Talk:International Committee of the Fourth International

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I don't understand. Is it a rule that only people hostile to Trotskyism can write about it?

Hostile to Trotskyism? I am a Trotskyist! But we need to tell the truth about the world - and that means balanced articles on Trotskyist topics.

After all, not everyone in the SWP was "eager for reconciliation." Whose interpretation is this? And why does this interpretation take precedence? How can you write about the Fourth International without a single mention of the concepts of "Stalinism" or "bourgeois nationalism", which are the main opponents of Trotskyists, who advocate a world socialist revolution?

There's no need to go into the history of Trotskyism or the Fourth International except as it affects the split as we have separate articles on those topics.

The oppostion between the ISFI and the ICFI is precisely on these questions.

"In the ISFI, Pablo had lost prestige, and as both the SWP and the ISFI hailed the Cuban Revolution as unconsciously furthering Trotskyism, they grew together."

Unconsciously furthering Trotskyism? Was this idea held by everyone in the SWP? No, so why present it this way? Only the ISFI believed in the unconcious furthering of Trotskyism, while the ICFI defended the tradition of Bolshevism, which stated that a revolution could only by won if led by a concious marxist leadership.

I'm sure that you have a wide knowledge of the history of the ICFI and with a little discussion can improve the article no end. It's important to present all points of view as neutrally as possible. For instance, the ICFI (of course) claim that they defend the tradition of Bolshevism, but so did the ISFI (and do the USFI). A discussion on shades of opinion in the SWP would be welcome. However, I am concerned by your phrase "It's incontravertible that that is what Trotsky stood for, and that is what the Fourth International was founded upon." Clearly there are disagreements about what Trotsky stood for, while there are also disagreements over whether the ICFI stands - and has stood for - them.

It's absurd that these ideas need to be edited out. It's incontravertible that that is what Trotsky stood for, and that is what the Fourth International was founded upon.

And finally, for now, "*was* a Trotskyist..."??? It still is Trotskyist.

Yes, this is an important correction! Warofdreams 12:41, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Sparts: they were charged with refusing to give testimony on the split within the American movement?

Reading through the minutes, I can't see any reference to the claim that "they were charged with refusing to give testimony on the split within the American movement". I;ve cut it until someone can produce a reference. (PS Sorry, I should have signed this) --Duncan 08:46, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wohlforth, Gelfand, and the Struggle Against the SWP

This section is not referenced and does not have a neutral point of view. Chronologically, a number of events here are presented out of order. I suggest we delete this section: if we cannot state on the WRP page that it was partly funded by Arab regimes, then the same standard of evidense should apply here. The suggestion that, because Field was related to a CIA employee, that her disagreements were police disruption, seems unsupported. I have placed the unsupported section below, while awaiting references. --Duncan 12:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

_________________________________

Yes and what about the allegation that the "ICFI" informed on leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party who were subsequently executed by the Saddam regime? This milieu of embittered pedantic intellectuals has never done anything to build the workers and progressive movement. If you want to know what Pablo was about, to read his version of history, start with the "Revolution and Counter Revolution in Chile." Yes, it's easy to carp and second guess from the sidelines when you've never done anything. Moreover, not a shred of evidence was ever produced to support these outrageous allegations from folks who opposed the Cuban Revolution and opposed the anti-war movement. A good example of why "the trots" were so widely disliked throughout the radical movement.

It also bears pointing out that no political organization, no party is required to admit into its ranks bitter political opponents who have joined under false pretenses with the intent of spying on and disrupting it. Below is a comment from the Militant newspaper from March 2005 on the Gelfand suit in the context of a discussion of a current SLAPP type lawsuit against them and the United Mine Workers Union in Utah by certain mine owners:

The Socialist Workers Party has defended itself previously from harassment lawsuits. In 1979, Alan Gelfand, a lawyer employed at the time by Los Angeles County, sued claiming his constitutional rights were violated because the SWP was run by FBI agents who engineered his expulsion from the party. Gelfand asked the court to remove the party’s leadership. “The suit has been prepared, organized, and financed by an antilabor group known as the Workers League, with which Gelfand is associated,” the Militant explained at the time.

With wild conspiracy allegations at its center, the case went on for 10 years until federal judge Mariana Pfaelzer finally dismissed it in August 1989. The SWP was awarded some of its costs. In a separate out-of-court settlement, Gelfand’s previous attorneys were forced to pay some of the legal costs the SWP incurred in defending itself in the case. The SWP mounted a public campaign against the suit reaching out broadly to the labor movement and to defenders of workers rights for support. Through the efforts of the Political Rights Defense Fund, which adopted the case, thousands and thousands of dollars were raised to cover the legal expenses.

In her final ruling, Pfaelzer stated that “there is no evidence” to back Gelfand’s charges and that his motivation in bringing the suit was to “disrupt the SWP.” “Gelfand,” the judge continued, did not “have any substantial basis in fact for any of his allegations, nor did he have a good faith belief that the allegations were true.” The judge concluded that years of “pretrial discovering” that she had allowed, which included hours of sworn depositions from SWP members and supporters with questions by attorneys paid by the Workers League, were “abusive, harassing, and in large part directed to matters which could have no probative value in this litigations. The discovery was not conducted for the purpose of discovering evidence in support of plaintiff’s claims; one of its main purposes was to generate material for political attacks on the SWP by the Workers League.”

The judge went on to lament, “I made a bad mistake during the trial. I should have granted the defendants motion for summary judgment six years ago.” She later told the SWP’s attorney that the case was “painful, because it cost your client so much money. All the trips [back and forth to Los Angeles] for legal hearings were a drain on the party’s treasury.”

-Tom Cod


A lot of this is covered in Workers Revolutionary Party, of course. The deal with the Iraqis is admitted and proven, not alleged. --Duncan 11:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


A response to the above: I will try to ignore the frothing at the mouth of the first 2 paragraphs. Clearly the ICFI did not oppose the anti-war movement! Ha!

1. By this poster's admission, Gelfand filed suit in response to being expelled, so that answers the previous edit.

2. There are two contradictory claims: the trial was meant to drain funds from the SWP vs. the trial was meant to "generate material for political attacks". If the SWP had nothing to hide, the trial could not possibly generate anything of the sort. The ICFI does not deny that they were trying to get testimony from SWP leadership that could be used against them, regardless of the lawsuit's outcome. The material gained helped the ICFI produce its "Security and the Fourth International" book, which goes into an investigation of how the Stalinists infiltrated the Fourth International in order to murder its leaders, including but not limited to Trotsky.

As for the costs of the trial: Did it not drain funds from the Workers' League and Alan Gelfand? And why did the judge only award partial costs to the SWP rather than all costs?

3. Think logically: The judge did not issue a summary judgement, and the case would have never gone to trial if a grand jury had not decided previously that there was some merit to the case. Also, how could the trial go on for 10 years if it was not for obstruction and avoidance by the SWP? The full, publicly available transcipts of the case are published and sold on the ICFI's website (www.wsws.org) while the case is only alluded to as a side issue by the SWP. The judge also with-held important grand-jury testimony from Gelfand until the very end of the trial, when no more witnesses could be called.

4. "Wild" conspiracy is one thing. It takes a certain type to deny that the US government, especially the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, would never dream of conspiring against the civil liberties of American citizens.

5. Gelfand's expulsion should be seen in the context of many expulsions the SWP carried out in the late 70s to mid 80s. This was during the period when they openly turned away from marxism, openly breaking with Marx's call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and denying Trotsky's theory of "Permanent Revolution". Any SWP members who criticized these steps or even had smaller tactical disagreements was compared to Gelfand as a traitor to the party and expelled.

6. I highly recommend the link: http://annotatedlife.blogspot.com/2006/07/excerpt-from-gelfand-case.html It details Gelfand's questions in a letter sent to the SWP leadership before his expulsion.

You are mistaken here. Gelfand raised his questions in 1977, and filed his court brief in 1978. he was expelled only in 1979. So, he didn't take the case to course because he had been expelled; rather he argued that the US government was restricting his freedom of association through its control of the SWP political committee. --Duncan 19:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a source, as it contradicts mine. Thanks.

All these dates are in 'The Gelfand Case', Volume 1. Gelfand raised his points verbally in 1977 (see pages 35 onwards), in writing on January 23, 1978 (pp 43), filed his brief December 18, 1978 (see pp. 86), and was expelled on January 11, 1979 (pp 102). --Duncan 16:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I have reverted a large number of the changed made earlier by an ICFI supporter. Use can use history to see that there's stuff being removed as well as added by this editor. Since no references were added, I've had to remove large parts. Hopefully we can find some references. However, Geland did file his brief before being sued. --Duncan 17:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Duncan's Reverting

Please do not revert. If you disagree with something, remove it individually and give an explanation. Then I can actually do the research and find the information you want to prove the claim. If you make large reversions, it is impossible to respond and come to an agreement.

Questions before you revert again:

1. What was the ISFI's policy towards the majority in Britain? I think it's reasonable that they would be just as anti-democratic as they were in France. Perhaps it was these traumatic experiences with Pabloism that made these sections less willing to compromise in 1964?

2. Regarding Castro, Lula, etc. Please reread: "They (ICFI) point as justification..." That is, they look back at their predictions of the ISFI's direction and they believe they are proved correct by subsequent development. They did not know everything the ISFI would do, but they did predict that the ISFI would abandon Trotskyism to support stalinist parties and to join nationalist movements. It is not wrong to explain what a movement's current view of its history is. Please be objective instead of attempting to remove all criticism of the ISFI!

3. Why do you want to delete the fact that Wohlforth himself voted for his own suspension from the central committee?

4. If you are not satisfied with saying that Fields was raised by a CIA agent, and you want to emphasise that he worked in the computer division, then why are you against explaining what he did in the computer division? He was not a technician but a high level operative, adn they actually often had a former CIA director over dinner at home on multiple occasions.

5. Why delete references to Seymour Hersh's articles in the NY Times, which clearly motivated the ICFI? I am giving you the author and the source!


6. Please cite source for claim that "Security" was only interested in assassinations.

7. Why are you deleting references to what documents the ICFI studied? During the late 50s, Soviet agents were tried in the United States, making available information not previously available. The SWP, however, never investigated these.

8. How can you reference Cliff Slaughter and ignore the role he played personally in the ICFI investigation?

9. Hansen's laxness was summarized in his point of view that it's better to have a spy and provacateur in the movement than to sow distrust among members. This is a lax approach to security.

In the future, if you make whole reversions with only partial comments, then I will just revert back again. This is a waste of both our time. Since you provided the source for the Gelfand thing, I am leaving it in. I admit that my source was a google search and I found a government website that mentioned the case, and it only had the 1979 date. This shows that I am not trying to hide the history but clarify it.

You seem to be more interested in removing facts without offering a counter-explanation. That is not a way to approach writing history. We don't need to cite a source for every claim, only claims for which there are contradictory points of view and conflicting sources. In that case, either one person concedes that the other source is more authoritative, or both sources are cited and the decision is left to the reader. I hope this is clear to you.

Hi there. I appreciate your comments; I understand that you're going your best, but we are hampered by a lack of references. Just to clarify. I am removing claims without sources, which is the way we work around here. I will do my best to answer your questions, but many of them really relate to other pages and other topics. However, it's your responsibiloity to find sources for clims you want to add into the article. For example, you continue to tweak the chronology to suggest that Gelfand went to court after he was expelled, but even The Gelfand Case, shows that these events happened the other way around.
1. What happened in Britain was quite unlike what happened in France. 'The origins of the International Socialists' had a good essay on this topic by Richard Kuper which explains that the entrists and non-entrists voluntarily agreed to separate in the 1940s. Since Healy controlled his group, the IS was unable to expell anyone from there.
2. Provide a reference.
3. I didn't cut it. Look at this diff [1].
4. Provide a reference.
5. The Gelfand Case argued that the case was prompted by the FBI papers from the 1940s. This is a reference to ConIntelPro. I can't find any reference that suggests that Hersch was the cataylst for the investigation.
6. I took the quote from the Introduction to The Gelfand Case. I don't have it here, but it's probably on page 37.
7. I didn't cut it. I changed 'admissions' to 'court testmony', which is a less loaded term. Look at this diff [2].
8. The page already referenced Slaughter. I seem to recall him saying that the investigationw aqs run out of the US and that he had not role other than formally rubber-stamping it. If you have ereferences, then let's use them.
9. I can't find a reference for Hansen saying that "it's better to have a spy and provacateur in the movement than to sow distrust among members", even if I spell it 'provocateur'. Can you find a reference?
Please do let me know if you find any references. Thanks! --Duncan 12:59, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pablo: impossible to build the FI

I have removed the floowing section: "It was impossible, the Pabloites argued, to build an alternative to Stalinism in the form of the Fourth International. Instead, various sections of the bureacracy could be influenced under pressure to defend the working class." This is not referenced, and does not fit with sources I have consulted. In particular, Pablo split with Mestre, Cochran and Lawrence on exactly these points. Are there any references that suggest that this, in fact, was Pablo's view at that time? --Duncan 18:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orthodox Trotskyism

The ICFI does not use this term with any energy: I can't find even a handful of uses of the term. The idea that this is a branch is bonkers. This is self-serving page, simply pushing the POV that the only two tributaries of Trotskyism are Northism or Shachtmanism. This page adds nothing, as exists only to support changes on the Trotskyism template. --Duncan 15:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

So far as I can tell, you are making four distinct arguments here:
  1. This term is used only by the ICFI and is identical with "Northism"; it adds nothing to the ICFI article.
  2. This term is not used by the ICFI, and is not a recognisable school of thought.
  3. Regardless of the term's existance, the article has been created only to justify the inclusion of third camp in Template:Trotskyism
  4. Regardless of the term's existance, the article has been created to imply that "Northism" and "Shachtmanism" are the only two tribuatries of Trotskyism.
Taking these in turn, point 1 is easily refuted by the article; I've shown it in use by the ITC and the LCRMI. In the critical studies composed by the IST, it is also identified with the USFI (although it is not a term the USFI uses), while all the groups which use the term claim a prehistory of Orthodox Trotskyism identified with the early Fourth International. This article contains much information not in the ICFI article, which would not be useful or appropriate there. On a side note, "Northism" is a neologism; I can't find the term in use anywhere.
Point two is incorrect; Googling the WSWS brings up twelve distinct uses of the term, many of them including definitions, and most very clearly claiming the term as their description of their ideology. Historically, Orthodox Trotskyism was used widely by the ICFI in the '53 dispute, as shown by the links in the article and other documents of the period.
Point three is a straw man. I really can't see how the existence of this article justifies or counts against the inclusion of any other topics in the Trotskyism template. Whether third camp should be included is an entirely separate argument. The sole connection is that in a discussion about which ideologies other than the third camp could be described as "branches" of Trotskyism, I suggested that Orthodox Trotskyism perhaps could, and that as we did not have an article on the topic, I would write one.
Point four suggests some confusion about the template. The list of prominent Trotskyists in the template is not an exhaustive list; the list of "branches" of Trotskyism (I'm still not happy about the term "branches"; all ideas welcome!) is also not comprehensive and should not be taken to imply that all - or even most - Trotskyists adhere to one or another group.
I hope that I am not misrepresenting your arguments here; please let me know if I have missed any points. Warofdreams talk 14:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)


Thanks for this. I will clarify my opinion and get back to you. Your point 2 is very useful. I had used their own search engine, and got very different results.--Duncan 15:25, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment moved from article

Actually, there are still TWO ICFI's not one as the article states. The smaller ICFI is still associated with the Shelia Torrance run WRP in the UK.

David Walters —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.203.27.99 (talk • contribs) . (belatedly put in by Mr Stephen 23:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC), I moved the comment)

I know they have a vague claim on their website to an international, but does it really still exist? Who else is a member? Warofdreams talk 20:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I think David is right on this --Duncan 13:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Fine, but why? Does it really exist? Who else is a member? Warofdreams talk 17:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
I think it's likely to have no 'real' sections. However, we should at least refer to it as a way to avoid confusion. --Duncan 11:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Warofdreams talk 22:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
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