Quatrième Internationale, theoretical organ of the Fourth International in French, published by its European Executive Committee from 1943 to 1946, and since then by its International Executive Committee, is entering its 16th year. On this occasion the Fifth World Congress voted to undertake the great editorial and financial effort of bringing it out also in English, for the United States, the United Kingdom, Ceylon, India, Australia, and Canada — as well as for those countries, such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, China, Japan, etc., where knowledge of English is more widespread than that of French.
In the United States particularly this has become all the more necessary because our former co-thinkers of the Socialist Workers Party have for some years now, despite repeated efforts by the International to heal the breach, refused all collaboration, not only in the technical sense forbidden by the reactionary laws of the U.S.A., but even in the real sense of common programme and coördinated activity. The SWP will apparently « regroup » with anyone except the Fourth International. Thus the true and full voice of Trotskyism is no longer heard in the U.S.
In the United Kingdom, the only revolutionary Marxist theoretical publication to defend the programme and the organization of the Fourth International was the organ of the Revolutionary Socialist League, the small Workers International Review, which this larger present quarterly will replace.
Fourth International is a theoretical organ, not a propaganda review, and even less an agitational magazine. As such it does not duplicate any existing publication in English. It is aimed particularly at advanced cadre elements, both those already in the revolutionary Marxist movement and those drawing close to it. It thus does not write down to its readers, or fail to present its full programme at all times.
It will appear four times a year.
Ordinary issues will consist of: editorials and editorial notes upon the important events of the previous quarter; manifestos, declarations, and documents of the International Executive Committee; articles upon aspects of Marxist theory, upon important developments in individual countries, upon such burning questions as war-&-peace, the progress of the political revolution in the Soviet bloc and of the social revolution in the capitalist world, the international economic conjuncture, the unending crisis in Stalinism, etc.; historical documents, especially rare articles by Leon Trotsky; reviews of books of interest to revolutionary Marxists; and notes upon the world workers' movement and the International.
The present first number, as readers will immediately observe, is not characteristic, in that it does not follow the foregoing formula. That is because this is a special issue, devoted entirely to the documents of the Fourth International's recent Fifth World Congress. This choice of contents is deliberate, since it is believed that, for those unfamiliar with Trotskyism, there could be no better introduction than a clear and extensive presentation of its full current programme, especially its consideration of the conjuncture, its continuing analysis of the phenomena of the decline and the coming fall of Stalinism, its study of the colonial revolution, and its world revolutionary perspectives. It is believed that this first issue will prove valuable not only for immediate reading but also for long-term reference.
8 February 1958