TACTICAL ORIENTATION OF THE FACTION FOR THE TROTSKYIST INTERNATIONAL
(For the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International)

Adopted by the First International Conference of the
Faction for the Trotskyist International
(For the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International)
5 January 1992

1. The "Rules of the Faction for the Trotskyist International," adopted at its founding conference, defines the faction's purpose:

The International New Course Faction is dedicated to the political regeneration and organizational reconstruction of the Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution, which is currently fragmented and dominated by revisionist positions.

"The Crisis of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Consistent Trotskyists," also adopted at the FTI's founding conference, defines the faction's general perspective for achieving this objective:

The Fourth International has suffered a grave process of political degeneration and organizational fragmentation. As a united, organized revolutionary political force, as the body of the international proletarian leadership, as the world organization of genuine revolutionary Marxism -- it has obviously ceased to exist. This fact poses the fight for the international proletarian leadership in an extremely elemental form as the primary task facing proletarian revolutionaries today. The first question of international strategy which the consistent, orthodox Trotskyists must, then, take up is the question of how actually to proceed in this elemental fight for the international proletarian leadership.

While politically degenerated and organizationally fragmented, the Fourth International has not died politically. Despite its acuteness, the historical crisis of the Fourth International still differs qualitatively from the historical crises of the Second and Third Internationals...

In the sense that in all the organizations derived from the crisis of the Fourth International and claiming to base themselves on the Transitional Program, some conscious struggle for the political regeneration of the Fourth International has taken place, is taking place, and must take place in the next period, in this sense, we must recognize and define the contours of a somewhat amorphous international movement in which consistent Trotskyists must fight to develop and unify all the genuinely Trotskyist forces in the regenerated and reconstructed Fourth International.

By this perspective we do not mean that orthodox Trotskyists in any way identify or confuse their program with the concrete program and policy of either Pabloite or anti-Pabloite revisionists. Nor do we mean that any form of centrism or revisionism, including Pabloism, can somehow, in and of itself, be treated as a consistent, revolutionary Marxist trend. Nor do we mean that these "Trotskyist-centrist" organizations derived from the crisis of the Fourth International should be the sole arena of the struggle to regenerate the Fourth International. An international Trotskyist faction could decide to enter as a whole into one international "Trotskyist-revisionist" organization, to work primarily within a number of such organizations, to function primarily as a group of independent organizations, and so on -- all depending on the concrete conditions best favoring the struggle to regenerate the Fourth International.

What the recognition of the special character of these centrist groupings does mean is that orthodox Trotskyists must maintain a strategic orientation toward them. Further, their special character has a number of specific practical implications.

Within the "Trotskyist-centrist" organizations, we must promote the formation of orthodox Trotskyist factions, united on an international basis with each other -- independently of the various international or national organizations in which they may respectively be intervening -- and with the independent orthodox Trotskyist organizations, all the components together forming an international Trotskyist faction, organized on a democratic centralist basis both internationally and in its national sections.

2. The International Trotskyist Committee (ITC), from which the FTI derives, attempted to implement this perspective in three ways: 1) building independent ITC organizations in the US and Britain, 2) engaging in political discussions with left or leftward-moving Trotskyist organizations in various countries, and 3) joining the sections of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) in Italy, Denmark and Germany and building ITC factions there and in the USFI as a whole.

The ITC succeeded in building small independent organizations in the US and Britain. Through individual recruitment, mainly in 1990-91, the ITC sections there grew by half from the size they were when the ITC was founded in July 1984. The ITC split in August 1991, however, reduced the rump ITC sections in the US and Britain to the sizes they were throughout the 1980s and left the FTI sections there with half that number.

The ITC failed to make any significant progress in the regroupment of left or leftward-moving Trotskyist organizations. It established its international presence and developed friendly relations with several groups, but it did not converge with any of them. In particular, the ITC was unable to bring about any significant regroupment from the ferment caused by the 1985-86 explosion of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) of Britain.

The ITC succeeded in joining the USFI and establishing small factions in the USFI sections in Italy and Denmark. It extended its factional activity internationally through the initiative to establish a Left Tendency at the Thirteenth World Congress of the USFI in February 1991. The Left Tendency initiative strengthened the ITC section in Italy, helped revive the section in Denmark, and laid the basis for developing factions in the USFI sections in France and some other countries.

The ITC could implement its policy only to a very limited extent for several reasons: the retreat of the working class internationally after the 1970s; the accompanying retreat of the proletarian vanguard; the profound and deepening crisis of the Fourth International; the great disparity between the ITC's tasks and its resources; and certain weaknesses of the ITC leadership.

The retreat of the working class and its vanguard meant that the ITC had too little opportunity to show its program and method to the vanguard and to demonstrate its policy in key moments of the class struggle. The deepening crisis of the Fourth International meant that the ITC had too few left-wing developments in the world Trotskyist movement to intersect. The ITC's small size meant that it lacked adequate resources to intervene in the leftward motion that did develop. And the weaknesses of the ITC leadership -- a sectarian smugness and passivity which was tolerated where it was not shared -- meant that the ITC failed to intervene aggressively enough with the resources it had.

3. The FTI faces the same objective problems the ITC faced. The working class continues to retreat, even if the extreme social tensions in most of the world and frequent explosions show that the retreat will not last forever. The proletarian vanguard is stirring, but its political movement is still quite limited. The centrist leaderships of most of the Trotskyist organizations are becoming increasingly disoriented, even if their organizations continue to attract fresh forces.

The FTI cannot claim to have overcome the ITC's subjective problems either. The disparity between the FTI's tasks and its resources is even greater then the ITC's, since the FTI has about half the resources of the former unified ITC. The FTI intends to avoid self-satisfaction and self-indulgence, but we understand that good intentions and revolutionary will are not enough. We need a correct policy.

The FTI must abandon the ITC's three-track policy and adopt a policy focussed on the USFI. The FTI does not have the resources simultaneously to build independent national organizations, to engage in discussions with other left-Trotskyist groups, and to build a faction in the USFI. We may be forced to build an independent organization in the US. We may see opportunities for political discussions with or interventions in Trotskyist organizations other than the USFI or even non-Trotskyist organizations. But these activities must be subordinated to the development of our work in the USFI.

The FTI must prioritize our USFI intervention, first of all, because of the USFI's importance in the world Trotskyist movement. The USFI is the largest international Trotskyist organization and the only one with a real worldwide presence. It is relatively democratic and has a real internal political life. These characteristics mean that the USFI has, so to speak, the gravitational pull to draw in individual militants and other Trotskyist groups.

The FTI must prioritize our USFI intervention also because of the relative lack of opportunities in the rest of the world Trotskyist movement. The other relatively large international Trotskyist tendencies, the International Workers League (IWL), the International Militant tendency (IMT), the International Center of Reconstruction (ICR), and the International Communist Union (ICU) of Lutte Ouvrière (LO), are largely an extension of one national organization and lack, to one degree or another, a democratic internal life. For the moment, there is no reason to expect significant developments there.

The smaller, more left-wing international Trotskyist tendencies are generally stagnant. The impetus from the WRP explosion is spent, so the WRP's Preparatory Committee has nothing to prepare. The Workers Party of Argentina is absorbed in its national work and not interested in regroupment outside the Latin American countries where it already has influence, particularly Brazil. Workers Power of Britain is turning in on itself and apparently moving to the right.

4. The FTI's tactical orientation toward the USFI means that it should attempt to become a faction not only of the Fourth International in general but also of the USFI, with all its national sections in the USFI. This has numerous implications.

The FTI's British and US comrades should attempt to join the USFI. The British comrades should apply for individual membership in the International Socialist Group (ISG). The Trotskyist League (TL) should initiate political discussions and joint work with the Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) and Socialist Action (SA) to test the possibility of fusion and, if that proves impossible, to lay the basis for becoming the fourth US section, pending unification of the USFI forces there.

If the British and US comrades are blocked from joining the USFI, they should present themselves as supporters of the FTI, a faction of the USFI, who have been excluded bureaucratically from the USFI. The FTI should wage an international campaign to get the excluded comrades admitted to the USFI.

The FTI should present itself as a faction of the USFI, regardless of its juridical situation, and all its activity should reflect this. We should fight for the USFI to adopt the programmatic positions outlined in the FTI's founding documents. We should fight for the USFI to adopt the perspectives and carry out the tasks outlined in the documents for a Left Tendency in the USFI and subsequent FTI documents. Although we may need to form blocs around partial questions, our object is to build our international faction and win a majority or at least a substantial minority of the USFI to our views.

The FTI comrades in the USFI should participate actively in the internal life of their USFI sections. They should develop good working relations with other comrades, attend branch meetings, join the debate, put forward resolutions on relevant topics, engage actively in the practical work, write for the external publications of the section, run for branch and national offices, submit material to the internal bulletin, put forward platforms and resolutions for national conferences, and build the FTI in the section.

The FTI also should participate actively in the international life of the USFI. The comrades in the USFI should take part in the international discussions in their sections, join the debate, put forward resolutions, run for World Congress delegate and other international offices, submit material to the international discussion bulletin, write for the USFI's external publications, attend USFI international conferences, develop positive relationships with other USFI comrades whose positions are close to ours, and build the FTI internationally.

The FTI comrades outside the USFI, in addition to trying to join the USFI, should support this effort through formal discussions with the leaderships and informal discussions with the ranks of the USFI sections, in the course of joint work, and through contributions to the internal bulletins and external publications of the USFI sections and the USFI as a whole.

5. The FTI's tasks in the USFI over the next period are to consolidate our relationship with the non-FTI supporters of the "Appeal for the Establishment of a Left Tendency in the Fourth International (USFI);" to continue the struggle against liquidationism and for programmatic clarity and the line of building a mass Fourth International that we began at the Thirteenth World Congress; to develop a struggle around the crisis of the Soviet Union and Stalinism; and to fight for the early convening of the Fourteenth World Congress to take up the questions of the Soviet Union, the crisis of Stalinism, and party-building.

The FTI should call an International Conference in summer 1992 to "fuse with" the supporters of the "Appeal for a Left Tendency" who are not presently members of the FTI. The IEC should prepare the Conference carefully, making sure that document drafts are ready well in advance of the Conference, that the Conference is well-publicized in the USFI, and that our contacts are invited and urged to attend.

During the period leading up to the Conference, the FTI should correspond with our USFI contacts worldwide and arrange visits to Germany and other countries where we have contacts. We should attempt to locate people who voted for the "Appeal" or parts of it in the national precongresses for the Thirteenth World Congress, see how fully they agree with our overall perspective, and win them to the FTI, if possible.

In Italy, Denmark and France, the FTI comrades should campaign against any tendency to liquidate the national sections there and any tendency to conciliate liquidationist tendencies in other sections. We should argue that the crisis of Stalinism means a crisis of all the counterrevolutionary, nonrevolutionary and centrist forces. Trotskyists should be raising, not lowering their banner, because our time, the time of Trotskyism, is now.

The FTI should develop a struggle around the crisis of the Soviet Union, as indicated in our document on the subject. Given what is potentially at stake, both positively and negatively, the USFI should be devoting all available resources to the building of a section in the former Soviet Union. Instead, the leadership is wringing its hands. The FTI should demand action from the USFI, in part because this is our only way to intervene in the crisis of the Soviet Union, given our location and resources, and in part because it helps advance our overall struggle in the USFI for the political regeneration and organizational reconstruction of the Fourth International.

The FTI should demand the early convening of the Fourteenth World Congress, as soon as a discussion to prepare the Congress and involve the ranks can be organized. A Congress in the first half of 1993 should be possible. The USFI came out of the Thirteenth World Congress with no clear line on the Soviet Union, the crisis of Stalinism, or party-building. This must be remedied as soon as possible.

6. The FTI needs effective democratic centralism to accomplish its work. Two important requirements for preserving the vitality of the faction are 1) the development of a more effective international leadership, both primary and secondary, and 2) the growth of the faction.

The FTI needs a primary international leadership capable of developing the internal life and external intervention of the faction, including the production of an internal bulletin and an external theoretical review and polemical bulletin, and the gaining of promising international contacts. The FTI needs a secondary international leadership capable of building the faction, developing the sections, and helping to win the international contacts. The FTI and its sections must strive to become a "party of responsible leaders," as described in the "The Organizational Structure of the Communist Parties, the Methods and Content of Their Work: Theses," adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International.

The FTI needs regular, well-prepared international discussion meetings, preconferences, International Conferences, and International Executive Committee (IEC) meetings. Written reports of IEC meetings, including at least the agenda and decisions, must be produced and distributed to the sections. Between IEC meetings responsibility for the FTI's work will be divided among IEC members, with special technical-political responsibility falling to the IEC Secretary.

A first priority for the IEC must be communication. The IEC members must maintain communication among themselves between meetings. Since urgent matters will require telephone communication, the Secretary must make sure that each IEC member is contacted at least monthly and has the opportunity to raise and discuss any issue. Any IEC member may contact any other IEC members to discuss any issue at any time. Where an organized discussion is needed, the Secretary must arrange it.

The IEC members from each section must make sure that all internal or external materials published by the section or important to the work of the section or the FTI are made available. Such materials, translated into English or not, should be sent to the Secretary to distribute to the other sections. Urgent materials should be sent directly to the other sections as well.

The FTI must have an International Internal Bulletin (IIB) as an organ of internal discussion, in accordance with Article V, Section 18, of the "Rules of the Faction for the Trotskyist International." The Secretary must make sure that informational materials, document drafts, discussion documents, reports and resolutions from meetings, and other materials for general circulation in the FTI are collected and published in the IIB at least quarterly.

The FTI should encourage the comrades of each section to produce a balance sheet on their section's work to encourage political discussion among the militants from the different sections. That is to say, we must develop the faction collectively.

The FTI should publish a theoretical/political review devoted to clarifying our theoretical and political positions, with at least one (1) issue per year. We also should publish a polemical/political bulletin for circulation in the USFI and among close contacts, as often as necessary but with at least three (3) issues per year.

Communication among the FTI sections and the production of bulletins will be much easier if the sections exploit the technology the capitalists inadvertently have made available to us. The IEC should help each section obtain at least one personal computer and connect it to an international telecommunications network, so that documents can be exchanged on computer disk or through the network. The FTI also should make more use of facsimile machines, audio tapes and transcriptions, etc.

The FTI needs to improve its ability to translate documents, at least among English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Comrades should be encouraged to learn languages, and we should make use of techniques such as taping and transcribing or computer-generating rough translations and having comrades fluent in the language edit them. We may be able to get some documents translated by contacts, friends or commercial translators.

The FTI should systematically develop its relations with cothinkers and potential cothinkers in and out of the USFI. This will require correspondence and travel. The FTI needs to divide labor, taking account of linguistic problems and political connections. The European comrades should take special responsibility for work in Europe, including Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, western and southern Asia, and Africa, and the US comrades should take special responsibility for work in Canada, Latin America, eastern Asia, and the rest of the Pacific rim.

7. The FTI's tactical orientation toward the USFI does not exclude other tactical possibilities, even in the next period. Two such possibilities are the building of an independent organization in the US and the intervention by the British comrades into a non-USFI organization, if they are excluded from the ISG.

The US situation presents a special case, because the TL has no compelling national reason to seek fusion with the FIT or SA separately, given their small sizes and the fragmentation of the Trotskyist movement in the US. The TL should pursue discussions with the FIT and SA to see whether unification is possible, but it must build an independent organization at the same time.

The discussions with the FIT and SA may not lead to unification in the near future. SA most likely will refuse to talk, and in that case the TL and the FIT may find that bilateral fusion is too difficult, given the present small, relatively equal sizes of the organizations. The TL should be willing to compromise on organizational questions to achieve fusion, but in discussions now with the FIT alone it should insist on the right to test its policies in action within the framework of a common organization.

Even if the fusion discussions fail now, they may lay the basis for a joint TL-FIT appeal to the USFI to admit the TL as a fourth section of the USFI, pending unification of the USFI forces in the US. The discussions also would position the TL for fast action in the event of an upsurge in the class struggle in the US and the growth and fusion of the USFI forces. Under such circumstances, the TL could not insist on the right to pursue its own policies externally, since the access to the vanguard inside the USFI section gained by joining would be more important than the access to the vanguard outside the section lost by adhering to the section's discipline.

If the TL is excluded from the USFI, it should present itself as it would be -- bureaucratically excluded from the USFI, which it is trying to join. This would facilitate an international campaign in the USFI to get the US comrades admitted. It also would facilitate their supporting the USFI intervention through literary contributions and discussions with USFI supporters in the US and abroad.

Unlike the TL, the British comrades have both national and international reasons for joining the USFI. Joining the ISG and building a faction there seems to offer the best opportunity for developing the British section and its intervention in the British class struggle, as well as assisting the FTI's international intervention in the USFI. All the British comrades should apply for ISG membership immediately.

If the British comrades are blocked from joining the ISG, they should present themselves as bureaucratically excluded and attempt to work with ISG comrades on that basis, and the FTI should wage an international campaign to have them admitted. In the meantime, however, the British comrades might be forced to join another Trotskyist organization in order to have a framework for their activity.

8. Other ways the FTI might find itself relating to organizations other than the USFI in the next period are the development of left factions in the large Trotskyist-centrist organizations other than the USFI, discussions with the small, independent, left Trotskyist groups, and the development of left factions in non-Trotskyist mass organizations. In such cases, the FTI would need to find a way to proceed with the non-USFI possibility and relate it to our central orientation to the USFI.

If the FTI finds a group of consistent Trotskyists or leftward-moving Trotskyist-centrists in a Trotskyist-centrist organization other than the USFI, we might want to urge the comrades not to leave their present organization but rather to build a faction there. Developments in the International Militant Tendency (IMT) seem most likely to lead to such a situation now. The IMT appears to be moving leftward and polarizing under the impact of recent world events and repression in the British Labour Party, which may mean the development of an interesting left wing. Similar developments might occur in other formerly stagnant Trotskyist or semi-Trotskyist organizations.

The ITC expressed interest in discussions with a series of left Trotskyist organizations, including the Workers Party (PO) of Argentina, the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR) of Bolivia, the PO/POR-sponsored Fourth Internationalist Tendency, Workers Power (WP) of Britain, the WP-sponsored Movement for a Communist International (MRCI), the Revolutionary Workers Party (RWP) of Sri Lanka, the Socialist Workers Party (HKS) of Iran, the WRP of Britain, the WRP-sponsored Preparatory Committee, the Irish Workers League, the Revolutionary Workers Party of Spain (PORE), the PORE-sponsored Fourth International ("Rebuilt"), the Workers Internationalist League of South Africa (WILSA), and the groups in the Coordinating Committee for a US Open Trotskyist Conference.

The FTI should maintain friendly relations with these organizations -- the ones that still exist -- although at the moment there seems little likelihood of significant political developments with any of them. If one of the left Trotskyist groups shows interest in regroupment, however, the FTI should propose political discussions. We would have to decide then how to relate the discussions to our central intervention in the USFI.

If the FTI found a group of leftward-moving Trotskyist-centrists or non-Trotskyists moving toward Trotskyism in a non-Trotskyist party, we again might want to urge these comrades not to leave their present organization but rather to build a faction there. If the group were small, we might want to urge it to join the relevant USFI section. If it were large, we might want to urge the USFI section to join it. If neither were possible, we might want to intervene in the group anyway.

At the moment, developments in the Stalinist organizations seem most likely to create such a situation. Around the world, Stalinist organizations or factions of Stalinist organizations have reacted to the events in the Soviet Union, the crisis of Stalinism, and imperialism's "new world order" with political discussion and a left turn. There have been left Stalinist developments in Italy, Greece, Spain, South Africa, Poland, the Soviet Union, the US, and many other places. The FTI and the USFI should try to take advantage of these developments.

9. The orientation described in this document reflects the current state of the class struggle, the crisis of proletarian leadership, the disarray in the world Trotskyist movement, and the relative importance of the USFI. It is a genuine and serious orientation, in the sense that the 1928-33 orientation of the International Left Opposition toward the Communist International was genuine and serious, but it is not a permanent orientation.

If the USFI, facing the present crisis of the Soviet Union, should fail completely in its tasks and collapse fully into liquidationism, the proletarian vanguard would turn away from it, ignore it, and seek another vehicle for building a world party. In that case, the FTI would have to change its orientation. Our strategy would remain the same -- the political regeneration and organizational reconstruction of the Fourth International -- but we would have to find a new tactical approach to achieving our objective.