement was to declare it lost to the working-class movement.

The International Left Opposition was reconstituted as the International Communist League in 1933 and then as the Movement for the Fourth International in 1936. The intervening years were spent in tactical efforts at fusion with other small Left parties (the "French Turn," the entry into the SFIO and similar parties of the Second International).

The Founding Conference

The First (Founding) Conference of the Fourth International met on 3 September 1938 at Alfred Rosmer's house at Perigny near Paris. Twenty-one delegates from 11 national sections attended in a single day's meeting, conducted under conditions of high security after Sedov's death and the disappearance of Trotsky's secretary Rudolf Klement (murdered by the NKVD in July 1938).

Trotsky did not attend; the Mexican government's asylum forbade political activity, and the conditions of travel through fascist Europe were prohibitive. He participated through written contributions and through his designated representative James P. Cannon of the American Socialist Workers Party.

The Conference adopted the Transitional Programme and elected an International Executive Committee chaired by Max Shachtman and including Cannon, Rosmer, Naville, and Pierre Frank.

The Transitional Programme

The Transitional Programme (full title: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International) was drafted by Trotsky at Coyoacan in spring 1938. The programme's distinctive feature was the concept of "transitional demands": demands that bridged current working-class consciousness and the socialist revolution.

The major transitional demands included:

• A sliding scale of wages and hours to address mass unemployment.
• Workers' control of production.
• Nationalisation of the banks and large industry.
• Expropriation of the major capitalists.
• A workers' and farmers' government.
• Workers' militias to defend against fascism.

The programme also restated Trotsky's defence of the Soviet Union as a "degenerated workers' state" against Stalinism and capitalism alike, and called for political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The Fourth International after Trotsky

Trotsky's assassination in August 1940 left the new International without its theoretical leader. The Second World War interrupted the International's operations. The Third (Reunification) World Congress of 1951 split the International into a Pabloite and an anti-Pabloite wing; further splits followed in 1953, 1963, and the 1980s. The contemporary inheritance is divided among the Reunified Fourth International (the largest fragment), the International Committee, the Lambertist Fourth International, and several smaller bodies.

The Fourth International never approached the mass character of the Comintern or the Second International. Its formal membership has rarely exceeded 50,000 worldwide. Its political influence on the post-1945 New Left, on the academic study of Stalinism, and on figures like Christopher Hitchens, Tariq Ali, and Daniel Bensaid has been disproportionate.

How to read a source on this topic

The Founding Documents of the Fourth International (Pathfinder, 1973) collect the September 1938 conference papers. Trotsky's Writings (14 volumes, Pathfinder) collect the exile articles.

Pierre Broue's Histoire de l'Internationale Communiste (1997) and Robert Alexander's International Trotskyism 1929-1985 (1991) are the major scholarly accounts. Service (Trotsky, 2009) is sceptical of the Fourth International's significance.

Common exam traps

Confusing the International Left Opposition (1930) and the Fourth International (1938). Trotsky shifted from inside-the-Comintern to outside-the-Comintern in July 1933.

Forgetting the German catastrophe. January 1933 is the decisive moment in Trotsky's break with the Comintern.

Misdating the Founding Conference. 3 September 1938 at Perigny near Paris.

In one sentence

The Fourth International, founded by Trotsky and 21 delegates of 11 national sections at Alfred Rosmer's house near Paris on 3 September 1938, grew out of the International Left Opposition of 1930, broke with the Comintern after the German catastrophe of January 1933, was founded on Trotsky's Transitional Programme drafted at Coyoacan, and constituted the institutional basis of every later Trotskyist organisation as the rival Marxist tradition to Stalinism.