Trotskyism in the Twenty-First Century League for Fifth International, 14/02/2014
The Fourth International’s degeneration and disintegration was distinct from the fate of its two immediate predecessors. It collapsed into centrism, not into social patriotism or reformism. This was because it never attained a mass character; it did not have the opportunity to play a decisive leadership role in major revolutionary struggles
"The root cause of this failure (of IV International) was programmatic. Already disoriented by the outcome of the Second World War, which did not conform to Trotsky's perspectives (which was what?), the leadership of the FI responded to the expansion of Stalinism and the formation of new degenerate workers' states by revising both the analysis of Stalinism and the revolutionary programme. Equating Stalinism with loyalty to Moscow, they concluded that, having broken from Moscow, Tito had become a centrist and that the bureaucratic overthrow of capitalist property relations had established a workers' state that needed reform, but not political revolution and was, in that sense, a healthy workers' state."
1) Tito's regime is a case of Stalinism. This shows that tendency towards Stalinism is not accidental, but a law-like progression of all socialist revolutions in XX century.
2) The root cause of failure of IV International was theoretical: orientation towards proletariat as revolutionary class, in the epoch when knowledge revolution (IT, nuclear energy, robotics, etc.) was already dawning.
"This accommodation to Tito's version of the programme of Socialism in One Country, which was endorsed by all the main leaders of the FI at its Third Congress, opened the way to full scale revision not only of the programme for political revolution but of the entire methodology of the Transitional Programme."
"The Third Congress of the Fourth International, in 1951, carried Pablo’s theses on Yugoslavia unopposed and thus collapsed into centrism. The 1953 split between the International Secretariat, IS, and the SWP (US) and its supporters, who referred to themselves as the International Committee, IC, did not result from disagreements over the programmatic revisions of 1951 but rather over the proposed tactic of “entrism sui generis” (a “unique form of entrism”) into the Stalinist parties. The split was unprincipled since it was undertaken in advance of the planned 1954 Congress at which the issues could have been presented to the highest body of the International."