Note to Readers

The editors

The International Trotskyist Opposition (ITO) was established in 1992 at an international conference in Florence, Italy. The conference brought together Trotskyists from a number of countries. The essential idea uniting the people attending the conference was to reconstruct the Fourth International as an authoritative World Party struggling to overthrow capitalism. Our approach to achieving this was: a) to participate with our small forces in the daily struggles of the working class; b) to intervene patiently and constructively into the crisis of the existing international organisations identifying themselves as Trotskyist to organisationally reconstruct and politically regenerate the Fourth International; c) to encourage the, generally marginalised, forces identifying with Trotskyism to intervene themselves in the larger organisations of the broad workers vanguard and, in particular, the left splits from the mass workers parties which were then developing in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism.

The British supporters of the ITO have brought out this publication to express their point of view and also as an educational vehicle for people who may be new to socialist politics. We do not wish to simply speak to other Trotskyists (important though that is), but to try and win new people to Trotskyist ideas from the broader workers vanguard. We also want to promote a high level debate among Trotskyists about the way forward for the workers’ movement in the present period, and to bring to the British working class the translated views of socialists overseas, as in the case of the article by Argentine Trotskyist Osvaldo Coggiola.. Therefore, signed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the ITO. To contact the British supporters of the ITO, please write to us at:

ITO Britain/In Defence of Marxism, Dept 88, 1 Newton Street,

Manchester. M1 1HW. Britain