We publish below recent correspondence between the League for the Fourth International (LFI), known in the U.S. as the Internationalist Group, and the International Communist League, which was first published on their website.

In accordance with the mandate of our recent international conference, the ICL reached out to the LFI proposing to hold leadership discussions between our two organizations and to explore possibilities of common work in defense of basic interests of the workers movement (see “The ICL’s Post-Soviet Revisionism,” Spartacist [English edition] No. 68, September 2023).

Since it is the ICL that provoked the unprincipled and shallow split which led to the creation of the LFI, we consider it our responsibility to do everything we can to bring clarity to what has been a confusing and disorienting rivalry. We are determined to reduce organizational and personalist tensions between our two parties and to engage in thorough and clarifying debates. As the correspondence shows, the LFI showed no interest at all in this. The LFI responded to our extended hand with a series of denunciations and accusations. The one redeeming part of their response is their proposal to hold a debate, which we have gladly accepted. It is planned for January 13 in New York.

We are confident that the careful reader will see through the demagogic and false accusations made by comrade Norden in his responses to the ICL. That said, the character of these responses also makes it easy to lose track of the substance of the political questions in dispute. For the sake of clarity, we will elaborate on three key points.

Founding of the IG and Fights in the 1990s

The correspondence touches on various fights that occurred in the mid to late 1990s in the ICL. In its letters, the LFI argues that our reassessment of these fights is not genuine and not complete. We have already conceded that these fights were unprincipled and have committed to investigating in more detail those that directly precipitated the split. But this dispute is secondary. With their accusations and request that we deepen our review, the LFI buries what has long been recognized by both organizations as the main difference: the question of revolutionary leadership.

The main argument in Spartacist No. 68 is that both the LFI and ICL have had a fundamentally wrong understanding of the tasks of communists following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Both denied the overwhelming dominance of U.S. imperialism in the post-Soviet world and the concomitant hold of liberalism in the workers movement. This made our respective proclamations for revolutionary leadership entirely hollow because they were not rooted in material reality and not defined in opposition to the dominant trends binding the workers movement to the ruling class.

Given that comrade Norden’s recent letters defend every inch of the LFI’s record, we think it is fair to assume that he also upholds the blatantly wrong tasks and perspectives both parties shared following the collapse of the USSR. These were codified in the 1992 ICL International Conference document, adopted four years before the IG’s founding cadre were expelled. This is not merely a historical question. It is impossible to provide revolutionary leadership today without understanding that the post-Soviet order was defined by the liberal triumphalism of U.S. imperialist hegemony and that the current period is defined by the breakdown of that order. Today the LFI has no coherent explanation of what is happening in the world (agitating about World War III doesn’t count) and even less of the task of communists. The LFI is navigating without a compass, reacting to the erratic moods of the New York petty bourgeoisie, hailing the Communist Party of China’s lockdowns one day and tailing BLM the next.

In contrast, the document “The Breakdown of U.S. Hegemony & the Struggle for Workers Power,” also published in Spartacist No. 68, provides a clear materialist explanation of the world situation and a critique of the Marxist left since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, in a world increasingly defined by sharp polarization between political forces representing the liberal status quo and those seeking to upend it, the ICL is fighting to provide a working-class path that cuts against all dead ends on offer. It is the inability of the LFI to put forward such an independent working-class perspective that runs through all our differences, whether over the Ukraine war, China, the black question, social democracy or the national question. It is these questions that we are eager to discuss and debate with the LFI.

On United Fronts, Blocs and Boiling Water

In response to our proposal for a private leadership discussion and “to engage as much as possible in common work when appropriate,” the LFI essentially accuses us of wanting to form an unprincipled bloc with them. They rejected the former, basically arguing that the simple fact of sitting down for discussion with us would be unprincipled. This is absurd and says much more about the LFI’s defensiveness than about our supposed opportunism.

They also refuse our proposal to explore common action to defend the basic interests of the workers movement. To justify this, comrade Norden makes a hair-splitting distinction between a bloc and a united front, totally abstracted from any specific proposal. What matters fundamentally is not whether an agreement for common action is for a single event or a sustained campaign; what matters is that the terms of the agreement are principled. The truth is that the LFI has shown it does not want to engage in any kind of common action with us—whether in the form of a “bloc” or a united front.

• In Germany, the ICL called for a united front to throw NATO supporters out of the workers movement, a basic measure of sanitation as well as a tactic to expose the bankruptcy of pacifism. The IG denounced this while proposing nothing else to build a revolutionary pole amid the crisis shaking the left over the Ukraine war.
• In Australia, the ICL together with the Bolshevik-Leninist group applied a similar tactic toward the Labor Party, calling to throw the pro-AUKUS wing out of the party. We also advocate pursuing this fight within the Labor Party to exacerbate the conflict between its working-class base and its leadership. The LFI once again denounced our call while proposing nothing to channel the deep polarization over AUKUS in a revolutionary direction.
• In the ICL’s 11 October letter to the LFI, we stated that “we think that we can possibly find a principled basis to work with you on defense work against political repression.” With brutal repression against the left everywhere and much more on the horizon, there is a real need for common action in the workers movement. But the LFI simply ignored our proposal, probably dismissing it as some kind of ploy to talk to them.
• In the U.S., the fight against police brutality and black oppression is at an obvious impasse and there is widespread demoralization among activists. In this context we are building a campaign to “open police archives” to revitalize the struggle and drive a wedge between militant opponents of police brutality and the liberal leadership of that struggle. Once more the IG denounces us but are themselves unable to chart any path forward beyond proclaiming that socialist revolution will bring justice.

The worst example is the most recent one. In the context of the intense repression against pro-Palestine demonstrations and organizations in Germany, we appealed to the Internationalistische Gruppe (IG) and the rest of the left to take a stand in the form of a united-front forum built on the following three points:

1) Defend Gaza!

2) Down with anti-Palestinian state repression in Germany!

3) Hands off Samidoun [Palestinian prisoner defense group]! Down with the banning of all Palestinian organizations!

The IG declared agreement with our demands, stated they would attend our forum but refused to support it and join us in any way to fight for these demands. While our comrades have faced police harassment, with two venues being canceled and a wall of hostility from German social democracy, the LFI did like the rest of the German left, proclaiming solidarity with the Palestinians but in practice doing nothing to confront the social democratic-led witchhunt. Meanwhile, even a small bloc of our two organizations could have put pressure on the rest of the left to do something in defense of the repressed Palestinian groups. This latest example shows the utter bankruptcy of the LFI. For them, drawing a hard organizational line against us is more important than taking up a struggle which is of the utmost urgency and which they claim to agree with. Comrade Norden is justified in still being outraged by the actions of the ICL in Brazil in 1996, but what about now? Who is pulling their hands out of the boiling water of the class struggle today?

These examples all point in the same direction. While the ICL is seeking to exploit the growing contradictions within the left and labor movement by fusing the defense of basic working-class interests and the building of a revolutionary pole, the LFI stands to the side and proclaims the need for socialism and a revolutionary party totally disconnected from the living reality of the class struggle.

Despite their response so far, we are still committed to pursuing common action with the LFI on the urgent questions facing the workers movement and urge them to shake off their subjectivity and sectarianism.

On Nationalism and Permanent Revolution

The main programmatic criticism the LFI raises against the ICL’s new trajectory is that it is “driven centrally by the embrace of bourgeois nationalism.” This is a serious claim, but it is not argued seriously. Anyone who reads our recent Spartacist will see that our entire approach to permanent revolution is based on breaking the hold of nationalism on the struggle for national liberation. Our central criticism of the ICL’s past approach is precisely that it abandoned the struggle for national liberation to the nationalists. It is certainly possible that we have made mistakes in our arguments. But the LFI simply ignores any argument we make and just repeats as a mantra that we are motivated by nationalism. Comrade Norden does nonetheless make a few arguments of his own which are worth responding to.

1) The Anti-Imperialist United Front

To “prove” the ICL’s class collaborationism, the LFI argues:

“You now embrace the ‘Anti-Imperialist United Front’ which in practice means political blocs with the bourgeoisie in colonial and semi-colonial countries, the formula used to subordinate the Chinese Communist Party to Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang, leading to the 1927 Shanghai Massacre.”

That the Stalinists and countless other opportunists have used the anti-imperialist united front to justify subordination to nationalism is an undisputed fact. But to conclude from this that the anti-imperialist united front necessarily means subordination to the bourgeoisie is just a cheap syllogism. According to this logic, one would have to reject everything Lenin and Trotsky have ever written because it has been used to justify class collaboration.

The point is simple. It is perfectly principled to take common action with nationalist forces against imperialism provided it does not lead to abandoning the fight for communist leadership. It is the latter that Stalin rejected in China and beyond by liquidating the communist vanguard into bourgeois nationalism. This betrayal did not lead Trotsky to repudiate common struggle with nationalist forces. In fact, even after the massacre of the communist vanguard in China, he argued: “While maintaining its political independence, the proletarian vanguard must be ready always to assure united action with revolutionary democracy” (“Peasant War in China and the Proletariat,” September 1932).

The anti-imperialist united front is not only principled, it is essential. In confrontations between imperialism and oppressed countries, it is imperative to take a stand with the oppressed. In fact, the LFI itself has often raised the need for a military side with bourgeois-nationalist forces against imperialism. What is this if not an anti-imperialist united front? The same logic applies to any other concrete action against imperialism.

The point of the united front is not only to take a stand against imperialism but to show in struggle how nationalism is an obstacle to liberation from imperialism. The importance of this tactic was clearly illustrated in the 2015 Greek referendum, which Syriza called over the EU austerity package to squirm out from between the imperialists on one side and the Greek masses on the other. To anyone but sectarian muddleheads—such as the LFI and the Greek Communist Party (KKE)—it was obvious that rejection of the austerity package would be a blow to the EU. A common front with Syriza to vote “No” was crucial precisely because of their inevitable capitulation. Their betrayal of the people’s massive rejection of austerity was a golden opportunity for the workers movement to pick up the ball where bourgeois populism had dropped it and escalate the struggle against imperialism and Greek capitalism. The rejection of the united front against imperialism in this context by the KKE (echoed by the LFI) did not advance class independence but in fact did the opposite. In the name of “class independence” from the Greek bourgeoisie, it left the mantle of “anti-imperialism” to Syriza, guaranteeing their continued hold on the masses.

2) The Democratic Dictatorship and Permanent Revolution

To support his claim that the ICL is ever more revisionist, comrade Norden argues:

“Your claim that Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution put forward in 1905 was essentially identical with Lenin’s formula at that time of a ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ directly contradicts Trotsky’s own presentation in ‘Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution’ (August 1939) which contrasts them.”

In fact, we do not argue that there was no difference between Lenin and Trotsky’s positions but that there was an “essential identity between Trotsky’s permanent revolution and Lenin’s strategic line.” We argue that they had different prognoses for the course of the revolution in Russia but agreed on the fundamental strategic tasks. Is this a revision of Trotskyism wielded to justify bourgeois nationalism? Hardly. Here is what Trotsky himself wrote in My Life:

“Many ‘old Bolsheviks’ said to me after I arrived in Russia: ‘Now the celebration is on your street.’ I had to argue that Lenin had not come over to my point of view, but had developed his own, and that the course of events, by substituting arithmetic for algebra, had revealed the essential identity of our views. And that is what really happened.” [our emphases in bold italics]

So why does the LFI—as our own previous propaganda did—insist on the fact that Trotsky was right and Lenin was a proto-Menshevik until 1917, and crucially, why does it matter today? Just as when the epigones raised a hue and cry over Trotsky’s permanent revolution in the 1920s, the differences we have with the LFI on this question are not historical but relate to the strategic perspectives for the revolution in neocolonial countries. Stalinists revived the Menshevik program for a democratic stage historically distinct from the dictatorship of the proletariat to justify support for the national bourgeoisie. The LFI, as we did, inverts this in the name of class independence by rejecting the decisive role democratic questions play for revolutions in neocolonial countries. Both views are metaphysical rejections of Leninism.

The entire point of permanent revolution, confirmed in living reality by the Russian Revolution, is that there is a dialectical interrelation between the democratic and socialist tasks. In countries of belated capitalist development, democratic questions such as emancipation from imperialism, the agrarian question and formal democracy will play a disproportionate role in the initial stages (yes, stages) of the revolution. What is key is that the proletariat must play the leading role in this struggle, competing for leadership against radical bourgeois forces. This is the essence of permanent revolution. Anyone who doubts it should read Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution—a book almost entirely dedicated to exposing the formal logic used by the Stalinists to conjure a fundamental difference between Lenin and Trotsky over permanent revolution.

3) Quebec and Language Laws

For the LFI and our other detractors, the smoking gun for the ICL’s supposed nationalism is our defense of laws in Quebec that make French the official language. This can sound like a strong argument for those unfamiliar with the national question in Quebec—after all, wasn’t Lenin against privileges for any language? However, the argument falls apart as soon as it is put in context.

Quebec is an oppressed nation whose entire history since 1759 is defined by a struggle to maintain its national existence. The British and then English Canadian bourgeoisies both had the conscious policy of forcibly assimilating Quebec through anglophone immigration. It is not a revision of Lenin to uphold the right of an oppressed nation to fight its national and linguistic oppression. Lenin’s fight was first and foremost against the imposition of Russian—the dominant language—on the oppressed minorities of the tsarist empire. The LFI turns Lenin on his head by invoking his authority to oppose measures defending French—the oppressed language—against the dominant English language.

To oppose languages being given official status in all cases is simply reactionary. In fact, this position had previously led the ICL to oppose indigenous languages in Mexico being given preferential status under the guise of opposing privileges to any language! Or what about Haiti? The dominant language is French whereas the overwhelming majority of the population speaks Creole. Would measures favoring Creole at the expense of French be opposed by the LFI?

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All in all, the sentences from comrade Norden’s letters that most clearly reveal the political method and program of the LFI are probably the following:

“In Mexico, you essentially prettify the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as anti-imperialist. A question: do you advocate that the ‘anti-imperialist united front’ in Mexico include AMLO’s party, MORENA? Of course, everyone in Mexico knows that AMLO is acting as a border guard for yanqui imperialism.”[!]

To Norden’s question, our answer is yes. Trotsky wrote that in the struggle against Hitler he was ready to make a united front with the devil and his grandmother (“The United Front for Defense,” February 1933, printed in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany). So clearly, if it were posed, we would make a united front with AMLO or even the right-wing PAN in struggle against U.S. imperialism. The LFI wouldn’t…?

But more importantly, these few sentences reveal just how disconnected the LFI is from the actual tasks of revolutionaries. AMLO is one of the most popular heads of state in the world, precisely because he is considered a break from previous presidents who were simply yes-men for U.S. imperialism. Half a million people attended his rally celebrating the 1938 nationalization of Mexican oil. To simply brush off the anti-imperialist illusions he generates is not only delusional but profoundly disarming. After all, if “everyone in Mexico knows that AMLO is acting as a border guard for yanqui imperialism,” then there are no illusions to break. The result is simply to leave the hold of populist anti-imperialism totally unchallenged.

A similar methodology can be seen throughout the LFI press. Bombastic statements and orthodox jingles are used as talismans against capitulation while the misleadership of the working class is criticized from the left but not challenged fundamentally. There is a lot of huffing and puffing from the LFI, but you will not get an answer to the simple question: what is to be done? The ICL is a very small organization, but we believe we can provide answers for many of the key questions facing the international proletariat. We encourage our readers and supporters to attend the upcoming debate, where we will do our best to lay out our perspective to reforge the Fourth International in today’s world.

Letter to the IG/League for the Fourth International

2 September 2023

Dear comrades,

The recent international conference of the ICL has reoriented our party on fundamental questions (see Spartacist [English edition] No. 68, September 2023). This includes a review of our differences with the IG/LFI. As a result, the conference tasked the ICL to conduct “serious political clarification and debate with the IG” and to engage “as much as possible in common action to defend the basic interests of the workers movement.” In line with this, we propose opening formal discussion between our organizations.

On several important counts, the International Conference recognized that the criticisms made by the IG of the ICL were correct. The fights that led to the expulsions of the IG’s founding members from the ICL were characterized as unprincipled, as was the break in relations with Luta Metalúrgica/Liga Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil. We are currently investigating the disciplinary measures taken at the time. The conference also described the central critique of the ICL made by the IG at its founding as “essentially correct”—that is, that the ICL had reduced the task of Marxists in the post-Soviet period to “keeping the flame alive against attempts to squelch it.”

However, when it comes to the courses taken by our two organizations in the post-Soviet period, we believe that overall they were qualitatively similar. When it came to orienting the working class, neither organization had a correct perspective because neither had as its central objective to break the hold of liberalism on the workers movement—the dominant ideology of the period and the main ideological brake on the struggles of workers and the oppressed.

Our proposal to open discussion is not to paper over our differences. Rather, it is intended to raise the level of political discussion between our organizations, starting from the central questions of revolutionary strategy for the current period. We are hopeful that engaging in such discussions can bring our organizations closer. The split provoked by the expulsion of your founding members from our party has been detrimental to the workers movement. The relations between our two organizations have been extremely hostile, while on most questions the political differences have been shallow at best. We believe there has always been—and remains—a significant overlap in the views of our memberships. If we are to stay divided in two rival organizations, it is our respective duty to ensure that this division is based on crystal-clear differences over the most important questions facing the workers movement today.

The world is rapidly changing and the fight to reforge the Fourth International is posed with burning urgency. Events are shaking the left. Theoretical and political debates among the most advanced layers of the workers movement are crucial to reforging the Fourth International. But fundamentally it is fighting to provide revolutionary leadership in great world events that will be decisive. Doctrinal differences within the left can and will be overcome through common struggle.

In this sense, it is essential to engage as much as possible in common work when appropriate. The capitalists are keenly aware of the precariousness of their current situation; their response is to crack down on dissent and target minorities. There can be no excuse for disunity in the face of such attacks. Common fronts in defense work would be a modest but important contribution to advancing the interests of the workers movement and would put pressure on the rest of the left to do the same.

We expect that this letter will be met with a certain amount of skepticism on your part. As a first step, we simply propose to hold a private meeting between leadership delegations of both our organizations. The purpose would be to have an initial exchange of views and to consider options for further discussion. We place no preconditions on this meeting. On our part, we commit to seeking the utmost political clarity as opposed to the demagogy and slander that have characterized our relations thus far.

We look forward to your answer.