League for the Fifth International

Logo of the League for the Fifth International

The League for the Fifth International (L5I) is an international grouping of revolutionary Trotskyist organisations around a common programme and perspectives. The group has sections in Europe, South Asia, and North America as well as supporters in the Middle East.

History

Early years

L5I was founded as the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International. Its first member groups were Workers' Power in Britain, the Irish Workers Group, Pouvoir Ouvrier in France, and Gruppe Arbeitermacht (GAM) in Germany. After a congress in 1989 the organisation adopted a common programme, the Trotskyist Manifesto, and a democratic centralist constitution, under which each national section agreed to be bound by the decisions of the international organisation as a whole.

Anti-capitalist movement and fighting for a Fifth International

In the late 1990s the League launched the youth group Revolution as an independent organisation in 1997.

In this time the League developed the slogan of a 'new, Fifth International', which called on mass organisations of the working class to form a new global party, while also maintaining that such a party should adopt a revolutionary programme. The call for a Fifth International expressed the League's view that the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938, had degenerated into non-revolutionary fragments since the end of the Second World War and now a new international must be built, with new forces, but one that expressed continuity with the Trotskyist tradition. This was originally expressed in the book published by the British and Irish sections called The Death Agony of the Fourth International and the Tasks of Trotskyists Today.[1]

It changed its name to the League for the Fifth International. It regards this programme as a new "transitional programme", based on the method of Trotsky's original from 1938, but applied to the current global political situation.

More recently, the academic and activist Samir Amin, has joined their call for a Fifth International - but does not give it the same Trotskyist content as the League.[2]

Publications

The League publishes a quarterly English language journal entitled Fifth International. The majority of writers for this appear to be from the British group, although other sections publish journals in their own languages. Revolutionärer Marxismus is the German language journal. The League has previously published first the journal Permanent Revolution which was more theoretical looking at tactics that communist organisations use, theories of imperialism, and similar questions. This was followed by Trotskyist International, which although still theoretical, looked also more at current affairs.

The League also has published many pamphlets on a variety of issues. In 2007 in republished The Road to Red October, a short history of the Russian Revolution. Among these publications is its transitional programme, From Protest to Power.

Member organisations

Groups that have a common history

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/publications/pamphlets/death-agony-fourth-international
  2. ↑ The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century (NY: Monthly Review Press, 2008)

External links