9th ICL Conference :

The Demise
of “Genesis of pabloism” and Cannon

With its 9th conference, the ICL continues its work of unraveling its own history and advancing the official rejection of Trotskyism, Leninism, and Marxism. Following the official rejection of the Permanent Revolution and the replacement of the struggle for “socialist revolution” with the struggle for “national liberation,” then the abandonment of the Leninist theory of “imperialism” in favor of the Kautskyist theory of “ultra-imperialism,” the ICL has been challenging the Fourth International since 1945 (and thus, for the time being, only partially).

The ICL disavows Cannon and Robertson

Up until this 9th conference, Perrault had merely argued that the “left”—including the RT/IsT/ICL—had failed to grasp the “new ultra-imperialist era” and had capitulated to the ideology of this “new” era, “liberalism.” We were surprised that Perrault had not pointed out that all the leaders of the Fourth International had completely missed the mark. But—contradicting ourselves and making a mistake—we had assumed that he and his associate David Vincent would not do so. Yet criticizing the RT/IsT/ICL without criticizing all the leaders of the Fourth International—whether the future anti-pabloists (first and foremost Cannon) or the future pabloists—was as obvious as the nose on one’s face. It was therefore imperative for them to address it.

So it’s now official with the 9th Conference: the new ICL renounces the Fourth International as well as all its leaders since 1945 (including those of the RT/IsT/ICL, Robertson, etc.): “it is absurd to claim that the Fourth International was somehow “revolutionary” before the rise of “pabloism” as we have argued in the past”. And, drawing on a quote from Trotsky, it makes it clear that the Fourth International, between 1945 and 1948, had become “the indirect tool of other classes”. A new major milestone has been set in the ICL’s revisionism [1].

The shredding of “Genesis of pabloism”

The new ICL now considers—for the time being—that the Fourth International self-destructed in 1945 and bears shared responsibility for the continuation of capitalism after world war II, as its leaders were unable to understand “the new chapter in history » [2]”—an “ultra-imperialist” one. Under the guise of placing pabloists and anti-pabloists on equal footing, David Vincent’s presentation aimed first and foremost at the (slightly critical) rehabilitation of pabloism, as this allows them to justify their current practices and engage in the systematic demolition of the anti-pabloists.

After reorienting the ICL—which they considered isolated due to the ICL’s historical “sectarianism” toward the “left”—the new nationalist Quebec leaders of the ICL are gradually tracing the “evil” back to its roots: in fact, the RT/IsT/ICL is said to have inherited the “sectarian isolation” of Cannon’s SWP and the anti-pabloists after world war II. To make this case, David Vincent didn’t have to think too hard. He simply reworked “Genesis of pabloism”—one of the founding documents of the IsT/ICL—in his own way. All the right-wing and liquidationist leaders of the Fourth International, as well as the pabloists—who were denounced in “Genesis of pabloism”—are rehabilitated and glorified by David Vincent, becoming revolutionaries who, amid the general confusion, were the only ones who had grasped reality and sought to set the Fourth International on the right course. Thus Goldman, Morrow, and Van Heijenoort—whose “ ‘solution’ was to limit the trotskyist program to bourgeois-democratic demands” (“Genesis of pabloism”)—are praised to the skies, which is perfectly understandable since they adhered exactly to the ICL’s current liquidationist line.

An under-economist program

As we have explained, given the ICL’s isolation and aging of LCI members, the Quebecers who lead it have devised a shortcut to “gain time against time” (and attempt to satisfy their ambitions). They have transformed the ICL into a pressure group within “the Marxist left” or “the trotskyist left.” The “plan” is to use this “trotskyist left” as a sounding board, hence their incessant calls for its “unity.” The very first step was to break with the more than 50-year tradition in which the TSI/LCI had rightly characterized as centrists and/or reformists all those organizations that had openly transformed themselves into mere recruiters for the bourgeoisie’s official labor lieutenants. Having replaced the struggle for socialist revolution with the struggle for national liberation as its priority task, the ICL naturally replaced the Transitional Program with a classic minimum-maximum program. Then, with the “discovery” of “ultra-imperialism,” they simply shifted to an increasingly minimalist minimum program (sub-economist), with the central task now being “anti-U.S. imperialism.”

The Quebecers’ perspective is “revolutionary synthesis”: taking what was “good” from all the organizations of the “trotskyist left” and rejecting what was “bad” in order to end up “all together, all together.” Perrault and David Vincent can afford to completely tear apart the LCI’s program because they are not operating on the ground of Marxism, but on that of nationalism (with a clique of “convinced” full-time staff and dozens of “retired” members—in every sense of the word—who are just as “convinced”). The very idea that anyone might imagine these “swamp” organizations will re-evaluate their 60 to 80 years of existence and question the small niche they’ve managed to carve out for themselves in capitalist society—or even that segments of these organizations will join the LCI—is simply amusing.

The few remaining correct programmatic elements of the LCI are no longer based on a program aimed at bridging the gap between current struggles and the necessity of socialist revolution, but on the purest and most hardline form of nationalist “anti-U.S. ultra-imperialism.” And even when presented in this light, the LCI has no impact on the political swamp. Thus, regarding its defense of Iran against the imperialists and the Zionists, the “trotskyist left” remains largely “neutral” in the name of its “democratic” and “secular” values, which it shares with the imperialists. Similarly, this same “trotskyist left” refuses to “defend Cuba” so as not to be lumped in with the “stalinists of the Cuban Communist Party.” As for Ukraine, where the ICL had gone to great lengths to make it clear that it was not siding with Russia by taking a neutral stance, it nevertheless found itself on the sidelines, as the “trotskyist left” generally considers NATO “more equal” than Zelensky. The main problem for the new ICL is that the swamp of the “trotskyist left”—which it looks down on—for its part adheres to its own murky principles.

As for the pabloists, David Vincent believes that they had fundamentally good intentions in “to link themselves to the masses under stalinist leadership”; their only mistake, he argues, was that they developed “the illusion that the ‘objective process’ would push Communist parties [stalinists] to become revolutionary”.

On the other hand, as far as the anti-pabloists are concerned, not only does he take up virtually all the critical points raised in “Genesis of pabloism”—emphasizing some of them—but he also adds to them. He revels in the denunciations of a “sterile orthodoxy” made in “Genesis of pabloism,” which allows him to sharply contrast the “sectarian isolation” of the anti-pabloists on the one hand with the pabloists’ quest to reach out the “masses” on the other. Whatever one may think today of certain formulations used in “Genesis of pabloism,” one thing is certain: when David Vincent denounces the “sterile orthodoxy” of the anti-pabloists, he is by no means attributing the same meaning to it as the SLUS did in 1972!

Pabloism

To further his argument, David Vincent redefines “pabloism.” It is therefore necessary to recall how “Genesis of Pabloism” defines it:

Pabloism was more than a symmetrical· false theory, more than simply an impressionistic over-reaction against orthodoxy; it was a theoretical justification for a non-revolutionary impulse based on giving up a perspective for the construction of a proletarian vanguard in the advanced or the colonial countries. [...] The conception that a mass Communist Party will take the road to power if only sufficient mass pressure is brought to bear is false. It shifts the responsibility for revolutionary setbacks from the leadership to the mass .... " "The working class is transformed [by Pablo's theories] into a pressure group, and the trotskyists into a pressure grouping along with it which pushes a section of the bureaucracy toward the revolution. In this way, the bureaucracy is transformed from a block and a betrayer of the revolution into an auxiliary motor force of it.

-- “Genesis of pabloism”, Spartacist n°21, Fall 1972

It is clear that the critique of pabloism centers on the abandonment of the need to build a revolutionary party and the transformation of the Fourth International into a pressure group targeting the existing leaderships of the labor movement. Pabloism meant that “the trotskyists were to abandon the perspective of short-term entrism whose purpose had always been to split the working-class organizations on a hard programmatic basis as a tactic for building the trotskyist party” (“Genesis of pabloism”), that is, with flag unfurled to split off a left wing. The endorsement of pabloite entryism—which represents a break with the tactics of trotskyist entryism and, for trotskyists, the liquidation of the Fourth International—is thus clearly and consciously advocated by David Vincent:

« [Pablo] was correct to argue that trotskyists had to link themselves to the masses under stalinist leadership, including through entry tactics. What was fatal in his tactics was that they were all motivated not by the need to build a revolutionary current within them, but by the illusion that the “objective process” would push Communist parties to become revolutionary. »

David Vincent asserts that pabloists were not seeking “to build a revolutionary current” within the parties they joined,. It is unclear exactly how he understands “sui generis entryism,” especially given the nature of the stalinist parties of that era, which exercised massive leadership over the workers. But the pabloists sought to put pressure on the leaderships, believing that they would be forced to follow the rank and file. What a difference from the ICL’s entryism in Australia, Canada/Quebec, or the U.S.—in petty-bourgeois splinter groups steeped in the death of communism, at best— (especially since it does so with a meager program of three or four vague and ambiguous demands, such as “Opposition to Zionism,” at most). But it’s true that our two friends are much smarter! [3]

The “strategy”

With two great “strategists” at its helm, the ICL no longer speaks of programs, tactics, party-building, etc., but of “strategy.” Thus, David Vincent proclaims that the end of world war II “also tore up the playbook the trotskyist movement had relied upon for over a decade.” One might already ask, “which decade is he talking about?” 1935–1945? And why that one? But what is important is that the struggle for the unconditional defense of the USSR (today, China) is not a strategy; it is a key point of the program for guiding the workers. The struggle against popular fronts is not a strategy; it is the struggle to help the working class understand the necessity of class independence in order to advance toward socialism. The struggle against imperialism is not a strategy; it is, for example, about teaching workers that the main enemy is within their own country. The struggle against opportunism and revisionism—or against sectarianism—is not a strategy; it is about raising workers’ consciousness so they understand who the charlatans are who lead to defeat. Etc.

The term “strategy” as used by the ICL today is nothing more than a gimmick to cover up the petty maneuvers and backroom deals it has been openly engaging in since 2021 (petty maneuvers and deals that, according to the ICL, the trotskyists should have engaged in immediately after world war II). Today, these include calls to vote for organizations that strike deals with bourgeois parties (PSL) or that support governing parties (MLPD, RIO), in the name of “class independence” (!) or entryism into organizations with no revolutionary pretensions or wings. According to the ICL, the Fourth International should have dissolved itself, as the pabloites proposed, but on the basis of “anti-U.S. imperialism”—a “program” vague and flexible enough to allow for all sorts of maneuvers.

The Transitional Program

The Fourth International is said to have betrayed the cause by 1945 because it lacked “a course of struggle which advanced the interests of the working class as a whole“, “an independent strategy to genuinely advance these struggles—one capable of breaking the masses away from their non-revolutionary leaders,” according to David Vincent. He confirms what we have said time and again: for the ICL, it is no longer a matter of raising the level of consciousness of the working class—the basis for the existence of a Leninist party—but of “advancing the struggles.” We are well acquainted with this dogma of the “ economists” (and of any trade unionist or bureaucrat who is even slightly combative). The main thing is that the working class struggles; the primary task of the under-“economists” is simply to “remove the obstacles blocking the way for the workers”, since the workers’ consciousness progresses on its own, as if by magic. The under-“economists” need only to go along with the workers programmatically until the day comes when they can finally reveal the maximum program to them.

While waiting for this “opportune” moment, we need “realistic” and “concrete” slogans. One might assume that the “internationalist and revolutionary strategy to defeat [the American empire]”—linked to the observation of a “revival of democratic illusions among European workers” in the aftermath of world war II, as discussed by David Vincent—should have resulted in a revival of the Goldman/ Morrow/Van Heijenoort program (limiting itself to the call “for constituent assemblies” and to “bourgeois-democratic” demands), supplemented by broad calls for a “world united front to fight against U.S. domination over the countries of Europe” (perhaps accompanied by a letter from Pablo to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?). With its current under-“economism,” the ICL considers the long, patient, and tedious task of putting forward transitional programs and guiding workers in their development of class consciousness to be unnecessary.

Since the Transition Program has no longer been relevant to the ICL since 2021, it has been repeatedly criticized as “outdated.” And in this regard, David Vincent has been the most consistent, returning to the fray whenever he can. In 2025, in a letter to the LCFI, he noted that “Rather, it compares in a literary fashion certain demands crafted in 1938 and reflects on their potential application 87 years later.” At the conference, he explained: “The leaders of the movement— from Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, who emerged from the underground in Europe, to James P. Cannon in the U.S.—proved incapable of squaring this new reality with the literal text of the 1938.” He is not the first to have “discovered” that it had been “outlived.” All those who abandoned the Transitional Program—the pabloites foremost among them—have always justified their betrayals and their failure to uphold it by claiming it was “obsolete” and “outdated.

Admittedly, the era in which this program was written is evident in a number of passages whose wording does not reflect the post-Soviet era in which we have lived for the past 35 years. But clearly, that is not what David Vincent rejects; it is the method. He makes this clear by treating it solely as a catalog of demands—which is rather laughable and shows that he has probably never understood it. Let us recall (for the umpteenth time) the method of this program (precisely using wording from another era):

“The strategic task of the next period – prerevolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization – consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation . It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

While it is true that any revolutionary would hope that today’s workers possess at least the same “immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard” as the workers Trotsky speaks of, we would very much like David Vincent to explain why he thinks that the search for a “the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution” is outdated and obsolete. And also, since exactly when: 1939, when the war began? 1943, when the German army began its descent into hell after Stalingrad? In 1944? In fact, he should answer “1938!” because it is the very principle of the Transitional Program that the ICL’s under-“economism” calls into question. For it holds that consciousness develops simply and naturally “in the struggles”.

Go even higher, toward the source!

So the ICL must now continue its work of revisionism. When David Vincent repeatedly denounces “defensive, rigid orthodoxy,” “sectarian isolation,” “rigid dogmas,” and “a thoroughly sectarian, sterile, and reality-denying approach,” he is denouncing the entire body of work that Trotsky undertook to build the continuity of Leninism in the 1920s and 1930s—the Left Opposition and then the Fourth International—as well as his program, the Transitional Program. This is made explicit when David Vincent explains: “After the war, the movement retreated into rigid, pre-war dogmas.” So Perrault and David Vincent must trace the history back and question the sources of this “sectarian orthodoxy”.

We propose a “thesis” to David Vincent and Perrault: the former ICL failed because it clung to the sterile, rigid, and sectarian dogmas of the anti-pabloists, who themselves had clung to the same sterile, rigid, and sectarian dogmas of the prewar Fourth International—that is, Trotsky’s sterile, rigid, and sectarian dogmas. Come on, comrades!

According to our strategists, the other pillar of the former ICL’s degeneration stemmed from its failure to understand the new “ultra-imperialist” era of the United States following world war II. Here, the ICL is said to have perpetuated the same misunderstanding held by the anti-pabloists and the pabloists (and by the entire global left, and even by all of humanity!). Whose fault is it? Perrault, in his invention of “ultra-imperialism,” has so far contented himself with saying that Lenin and Trotsky “did not face a situation in which the main imperialists were united due to the overwhelming domination of one power.” But, as we have shown, Lenin drew on Marxism to tear Kautsky to shreds and explain that ultra-imperialism is impossible in principle (according to Marxism). And Trotsky was in complete agreement. So, here too, our brilliant intellectuals need to make a little effort. Our proposals:

-- that Perrault takes up this “thesis”: the trotskyists (and the RT/IsT/ICL) failed because of Trotsky and Lenin! The next ICL conference would have to call into question the legitimacy of Trotsky and Lenin. On top of that, since Lenin was the king of “rigid and sectarian orthodoxy,” the ICL would kill two birds with one stone.

-- that Perrault take up another “thesis” (a last-ditch effort, but a liberating one at that): he must call into question those who led Lenin to such depravities, namely Marx and Engels with their damned law of value, which misled Lenin and his entire circle.

That would bring things full circle, and our Quebec nationalists would return to their political starting point. And the labor movement would be rid of impostors.

We can’t wait!

October 2026

[Translated from french original by AI]