Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 07.07.2025
In the article “The Degeneration and Collapse of the Fourth International: In Defense of Our Heritage” Wood’s chronology of his tendency is similar to that of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which altered history to accommodate Stalin’s shifting politics.
Let us start with Ted Grant’s refusal to join the Fourth International when Trotsky was alive and the movement’s leading figure. Woods begins his account of his tendency after Trotsky’s murder.
“Despite the historic task that faced the Fourth International, after Trotsky’s assassination, many of its ‘leaders’ played a lamentable role. Amidst a sea of confusion, Ted Grant – founder of the organization that is now the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) – stands out as the only consistent defender of the genuine, revolutionary method of Marxism.”
But what Happened in 1938-40?
Ted Grant, a founding member of the Fourth International, rejected the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 and remained outside its ranks for years. This was in line with the prevailing view that a socialist revolution was unlikely after World War II. The Grant tendency insisted that Social Democracy, the Stalinist parties, the bureaucracy of trade unions, and the nationalist bourgeoisie in the former colonies enjoyed the full support of the working class and the oppressed nations.
They claim that the Chinese model, which established a deformed working class based on peasants, is a historical stage that will last many years. They call these states Proletarian Bonapartism.
For Example, Grant wrote:
“In Burma, where the regime, newly emerged from British domination and where the ruling class was incapable of successfully ‘holding the country together’, it faced a series of rebellions and wars. The army was formed from the Anti-Fascist Peoples Freedom League, which described itself as ‘socialist’.With China as a model next door, the army leaders tired of the incapacity of the landowners and capitalists to solve the problems of Burma. Basing themselves on the support of the workers and peasants, they organized a coup, expropriated the landowners and capitalists, and established Burma as a ‘Burmese Buddhist Socialist State’.
For decades, they infiltrated and remained in these counter-revolutionary parties, claiming that their task was to transform them into revolutionary parties. To justify their launching the fake international in 2024, they wrote:
“In the third decade of the 21st century, the capitalist system is facing an existential crisis. Such situations are by no means unusual in history. They are a manifestation of the fact that a given socio-historical system has reached its limits and is no longer capable of playing a progressive role” [i]
Has the capitalist system stopped being progressive only now? How to explain the 1917 Bolshevik revolution? The 1968 events in France. What about the crisis of 2008?
Unlike this caricature of the historical age that humanity has lived in since at least WWI.
Trotsky wrote in 1938 in the transitional program:
“The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already, in general, achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism….
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet ‘ripened’ for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind”.[ii]
But why quote only Trotsky? We can quote Ted Grant in 1943.
“The crime of the last world war exacted its retribution in the revolution of 1917, and the world revolutionary wave which followed in 1917-1921. We know that only the Russian proletariat succeeded in solving the problems with which they were faced, nevertheless the fact that this world revolutionary wave affected the entire mass of the population in almost every part of the globe in itself was proof of the fact that capitalism had become a brake on the development of the productive forces, and that it was now the task of the proletariat to inaugurate a new order of society. The national state was completely outmoded by the development of the forces of production.”[iii]
Ted Grant’s adaptation to the British ruling class was straightforward long before he supported British imperialism in the Falklands War. It began in WWII when he said:
“We have a victorious Army in North Africa, and Italy, and I say, yes, Long live the Eighth Army, because that is our army. One of our comrades has spoken to a number of people who have had letters from the Eighth Army soldiers, showing their complete dissatisfaction. We know of incidents in the Army, Navy and other forces that have never been reported, and that it is impossible for us to report. It is OUR Eighth Army that is being hammered and tested and being organized for the purpose of changing the face of the world. This applies equally to all the Forces.” [iv]
“In 2007, the IMT refused to side with Hamas against the PA, backed by the USA and Israel. Several sources speak of considerable involvement by the United States, Israel, and Arab states, after Hamas in 2006 announced the formation of its own security service, the Executive Force, which Mahmoud Abbas denounced as unconstitutional. The Presidential Guard of Mahmoud Abbas was enlarged and equipped, and its members trained by the US, Egypt, and Jordan, who attacked Hamas and the PA forces, which lost.
According to the IISS, the June 2007 escalation was triggered by Hamas’ conviction that the PA’s Presidential Guard, loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, was being positioned to take control of Gaza. The US had helped build up the Presidential Guard to 3,500 men since August 2006. The US committed $59 million for training and non-lethal equipment for the Presidential Guard, and persuaded Arab allies to fund the purchase of further weapons. Israel, too, allowed light arms to flow to members of the Presidential Guard. Jordan and Egypt hosted at least two battalions for training.”
A short time before Israel and the USA attacked Iran, Alan Woods defined Iran as a regional imperialist power. Still, without any explanation, he changed his position and defended Iran against Israeli and American imperialists. We can only hope that the RCI/IMT will be able to criticize themselves for all their wrong positions, rather than trying to hide and beautify their real history.
Endnotes:
[i] Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist International
[ii]www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/].
[iii] Ted Grant Our Tasks in the Coming Revolution – Speech at the 1943 Conference of the Workers’ International League.
[iv] https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1944/01/tasks.htm