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The Fourth International (FI) is the communist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, or Trotskyists, with the declared goal of helping the working class bring about socialism and work toward international communism. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938: Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Comintern or Third International to have become "lost to" Stalinism and incapable of leading the international working class to political power.〔''(The Transitional Program )''. Retrieved November 5, 2008.〕 Thus, Trotskyists founded their own, competing "Fourth International". Today, there is no longer a single, cohesive Fourth International. Throughout the better part of its existence, the Fourth International was hounded by agents of the Soviet secret police, repressed by capitalist countries such as France and the United States and rejected by followers of the Soviet Union and later Maoism as illegitimate—a position these communists still hold today. It struggled to maintain contact under these conditions of simultaneous illegality and scorn around much of the world during World War II, because when workers' uprisings did occur, they were usually under the influence of Soviet-inspired, anarchist, social democratic, Maoist, or militant nationalist groups, leading to further defeats for the FI and its Trotskyists, who never gathered similar support.〔Ernest Mandel, ''(Trotskyists and the Resistance in World War Two )''〕 Even after the Soviet repudiation of Stalin and de-stalinization, Trotskyism continued to be regarded as politically discredited and there was very little renewed support for Trotskyist ideas, particularly when it came to those already committed to another form of communism. Ideologically, Maoists, left communists, and anarchists all consider Trotskyism, and thus also the Fourth International, to be ideologically bankrupt and impotent. Despite this, many parts of Latin America and Europe continue to have large Trotskyist groupings, with followings both young and old, who are attracted to its "anti-Stalinist" positions and its rhetoric of workers' internationalism. Quite a few of these groups carry the label "Fourth Internationalist" either in their organisation's name, major political position documents, or both. The Fourth International, in line with its Trotskyist underpinnings, tended to view the Comintern as worthy of conditional support even considering its corruption, and although it regarded its own ideas as more advanced and thus superior to those of the Third International, it did not actively seek the Comintern's destruction. It has not succeeded in capitalizing on the renewed interest in socialism and do not operate as a cohesive entity in the manner of the prior internationals. The FI suffered a major split in 1940 and an even more significant split in 1953. A partial reunification occurred in 1963, but the international never recovered enough to re-emerge as a single transnational grouping. Trotskyists' response to that situation has been in the form of its broad array of Trotskyist Internationals, almost all of whom are bitterly divided over which organisation represents the "true" Fourth Internationalist political continuity. ==Trotskyism== Trotskyists regard themselves as working in opposition to both capitalism and Stalinism. Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and believed that a workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was advanced in opposition to the view held by the Stalinists that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union alone.〔Leon Trotsky, ''(In Defence of October )''〕 Furthermore, Trotsky and his supporters harshly criticised the increasingly totalitarian nature of Joseph Stalin's rule. They argued that socialism without democracy is impossible. Thus, faced with the increasing lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, they concluded that it was no longer a socialist workers' state, but a degenerated workers' state.〔 Trotsky and his supporters had been organised since 1923 as the Left Opposition. They opposed the bureaucratisation of the Soviet Union, which they analysed as being partly caused by the poverty and isolation of the Soviet economy.〔 Stalin's theory of socialism in one country was developed in 1924 as an opposition to Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, which argued that capitalism was a world system and required a world revolution in order to replace it with socialism. Prior to 1924, the Bolsheviks' international perspective had been guided by Trotsky's position. Trotsky argued that Stalin's theory represented the interests of bureaucratic elements in direct opposition to the working class. Eventually Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union.〔Serge, Victor, ''From Lenin to Stalin'', p70 ff, Pathfinder, (1973)〕 Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to France, Norway, and finally to Mexico.〔Deutscher, Isaac, ''Stalin'', p381, Pelican (1966)〕 He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico, by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent in August 1940.〔Robert Conquest, ''The Great Terror: A Reassessment'', Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-19-507132-8, p. 418.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fourth International」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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