The Fourth International has, more than once, recognised several organisations in the same country as components of a single section. Brazil is the standing case. The section there contains a number of organisations, and rather than requiring them to merge or choosing between them, the International set up regular discussions and a protocol for how they operate together, written specifically to stop any one of them becoming hegemonic and to guarantee every component representation in the international leadership bodies.
That is an unusual thing for a revolutionary organisation to do, and it is the answer this episode is really about. The left’s split problem does not get solved by people resolving to be more comradely. It gets managed, when it is managed at all, by constitutional devices: rules about who is bound by what, who is represented where, and what happens to a minority after a vote. The Fourth International has a set of them, and they are worth examining whether or not you share its politics.
The alternative is on display whenever the AWL attacks Ernest Mandel, and in the cycle of splits that has run through revolutionary organisations worldwide for decades.
The devices, and what each one is for
Multiple organisations, one section. Recognising several groups as parts of one section keeps comrades inside a shared framework instead of expelling the argument into a new organisation. The stated aim is eventual reunification, not permanent coexistence, but the sequence matters: hold people together first, converge through practice afterwards.
Rights and duties in the same clause. Members in a minority have the duty to carry out a line decided democratically. Their rights as a minority are affirmed in the same breath. Neither half works without the other, which is why organisations that assert only the duty produce splits and organisations that assert only the right produce paralysis.
Debate that belongs to the whole membership. Political debate is meant to be deep and decisive and to run through the entire international, rather than being settled elsewhere and imposed. A decision that arrives from outside the discussion is not binding in any sense that will survive pressure.
The united front is the outward-facing version
The same logic governs how the International deals with other traditions, including those it considers opportunist or sectarian. The united front exists to prevent sectarian isolation and to connect with the wider working class, uniting workers in common action even alongside reformist organisations, with the aim of winning the masses to socialist ideas.
It carries a specific risk, and the FI is explicit about it. A party entering united fronts needs to be strongly organised and to have clear ideas, or it gets pulled in a less revolutionary direction and its programme is diluted. Class independence from bourgeois and reformist forces is the line that does not move. The International rejects participation in bourgeois governments and in governments built on class collaboration.
So the rule is not that unity is good. The rule is that common action is necessary and that the price of entering it is knowing exactly what you will not trade.
Broad parties are a tactic, not a retreat
The FI argues for building broad parties that gather revolutionary Marxists beyond the Trotskyist tradition. This is not an abandonment of the goal of a mass revolutionary party. It is a practical route to uniting non-sectarian revolutionaries, and organisations such as the Movimento Esquerda Socialista in Brazil and the NPA-L’Anticapitaliste in France are considered for integration on that basis, disagreements included.
The phrase used for the alternative is political gangrene. Sectarianism is treated as a condition that spreads and destroys tissue, not as a character flaw in other people.
Five things the International actually does
Participation in social movements: trade unions, neighbourhood organisations, women’s, LGBTIQ, environmental and anti-war movements, advancing demands that cut against capitalist policy and pressing for those movements’ independence from state power.
Confrontation of analyses and experience, with the International as the forum where militants from different countries put their readings of the class struggle against each other.
Coordinated international initiatives, from anti-apartheid campaigning to solidarity with revolutionary movements, which is where internationalist solidarity stops being a sentiment.
Feminisation and the integration of younger comrades into the leadership bodies, pursued deliberately rather than left to happen.
International publications and education: a coherent press including International Viewpoint and Inprecor, and educational work through the institutes, which is how a shared political vocabulary gets built and passed on.
What to take from this
If you are in the middle of a British argument about a new party right now, the transferable part is not the Fourth International’s programme. It is the machinery.
Ask of any new formation: can it recognise more than one component in the same place, or does it require a merger before it can start? Does it state the rights of a minority in the same document as their duties? Is there a written protocol preventing one component from dominating the leadership, or only an assurance that nobody would? Are the debates that decide things held in front of the membership?
Those are answerable questions, and the answers predict whether an organisation splits. Good intentions do not.
