League for the Fifth International
In early December, delegates and observers of the League for the Fifth International (L5I) participated in the Third World Congress of the International Socialist League (LIS), held in Istanbul. Thirty-six years ago, the predecessors of the L5I set out to re-elaborate the revolutionary programme of Marxism, renew the struggle against reformism and centrism, and fight for the reconstruction of a revolutionary communist International. With our decision to join the LIS on the basis of a newly agreed common programme, one chapter of that struggle closes—and a new one opens.
This decision did not arise suddenly, nor from organisational impatience. It is the product of a prolonged period of discussion, debate, and clarification, grounded in the Trotskyist method of principled regroupment. As we argued previously in For a Regroupment of Revolutionaries, the historic crisis of capitalism, sharpened by imperialist war, ecological breakdown, and attacks on the working class and oppressed, poses with renewed urgency the question of revolutionary leadership. Fragmentation, isolation, and the proliferation of self-proclaimed internationals cannot meet this challenge. Only a serious process of programmatic convergence can.
The Istanbul Congress brought together comrades from more than forty countries across every continent. We collectively analysed the deepening economic, military, and ecological crises shaking the world system, and debated the strategic tasks now confronting revolutionaries. These discussions were not diplomatic exchanges, but addressed the decisive questions of our epoch: imperialist rivalry and war, revolution and counterrevolution, and the rebuilding of revolutionary parties rooted in the working class.
Central to our agreement is a shared analysis of the present world disorder. We affirmed that capitalism has entered a phase of heightened inter-imperialist competition, in which the United States, European powers, Russia, and China all contend for markets, resources, and strategic dominance. Against all forms of campism, we reaffirm that Russia and China are fully capitalist and imperialist powers, and that socialists must oppose all imperialist blocs from an independent working-class standpoint.
On this basis, we reaffirmed that the war in the Ukraine has a dual character. Ukraine is waging a just war of national defence against Russian imperialism. At the same time is linked to the struggle for the re-division of the world. Therefore, our support for Ukraine’s right to resist invasion goes hand in hand with our opposition to Nato, Western imperialism, and all attempts to subordinate the Ukrainian working class to capitalist interests. The same principled internationalism underpins our opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Palestine, our solidarity with the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, and our rejection of all imperialist occupations and aggressions.
A particularly urgent discussion concerned the growing threat of US imperialist aggression against Venezuela. We reaffirm our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and with the Venezuelan section of the LIS against sanctions, military threats, and any attempt at regime change. Defence of oppressed nations against imperialism remains an elementary duty of revolutionaries.
The Congress also adopted resolutions addressing the capitalist destruction of the environment; attacks on women, racialised people, LGBT+ communities, and migrants; and the intensifying exploitation of the global working class. These were not treated as separate issues but as integral to a strategy for socialist revolution, workers’ power, and the overthrow of the capitalist system as a whole.
At the heart of our regroupment is the adoption of a new Programme and Manifesto for the Socialist Revolution, titled In the Face of the Capitalist Crisis and a New World Disorder. This programme codifies our shared strategic foundations: the necessity of revolutionary parties based on democratic centralism; the transitional method linking present struggles to the fight for power; the goal of workers’ governments resting on organs of mass struggle; and the construction of a new, mass revolutionary International. It will guide the common work of all LIS sections in the coming period.
Our decision to join the LIS does not mark the end of discussion, clarification, or debate. On the contrary, it creates a stronger and more coherent framework within which these can continue. Revolutionary Marxism has never treated programmes as dead texts or unity as the suppression of differences. We enter this new stage confident that further debates—both internally and with other revolutionary currents—are not only inevitable but necessary.
What has changed is that this discussion now rests on a firm programmatic basis and a shared commitment to build, together, an international revolutionary organisation capable of intervening in the class struggle on a world scale.
We return from Istanbul prepared for this new stage in our development. In conditions of accelerating crisis and growing resistance, the task of revolutionary regroupment is posed concretely to all serious revolutionaries. Through this step, we aim to contribute to forging a new revolutionary international—one capable, in the struggles ahead, of helping the working class lead humanity beyond capitalism and toward socialism.