This April I came across an article announcing a manifesto also arguing for an eco-socialist revolution, written by individuals from an organisation called the Fourth International. Its opening paragraph stated the following;

“This Manifesto is a document of the Fourth International, founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his comrades to save the legacy of the October Revolution from Stalinist disaster. Rejecting sterile dogmatism, the Fourth International has integrated the challenges of social movements and the ecological crisis into its thinking and practice. (Manifesto for an ecosocialist revolution — Break with capitalist growth. By Fourth International. Published 24 April, 2025)

In this short paragraph we are able to witness the collective expression of a deliberate or ignorant confusion of fact, history and of abstract (oxymoronic) agency. This blurring of history and reality should not create any confidence in those reading it who have any critical understanding of either past Soviet history or contemporary social and ecological problems. Note that this so-called “ecosocialist revolution” only calls for a “Break with capitalist growth”.

Presumably, its 21st century authors do not find any fault with past or future socialist forms of economic ‘growth’, and they have failed to understand the link between mass consumption by any form of human societies and the limited natural resources on planet earth. Also the Fourth International founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky, was not founded to save the legacy of the October Revolution, that is a sectarian-based distortion of history. The Fourth International was founded to save the 1918 – 1920 Leninist State Capitalist hijacking of the October 1917 worker and peasant led uprising within Czarist Russia.

During the hostilities between Czarist Russia and Germany during the First World War, a majority of the worker and peasant Russian troops deserted, rebelled against their elite, refused to fight and returned to their towns and villages. Once there, many soldiers, workers and peasants formed rank and file committees (known as soviets) to discuss and solve social and war engendered economic problems. These ‘soviets’ spread locally and regionally  in 1916 and 1917.

They were formed in order to manage and coordinate the socio-economic activity of the various districts and areas of Russia, and were predominantly successful and effective. However, these rank and file Soviets were first infiltrated and then taken over by loyal members of the Bolshevik Political Tendency of the Russian Social Democratic Party. This Bolshevik tendency was led by its middle-class leaders; Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and a number of other intellectuals and later became the Bolshevik-formed Communist Party.

By intrigue, political persuasion and armed force, this Bolshevik Communist Party transformed what was a series of emerging ground-up worker and peasant Soviet-based community initiatives into a top-down, centrally imposed and armed authoritarian Soviet State. ‘Democratic Centralism’ was the intellectual rationale, which was used by the Bolsheviks during that period to disguise the dominant totalitarian centralism of this political form of 20th century hierarchical mass society structure. Lenin, the middle-class intellectual leader of the Communist Party and thus leader of the Soviet Union, made this authoritarian and totalitarianism clear when he wrote the following about Soviet economic activity in 1918;

“There is therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is socialist ) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 27. Page 258.)

Trotsky was a senior Bolshevik and Communist Party member at the time and the following is an extract from a 1920’s statement by Trotsky’s in response to demands from Russian workers for greater representation in this so-called ‘soviet inspired’ socialist experiment.

“They seem to have placed the workers right to elect their representatives above the party, as if the party did not have the right to defend its dictatorship even if that dictatorship were to clash for a time with the passing moods of the workers democracy..” (Reproduced in T. Cliff ‘Trotsky’ Volume 2. Pluto Press. Page 174.)

This extract makes clear that Trotsky’s view at that time was no different in this regard from Lenin’s, Stalin’s or the rest of the Communist Party leadership. Indeed, the above sentiment was in line with Trotsky’s earlier 1906 view of the necessary role of a coersive ‘state’ under a future socialist society, consequently writing;

“…nowadays the only cooperative body which could utilise the advantage of collective production a wide scale is the state.” (Trotsky. Results and Prospects. New Park. Page 90.).

After being an active and loyal member of Lenin’s and Stalin’s tendency since 1917, Trotsky, made his ideas on totalitarian compulsion by the state upon its workforce consistently crystal clear. He also later asserted that;

“The very principle of compulsory labour service is for the communist quite unquestionable…..Compulsory labour service is sketched into our Constitution and in our labour code…The labour state considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where its work is necessary. And not one serious socialist will begin to deny the labour state the right to lay its hand upon the worker who refuses to execute his labour duty.” (Trotsky. Terrorism & Communism . Page 153.)

Laying ones hand on a critic had become such a euphemism for dealing with political opponents by gulag imprisonment, torture and bullets in the back of the head, that by the time Stalin had Trotsky assassinated as ‘an enemy of the Soviet Union’ in Mexico, only a few friends of Trotsky would dare to even complain. The importance of all these instances of Trotsky’s totalitarian, anti-working class state enforcement principles and policies when he was a colleague of Lenin and Stalin is that they were never refuted by Trotsky himself during his lifetime or in the wake of his Fourth International initiatives.

Nor were they rejected by any of his followers who later outlived him. Nor have they been acknowledge and condemned by any of the later members of the remnants of that Fourth International organisation. Consequently the more modern variants of ‘Democratic Centralism’ retain the same 20th century purpose among the  21st century remnants of this Leninist, Stalinist and Trotskyist totalitarian tradition   The political tendencies of Bolshevism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism, in 1917 and those existing until the present day were merely those they personally and openly advocated.

Thus they were openly totalitarian political tendencies whose elites sought (and some still seek) to rule human societies by maintaining the same hierarchical mass society structures as previous aristocratic, bourgeois, Communist and Fascist Party elites. Totalitarian political tendencies are part and parcel of all hierarchical mass society structures no matter what favoured political nomenclature is used by their advocates to identify themselves.

Trotsky and Lenin’s own writings detail this tranformation and their own supportive part in it, for those with the time, inclination and resources to read more than later versions of Trotskyist defensive and deceitful spin. (See free downloads on this blog). So in fact the Fouth International set up by Trotsky and his comrades was an attempt to wrest control of the increasingly powerful and brutal armed soviet state from the control of one authoritarian and totalitarian bureaucratic faction of individuals  (the Stalinist faction) and  replace it with another totalitarian and authoritarian faction (the Troskyist faction). The policies and principles with regard to the hierarchical mass society structure of both these mass society factions were essentially the same, because personalities, (pleasant or otherwise) do not ultimately determine socio-economic structures. The socio-economic structures determine the actual and eventual conduct of the personalities.

That is why these identical authoritarian and totalitarian principles and policies continued to be implemented by their successors in the eastern bloc countries, when all these above named individual leaders had died. Furthermore, it is why these symptoms have also emerged within regimes that have no direct or indirect link with Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky. Moreover, anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with the hierarchical mass societies of the ancient near and far east, before the common era (BCE) and who has not been hypnotised by historical partiality or by ersatz tribal nostalgia, will recognise the identical tendencies of all hierarchical mass societies. That is to say; their ancient and modern ruthless suppression of dissent, compulsory labour inflicted upon the masses, the imposition of unequal terms of trade with rivals, continual warfare to obtain scarce resources and the complete physical suppression of rival elites.

In addition to the above, the complimentary tendency of genocidal elimination of opposition, that goes along with the above list has always been one of varying magnitudes depending upon the numbers of those standing in the way. In the city states of ancient Greece, Persia, Rome and during the Islamic Empire period, the numbers of conquered resisting people, deliberately eliminated, although large, were proportionaly few and the means of elimination (swords, lance’s and arrows) relatively small scale; however, the colonial period of the European late middle ages with continents and multiple inhabitants to conquer; the numbers were massive and the means, (guns, explosives, bombs, gas and biological or viral agents), were large-scale.

There is one final quote by the above noted 21st century adherents of the Leninist, Trotskyist tradition that is worth considering in this blog. This is because the quote reproduced below, indicates the continuing commitment to the entire outdated 19th century perspective of revolution, led by a band of ‘vanguard’ individuals who also arrogantly think they know more about society and social living than any of their contemporaries.

“The Fourth International does not see itself as the sole vanguard; it participates, to the extent of its strength, in broad anti-capitalist formations. Its objective is to contribute to the formation of a new International, of a mass character, of which it would be one of the components.” (ibid)

This partial denial of the ambition to be a sole ‘vanguard’ reinforces the fact that despite a belated recognition that the war of the capitalist mode of production against nature is problematic, its intellectuals, the ones who write its manifesto’s, have failed to move beyond the 19th century views of Karl Marx or beyond the dogmatic certainty of the Leninist, Stalinist and Trotskyist vanguards. The post-Marx, modern realisation that excessive production and consumption of organic resources on a fully global scale can effectively consume organic material faster than the organic material can reproduce itself was unknown and not appreciated by Marx and certainly never seriously considered or referenced by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky or any of their subsequent followers, including the the most recent members of the Fourth International .

The fact that industrial levels of forest clearances, sea food extraction by factory ships, waste material disposal (toxic gases, liquids and metals) are now in a whole-scale fashion  killing off organic species that oxygenate the air, purefy water, recycle dead organic material and create the micro-biota that are the foundation of all food chains, was not fully understood and could not have been even hinted at by any 19th or 20th century, intellectuals of left, right or centre persuasion. Those previous generations of anti-capitalist thinkers and their activist followers clearly did not have the evidence to understand that all hierarchical mass societies produce and consume more than their limited resources can supply, because that is what hierarchies and their mass forms of labour are organised for.

Therefore, previous economic historians did not conclude that, excessive production and consumption beyond what local resources could supply, was one of the motivating factors in addition to personal greed which led to exploration, piracy, colonisation and wars of conquest and elimination. And these combined motivations occured repeatedly from ancient Sumer, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome and continued through the middle ages and on into the modern bourgeois era. The latter mode of production, with its ever restless appetite for more resources, more sales, more conquests and more wealth accumulation for the elite, did not create the tendency to overproduction and over consumption, it merely accelerated the trend until there was very few more pristine places left on the planet to to move on to and extract them from.

Hence, the 21st century ambitions and research projects to mine the solar system  planets and the deep sea trenches for ever more ‘rare’  raw materials and locate potentially habitable planets to be colonised, is just a logical hierarchical mass society modern extension to the ancient dramatised adventures of Jason, the Argonauts and seeking a mythical Golden Fleece. Although the ‘Space Trek’ fantasies of 21st century Scientists, Politicians and Media gurus, will never ever go beyond putitive trials and isolated failures and never actually materialise, these ‘ambitions‘ indicate the continuing logic of the hierarchical mass society form of socio-economic system, irrespective of the mode of production practiced.

To be relevant to humanity, in the 21st century, any movement concerned with the future of life on earth must ‘boldly go beyond‘ the limited hierarchical and  anthropocentric perspectives of the previous 20 centuries and see humanities current form of resource extraction as the problem for life on earth, not the solution.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2025)