From July 21-27, 2019, the Socialist Equality Party (United States) hosted an international Summer School on the historical origins and political consequences of the ICFI’s split with the Workers Revolutionary Party, the former British section, from 1982-1986.
The lectures delivered at the school concentrated on the history of the ICFI from 1982 to 1995, the period from the initial formulation of a detailed critique of the WRP’s revisions of the theory and program of Trotskyism to the decision to transform the leagues of the ICFI into parties.
The lecturers examined the discussions within the International Committee on critical issues relating to strategy, program, perspective and organization in the aftermath of the February 1986 break with the WRP.
The political development of the party as a whole—of both older and younger members—the raising of its theoretical level to meet the intensifying political challenges, requires the interaction of an intense engagement with contemporary developments and the identification and critical analysis of the historical processes that constitute the essential content of the “present.”
Only after the 1985–86 split were the RCL and the ICFI able to begin a serious examination of the national question and the political perspectives of the Sri Lankan section in relation to it.
Only after the 1985–86 split, were the RCL and the ICFI able to begin a serious examination of the national question and the political perspectives of the Sri Lankan section in relation to it.
The historical legitimacy of the Russian Revolution derived not from the possibility of creating an isolated socialist Russia but from the fact that it was the opening shot of the world socialist revolution.
It is now nearly three decades since the deliberate liquidation of the Soviet Union by the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy and the launching of the First Persian Gulf War, which began in January 1991.
The eruption of mass protests in China from April 1989 onwards, culminating in the brutal military crackdown in the days and weeks after the night of June 3–4, was a crucial historical turning point in China and a key element of the crisis of Stalinism that was underway internationally.
On March 11, 1992, eleven weeks after the legal dissolution of the Soviet Union, the International Committee of the Fourth International began a plenum—a meeting of leading members—the twelfth since the split in 1985–86. In an opening report, David North addressed what the end of the USSR represented “within the context of the objective historical experience of the working class.”