(International Committee for the Reconstruction of Nahuel Moreno’s LIT)
Those of us who write this Manifesto are revolutionary militants from various countries: workers, teachers, students, the unemployed and workers from different fields. What unites us, first of all, is the conviction that humanity has no future under capitalism and that this system must be destroyed in order to build a socialist society. Secondly, we believe that this process will not develop spontaneously, so it is essential to build an international revolutionary leadership and national organizations in different countries, capable of orienting and leading the workers and popular masses of the whole world along this path.
We follow the example of the great Russian Revolution of 1917 and the lessons left to us by its leaders, Lenin and Trotsky. That is why, until recently, most of us were militants of the International Workers’ League – Fourth International. However, a few months ago, those of us who signed this Manifesto were expelled or broke with that organization due to its bureaucratic and moral degeneration, a process that we will explain later.
In the face of this process of degeneration, we see the urgent need to rebuild the LIT/IWL, starting from its foundational bases and with the strategy of rebuilding the Fourth International as a continuity of the Third International led by Lenin and Trotsky.
Our history
The International Workers’ League – Fourth International was founded in 1982 by Argentine leader Nahuel Moreno, together with hundreds of comrades from different countries. The process of founding the IWL was the result of more than two decades of Moreno’s struggle against the abandonment of the revolutionary program by self-proclaimed Trotskyists sectors, that ended up capitulating to Stalinism and/or its Castro version, or social democracy, during the second half of the twentieth century.
In founding the IWL, Moreno managed to maintain the most important teachings of Lenin and Trotsky— the main leaders of the Russian Revolution—updating them to understand the phenomena that developed after Trotsky’s death in 1940. One of the most relevant processes was the bureaucratization and degeneration of the Workers’ “socialist” States. Following the perspective already put forward by Trotsky, Moreno identified that Stalinist bureaucracies of the former Soviet Union, Cuba, China and other Degenerated Workers’ States had turned these states into an obstacle to world socialist revolution and were an absolute obstacle to the development of planned economy and the development of productive forces at the national level. He also observed that these bureaucracies did everything possible to betray revolutionary processes where there was the possibility of the working class taking power.
Moreover, Moreno shared Trotsky’s assessment that, without a political revolution in the so-called «socialist countries,» it would be impossible to prevent the restoration of capitalism, something that was later confirmed. He also argued that if the working class did not organize itself democratically and lead socialist revolutions—both political revolutions against Stalinist bureaucracies and new socialist revolutions—those processes would have no future, as demonstrated by the path followed by the Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. In this same sense, Moreno and the founding theses of the IWL reaffirmed that the workers’ vanguard must organize itself in a revolutionary party, since without that party there can be no victorious socialist revolution. In turn, national revolutionary parties must be part of an International, due to the impossibility for revolution and socialism to triumph within national borders, given the global nature of capitalism.
Consistent with that, it was a very marked characteristic of Moreno, who transmitted to the entire current, the obsession with building our parties within the working class These points, among many others, were recovered by Moreno in the IWL Foundation Theses, with the aim of maintaining the construction of an international revolutionary organization capable of advancing towards the reconstruction of the Fourth International. That was the experience synthesized in the founding of the IWL that we have kept alive until now.
Opportunist gale dominates the left
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, the left worldwide entered a deep crisis, especially the Communist Parties. The imperialist world offensive, with its theoreticians and media, claiming that socialism had failed and that capitalism had triumphed was brutal. This offensive also affected the «Trotskyist movement».
Most “Trotskyist” organizations modified their program to adapt to the «new reality.» The greatest example was the United Secretariat, led by Ernest Mandel, which abandoned the program of socialist revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary stage of transition to socialism, replacing it with an abstract program of «socialist democracy.» From this, the SU promoted the formation of «anti-capitalist» parties in different countries, where reformists and revolutionaries should coexist. These parties aim to establish pacts with supposed «progressive bourgeoisies» to promote «radical democratic» reforms. We defined that process which acted on revolutionary organizations as: «opportunist gale».
In the IWL, unlike the majority of the left (whether the CPs or Trotskyist movement), we interpreted the processes that were developing in Eastern Europe in a completely different way. We celebrated the revolutions that were taking place against the Stalinist bureaucracy throughout the region, but we were slow to understand that these revolutions were already taking place within the framework of capitalism, previously restored by Stalinism itself. We thought, mistakenly, that these revolutions were part of the political revolution planned by Trotsky, which would end bureaucratic power by restoring the revolutionary soviets and preserving their working-class character (state ownership, economic planning, monopoly of foreign trade). It took us years to identify that mistake, but we finally understood it. Thus, since the beginning of the 21st century, the IWL became one of the few organizations of the so-called «revolutionary left» to propose that what existed in Russia, Cuba, China or Vietnam was not socialism, but capitalism and that the processes of the East confronted the capitalist plans imposed by those bureaucracies, which were overthrown by these actions of the mass movement. We understood, for example, that capitalist restoration in the former USSR began in 1985-86 from Gorbachev’s plans, which in China had begun in the 70s with the «modernizations» of Deng Xiaoping, and that the same thing happened in Cuba in the 90s. All restoration processes are led by the ruling bureaucracies. To this day, the majority of the left continues to claim that there is a «very particular» form of socialism in China and that Cuba remains a workers’ state. This understanding of the restoration of capitalism in the former workers’ states, understanding that the restoration was not provoked by the actions of the mass movement and that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, by the actions of the masses, was a highly positive fact even if it did not manage to reverse the capitalist restoration due to the absence of a revolutionary leadership. It allowed us to survive the harsh 90s with great difficulty.
We were also almost destroyed by the opportunist gale, at the beginning of the 90s with the explosion of the old MAS of Argentina and we went through several processes of rupture that led to reformism. One of the most important occurred in 2016 when an internal current of the PSTU of Brazil, the TI, broke with positions very similar to those defended today by the leadership of the PSTU and the majority IWL fraction, focused on a negative vision of the processes in Eastern Europe. That current, today called Resistance, is a right-wing sector of the PSOL
New revolutions: the crisis of capitalism deepens
Unlike the propagandists of big capital, the revolutions against capitalism did not disappear with the end of the Soviet Union; on the contrary, they multiplied. The contradictions of the system (extreme inequality, misery, plundering of resources, unemployment, low wages, privatization of public services) generated social explosions all over the planet since the 1990s. The idea of socialism reappeared on the lips of unexpected characters, such as Hugo Chávez, a Venezuelan nationalist military officer (with his Socialism of the 21st Century), or Bernie Sanders, historic leader of the US Democratic Party. In Europe and Latin America, multiple currents, movements and parties emerged that claimed to defend anticapitalism or socialism.
In the 2000s, especially after the global economic crisis of 2008-2009, revolutions multiplied around the world. In North Africa and the Middle East we saw how a revolutionary outbreak in Tunisia set the entire region on fire in the so-called «Arab Spring»: Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco. Even in countries with governments presented as «popular» and «anti-imperialist» by the heirs of Stalinism, such as Libya and Syria, the revolution was relentless. The dictatorships of Gaddafi (Libya) and recently that of the Assad family (Syria) fell after harsh civil wars and complex processes of internal struggle.
Europe was also shaken by intense mobilizations after the economic crisis, due to the severe attacks of big capital against living conditions: Greece, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, among others. In almost all of them there were huge mobilizations of workers and youth.
America was also the scene of countless revolutionary processes with the fall of governments and rebellions. In Latin America, since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been revolutionary processes such as Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, Chile, and popular uprisings: Colombia, Peru. In the United States, protests following the murder of George Floyd triggered a real national crisis in 2020, even with «liberated» areas where police could not enter.
In recent years, the most important processes of class struggle have been of national liberation against capitalist colonizing powers, such as Ukraine and Palestine, where both peoples wage heroic and totally unequal struggles against their invaders. In Gaza in particular, the historic resistance of the Palestinian people faces a real genocide by the Zionist state of Israel with the support of the United States. Their struggle has awakened an unprecedented wave of international solidarity, countless mobilizations and actions such as the two strikes in Italy and the Sumud flotilla. This, coupled with its fierce armed resistance, has forced Israel into a still-faltering ceasefire and Trump’s deceitful peace deal. It is the reality of these two years of war that gives strength to the definition of Israeli historian Ilam Pappé who affirms that we are facing the beginning of the end of the Zionist state of Israel.
Another very important fact of the class struggle, which contradict the visions that the unstoppable growth of the «extreme right» predominates in the world, is the extraordinary mass response, in the US, to Trump’s brutal attack on immigrants and on the health and education of American workers. The important «No Kings» national mobilizations are a conclusive proof of this reality.
All these rebellions have in common the rejection of the miserable living conditions generated by capitalism and its governments, whether right-wing or supposedly left-wing, as well as imperialist colonial rule.
In some countries, these processes were defeated through harsh repressions, as in Egypt, where the military (supported by the United States) crushed the revolution. In others there were democratic conquests, such as in Tunisia, Libya or Syria. In bourgeois democracies, the processes were channeled through elections, giving rise, in several cases, to «new» so-called left-wing governments such as Boric (Chile), Petro (Colombia) or Syriza (Greece).
However, all these governments that promised to support workers and people ended up betraying popular demands and governing for big capitalists, generating demoralization among the masses, who did not see results from their struggles and sacrifices.
This global climate of polarization also fueled a new right, with increasingly aggressive programs against the working class, migrants, and other oppressed sectors. This new right grows on the failure of reformist and neo-reformist leaderships. For this reason, many sectors of the workers, disappointed with «left» governments are looking for alternatives – at least in the electoral field – in right-wing populist leaders such as Trump, Bolsonaro or Milei.
Another key element to understand today’s world is the decline of US imperialism (which continues to be hegemonic) and the emergence of China as a great capitalist power2 disputing areas of influence, technological development, territories and trade routes. This inter-bourgeois dispute over the plundering of the world has a direct impact on the working class, as big companies and monopolies further intensify exploitation in order to stay in competition.
All these are expressions of the world bourgeoisie in search of recovering its rate of profit in the face of the brutal economic crisis. The enormous attacks on the living conditions of the world working class and even the inter-bourgeois conflicts (between nations as well as corporations) are expressions of who will pay part of the bill for the current crisis. The world situation is explained by this offensive and on the other hand by the workers’ and people’s resistance for their survival.
The opportunistic gale continues to sweep the left
This process of global instability and attacks on the masses generates resistance, as we mentioned earlier. We do not share the vision of certain sectors of the left that speak of a «new reactionary wave»; We see a polarized world between revolution and counterrevolution.
The most serious problem of these processes of struggle is that of their leadership. By not having a revolutionary program, the «new leaderships» end up capitulating to the bourgeoisie and even to imperialism. The opportunist gale continues to drag organizations that claim to be revolutionary towards adaptation to the regimes of bourgeois democracy and its institutions and mechanisms such as electoral processes and the co-optation of unions.
This process towards reformism is visible today in currents such as the Trotskyist Fraction, whose main party is the Argentine PTS. In recent years, this current went from «ultra-leftism» to voting for dozens of laws together with bourgeois forces and «solidarity» with Cristina Kirchner, in the face of her imprisonment in a corruption case, its leaders went to the home where she is serving her sentence, denouncing that it was an act of «anti-democratic and proscriptive advance» and calling to mobilize for her freedom.
Considering the defense of the corrupt former president inadmissible does not imply that the slightest support should be given to the reactionary Milei government, which politically uses that prison, while doing nothing with the enormous number of corrupt people in its own government.
The defense made by the PTS responds to its adaptation to bourgeois democracy, mainly through its parliamentary apparatus. As they grow electorally, their militancy, their program and their means revolve around the bourgeois state, elections and parliamentary seats. The defense of «socialism,» «revolution,» and the «working class» is reduced to speech, not practice.
A similar process began to occur, albeit more slowly, in the International Workers’ League, to which we belonged. The LIT does not have parliamentarians and, therefore, the pressures are different. In its main party, the PSTU of Brazil, one of the main pressures comes from the union apparatuses, class conciliation government and from the parties that support it such as the PT and the PSOL. Pressure also come from the so-called «social movements» of women, blacks, LGBT, ecologists, multi-class united fronts where reformist organizations act strongly. By not having a clear characterization of these pressures and little presence in the working class, IWL parties are more permeable to them. Thus we saw the PSTU-B calling to build, with the «Socialist and Revolutionary Pole», a «revolutionary alternative» for Brazil, together with reformist and centrist organizations. Or calling for unity of anti-imperialist action with the Lula
government, when there was no anti-imperialist action by that government. A tendency to capitulate to reformism, which is based on its vision that the center of politics is against the «extreme right» and not against the current government. This is also expressed at the level of the International, as when we see the English group dissolving into Jeremy Corbyn’s new reformist party.
Those who began to confront this process within the IWL, making political criticisms, were accused of being «liquidationists», that is, of wanting to destroy the International. Many colleagues were sanctioned, arbitrarily removed from tasks, etc. Undoubtedly, the IWL has had innumerable weaknesses in its 40 years – regime problems, political errors, various errors – but it had never reached the current level of political and methodological degeneration. Reformist and capitalist pressures not only affect politics, but also the democratic centralist regime, attacking internal democracy. Many times these processes of political degeneration of the leftist currents are accompanied by moral degeneration, a process also present today, which was expressed in the defense and factional protection of the majority of an international leader in a case of sexist violence.
The consequence was that, on the first day of the XVI World Congress of the LIT (September), an internal opposition sector, the Fraction for Defense and Reconstruction of the LIT (with militants in Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, the United States and Portugal), was expelled, which caused the departure of many other comrades: those who were part of the Workers’ Tendency for the Principled Unity of the LIT (TOUPI) —today CORI-CI—, the Opinion Group of Argentina (today GOI), the PST of Peru, comrade Daniel Ruiz (former Argentine political prisoner and recognized working class figure in the vanguard of his country), among others. This process has unleashed the beginning of an explosion in the IWL. The loss of entire sections, leading cadres and hundreds of militants will be followed by new separations and ruptures. The bureaucratic leadership, by sustaining a turn towards reformist positions, has marked the end of the IWL founded by Moreno as we knew it. This organization has ceased to be a revolutionary alternative.
In the face of this enormous defeat and in the midst of a world situation marked by the economic crisis, the imperialist offensive and the resistance of the oppressed peoples, we are faced with the enormous task of reorganizing our forces and initiating the reconstruction of the International Workers’ League on the basis of the teachings and the program proposed by Nahuel Moreno.
Foundation of the International Committee for the Reconstruction of the IWL (CIR)
Thus, after a long process of debate on the need to undertake this difficult path, and under the premise of trying to regroup forces, parties and groupings that were expelled from IWL are meeting others (parties, groups, leaders, activists) with whom we can advance in a common revolutionary program, we undertook the construction of this Committee. Unfortunately and despite our invitation to be part of this process, comrades from CORI-CI current, who have also broken with IWL, have refused to undertake a process of debate and common construction. We believe that the comrades are wrong and that their attitude deepens divisions in the face of a very serious fact that has been imposed on us with the expulsions.
The CIR is made up of comrades with a long tradition, workers, teachers, students and the unemployed: MPR of Brazil; MIT of Chile, GOI of Argentina, U.S. Corriente Obrera, Insurgencia of Paraguay
A Call to Build a Revolutionary International
As we have developed in this manifesto, our immediate objective is the reconstruction of Moreno’s LITCI. We consider the reconstruction of the LIT as a democratically centralized organization essential in order to advance in the realization of the strategy of the reconstruction of the Fourth International with all those with whom, in the heat of the class struggle, we agree on the policy, the program, the methods and the morality of the world socialist revolution.
A necessity of the first order for those of us who see that the world that is already going through barbarism can only be overcome by destroying capitalism and with the working class at the head of a socialist program in transition to communism, the kingdom of freedom according to Marx, where everyone works according to their ability and receives according to their need. Where the exploitation of man by man finally ends and the efforts of work are at the service of the workers and the people. Where there is not a parasitic class that unleashes wars, famine and modern slavery on the vast majority of humanity.
That is why, with all those who coincide with the task of rebuilding Moreno’s LIT, we want to face a serious process of programmatic, political, regime debate and balance and perspectives on the way to our first Founding Congress to be held in 2026. This must be a democratic process with elaborations, exchanges and spaces for debate, following the teachings of our teachers and our revolutionary tradition.
For this reconstruction we do not start from scratch, we start from the Foundational Theses and the Statutes of the LIT and the updates that we have made in recent decades within our current, such as:
– Understanding of the processes of restoration-revolution in Eastern Europe. As well as the restoration processes in the former Chinese and Cuban Workers’ States.
– The actuality of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as the center of the revolutionary program;
– The permanent confrontation with the Popular Front or class conciliation governments and the reformist and neo-reformist currents;
– The role of revolutionaries in bourgeois parliaments and elections;
– The fight against machismo and all forms of oppression, with a program of class independence;
– The importance of revolutionary morality;
On all these issues it is necessary to continue studying, and some updates may be necessary, but they are already firm pillars on which to lean. Another fundamental starting point is the need to build national organizations and an international one with democratic centralist functioning, where there is ample internal democracy, on the one hand, and an iron discipline for external action and intervention, as proposed by the Statutes approved at the founding congress of the LIT-CI.
We invite all those who are willing to start this fundamental reconstruction with us. The struggle for revolutionary socialism is more urgent than ever.
Brazil MPR
MIT de Chile
Corriente Obrera US
GOI of Argentina
Insurgencia de Paraguay.
December, 2025
