Debate Between the International Communist League (ICL) and the
League for the Fourth International (LFI)

New York City, 13 January 2024

The audience at the January 2024 debate between the International Communist League and the League for the Fourth International. Well over 200 people attended, while many others saw it on Youtube. (Internationalist photo)

On 13 January 2024, in New York City, a debate was held between the League for the Fourth International (LFI), whose U.S. section is the Internationalist Group (IG), and the International Communist League (ICL), of which the Spartacist League (SL) is the U.S. section. After upholding the Trotskyist program for three decades, a deep-going political and organizational crisis of the Spartacist tendency, touched off by the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union, led to the expulsion in 1996 of longtime cadres who went on to form the IG and then to join with comrades in Brazil, France and Mexico to found the LFI in 1998.

The January 13 debate – chaired by labor historian Bryan Palmer, biographer of U.S. Trotskyism’s founder James P. Cannon – consisted of a first part, “The Fight for the Fourth International Today,” and a second part, “Permanent Revolution.” Each part was followed by a discussion period in which supporters of both organizations and from other groups took part.

We present here a full video of the debate. We have added some photos that illustrate points raised by LFI speakers during their presentations and in the discussion periods. In the hallway near our literature table were displays made by comrades of the Revolutionary Internationalist Youth (youth section of the IG) about some topics related to the debate. These displays can be seen in the article “In Defense of the Trotskyist Program,” which contains the text of the presentations, rebuttal and summaries of the speakers for the LFI, Abram Negrete and Jan Norden. (Clicking on the images in that article will enlarge them so as to see the individual photos and to be able to read the captions.)

A correction: at approximately 2:48:20 in the video, a photo caption refers to the 1988 Volta Redonda steel workers strike, but while other photos show that strike, that photo is of comrade Cerezo speaking to steel workers during a subsequent (1990) mass strike and plant occupation.

The video of the debate can be seen at: https://youtu.be/GgQEvNwidBY