Trotskyist International is the English language organ of the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International (MRCI), which was founded in April 1984. The name of our journal is also a declaration. It represents our commitment to refound a revolutionary international in the tradition of Lenin and Trotsky. Today no such international exists. Trotsky’s Fourth International collapsed into centrism in 1951. The various tendencies who claim to be the Fourth International—Mandelites (USFI), Morenoites (LIT), Lambertists (OCRFI), etc—are centrist caricatures of Trotskyism. They have dragged Trotsky’s revolutionary banner though the mud of opportunism and liquidationism for more than three decades.
The founding conference of the MRCI set itself the task of defending the historic programme of Trotskyism against these centrist distortions and re-elaborating it as a guide to action in the current period of world imperialist rule. Trotskyist International will play a vital role in that task. The journal will publish the resolutions and theses of our international tendency. It will be a journal that does not shrink from sharp polemic.
The nucleus of a new revolutionary communist international will be forged in struggle against centrism, Stalinism and social democracy. It will need to rally revolutionary workers against misleaders, around a new revolutionary programme. Our journal will be part of that struggle. Neither will we neglect our history—the history of Trotskyism. We will defend and rediscover what was correct and valid in our movement and criticise all that was misguided or in error. The workers’ movement has no use for diplomacy of cover-ups.
Some of our articles will be taken from the press of the MRCI sections, edited for an international audience. Others will be written especially for Trotskyist International. We hope to stimulate a debate among those groups or individuals who recognise the political bankruptcy of the major tendencies which claim the mantle of Trotsky’s Fourth International and we invite contributions and letters on the subjects dealt with in our journal. We also encourage contributions on the revolutionary and workers’ movement in areas of the world where the MRCI has yet to reach.
This first issue of Trotskyist International contains a number of theses and resolutions passed by the most recent MRCI delegate meetings. The Theses on Gorbachev and the revolution on Afghanistan analyse recent developments within Stalinism and develop communist tactics in relation to them. The article on the French LCR and Pierre Juquin is an edited version of an articles which appeared in Pouvoir Ouvrier number 11 written during the French presidential campaign. The article traces the origins of the ‘Rénovateur’ movement and demonstrates the LCR’s capitulation to it.
The article on the Kurt Waldheim affair looks at the scandal of the ex-Nazi president from the vantage point of analysis of Austria’s position in the postwar settlement. This article is a translation of a bulletin produced by our Austrian section and sold on the February demonstration at the height of the anti-Waldheim movement.
In the last few years, the history and positions of the biggest current in Latin America claiming to be Trotskyist—the Morenoite LIT—have become a matter of debate and argument in Europe. This has been a result of the LIT’s attempts to build sections outside of its Latin American heartland since its split first with the USFI and then with the OCRFI of Pierre Lambert. In the first part of this article, Peruvian Trotskyist José Villa looks at the origins of Moreno’s current in Argentina, its capitulation to Peronism and the falsity of its claims to have stood against the guerillaist line of the USFI in the 1960s.
Also in relation to Latin American Trotskyism we print for the first time in English, the Pulacayo Theses of the 1946 with an introduction explaining their political setting, their significance to the Bolivian labour movement and their basic weaknesses.
Finally, we assess the results of the ‘open conference’ initiatives which followed the explosion and disintegration of the International Committee of Gerry Healy.
We hope that our new journal will make an important contribution to the gathering together of forces committed to refounding a genuine Trotskyist International. We invite any individual readers or organisations which agree with its analysis and political line to enter into discussion with us with the aim of jointly carrying out that task.
