Forty years ago, the Fourth International (FI) was rent by a substantial political debate over perspectives and orientation. A number of important sections (Britain, France, USA) set up the "International Committee of the Fourth International" in November 1953, in opposition to the majority "International Secretariat".

The split still reverberates today. Some of the international organisations which call themselves Trotskyist can claim to be the direct descendants of one or the other side, and virtually all of them have a clear view on the split. The split has become part of the mythology of Trotskyism, presented as a principled defence of "orthodox Trotskyism" against a political deviation led by one man ("Pablo") or as a damaging split which led to the subsequent and lasting weakness of the International. Read more...

The decisive battle of World War Two was fought at Stalingrad. The Red Army stopped Hitler’s drive to conquer the USSR and began the march west which was to destroy Nazism. Despite the terrible suffering and cost in human lives, and despite the degeneration of the workers’ state under Stalin’s rule, the USSR’s war with German imperialism was a just war. It was a war to defend the remaining gains of the Russian Revolution against fascism’s determination to destroy them. But the Stalinist bureaucracy came within an inch of losing that war. Then, the military turning point signalled the start of a process that was to see the consolidation of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe. Paul Morris explains the class issues at stake in the defence of the USSR during World War Two. Read more...

Since 1990, the capitalists have seemed to be winning hands down in Eastern Europe. However, as Martin Suchanek explains, their plans to introduce workers to the wonders of capitalist exploitation are running into trouble.

For the last two years those bourgeois commentators keen to monitor the progress of capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe have focused on three countries: Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. As compared to the Balkans or even the disintegrating USSR, they were expected to blaze a trail for others to follow. Each of the three possessed advantages over other countries in the region. Read more...

Fascism is on the rise in Europe, and the workers’ movement and the left is responding with useless pacifism and complacency. The LRCI’s section in France has taken up the fight. In an article edited from this month’s edition of Pouvoir Ouvrier, Emile Gallet explains the background to the rise of Le Pen’s Front National. We also reprint (right) the Pouvoir Ouvrier leaflet to the abortive anti-Le Pen demo on 1 May. Read more...

The Sunday Times’ serialisation of the Goebbels Diaries, edited by Nazi David Irving, has brought the ideas of the Holocaust revisionists back into the news. Richard Brenner looks at the attempts of fascists to re-write history, and assesses the importance and meaning of the Holocaust for socialists and oppressed minorities today. Read more...

The war in what used to be Yugoslavia continues, bringing a daily toll of death and destruction, hundreds of thousands of refugees and the threat of an imperialist military intervention. But what is the war about? Paul Morris explains the changing aims of the participants, imperialism’s dilemma and the class issues at stake. Read more...

Leaders of over 120 countries, surrounded by rock stars and the world’s media, assemble in Rio this month to discuss what can be done to reverse the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer. But the only significant effect the Earth Summit will have on the environment will be the emission of a great quantity of hot air, writes Keith Harvey. Read more...

The problem Spanish workers face is not a lack of militancy or even in some sectors, strong organisation at the base. Read more...