Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Written: 1992.
First Published: October 1992.
Source: Published by the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency.
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This is the first issue of the theoretical journal of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT). The LTT is the result of a fusion between the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency of Belgium and Germany and the Workers International League of Britain, with the participation of a group of South African Trotskyists. Although the fusion congress took place in March 1991, political collaboration predated formal fusion by some time. This is reflected in the contents of the present issue.
The Fourth International ceased to be a consistently revolutionary movement in the aftermath of the Second World War. The strategic aim of the LTT is therefore the rebuilding of the Fourth International, with sections in every country. This requires a struggle for a clear Marxist understanding of events both current and historical. To that end, this journal will provide a forum for debate on the important questions facing Trotskyism, a vehicle for theoretical work carried out by the LTT and its supporters and, lastly, a means of ensuring that important material from the archives of Marxism is not forgotten.
The present issue is weighted somewhat heavily towards the first of these three functions. In that respect, it reflects the major upheavals in world politics in the recent past.
The past three years have seen what is undoubtedly the most significant political development of the late 20th century: the collapse of Stalinism. Capitalist restoration in the ex-Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe presents the masses in those countries with problems which have not been seen for a generation or more. It has also induced the most profound crisis of political understanding in many organisations which claim adherence to Trotskyism. Their disorientation in the face of Stalinism’s collapse mirrors to an extent the confused character of the post-war debate on Eastern Europe. The latter was in many ways a watershed in the collapse of the Fourth International into centrism. It left unresolved some of the questions which are raised today by the reverse process: what is the dividing line between a bourgeois state and a workers’ state? What was the role of Stalinism in the overturns of capitalism in Eastern Europe? We intend to return to these questions in future editions.
Getting to grips with these and other issues, especially those relating to the national problems long suppressed by Stalinism, provides Trotskyists today with an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Fourth International after the Second World War and make genuine strides towards a rebuilt revolutionary international. It is therefore fitting that the biggest section in the first issue of In defence of Marxism relates to capitalist restoration in Germany, the country where the process took place first. One of the smaller sections deals with the national question in the ex-Yugoslav federation, where the suppression of national minorities by the Stalinists has had the most serious consequences.
The question of strategy and tactics in the struggle to throw off the yoke of imperialism is posed exceptionally sharply in South Africa, where the multi-millioned black masses face betrayal at the hands of the African National Congress and its associates in the South African Communist Party. The second most substantial section appropriately deals with issues facing revolutionaries in the Southern African coupled with a polemic on the question of continuity in the Fourth International.
The aggressive character of the ‘democracies’ of Western European and American imperialism has nowhere been more graphically illustrated than in the Gulf War of 1991. Equally stark was the challenge to revolutionaries presented by imperialist war. The struggle against pacifism and chauvinism in the labour movement evoked the historic struggles of Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left and others for a principled line during the First World War. The third section is devoted to joint statements of those who came together to form the LTT and other international tendencies.
Yet another source of confusion on the left is the move towards integration of European capitalism. Our selection from the archives, written more than 50 years ago, is by contrast a model of clarity.
It is currently planned that In defence of Marxism will be published twice a year. The editorial board welcomes concise and serious contributions relevant to the main goal of the LTT: the rebuilding of the Fourth International.
October 14, 1992
In defence of Marxism Index (1992-1996)
Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive