Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
League for the Fifth International
The League for the Fifth International (LFI or L5I) is an international grouping of Trotskyist organisations. Its members include Workers Power in Britain and Australia, Gruppe Arbeitermacht in Germany, Arbetarmakt in Sweden, SOP in Czech Republic, the Irish Workers' Group and ArbeiterInnen Standpunkt in Austria.
It was founded as the Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International. Its first member groups were Workers Power in Britain, the Irish Workers Group, Pouvoir Ouvrier in France and Gruppe Arbeitermacht in Germany (GAM). After ArbeiterInnen Standpunkt in Austria joined it became the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCRI). This was reportedly not due to any political factor other than the fact that their name in Spanish was very similar to the international tendency of which Sendero Luminoso is a part. The LRCI was of course in the process of recruiting the Poder Obrero groups of Bolivia and Peru.
Later the LRCI did in fact recruit the Poder Obrera groups of Peru and Bolivia and also added a group in New Zealand which renamed itself Workers Power. However renewed factional disputes broke out within the tendency and it lost many of its members in Austria and France. Then a full scale debate led to the Peruvian and Bolivian groups leaving along with a part of the New Zealand group, since renamed the Communist Workers Group, and some militants in Britain.
However the LRCI has since turned to an orientation on 'anti-capitalist' youth launching the independent youth group 'Revolution' to try and create a new youth international. Successes at the Paris ESF in 2003 led to youth groups in Greece, Turkey and the mass Basque group SEGI signing the youth international statement. Despite some success in recruiting militants in the Czech republic and Slovakia, together with a small Australian group (which seems to consist of former members of the defunct New Zealand Workers Power) the L5I remains tiny and its French section has dissolved entirely. However continued intervention into the World Social Forum and European Social Forum movements have produced tangible results for the organisation not only in terms of membership but also political results. Their work has led some on the right wing of the movement, such as Bernard Cassen of ATTAC to warn of the dangers of the anti-capitalist movement 'becoming some kind of fifth international'.
The tendency has for many years held that a new international is necessary, and that the fragments of the Fourth International cannot merely be brought together, but the new call for a Fifth International which accompanied its change of name in 2003 must be made to appeal to new sections of workers and youth brought into struggle to found a new anti-capitalist, revolutionary international.
It has published a new transitional programme, based on Trotskys original from 1938, but updated for the current global political situation.
External link
See also: List of Trotskyist internationals
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