Michel Pablo - Leadership of The Fourth International

Leadership of The Fourth International

By 1944 he was fully involved with the movement, and was elected the organizational secretary of its European Bureau, which had re-established contact with between the Trotskyist parties. After the war, Pablo became the central leader of the Fourth International with the support of the SWP of America and James P. Cannon. Pablo played a key role in re-unifying, re-centralising and re-orienting the International. In 1946 Pablo visited Greece to successfully reunify the four separate Trotskyist parties. Pablo and Ernest Mandel were instrumental in these years in winning the Fourth International to a position that asserted that the Eastern European states conquered by the Soviet Armed Forces in 1944-45 had by 1948 become what they described as deformed workers' states.

In the uncertain aftermath of World War II, when the Trotskyists were numerically dwarfed by the mass Communist Parties and their hopes for a revolutionary breakthrough were dashed, Pablo also advanced a new tactic for the FI from about 1951 onwards. He argued that a Third World War, which was believed by many people to be imminent, would be characterised by revolutionary outbreaks during the actual war. Splits of revolutionary dissenters were likely to develop in the Communist Parties. To gain influence, win members and avoid becoming small sectarian cliques just talking to each other, the Trotskyists should - where possible - join, or in Trotskyist terminology enter, the mass Communist or Social Democratic (Labour) parties. This was known as entrism sui generis or long-term entry. It was understood by all that the FI would retain its political identity, and its own press.

It was believed at the time that the international "centre" should be able to impose democratic centralist discipline by directly intervening in the politics of local parties. Pablo also used the weight of the international secretariat to back tendencies that were closest to mainstream views inside the International. For example, Pablo and Cannon jointly sponsored an entryist faction within the British movement that opposed the leadership of Jock Haston in the RCP, contributing to the collapse of the RCP as an open organisation.