The ILP and the Fourth International¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents a sustained Marxist critique of the Independent Labour Party's political trajectory, arguing that its centrist vacillations have rendered it incapable of leading the revolutionary struggle. The ILP's leftward evolution on questions such as Ethiopia, the League of Nations, and Labour Party policy is acknowledged, but the author insists that isolated good articles do not constitute a coherent party programme. The ILP's connection with the Communist Party made it appear a second-grade appendage of Stalinism, lacking principled foundations and failing to pursue systematic work within the trade unions and the Labour Party.
The chapter's core argument centres on the ILP's refusal to draw the necessary conclusions from the degeneration of the Communist International. While recognising the Comintern's social-patriotic decay, the ILP halted midway, influenced by the German SAP and the London Bureau. Its treatment of the general strike as a special method to stop war is condemned as an anarchist conception. Engels identified three possible outcomes of a general strike—immediate victory through threat, colossal fiasco, or direct progression to barricades—but a strike without victorious insurrection cannot halt war. The ILP's April 1935 theses, which separated the general strike from social revolution, are dismissed as irresponsible radical phraseology that would lead to a putsch.
The ILP's split from the Labour Party preserved its parliamentary fraction's independence but, without a strong faction in the mass organisations, doomed it to impotence. The chapter argues that a correct Marxist policy must be built inside the Labour Party, even if concealed from the bureaucracy. The ILP mistakenly identified Leninism with Stalinism, ignoring the Left Opposition's critique, and treated the International as a merely theoretical question while demanding concrete preparation for Workers' Councils—a fundamental contradiction.
The POUM, a fellow London Bureau member, is condemned for forming blocs with bourgeois parties supporting the League of Nations, directly contradicting the ILP's refusal to give electoral support to Labour candidates backing the League. This exposes the London Bureau's bankruptcy as a temporary roof for hybrid organisations with divergent pasts and futures. The Fourth International, by contrast, is defended as the only international organisation with an absolutely definite programme, forged through years of struggle. Its sections are selective bodies founded on definite ideas and methods, explaining their systematic growth despite persecution. The ILP's pacifist leaders urging workers not to bear arms represent defeatism against the workers, not revolutionary defeatism against capitalism. The chapter concludes that the ILP under its present leadership marches towards the abyss, and the best elements of the English workers' movement will rally to the Fourth International.