The Fourth International was founded in 1938 in response to the catastrophic defeats of the working class caused by the crimes and betrayals of the Stalinist and social democratic parties and organizations. The Soviet bureaucracy led by Stalin was responsible for the physical destruction of the leaders of the October revolution and the socialist opposition to the bureaucratic degeneration of the Comintern throughout the 1930s, leading up to Trotsky's assassination in August 1940.
But the efforts to undermine and destroy the Trotskyist movement did not end with Trotsky's death.
Three decades after its initial publication, I believe that The Heritage has stood the test of time. While retaining substantial contemporary value as an introduction to the history of the Fourth International, The Heritage also examines problems relating to Marxist theory, program and strategy that remain highly relevant to the present-day struggle to build the World Party of Socialist Revolution.
David North, Preface to the 30th anniversary edition
The International Committee was founded in November 1953, to defend the Fourth International against an opportunist and revisionist current, known as Pabloism, that sought to liquidate the Fourth International into parties and organizations controlled by Stalinism, social democracy and bourgeois nationalism. The struggle against Pabloism within the International Committee led to the initiation of a watershed investigation into the assassination of Leon Trotsky and the exposure of state intelligence agents within the Fourth International.
In 1975, the International Committee of the Fourth International launched the first systematic investigation by the Trotskyist movement into Trotsky's assassination. Known as Security and the Fourth International, it led to the exposure of the network of GPU and American intelligence agents that ensured the success of Stalin’s conspiracy against Trotsky’s life and facilitated state surveillance in the following decades. The investigation was bitterly opposed by Pabloite and pseudo-left organizations, which denounced the exposure of spies placed inside the Trotskyist movement as “agent-baiting.” They maintained this position even after state intelligence documents released after the USSR's dissolution confirmed the International Committee's findings.
View the full catalog of Security and the Fourth International documents
The lessons of the Security & the Fourth International investigation are even more important today than when they first came to light. As global capitalism descends into terminal crisis, and war and authoritarianism resurge on the one side, on the other, the tide of working class opposition against capitalist exploitation and war is growing. To end capitalist exploitation and place the society on socialist foundations, the workers movement must reclaim the revolutionary socialist tradition the Stalinist and imperialist agencies tried unsuccessfully to bury.
The struggle against Pabloism within the Fourth International spanned more than three decades, concluding in 1986 with the defeat of the opportunists by the orthodox Trotskyists of the International Committee.
Still, the resolution of the crisis of revolutionary leadership remains the central task that must be overcome by the International Committee of the Fourth International through the building of sections of the world party in every region and country.
