Committee for a Workers' International (1974)

For other uses, see Committee for a Workers' International (disambiguation).

Committee for a Workers' International

Abbreviation	CWI (English), CIT (Spanish), CIO (French)
Predecessor	Fourth International (post-reunification)
Successor	Committee for a Workers' International (2019) (Refounded/Continuation) International Revolutionary Left International Socialist Alternative
Formation	21 April 1974
Dissolved	25 July 2019
Type	Association of Trotskyist political parties and organisations
Region	Worldwide
Membership	35 Sections (until 2019)
Key people	Leon Trotsky
Affiliations	Trotskyism, Marxism Socialism, Revolutionary socialism, Unionism, Activism

Before The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) (Spanish: Comité por una Internacional de los Trabajadores, or CIT; French: Comité pour une internationale ouvrière or CIO) was an international association of Trotskyist political parties and organisations that currently exists through a major split in 2019.

History

Founding

The origins of the CWI can be traced to a group of British Trotskyists which were expelled from the FI in 1965, after disagreements regarding the Colonial Revolution, Guerillaism, Studentism and the post war boom. But it is not till 1974 that they set about building an international. The founding conference of the CWI was held in London on 20 to 21 April 1974 and attended by supporters of what was then called Militant (or the Militant tendency), from 12 countries including Britain, Ireland and Sweden. In the early years of the international, sections generally pursued a policy of entryism into social democratic or labour parties. As such, the CWI was originally secretive because to organise openly risked the expulsion of its sections from the parties in which they were working.

End of entryism

The CWI largely ended its strategy of entryism in the early 1990s. The international developed an analysis that many social democratic parties had fundamentally changed in nature and become outright capitalist parties, their main example being the UK Labour Party. This was strongly resisted by Ted Grant, one of Militant's founders. After a lengthy debate and special conference in 1991 confirmed overwhelmingly the position of the CWI in the England and Wales section, Grant and his supporters sought official faction status within the organisation, which was granted for some time, but later was revoked by the leadership. Ted Grant and his supporters were expelled and founded the International Marxist Tendency (now the Revolutionary Communist International).

Since their Open Turn CWI sections have, in a number of countries, stood candidates under their own name. One section has representation in a state parliament, the Socialist Party, which at its height had three TDs in Dáil Éireann in the Republic of Ireland. The CWI also has elected members in a number of regional legislatures or local councils in Sweden; (Germany) (members of The Left); Pakistan; Sri Lanka; and the United States, where Socialist Alternative elected Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council in 2013 and again in 2015. In the 2005 Sri Lankan presidential elections the CWI affiliate, the United Socialist Party, came third (with 0.4%).

Supporters of the CWI launched a youth organisation, International Socialist Resistance, in 2001.

New mass workers' parties

CWI members played a leading role in founding the Scottish Socialist Party. However, the SSP broke with the CWI in 1999, with a minority of members loyal to the CWI establishing the International Socialists. When Tommy Sheridan resigned from the SSP in 2006 and established a new party in Scotland, Solidarity, the International Socialists joined in conjunction with the Socialist Workers Party.

CWI members stood as National Conscience Party candidates in the 2003 Nigerian legislative elections, winning 0.51% of the national vote. In Germany CWI members have been active in the new WASG since its foundation in 2004 and in December 2005 were elected part of the new leadership of its Berlin district that ran candidates on a clear anti-cuts programme in the 2006 Berlin regional election, gaining 3.1% and several borough council seats, but the Berlin WASG later merged into Die Linke. In Brazil, CWI members helped found the P-SOL Socialism and Liberty Party after left wing parliamentarians were expelled from the PT.

In the 2011 Irish general election the CWI's Irish affiliate, the Socialist Party won two seats in the Dáil as a part of the wider left group, the United Left Alliance which won five seats in total in Dáil Éireann. However, one of the elected members of the Socialist Party has since left the party to continue as an independent. In the by-election in Dublin West in 2014, the Socialist Party gained a second seat in the Dáil again, and a third seat in the 2014 Dublin South-West by-election as part of the Anti-Austerity Alliance.

Split

See also: International Socialist Alternative § History

In 2018 and 2019, a dispute developed in around the questions of socialism and identity politics, the role of the trade unions and the working-class movement, and under what programme and how Marxists should organise internationally and domestically. This led to a multifaceted split. The dispute divided the leading bodies of the CWI, with International Secretariat and International Executive Committee taking conflicting positions.

One group, which had founded the “In Defence of a Working Class and Trotskyist CWI” (IDWCTCWI) faction in November 2018 in support of the CWI's International Secretariat, declared in July 2019 that they had refounded the CWI.

A second group, in support of the majority of the CWI's International Executive Committee, declared itself the CWI Majority in August 2019 and renamed itself International Socialist Alternative (ISA) on 1 February 2020. It asserted that the CWI had not dissolved but that the IDWCTCWI had split from the CWI.

A third group, which had split from the IDWCTCWI earlier, declared it had left the CWI entirely and formed International Revolutionary Left in July 2019.

In 2021, several groups subsequently left the ISA, or split from ISA sections, to form International Standpoint (IS).

CWI at 50

Celebrating Fifty Years of the CWI

Over the weekend of 20-21 April 1974, a small but crucial international meeting took place in a room at the Old Mother Redcap pub in Camden, London. This meeting decided to launch a new revolutionary Trotskyist international organisation, the Committee for a Workers’ International – the CWI. The new international was to be wedded to the ideas and methods of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

Present at the meeting were supporters of the Militant newspaper in Britain and very small groups which had been established in Ireland, Germany and Sweden, together with individuals from Sri Lanka, Jamaica and some other countries. Although tiny in number at that stage, the CWI was to take important strides forward in the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s and have a significant impact internationally. For fifty years the CWI has been involved in a political struggle for a revolutionary socialist programme for the working class, participating, and in some situations played a leading role, in the struggles of the working class and oppressed.

The need to work to build a new Trotskyist international flowed from what had developed in the 1950 and 1960s and the post-Second World War economic upswing, which had come to an end by 1974. This period had had an impact on the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI), at that time the main successor organisation to the international Trotsky helped found in 1938. How to respond to capitalism and international developments triggered a series of political debates and disputes in the USFI with supporters of Militant in Britain.

Militant had been launched in 1964, emerging from the group around the infrequent journal, Socialist Fight, the paper of the Revolutionary Socialist League. The differences related to crucial questions such as the character of the colonial revolutions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the role of guerrillaism and the working class, the then Sino-Soviet split, and the perspectives and programme for the working class in Europe, the US and elsewhere amongst other issues. In essence the USFI turned away from the working class and looked towards other social forces as the driving force of the socialist revolution. Eventually this resulted in the de-facto expulsion of Militant from the USFI in 1965. Politically this rupture was a product of objective conditions and how Trotskyists faced up to the world situation.

Initially isolated to only Britain, Militant still rooted its political analysis and approach within an international perspective. After its expulsion, Militant comrades began to seek international co-thinkers. It was agreed, after discussion, that it was necessary to take on the task of beginning to build a new international organisation. Herculean efforts and sacrifices were undertaken by those forming the core of the Militant in the mid- and late-1960s and later, especially by Peter Taaffe along with Keith Dickinson and others. Ted Grant played an important political role in the post Second World War period but was later not able to face the challenges of the new world situation which were to open-up in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Breakthrough

Crucial changes were taking place internationally by the mid-1960s, including in Britain. After the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other campaigns on this issue came the anti-Vietnam war movement, the movement of black Americans and the Black Panthers, the French general strike and upheavals in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1968 and turmoil and revolutions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These were all an anticipation for even greater events and upheavals in the class struggle in the 1970s.

In 1970 a decisive change took place which enabled Militant to make great progress in Britain, and later, internationally. Militant supporters, who were working at that stage in the Labour Party, won a majority in the Labour Party Young Socialists. At the time it was a shell of an organisation. Militant supporters transformed it. It was turned outwards to intervene in the class struggle amongst young workers. Campaigns, demonstrations, and rallies were organised and eventually an organisation of approximately 10,000 members, mainly of young workers, was built, with 2,000 attending the annual conferences. The Labour Party leadership agreed to give it a place on the NEC of the Labour Party which was used as an effective platform to intervene in the crucial battles within the Labour Party which were to erupt towards the end of the 1970s and 1980s.

The LPYS organised the first national Labour movement of that era against racism in Bradford in 1974. It was at the forefront of many anti-racist struggles and battles against the fascists, including the battle of Lewisham in 1977 when it played a leading role in stopping a march by the fascist National Front. Pamphlets on the Russian Revolution and other subjects were produced and paid for by the Labour Party. At that time the Labour Party was an entirely different animal to what we see today. Despite its key leaders being pro-capitalist it was seen by the working class as its party and big sections were active in it.

Internationalism

International struggles were a major feature of the work launched by the LPYS under the leadership of Militant, especially the Spanish Young Socialist Defence Campaign during the struggle against the fascist Franco dictatorship.

The developments in Britain also opened new channels for international work and the development of the CWI. Militant members from the LPYS were sent on international visits to the young socialist conferences in Europe. This allowed contacts to be met and assisted in laying the basis and strengthening the work of the CWI mainly in Europe after its foundation in 1974. Sections of the CWI were established throughout western Europe and built in Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Austria, Netherlands, Greece, Cyprus and elsewhere. Most of these sections also undertook work in the Social-Democratic parties.

However, this work, although allowing those sections to develop and grow, did not follow the same path as the unique situation that had developed in the British Labour Party. Although in Ireland it was possible to have a big impact, win the leadership of Labour Youth and get members elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party. This reflected the situation in the social democratic parties in the main.

Reflecting the revolutions which developed in Greece, Spain and Portugal, the social-democratic PASOK, PSOE and PSP respectively, lurched to the left dramatically for a period. The success of the work of Militant in the British Labour Party was noted internationally by the bureaucracies and pro-capitalist right-wing social-democratic leaderships. They rapidly moved to expel us in Sweden where they feared our growing support amongst the social-democratic youth. In Finland they proscribed us and banned us from membership before we had even recruited a single member.

The successes we had in this work in Britain in the Labour Party possibly led to an over emphasis on this aspect of the work of the CWI in some countries. However, it was not the only route or tactic that was applied by the CWI. In Greece, immediately after the overthrow of the military junta in 1974, we came into contact with two existing Trotskyist groups who agreed to fuse together and begin intervening in PASOK when it rapidly exploded in membership when formed. They were rapidly expelled in 1976 as they won increasing support.

In Sri Lanka a major development took place. Sri Lanka had enjoyed a strong Trotskyist tradition through the building of the mass workers’ party, the LSSP, which had a Trotskyist core. Following the degeneration of this party after it had joined a popular front government, a split eventually took place and the NSSP was formed in 1977 and affiliated to the CWI. At the same time work began in Pakistan amongst activists in exile who later returned to the country and built an organisation.

Others, although smaller, were attracted to the CWI at a later stage. From South Africa, two Trotskyists moved to London and with others built the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC which had members both in exile and in South Africa fighting the apartheid regime.  Later, in Nigeria, comrades from two small groups came together in 1985 and started to build the CWI in that country and became a significant factor on the Nigerian left.

The 1980s saw an upsurge in the struggle in Latin America and the overthrow of the military regimes which had ruled the continent. The CWI turned to these movements and sent comrades to build sections in Chile, Brazil and Argentina, which was achieved. In Chile, our section participated in the struggle in the underground during the Pinochet dictatorship and the CWI took up an international campaign of political and resource solidarity, the Chilean Socialist Defence Campaign, advocating a revolutionary socialist programme to overthrow the regime.

Successes

In Britain, support and membership of Militant went from strength to strength reflecting the radicalised and polarised political situation and the upturn in the class struggle. A furious battle opened between the left and the right in the Labour Party and the trade unions. Militant was to play a central role in this and in many areas became the backbone of the left. Three Militant supporters were elected to parliament. Decisively, Militant supporters won majority support in Liverpool Labour Party and then in the city council.

Later, on the back of the leadership and role of CWI members in important struggles in Ireland, including the anti-water charges campaign, members won seats to the local councils, the Irish parliament and the European parliament.

A solid base in the trade unions was build with Militant supporters playing an important role in the struggle to transform the trade unions into fighting combative organisations of the working class. The orientation to the organised working class has been a crucial aspect of the political orientation of the CWI and of its work.

An epic battle was to ensue between Liverpool Council and Thatcher’s hated government. At one stage a city-wide general strike was called and 50,000 rallied in support of the council. This historic struggle was to become a crucial battleground with Thatcher and also the right-wing of the Labour Party. Under the treacherous leadership of Neil Kinnock the party was taking a rightward lurch. In 1983, the five members of the Militant Editorial Board were expelled. It took the right-wing pro-capitalist wing of the Labour Party years to carry through a vicious witch-hunt which eventually drove thousands from the party. By 1986 the Liverpool councillors were suspended and surcharged.

Liverpool’s epic battle was to be followed by the mass non-payment campaign of the hated poll tax that Thatcher introduced in 1989/90. Militant initiated and led this mass movement which culminated in eighteen million people refusing to pay the tax, ultimately defeating Thatcher and triggering her downfall. The CWI stresses the crucial role of the organised working class in the trade union. At the same time, under certain circumstances ad hoc organisations not based on the trade unions can develop, like the Anti-Poll Tax Federation which we initiated.

Clarifications

Objective conditions, wars, revolutions and struggles of the working class put all revolutionary organisations and individual to the test. Sometimes it is essential to maintain a principled political position even if this means braking with a large party or group, or being in a minority. This is necessary on occasions to maintain political credibility and a principled position. When necessary, the CWI has been compelled to adopt this method.

In Sri Lanka, the government’s defeat of the public sector general strike undermined the strong base that the NSSP had within the trade unions and helped open the way to government-backed pogroms in 1983 amongst the Tamil minority. This was followed by the brutal war against the Tamil people which resulted, in 1987, in the intervention of the Indian army. The majority of the NSSP supported Indian intervention and abandoned the demand for the right of self-determination for the Tamil people. This was opposed by the CWI leadership and a minority in the NSSP. The debate began in 1987 and ended in the expulsion of the NSSP from the CWI in 1989. This was an example of how sometimes it is necessary to defend a principled political position even at the expense of losing some forces, or of being in a minority following a period of democratic debate and discussion.

This issue was to arise again within Militant and the CWI in the late 1980s and 1990s as an entirely new world situation arose with the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the former-USSR and Eastern Europe. Even prior to those upheavals differences arose over the tactics to be followed in the poll tax movement which reflected opportunistic pressures during a mass movement and struggle. A minority in Britain argued that the Militant MPs should pay the poll tax in order to keep their parliamentary seats. The clear majority opposed this opportunist position. One of the MPs, Terry Fields from Liverpool, was to go to prison for refusing to pay the tax and was subsequently expelled from the Labour Party.

Other issues also provoked debate and discussion for example, the changing situation in South Africa as the apartheid regime entered its death agony. This reflected a changing world situation. Crucial and fundamental issues were to confront the CWI in the 1990s. An entirely new world situation was to develop. This demanded a full reappraisal of world perspectives and the tactics and strategy which flows from them. The collapse of the Stalinist states and restoration of capitalism in the former-USSR and Eastern Europe changed the world situation and had a decisive impact on political consciousness and the organisations and political parties of the working class.

The minority that then emerged in the CWI was in denial regarding these changes and what flowed from them. As the events began in the former-USSR and Eastern Europe the situation was not initially fully clear. The possibility of capitalist restoration was raised for discussion as a possibility at the CWI World Congress in 1988. In four to five years it became an accomplished fact.

The CWI sent members to intervene in every Eastern Europe country and what was then the USSR. Seeing the reality on the ground gave a greater insight to the processes at work. What was to become the CWI majority was open to grasping the changes taking place and rapidly drew the conclusions which flowed from them. What became the minority was not. They were content to repeat what had become outmoded and dangerous formula. The world objective situation and how to respond to it provoked a split in the CWI. The CWI was the first organisation on the revolutionary left to recognise capitalist restoration had taken place. It also reappraised the situation in the former social-democratic and some of the Communist Parties, drawing the conclusion that they had become bourgeoisified and were no longer bourgeois-workers’ parties. With no sizeable workers’ political parties in most countries the need for broad new mass workers parties became an issue alongside the crucial need to build revolutionary parties. The former minority in the CWI rejected this approach and dogmatically clung to the outmoded tactic of continuing to work in the old parties as if nothing had changed.

1990s

Revolutionary organisations and individuals are tested in many different ways and in an array of varying objective situations. The 1990s however was an extremely difficult terrain for Marxists to navigate. There were exceptions, in Nigeria after the annulment of the 1992 election saw various mass struggles against the continuation of military rule in which CWI comrades played an increasingly influential role. The collapse of the former Stalinist states was used by the ruling classes to launch a massive ideological offensive. Socialism was defeated, “we have won”, they trumpeted far and wide. The leaders of the workers’ movement internationally, in the main, capitulated. Political consciousness was thrown back a long way and is only now beginning to recover. This did not mean that nothing was happening or some struggles were not breaking out.

However, within them the idea of socialism as an alternative social system was absent. In Europe there was an echo amongst big layers of the youth to the call to combat racism. The CWI took a bold initiative and launched Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE). At its peak an all-European demonstration was convened in Brussels in October 1992 mobilising 40,000 youth from across Europe. The YRE then developed in a number of countries, the Brussels demonstration was where we first met the comrades who went on to form the French section of the CWI. The activities of the YRE was crucial in assisting the development of a new generation of cadres within the CWI, some of whom were to develop as national leaders of our sections and play a crucial role in the CWI.

The new situation globally posed new issues for the CWI and the working class. Rich, lively and democratic debates took place in the CWI on issues relating to the introduction of the Euro currency, the European Union, globalisation, the class character of China, and the national question in Scotland, the Spanish state and elsewhere. Later, other issues were fully debated and discussed such as Marxist economics and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as well as tactical issues confronting our sections.

All organisations were affected by this fundamental change in the world situation. No political organisation, including the revolutionary left, if rooted in society can be immune from objective pressures and the concrete situation which exists,

The CWI attempted to reach out to other international organisations that adhered to Trotskyism for discussions to explore if agreement was possible. Discussions took place involving the USFI, LIT, UIT – the latter two being based mainly in Latin America and coming from the Moreno strand of Trotskyism – and others. However, after discussion, it was clear that there was not political agreement on crucial issues.

We explored in some countries new tactics, such as in Brazil where the social-democratic PT had degenerated and swung to the right and for a period CWI members participated in the PSTU, a party aligned with the LIT, prior to the formation of a new left formation, PSOL, which split from the PT in 2002 and was partly composed of various Trotskyist tendencies. The CWI has always adopted a flexible approach towards the tactics and orientations that are necessary in each concrete situation.

The objective pressures of this period weighed down on socialists and the working class. Regrettably, it affected some CWI members in Scotland, who, reflecting these pressures, looked for a short-cut and proposed in 1998 the dissolving of the revolutionary party into a broader party in which they would work as a loose trend. This was against the background of SML, Militant in Scotland, having conquered an important base through the anti-poll tax struggle and other struggles. The SML elected councillors in Glasgow and Strathclyde. Between 1992 and 1994 it contested seventeen elections and won on average 33.3% of the vote. The CWI leadership opposed this opportunist turn. We proposed that if the Scottish organisation insisted on implementing it they could, provided a balance sheet was drawn after one or two years. This was rejected by the majority in Scotland and they broke away from the CWI in 2001.

Opportunities & Complications

The end of the 1990s and the opening of the new century saw the beginnings of movements against neo-liberalism, anti-capitalist movements and protests that the CWI intervened in. these movements opened a new chapter. However, they also reflected one of the effects of the collapse of the former-Stalinist states on the political consciousness of activists, the working class and the new generation. Crucially, the idea of an alternative social system to capitalism, socialism, was not present. The new century saw the development of the “pink wave” in Latin America, beginning in 1999 with the coming to power of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The CWI intervened in these events and established a small section. The weaknesses in these movements posed big limitations on them.

The change in mood amongst big layers was however very significant. It was reflected in the world’s main imperialist power the USA. The CWI at the time was able to intervene and gain from this. A CWI member at the time was elected to the city council in Seattle – the only independent socialist to be elected then in the US – leading the way on the struggle for raising the minimum wage and other issues.

The significant, but politically limited character of these movements, eventually led to disappointment, disillusionment and betrayal. The defeat of the “pink wave” in Latin America in some countries opened the way for the right to gain electorally.

The “great recession” which hit in 2008, which was anticipated by the CWI opened a new era of capitalism. A new period of a protracted death agony of capitalism with economic crisis and fragile short-lived growth had opened. The CWI in our analysis had hope that it would lead to a more rapid re-emergence of a socialist political consciousness.

However, this did not take place. It opened the way for upheavals and struggles in many countries, such as the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011. Later a series of multiple uprisings and revolutions were to break out in Sudan, Chile, Ecuador, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. A political radicalisation did occur which was anti-system, anti-inequality, against the ruling elite and neo-liberalism etc. Yet still the idea of an alternative social system, socialism, was not coherently present.

The upheavals in Greece, Spain and elsewhere led to the growth of new left political forces like Syriza and PODEMOS. These were very symptomatic, yet they were not new mass workers parties as the CWI had argued for. The Corbynista movement in Britain, which the CWI orientated towards, was a part of this international process. The new parties were largely left-populist in character and “digital parties” in form. Critical of capitalism and its consequences they did not advocate an alternative social system of socialism. They did not take the steps needed to build mass workers’ parties. Politically limited and weak, they, like the Latin American “pink wave”, were defeated or betrayed the movement leading to confusion and disappointment. A political era of populism, both left and right has dominated the situation. This can change in the era we are now in.

Into the 2020s

A complex period of capitalist crisis followed. The working class had not put its political stamp on the situation as a class. Most of the left had collapsed ideologically. This was reflected again during the COVID pandemic and more recently during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza, with the failure to advocate an independent class position. This period brought down new objective pressures on the left and the revolutionary left. It has also affected bourgeois parties.

Many parties and groups fragmented and split under this pressure. This process was also to affect the CWI. In some cases the weight of economic and social collapse also hit organisations. As we has seen before, as in Pakistan, again, some sections of the CWI and members, frustrated with the complexities of the situation looked for short-cuts. They turned away from the organised working class. A section towards the end of the first decade of this century embraced the divisive scourge of identity politics which had emerged from academia in the US. It signified a turning away from the organised working class. This resulted in a split from the CWI which included those in the US, Ireland and others. Forming an unprincipled political block their new organisation rapidly entered a series of problems, divisions and are currently in the midst of a major crisis and a probable split.

The explosive situation which developed, especially after 2018, with mass uprisings in countries like Sri Lanka, Chile and elsewhere, which the CWI intervened in, has opened a new era. The split from our ranks in 2019 on the issue of orientation towards the working class and identity politics, as with others previously, was part of a necessary process to prepare the CWI, basing itself on the methods of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky for new historical task and an entirely new world situation. This requires the application of the methods of these historic revolutionary leaders not a repetition by rote of what the argued in a different political and world situation.

Through the pandemic, based on a solid political foundation and analysis the CWI was able to maintain its forces and prepare for the new explosive situation that capitalism, in its protracted death agony, finds itself.

Today the CWI has successfully intervened in the upturn in the class struggle which has been apparent with the rise in strikes in Britain, Germany, the US and some other countries. In the horrific situation in most of Asia, Africa and Latin America we have maintained the revolutionary core in crucial countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Chile, Sri Lanka, India and elsewhere and our forces actively participating in the struggles taking place there.

The deepening crisis of dystopian global capitalism with wars, polarisation and class conflict and struggle poses the urgent necessity for the working class to re-build support for the independent political alternative of socialism. The CWI is part of that process and is rebuilding the revolutionary Trotskyist movement and building revolutionary socialist parties that can eventually become large or mass parties. In the struggle to build such parties new forces and parties will emerge that will also be a part of that process. To build revolutionary socialist parties two components are essential. One is that it is essential they are based on a solid Marxist theoretical base, perspective and programme. At the same time they must be rooted in action and intervention and participation in the class struggle and lives of the oppressed. The CWI is confident and optimistic that it can play a crucial role with others in building the revolutionary socialist parties and international that will be essential to defeat capitalism and build a socialist future.

Clare Doyle – Eyewitness to History

Clare Doyle attended the founding conference of the CWI in 1974 and has played a key role in its development throughout its fifty years of existence, serving on the CWI’s leading body, the International Secretariat, for decades. Earlier this year, members of Sozialistische Organisation Solidarität – SOL, the CWI in Germany, interviewed Clare about her experiences.

Clare, you attended the founding conference in 1974 when 46 Marxists from 12 countries established the CWI. Before we ask how this came to happen, we want to ask, why have an international at all?

International analysis and solidarity across borders is as vital today as it was in the time of Marx and Engels when the First and Second Internationals were set up in the nineteenth century or of Lenin and Trotsky when the Third International was founded on the basis of the successful socialist revolution in Russia.

The young German revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – in exile in Belgium in 1848 – where they wrote the Communist Manifesto – witnessed revolution spreading across Europe. Later they saw the heroic struggle of the Paris Commune in 1871 and how the intervention of a foreign power could assist in drowning a revolution in blood. They learned from its bitter failure that the working class, on coming to power, must take over the main levers of the economy and of the state.

The Second International developed large organisations but collapsed as a force for revolutionary socialist change when the Social Democrats in Germany’s parliament and elsewhere voted in support of an imperialist war. One of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution, Lenin, famously joked that the number of genuine revolutionary internationalists travelling to the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915 could barely fill four stage-coaches.

Yet, only two years later, the socialist revolution in Russia was successful. The Third International was then founded in 1919 to promote revolution across the world and rapidly gained large support in some countries. The valiant attempts of revolutionaries in Germany to overthrow capitalism and end the isolation of the Russian Revolution were tragically defeated.

The political counter-revolution under Stalin after Lenin’s death, led to the ‘Comintern’ becoming what Trotsky described as a ‘border guard’ for the protection of Stalin’s regime in the USSR. The 1930s saw mass repression and slaughter of millions at home which was accompanied by the crushing of revolutions abroad – most notably during the Civil War in Spain and the massive sit-in strikes in France. Previously Stalin’s policy of ‘Social Fascism’ destroyed workers‘ united action against fascism in Germany. This allowed Hitler to come to power which led to another war and the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians, including in the USSR itself.

In the run-up to world war two, the exiled revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, was operating with very few forces internationally – predominantly in the US and a few supporters elsewhere. After Hitler’s victory, which did not trigger any serious debate inside the Comintern, he felt it necessary to launch a new, Fourth, revolutionary international. Thus in 1938 he drafted a ‘transitional‘ programme, showing how all the basic and reasonable demands of workers and young people could only be carried out on the basis of the elimination of capitalism. It is this approach which still serves as an invaluable foundation stone for all sections of the CWI to base themselves on.

By the time the second world war broke out and Trotsky had been assassinated in 1940 by Stalin’s agent, Ramon Mercader, the forces of genuine revolutionary Marxism on a world scale numbered just a few thousand.

Why was it necessary to break with the forces that led the Fourth International after Trotsky’s death and how did this come about?

The two decades following the war saw both a temporary upswing for capitalism and one of triumphalism for Stalin and so-called ‘Communist’ parties around the world. It was a difficult time for the handful of Trotskyists in Britain organised in the 1940s in the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The leaders of the small forces of the Fourth International (of which we were historically members) were confused by the post-1945 situation which was not what Trotsky had expected. There was a revolutionary wave, but capitalism, with the help of both social democracy and the Communist parties, was able to contain it. On an international scale Stalinism emerged enormously strengthened. Increasingly, the leaders of the Fourth International, based in Paris and headed by Ernest Mandel, Michel Pablo, Pierre Frank and Livio Maitan – lost their way politically.  First they did not realise that capitalism had entered a boom phase, then they exaggerated the effects of this boom on the consciousness of the working class. In practice, the possibility of mass action, let alone movements towards revolution, was pushed into the distant future. Sometimes these Trotskyist ‘leaders’ sought short-cuts, supporting individual ‘renegade’ Stalinists, like Tito in Yugoslavia. Later, these ‘leaders‘ actually turned their backs on workers, preferring to see the key to the socialist revolution in ‘revolutionary‘ students  and ‘guerrilla‘ and peasant movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

These issues came to a head in the mid-1960s. Our small group in Britain at that time, working in the Labour Party, started in 1964 to produce the monthly newspaper, Militant. Technically still members of the Fourth International, we argued for a different programme and perspective. We produced documents on the nature of the post-war boom, the class character of China and the colonial revolution against imperialism. Of key importance, we stressed the building of a base amongst workers and fighting to win support for Marxist ideas in the organised labour movement. In 1965, Peter Taaffe and Ted Grant travelled to a world congress of the Fourth International, only to find that their documents had not even been circulated to other sections in their so-called ‘International’!

Our Revolutionary Socialist League was promptly informed it would no longer be a full section of the International but a ‘sympathising section’ along with another group in Britain – a group that it had previously proved impossible to work with politically, as they produced material with a limited, non-socialist, programme. We then decided to concentrate on building up our own organisation. Our comrades at that time worked as members of the Labour Party, which was then a bourgeois-workers party with strong roots in the working class. Since the mid-1920s its pro-capitalist leaders had sought to drive revolutionary Marxists out of the party. The Labour Party in Britain was not then in turmoil, in the way that the French ‘Socialist Party’ had been in the mid-1930s when Trotsky advised his French supporters to work in it. However, as the intensity of class struggle increased in Britain, we managed to build significant support inside both the Labour Party and in the trade unions. In 1970 we won a majority in the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) and then built this into a strong fighting organisation of working class youth.

How did the building of Militant lead to the foundation of the CWI?

It was nearly another decade before the founding conference of the Committee for a Workers‘ International was held, but that did not mean we were idle. On the contrary! In Britain we were constantly analysing world events and looking for ways to build our forces internationally.

We followed up various links with people we knew who called themselves Trotskyists – in Scotland and in Ireland – North and South. We recruited youth like Peter Hadden – a student at Sussex University (after my time) and Davy Dick in Scotland – a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS). All through the late ‘60s and early ‘70s we built up the LPYS from a small organisation, when we first won a majority, to one which would later have no fewer than 2,000 young people at its annual national conferences.

Unfortunately, we did not have the possibility to intervene in the revolutionary events of May 1968 in France. But just weeks before they exploded, in public debate in London, our Secretary, Peter Taaffe declared that the leaders of the Fourth International were facing the wrong way. They were ruling out significant workers’ struggles even in France and saw the struggle of a peasant army in Vietnam as the equivalent of the Bolshevik revolution!

In Spain in the early 1970s, the challenge from below to Franco’s dictatorship was also gathering momentum. We conducted a massive Spanish Young Socialists Defence Campaign, arranging speaking tours around Britain, organising visits to illegal Spanish Young Socialist conferences (in southern France) and sending printing equipment into the country in the backs of cars or on ships!

In 1970, we produced Programme of the International. It summarised our international experience since the end of the War. We held a conference in London on how to proceed and decided not to attempt to rejoin the existing Fourth International. We would work to build support internationally through discussing with other revolutionary and left-moving forces. We would use our position in the LPYS to go to new layers in the youth sections of the Social-Democratic and other parties wherever we could.

The LPYS chairperson at the time, Peter Doyle, and other comrades visited various conferences abroad. One was that of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth where part of an already growing left opposition was won to our ideas. In Germany, a number of Jusos (Young Socialist) members joined us when they saw the LPYS’s campaigning work. Already in the year that the CWI was set up – 1974 – the paper Voran was launched. It got a very positive response, growing significantly in the mid-1980s.

Sri Lanka is the home of the first mass party of Trotskyism – the LSSP. We already had contact with members of that party who opposed its increasingly reformist policies. Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe met young revolutionaries on visits to Sri Lanka and India, including Siritunga Jayasuriya and, later, Jagadish Chandra. They have for decades now been leading the Indian and Sri Lankan sections of the CWI and assisted each other in the building of our forces in Asia.

So major uprisings and even revolutionary situations arose in both the 1960s and 1970s. How did the CWI intervene in such movements?

In the run-up to the founding of the CWI, Greece had been on fire. There was the murderous attack on the radical students at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 by the military regime. In July of 1974 the colonels’ junta, the military regime which had been ruling Greece since 1967, collapsed. A period of revolutionary developments opened up. An unlikely socialist, Andreas Papandreou, founded the party, PASOK, which then grew rapidly and shifted a long way to the left. Possibilities were opened up for developing a section of our new International.

One of those attending the founding conference of the CWI had been a Greek Trotskyist, George Gikas, living in exile in London at the time. It was he who led us to Nicos Remoundos and other Greek and Cypriot revolutionaries who soon joined us after discussions with Peter Taaffe. Towards the end of the same year a CWI section was established in Greece and later a section in Cyprus.

In Portugal, just four days after our comrades and sympathisers met in the ‘Old Mother Redcap’ pub, in London, to set up the CWI, the 40 year Salazar-Caetano dictatorship was brought down. A group of revolutionary army officers seized power and established what they called a ‘transitional government’. We rapidly got out a pamphlet – ‘Portugal – the socialist revolution has begun’ – and got it translated into Portuguese. Bob Labi, without any knowledge of the language, was despatched to Lisbon to intervene. He followed up tenuous links we had with one or two members of the Portuguese Socialist Party emerging from the underground and met others radicalised by the unfolding revolution. Lynn Walsh then lived in the country for a while to try and get a foothold for the newly-born CWI.

In November 1975, after years of strikes and demonstrations in Spain against Franco’s brutal dictatorship, the old dictator died and a new era opened up in that country. Many of the Young Socialists with whom we had close relations, regarded themselves as revolutionaries. They fought vigorously for the Socialist Party (PSOE) to adopt a full socialist programme to transform the lives of the country’s long-suffering workers and youth.

Italy had been experiencing not just the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1968 but a decade of strikes and factory occupations throughout the 1970s. With a clear leadership, rather than that of the Craxi Socialists and Berlinguer ‘Communists’, a European, even a world, revolution could have been set off in that country! Over the following decades different new left forces developed in Italy, even winning parliamentary representation, but unable to build lasting organisations with clear fighting programmes. We, as an International, were able to send various comrades to help build and rebuild our forces there – most recently, Christine Thomas, who lived and worked in the country for more than a decade.

In 1979, revolution broke out in Iran, against the Shah. Bob Labi was again despatched by our International without knowing the country’s language, to make contact with Marxists there. In the white heat of the revolution, we hoped, it might be possible to develop the embryo of a viable section of our International – which unfortunately would not came about.

From 1979 to 1981, Tony Saunois, current Secretary of the CWI, played an important role as LPYS representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee. He visited Ireland at the height of ‘The Troubles’, discussing with the H-Block hunger strikers and other fighters, publicising our principled, socialist approach on the national question. In 1984, Tony moved to Santiago, Chile, with two comrades from a Chilean Socialist Party background to participate in the growing underground revolt against the Pinochet dictatorship and find a base for our Trotskyist ideas. Tony was also a key comrade for the development of a CWI section in Brazil and in many other countries.

At around the same time, we met Nigerians at a ‘book fair’ in London who were keen to circulate our material in Nigeria. In 1985 Bob Labi made the first of many subsequent visits to Nigeria. He met trade union and student socialist activists who joined the CWI and, through courageous and energetic campaigns, have built in that vast country what became, for a time, the second largest section of the CWI. Hannah Sell, now Secretary of the Socialist Party in England and Wales (the largest section) has been much involved in this development.

You yourself have visited different countries, trying to build the forces of Marxism. Tell us a bit more about how you built the International in different countries?

In the turbulent ‘60s and early ‘70s, before our International was officially established, I travelled to France and Italy where the class struggle was ‘hot‘, looking for ‘points of support‘. I also visited comrades and ‘sympathisers’ in Ireland (North and South) and, along with one of them, John Throne, drove into Franco’s Spain with funds and equipment for socialists working illegally there.

After being a Militant full-timer in the North of England in the tumultuous mid-70s, I moved to London to ‘relieve’ Pat Craven as national Treasurer so that he could go to Scotland to develop our work there. Later, the Scottish comrades set up Scottish Militant Labour. Much later – in 1998 – after big debates in our International on the national question, a split took place. A Scottish Socialist Party was set up but foundered on the rock of left-nationalism and reformism and a majority of our members at the time formally dissolved their own Marxist organisation. The present Socialist Party Scotland is a section of the CWI with strong roots in the workers‘ movement.

Before this development, and just after the founding of the CWI, we diligently raised funds to send comrades to various countries to get a foothold for our International. Alan Woods went to live in Spain, Bob Labi spent long periods in Greece after initial visits by Peter Taaffe and others. Work in India, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the US and elsewhere was developed by comrades going for prolonged visits or even upping sticks and living there.

In London, we helped South African comrades in exile building support by producing a journal called Inqaba ya Basebanzi (Workers’ Fortress), with a fighting programme to unite workers against apartheid and capitalism. They moved back to South Africa at the beginning of 1990 as Nelson Mandela was being released and Stalinism was collapsing.

In 1986, when a mass movement erupted in Paris over the police killing of a young immigrant – Malik Oussekine – I travelled with a team of comrades to intervene. We got numerous names and addresses to be followed up. We had a couple of English comrades living in Paris, trying to develop a base for the CWI. Only later did we meet the comrades of the present-day Gauche Révolutionnaire, a healthy, growing section of today’s CWI.

At the end of the 1980s, when five of us on the Militant Editorial Board, Peter Taaffe, Keith Dickenson, Lynn Walsh, and Ted Grant and myself, were expelled from the Labour Party, we had over 8,000 workers and young people as members and thousands more supporters. We were the largest Trotskyist organisation in Europe, leading mass struggles like no other. Between 1983 and 1987 we led the socialist Labour Liverpool City Council. Under our leadership, the city’s working class resisted the government of Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’, and won important improvements for the people. Under the slogan “Better to break the law than break the back of the poor”, the socialist council refused to implement cuts demanded by central government and instead mobilised the city’s working class against Thatcher. We mobilised thousands of members and supporters to fill London’s Albert Hall – twice – and then, in 1988, the massive Alexandra Palace in north London.  A few years later, we led the largest civil disobedience movement in the country’s history when 18 million citizens refused to obey the law and pay their poll tax!

It was this rapidly growing organisation in Britain that still provided most of the finances for our international work. In ‘88 I had been ‘released’ from direct involvement in finance organising to write a book about the revolutionary events in France of 20 years before. Judy Beishon, now on the CWI’s International Secretariat, took over the reins on finance.

A major turn in history was the disintegration of the Stalinist states and the restoration of capitalism there. You and others went to Russia. What were your experiences? How did the CWI react to these developments and its consequences in the Labour movement?

Towards the end of the 1980s, Mikhael Gorbachev – as president of the USSR and Secretary of the ruling Communist Party – was trying desperately to breathe life into the sclerotic Stalinist ‘Soviet‘ system. As we in the CWI saw it, he was struggling vainly to introduce Glasnost (opening up) and Perestroika (restructuring) to try and avoid a political revolution of workers against the 20 million strong parasitic Communist Party bureaucracy in his vast country. He was also trying to hold the lid on revolutionary upheavals spreading across Eastern Europe.

Our International called on a number of comrades to ‘up sticks’ and go and live in all of these ‘Stalinist states’ – from Czechoslovakia to Romania, Poland to Hungary and, of course, East Germany and the USSR. The aim was not only to observe and report directly, but also to try and build new forces with our Trotskyist ideas and programme, all but unknown in the region because of decades of Stalinist repression. In Poland and the then Czechoslovakia, we were able to create small groups. In Russia and Ukraine more substantial organisations were established. The CWI group that was built in East Germany from 1989 onwards merged with that in the west of Germany just before the former Democratic German Republic merged with the Federal Republic.

The reports that all of us wrote for the CWI at that time showed a revolutionary ferment developing, but revealed the realities of life under ‘Soviet’ rule – the positive and the negative. It was too late to stem the tide that was flowing towards a restoration of capitalism. Not only did the privileged party bureaucrats want it, and would go on to become actual (oligarchic) capitalists; but also, many workers who had suffered too long from shortages and humiliations under ‘communism’, wanted to go full tilt ‘to the market‘. This was reinforced by the fact that there was no political force that could offer the incipient political revolution a program for a real workers’ democracy. Trotsky had warned in his book ‘Revolution Betrayed’ that Stalinism could prepare “An explosion which may completely sweep away the results of the revolution”. Decades later, due to the absence of a conscious force fighting for workers’ democracy, this is basically what was happening.

There were some members on the leading body of the CWI – the International Secretariat – who refused to believe what we were reporting. Not least of them was the previously much-respected founding figure of our organisation – Ted Grant. He and Alan Woods, plus a few others refused to believe that the restoration of capitalism was already irreversible at the time of the defeated coup in August 1991. This and our decision to leave the Labour Party (long after wholesale expulsions had been carried through and the LPYS effectively closed down) led to the split in the CWI of 1991. They characterised this change of policy and leaving the Labour Party as, “A threat to 40 years work”. (For more detail see Marxist.net.)

Our experience in testing out our ideas in the former Soviet Union, including in what Russia calls its ‘Near Abroad’ of Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere are still invaluable for our International. Niall Mulholland made visits to the region after I had come back to London and follows developments in Ukraine and Kazakhstan among his many other responsibilities. Our International had not only grasped the nature of Stalinism, but was also able to explain the consequences of its collapse more quickly and fully than others.

The 1990s were a difficult period for Marxists as capitalism went on the offensive. In the early 2000s, there was an upsurge of an international movement against globalisation. How did the CWI develop in this period?

We totally disagreed with the academic, Francis Fukuyama, that the ‘victory’ of capitalism in the Stalinist world meant the struggle between the classes had come to an end. We felt there would be a lifting of the dead weight of Stalinism on the consciousness of workers which would assist the development of new struggles. But unlike some other socialists, we did not believe it would replace the need for strong trade unions, workers’ parties and clear, socialist leadership.

We participated in the big anti-globalisation movements that took place around the world from Seattle to Sao Paulo, Nice to Genoa, Trivandrum to Quebec. We had no illusions that this amorphous movement, aiming to represent a world population of over 6 billion people at the time, could defeat the capitalist governments represented at these summits. Nevertheless, we enthusiastically took part in these mobilizations – whether in Gothenburg, Seattle or Melbourne – and launched a socialist youth movement with International Socialist Resistance. Even before that, in the early 1990s, we had taken the initiative to found Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) and organized the largest international anti-racist demonstration in European history with 40,000 participants on 24 October 1992 in Brussels, where we met French comrades who went on to found Gauche Révolutionnaire. Even with modest forces, our International has been able to organise worldwide protest campaigns when class fighters in various parts of the world have been victimised. The fight against all forms of oppression and discrimination, including for example of women and minorities, has always been an important part of the struggle against capitalism and of our practical work.

Very important for our International were the mass movements of workers and young people developing in Europe and in Asia. Towards the end of 1995 for example we were on the streets in France in the powerful battle of public sector workers against the Chirac/Juppé government. In 1997 a massive general strike paralysed the ‘Asian Tiger’ economy of South Korea in the first major workers’ battle against globalisation. Our comrades in Japan had given the necessary funds for the CWI intervention (in a country where just talking about socialism was illegal!).

During the rapidly developing ‘Asia Crisis’ we followed up any link we could. Through Australia, where we had a handful of CWI members, we went to Indonesia as the Suharto dictatorship was being brought down. We met ‘revolutionaries’ there who, unfortunately, had no perspective of a fight for socialism.

In Malaysia, where the ‘Reformasi’ movement was in full swing, we had contacts with Socialists (through one recruit in Britain) who also stopped short of challenging capitalism. Similarly, the ‘revolutionaries’ in the Philippines whom we visited during a lively election campaign, in spite of them having an impressive base amongst organised workers in the vast factories around them.

Even as the 21st century opened, capitalism was far from booming. Only in China, where we have seen a special form of state capitalism, was there still substantial growth (now stalling). Within the CWI there were one or two debates on this issue but our overall cohesion and numbers were maintained. Some new bases of support were developed in different parts of the world, not least the USA.

The financial crisis of 2007/08 was another major turning point. Since then, the multiple crises of capitalism have reached unprecedented levels. At the same time, the labour movement and Marxists have to deal with the consequences of setbacks in the past and also the failures and betrayals of new left formations such as Syriza and Podemos.

What do you think are the central tenets of the CWI’s approach and analysis?

Wars and revolutions are the biggest tests of revolutionary forces – not just in terms of maintaining their organisational cohesion but in standing the test of analysis and programme. We are convinced that we have passed these tests politically, even if our forces are still weak from a global perspective. But we have to struggle with the consequences of the mistakes of the reformist and Stalinist mass organizations of the past, which have not made it easy for us to convince workers and young people to join our ranks.

However, our emphasis on the vital importance of working class struggle and the building of parties that fight on socialist programmes is a sine qua non without which revolutionary leaderships cannot be built.

The CWI in all its 50 years of existence has adhered to Trotsky’s dearly held tenet that a real workers‘ international can only gather sufficient forces to carry through the transformation of society by developing a programme of ‘transitional‘ demands. By that he meant in each country showing how the most reasonable of demands – on wages, jobs education, health, housing etc. – can be achieved and consolidated only by making the transition from capitalism to socialism.

It is not impossible, where the weight of numbers is overwhelmingly on the side of the working class, that a socialist transformation can be carried through peacefully. Sections of the state’s own forces can be won over to the side of the working class, especially with a class appeal to their ranks. But as we have seen so many times in history, the ruling class will not give way without a fight if they have the forces to resist.

A party trusted by workers, with clear-sighted leaders who are subject to election and immediate recall and receive no more than the wage of a skilled worker – like the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky – is the only force that can lead to the ending of capitalism on a national and international scale.

In today’s conditions, an appeal by workers coming to power in one country would spark a prairie fire of successful revolution across borders. The forces of our international can grow rapidly – into a substantial fighting organisation that plays a decisive role in uniting workers’ struggles worldwide to transform the future of mankind on the basis of socialism and communism.

What do you think are the prospects for the building of the CWI and a revolutionary International in the 2020s?

The conditions for building a genuinely revolutionary socialist International of workers’ organisations may be more difficult than fifty years ago when the CWI was launched. We are surrounded by wars, environmental destruction and economic crises, which are radicalising many youth and workers. But a clear understanding of the need for socialism has not yet developed. We see heroic mass movements which however lack a programme and an experienced leadership. But that is what makes the task of building trusted and self-sacrificing revolutionary leaderships even more vital.

Clear, far-seeing analysis and a bold transitional programme are as vital for our time as they were when Trotsky decided to launch the Fourth International. The experience of Stalinism and of working class parties implementing pro-capitalist policies has badly affected the confidence of workers and young people that real socialist change can be carried through. And this is just when there is a widening disaffection amongst the mass of the population with the ruling elites. Our task is therefore a dual one: on one hand participating in rebuilding fighting workers’ organisations and developing a consciousness that socialism is the answer and is achievable by mass action; on the other the building of our revolutionary Marxist organisation.

A new generation of class fighters will come into the orbit of the CWI in the white heat of tumultuous events across the world. They will be as determined as the pioneers of all former internationals to lay the basis for the victory of truly international socialism.

There are many experiences that I have not had the space to describe here – helping small groups of socialists in Lisbon or Seville in election campaigns, travelling to see activists in Copenhagen, intervening with a team in a three million strong demonstration in Rome, discussing with trade unionists in Osaka. On behalf of the CWI, I visited Sweden (many times) and Norway, and Hong Kong, and Scotland, and Austria. I have participated in ‘Socialism Days’ in Malaysia as well in Germany (more than once). And there has always been plenty of work in England and Wales to participate in.

My own experience in a lifetime of revolutionary work, has repeatedly confirmed the absolute correctness of our analysis and programme. We stand on the shoulders of those political giants of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Internationals.

A Socialist World is Possible – the History of the CWI (2004)

A Socialist World is Possible – the History of the CWI, by Peter Taaffe, was originally published in 2004 on the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Committee for a Workers’ International to celebrate the ideas, programme and achievements of the international up to that point.

The book was an update of Peter’s 1998 pamphlet, History of the CWI, which summarised the origins of the CWI and how it built sections on every continent. The introduction written for the 2004 update examines the ideas, methods and programme of the CWI in contrast to other left groups and currents claiming to stand in the tradition of Trotskyism.

Finally, a postscript completes the history of the CWI’s first thirty years by summarising the main areas of work and campaigning by the CWI from 1998 to 2004. This includes the important campaigning work of CWI sections during the anti-war movement against the US-British invasion of Afghanistan and the anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist protests of the era, as well as CWI members’ work in trade unions and amongst youth, women, and immigrants, campaigns in working class communities and in elections.

Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the CWI, we make the full text available online for the first time.

Greetings from Carlos Moya, left veteran of Chile’s Socialist Party

We publish below a greeting sent to the CWI from Carlos Moya, a veteran leader of the Chilean Socialist Party who remained in Chile following the coup in 1973 and was, for a period, the National Organising Secretary. Later, Carlos was a leader of the SP left current known as the Historic Socialist Party.

“Comrades a fraternal greeting to the meetings and members of revolutionary socialists that form the Committee for a Workers’ International who are celebrating 50 years since its foundation.

The CWI has on numerous occasions crossed paths with us, working together in our active struggle in life, and we will continue together in this historic pilgrimage towards socialism.

With all the values of proletarian internationalism.

Our strength lies in our principles.”

World Congress Deliberative organ		International Executive Committee Executive organ		International Secretariat Administrative organ
Held every 3 to 5 years; Attended by delegates from the CWI's national sections; Responsible for establishing the international's programme and policies; Grants recognition of new sympathising sections; Elects the International Executive Committee.	Composed of members from across the CWI elected at the world congress; Responsible for the CWI's policies in between congresses; Elects the International Secretariat.	Conducts the day-to-day work of the CWI; Responsible for carrying out the directives of the IEC, to which it is accountable; Prepares documents and reports for review and approval at IEC meetings.

Sections before and after the split

Section	Name	English Translation	Alignment
Australia	Socialist Action (formerly the Socialist Party)		IS
Austria	Sozialistische LinksPartei Sozialistische Offensive	Socialist Left Party Socialist Offensive	ISA CWI (2019)
Belgium	Linkse Socialistische Partij / Parti Socialiste de Lutte	Left Socialist Party / Socialist Party of Struggle	ISA
Brazil	Liberdade, Socialismo e Revolução	Freedom, Socialism and Revolution	ISA
Canada	Socialist Alternative		ISA
Chile	Socialismo Revolucionario	Revolutionary Socialism	CWI (2019)
China	中国劳工论坛 Zhōngguó Láogōng Lùntán	China Worker Forum	ISA
Cyprus	Νέα Διεθνιστική Αριστερά / Yeni Enternasyonalist Sol Nea Diethnistike Aristera	New Internationalist Left	IS
Czech Republic	Socialistická alternativa Budoucnost	Socialist Alternative Future	ISA
England and Wales	Socialist Party Socialist Alternative		CWI (2019) ISA
France	Gauche révolutionnaire	Revolutionary Left	CWI (2019)
Germany	Sozialistische Alternative (SAV) Sozialistische Organisation Solidarität - (Sol) Offensiv	Socialist Alternative Socialist Organisation Solidarity Offensive	ISA CWI (2019) IRL
Greece	Ξεκίνημα Xekinima	Start	IS
Hong Kong	社會主義行動 Sekuizyuji =Haangdung	Socialist Action	ISA
Indonesia	Socialis Action	Socialist Action	ISA
India	New Socialist Alternative		CWI (2019)
Ireland (Republic and Northern)	Militant Left Socialist Party / Páirtí Sóisialach RISE		CWI (2019) ISA (until 2024) N/A
Israel and Palestine	حركة النضال الاشتراكي / מאבק סוציאליסטי Ma'avak Sotzialisti / Harakat a-Nidal al-Ishtiraki	Socialist Struggle	ISA
Italy	Resistenze Internazionali	International Resistance	ISA
Ivory Coast	Militant Côte d'Ivoire	Militant Ivory Coast	ISA
Malaysia	Sosialis Alternatif	Socialist Alternative	CWI (2019)
Mexico	Aternativa Socialista México	Socialist Alternative Mexico	ISA
Netherlands	Socialistisch Alternatief	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Nigeria	Democratic Socialist Movement Movement for a Socialist Alternative Revolutionary Socialist Movement		CWI (2019) ISA IS
Poland	Alternatywa Socjalistyczna	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Portugal	Socialismo Revolucionário	Revolutionary Socialism	IRL
Quebec	Alternative socialiste	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Romania	Mâna de Lucru	Hand of Labour	ISA
Russia	Социалистическая Альтернатива Socialisticheskaya Alternativa	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Scotland	Socialist Party Scotland		CWI (2019)
South Africa	Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) Marxist Workers Party		ISA CWI (2019)
Spain	Izquierda Revolucionaria	Revolutionary Socialism	IRL
Sri Lanka	එක්සත් සමාජවාදි පකෂය / ஐக்கிய சோசலிச கட்சி Eksath Samajavadi Pakshaya / Aikkiy Cōcalic Kaṭci	United Socialist Party	CWI (2019)
Sudan	البديل الاشتراكي al-Badil al-Ishtiraki	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Sweden	Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna	Socialist Justice Party	ISA
Taiwan	國際社會主義前進 Guójì Shèhuì Zhǔyì Qiánjìn	International Socialist Forward	IS
Tunisia	البديل الاشتراكي al-Badil al-Ishtiraki	Socialist Alternative	ISA
Turkey	Sosyalist Alternatif	Socialist Alternative	IS
United States	Socialist Alternative Independent Socialist Group		ISA CWI (2019)
Venezuela	Izquierda Revolucionaria	Revolutionary Socialism	IRL

Associated organisations

• Youth against Racism in Europe

See also

• List of Trotskyist internationals
• Revolutionary socialism

External links

• A history of the CWI
• A selection of documents arising from the 2019 split - A selection of documents from both sides of the 2019 debate
• Continuing the Fight for International Socialism - ISA perspective on the split.
• [1] 50 years of the CWI.