Editing Fourth International (section)

== World War II ==
At the outbreak of [[World War II]], in 1939, the International Secretariat was moved to New York City. The resident International Executive Committee failed to meet, largely because of a struggle in the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|U.S. Socialist Workers Party]] (SWP) between Trotsky's supporters and the tendency of [[Max Shachtman]], [[Martin Abern]] and [[James Burnham]]. The secretariat was composed of those committee members who happened to be in the city, most of whom were co-thinkers of Shachtman.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg03.htm |chapter=Declaration on the status of the resident International Executive Committee |title=Documents of the Fourth International |volume=1 |pages=351–355}}</ref> The disagreement centred on the [[Shachtmanism|Shachtmanite]]s' disagreements with the SWP's internal policy,<ref name="decline">{{cite web|author-first=Duncan |author-last=Hallas |author-link=Duncan Hallas |url=http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/cd/cd1/Library/archive/hallas/works/1973/xx/fidecline.htm |title=Fourth International in Decline |archive-url=https://archive.today/20080220223000/http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/cd/cd1/Library/archive/hallas/works/1973/xx/fidecline.htm |archive-date=20 February 2008}}</ref> and over the FI's unconditional defence of the USSR.<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Leon |author-last=Trotsky |author-link=Leon Trotsky |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/index.htm |title=In Defense of Marxism |location=New York |date=1942}}</ref>

Trotsky opened a public debate with Shachtman and Burnham and developed his positions in a series of polemics written in 1939–1940 and later collected in ''[[Leon Trotsky|In Defense of Marxism]]''. Shachtman and Burnham's tendency resigned from the International in early 1940, alongside almost 40% of the SWP's members, many of whom became founder members of the [[Workers Party (US)|Workers Party]].<ref name="factional">{{cite magazine|author-first=James P. |author-last=Cannon |author-link=James P. Cannon |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1953/facstrug.htm |title=Factional Struggle And Party Leadership |magazine=Fourth International |date=November 1953}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author-first=David |author-last=Holmes |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/bio/index.htm |title=James P. Cannon: His Life and Work}}</ref>

=== Emergency conference ===
In May 1940, an emergency conference of the International met at a secret location "somewhere in the Western Hemisphere". It adopted a manifesto drafted by Trotsky shortly before his murder and a range of policies on the work of the International, including one calling for the reunification of the then-divided Fourth Internationalist groups in Britain.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf |title=Emergency Conference of the Fourth International |magazine=International Bulletin |number=1 & 2 |year=1940}}</ref>

Secretariat members who had supported Shachtman were expelled by the emergency conference, with the support of Trotsky himself.<ref name="report">{{cite magazine|author-first=Michel |author-last=Pablo |author-link=Michel Pablo |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndcongress/1948-congress01.htm |title=Report on the Fourth International Since the Outbreak of War, 1939–48 |magazine=Fourth International (December 1948 – January 1949)}}</ref> While leader of the SWP [[James P. Cannon]] later said that he did not believe the split to be definitive and final, the two groups did not reunite.<ref name="factional" /> A new International Executive Committee was appointed, which came under the increasing influence of the [[Socialist Workers Party (US)|Socialist Workers Party]].<ref name="report" />

The Fourth International was hit hard during World War II. Trotsky was assassinated, many of the FI's European affiliates were destroyed by the [[Nazi Germany|Nazis]] and several of its Asian affiliates were destroyed by the [[Empire of Japan]]. The survivors, in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, were largely cut off from each other and from the International Secretariat. The new secretary, [[Jean Van Heijenoort]] (also known as Gerland), was able to do little more than publish articles in the SWP's theoretical journal ''Fourth International''.<ref name="report" /> Despite this dislocation, the various groups sought to maintain links and some connections were kept up throughout the early part of the war by sailors enlisted in the [[U.S. Navy]] who had cause to visit [[Marseille]].<ref>{{cite journal|author-first=Rodolphe |author-last=Prager |author-link=Rodolphe Prager |url=http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/No3/Prager.html |title=The Fourth International during the Second World War |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051227134205/http://revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol1/No3/Prager.html |archive-date=27 December 2005 |journal=[[Revolutionary History]] |volume=1 |number=3 |date=Autumn 1988}}</ref> Contact was steady, if irregular, between the SWP and the British Trotskyists, with the result that the Americans exerted what influence they had to encourage the [[Workers' International League (1937)|Workers' International League]] into the International through a fusion with the [[Revolutionary Socialist League (UK, 1938)|Revolutionary Socialist League]], a union that had been requested by the Emergency Conference.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/emergconf/fi-emerg07.htm |title=Resolution On The Unification of the British Section |magazine=International Bulletin |number=1 & 2 |year=1940}}</ref>

In 1942, a debate on the [[national question]] in Europe opened up between the majority of the SWP and a movement led by Van Heijenoort, [[Albert Goldman (politician)|Albert Goldman]] and [[Felix Morrow]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/index.htm |title=The Fourth International During World War II (immediately afterward) |website=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> This minority anticipated that the Nazi dictatorship would be replaced with capitalism rather than by a socialist revolution, leading to the revival of [[Stalinism]] and [[social democracy]]. In December 1943, they criticised the SWP's view as underestimating the rising prestige of Stalinism and the opportunities for the capitalists to use democratic concessions.<ref>{{cite magazine|author-first=Felix |author-last=Morrow |author-link=Felix Morrow |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/morrow-felix/1943/12/criticism.htm |title=The First Phase of the Coming European Revolution |magazine=Fourth International |date=December 1944}}</ref> The SWP's central committee argued that democratic capitalism could not revive, resulting in either military dictatorship by the capitalists or a workers' revolution.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1943-ww05.htm |title=Perspectives and Tasks of the Coming European Revolution |magazine=Fourth International |date=December 1943}}</ref> It held that this would reinforce the need for building the Fourth International, and adhered rigidly to their interpretation of Trotsky's works.{{citation needed|date=March 2021}}

=== European Conference ===
[[File:fourthinternational.jpg|thumb|The ''Fourth International'' magazine]]

The wartime debate about post-war perspectives was accelerated by the resolution of the February 1944 European Conference of the Fourth International. The conference appointed a new European Secretariat and elected [[Michel Raptis]], a Greek resident in France also known as Michel Pablo, the organisational secretary of its European Bureau. Raptis and other bureau members re-established contact between the Trotskyist parties. The European conference extended the lessons of a revolution then unfolding in Italy, and concluded that a revolutionary wave would cross Europe as the war ended.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1945-ww02.htm |title=Theses on the Liquidation of World War II and the Revolutionary Upsurge |magazine=Fourth International |date=March–May 1945}}</ref> The SWP had a similar perspective.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/ww/1944-ww07.htm |title=The European Revolution and the Tasks of the Revolutionary Party |magazine=Fourth International |date=December 1944}}</ref> The British [[Revolutionary Communist Party (1944-1949)|Revolutionary Communist Party]] (RCP) disagreed and held that capitalism was not about to plunge into massive crisis but rather that an upturn in the economy was already underway.<ref>{{cite thesis|author-first=Martin |author-last=Upham |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/upham/12upham.html |title=The History of British Trotskyism to 1949 |type=PhD |publisher=[[Revolutionary History]]}}</ref> A group of leaders of the French [[Internationalist Communist Party (France)|Internationalist Communist Party]] (PCI) around [[Yvan Craipeau]] argued a similar position until they were expelled from the PCI in 1948.<ref name="Schwarz 2004">{{cite web|author-first=Peter |author-last=Schwarz |url=http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/lft4-m22.shtml |title=The politics of opportunism: the 'radical left' in France |website=[[World Socialist Web Site]] |date=May 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124213008/https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/05/lft4-m22.html |archive-date=24 January 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== International conference ===
In April 1946 delegates from the principal European sections and a number of others attended a "Second International Congress".<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fi/1938-1949/fi-2ndconf/1946-conf02.htm |title=The Conference of the Fourth International |magazine=Fourth International |date=June 1946}}</ref> This set about rebuilding the International Secretariat of the Fourth International with Michel Raptis appointed Secretary and [[Ernest Mandel]], a Belgian, taking a leading role.

Pablo and Mandel aimed to counter the opposition of the majorities inside the British Revolutionary Communist Party and French Internationalist Communist Party. Initially, they encouraged party members to vote out their leaderships. They supported [[Gerry Healy]]'s opposition in the RCP. In France, they backed elements, including [[Pierre Frank]] and [[Marcel Bleibtreu]], opposed to the new leadership of the PCI{{spaced ndash}} albeit for differing reasons.<ref name="War">{{cite book|author-first1=Sam |author-last1=Bornstein |author-link1=Sam Bornstein |author-first2=Al |author-last2=Richardson |author-link2=Al Richardson (historian) |title=War and the International |location=London |date=1986}}</ref>

The Stalinist occupation of Eastern Europe was the issue of prime concern, and it raised many problems of interpretation. At first, the International held that, while the [[Soviet Union|USSR]] was a [[degenerated workers' state]], the post-World War II East European states were still [[bourgeois]] entities, because revolution from above was not possible, and capitalism persisted.<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Alex |author-last=Callinicos |author-link=Alex Callinicos |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.de/trotism/callinicos/2-2_crisis.htm |title=Trotskyism |chapter=Crisis |location=Maidenhead |date=1990}}</ref>

Another issue that needed to be dealt with was the possibility that the economy would revive. This was initially denied by Mandel (who was quickly forced to revise his opinion, and later devoted his PhD dissertation to [[late capitalism]], analysing the unexpected "third age" of capitalist development). Mandel's perspective mirrored uncertainty at that time about the future viability and prospects of capitalism, not just among ''all'' Trotskyist groups, but also among leading economists. [[Paul Samuelson]] had envisaged in 1943 the probability of a "nightmarish combination of the worst features of inflation and [[deflation]]", worrying that "there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced".<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Paul |author-last=Samuelson |chapter=Full Employment after the war |editor-first=S. |editor-last=Harris |title=Post war Economic Problems |location=London & New York |date=1943}}</ref> [[Joseph Schumpeter]] for his part claimed that "[t]he general opinion seems to be that capitalist methods will be unequal to the task of reconstruction". He regarded it as "not open to doubt that the decay of capitalist society is very far advanced".<ref>{{cite book|author-first=Joseph |author-last=Schumpeter |chapter=Capitalism in the post-war world |editor-first=S. |editor-last=Harris |title=Post war Economic Problems |location=London & New York |date=1943}}</ref>