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Introducing this issue
This special issue of IMR marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Fourth International. One of the Fourth International's best known spokespersons, Ernest Mandel, sets the framework for this issue, explaining the crisis of the world revolutionary movement brought about by the defeats and betrayals of the Stalinist period and the decision to found a new International when it became clear that this course was irreversible. Mandel also explains the need for the Fourth International today.
A short text by Trotsky written in 1938 summarises his views on the founding of the FI. Alan Wald, a distinguished contributor to the US journal Against the Current broadens the scope of our commemoration by looking at the influence of nascent Trotskyism among the New York intellectuals of the 1930s.
Livio Maitan, another longstanding leader of the FI, studies the difficult period of the International's history from the necessary rebuilding after the Second World War to the eve of 1968 when the worldwide radicalisation enabled the movement to make qualititative steps forward, particularly in West Europe and North America. He makes a balance sheet of the notable successes and failures of the International in this period.
Two documents, separated by the decade 1968-1978, give the motivation of the two of the Fourth International's strongest sections, the French LCR and Mexican PRT, for affiliation to the International. Despite the marked change in analysis of the world situation-from the optimistic expectations of 1968/9 when an uninterrupted rise in world revolution seemed on the agenda-to the more sober assessments of 1978 after the impact of the defeat in Portugal and the first economic crisis—-the line of argument demonstrates the coherent and consistent ideas which have led a small but significant minority of revolutionaries to engage in building an
4 International Marxist Review international revolutionary movement.
Michael Lowy takes us a step forward in looking at what is internationalism today. What are the processes that will lead a new generation to engage in a revolutionary internationalist commitment and what are the obstacles?
This year is also the anniversary of 1968, when from Paris to Tokyo, passing though Prague and Mexico, the battle cry of international solidarity above all with the Vietnamese people, echoed and created a worldwide expectation of the revolution tomorrow. Tomorrow brought many more difficulties than we expected. But it seems natural that in this climate, which had been partly created by the patient work of tiny handfuls of Trotskyists, the organisations of the Fourth International, particularly in Western Europe and North America, grew significantly. If one country above all symbolises this period it is the France of May 1968. Here, in a lengthy extract from their new book, Mai Si, Daniel Bensaid and Alain Krivine make a passionate defence of their revolutionary commitment since the time they were leaders of the '68 movement until today.
At a time when the mass media are doing all they can to dismisss May '68 as youthful exuberance and to unearth student leaders converted to all varieties of radical or not so radical reformism like Henry Weber, a candidate for the French Socialist Party in the recent elections, or Danny 'the Red' Cohn-Bendit now of the Greens, Bensaid and Krivine reassert their commitment and look at the role of their small organisation in 1968 and what impact a bigger and more developed revolutionary party could have had in changing the situation.
Finally, we introduce in this issue a new feature-book reviews. Ernest Mandel gives an overview of a number of recent publications attempting to give a Marxist input into the study and analysis of all social reality; Michael Lowy assesses Alan Wald's contributions to uncovering a hidden aspect of Trotsky's influence among US intellectuals and Paul Le Blanc gives an enthusiastic welcome to a recent short work by Mandel, The Place of Marxism in History, published in the Notebooks for Study and Research series.
LIVIO MAITAN