John Witherspoon Philosophy What philosophy did John follow? Witherspoon thus believed moral judgment should be pursued as a science. was he religious? Thomas Reid than the Christian idealism of Jonathan Edwards. Did he teach any of his beliefs? his lectures on moral philosophy at Princeton, required of all juniors and seniors, Witherspoon argued for the revolutionary
why did he argue for the revolutionary?
why did John Witherspoon argue for the revolutionary?
According to Herbert Hovenkamp, Witherspoon's most lasting contribution was the initiation of the Scottish Common-Sense Realism, which he had learned by reading Thomas Reid and two of his expounders Dugald Stewart and James Beattie.  Witherspoon revised the moral philosophy curriculum, strengthened the college's commitment to natural philosophy, and positioned Princeton in the larger transatlantic world of the republic of letters. Although he was a proponent of Christian values, Witherspoon's common sense approach to the public morality of civil magistrates was more influenced by the Enlightenment ethics of Scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid than the Christian idealism of Jonathan Edwards. In regard to civil magistrates, Witherspoon thus believed moral judgment should be pursued as a science. He held to old concepts from the Roman Republic of virtuous leadership by civil magistrates, but he also regularly recommended that his students read such modern philosophers as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and David Hume, even though he disapproved of Hume's "infidel" stance on religion.  Virtue, he argued, could be deduced through the development of the moral sense, an ethical compass instilled by God in all human beings and developed through religious education (Reid) or civil sociability (Hutcheson). Witherspoon saw morality as having two distinct components: spiritual and temporal. Civil government owed more to the latter than the former in Witherspoon's Presbyterian doctrine. Thus, public morality owed more to the natural moral laws of the Enlightenment than to revealed Christianity.  In his lectures on moral philosophy at Princeton, required of all juniors and seniors, Witherspoon argued for the revolutionary right of resistance and recommended checks and balances within government. He made a profound impression on his student James Madison, whose suggestions for the United States Constitution followed both Witherspoon's and Hume's ideas. The historian Douglass Adair writes, "The syllabus of Witherspoon's lectures . . . explains the conversion of the young Virginian to the philosophy of the Enlightenment."  Witherspoon accepted the impossibility of maintaining public morality or virtue in the citizenry without an effective religion. In this sense, the temporal principles of morality required a religious component which derived its authority from the spiritual. Therefore, public religion was a vital necessity in maintaining the public morals. However, in this framework, non-Christian societies could have virtue, which, by his definition, could be found in natural law. Witherspoon, in accordance with the Scottish moral sense philosophy, taught that all human beings, Christian or otherwise, could be virtuous, but he was nonetheless committed to Christianity as the only route to personal salvation. CANNOTANSWER
Witherspoon argued for the revolutionary right of resistance and recommended checks and balances within government.
John Witherspoon (February 5, 1723 – November 15, 1794) was a Scottish American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–1794; now Princeton University) became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Politically active, Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. He was the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration. Later, he signed the Articles of Confederation and supported ratification of the Constitution. 

In 1789 he was convening moderator of the First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

Early life and ministry in Scotland 

John Witherspoon was born in Beith, North Ayrshire, Scotland, as the eldest child of the Reverend James Alexander Witherspoon and Anne Walker, a descendant of John Welsh of Ayr and John Knox.  This latter claim of Knox descent though ancient in origin is long disputed and without primary documentation.  He attended the Haddington Grammar School, and obtained a Master of Arts from the University of Edinburgh in 1739. He remained at the university to study divinity. In 1764, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in divinity by the University of St. Andrews.

Witherspoon was a staunch Protestant, nationalist, and supporter of republicanism. Consequently, he was opposed to the Roman Catholic Legitimist Jacobite rising of 1745–46.  Following the Jacobite victory at the Battle of Falkirk (1746), he was briefly imprisoned at Doune Castle, which had a long-term effect on his health.

He became a Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) minister at Beith, Ayrshire (1745–1758), where he married Elizabeth Montgomery of Craighouse. They had ten children, with five surviving to adulthood.

From 1758 to 1768, he was minister of the Laigh Kirk, Paisley (Low Kirk). Witherspoon became prominent within the Church as an Evangelical opponent of the Moderate Party. During his two pastorates he wrote three well-known works on theology, notably the satire "Ecclesiastical Characteristics" (1753), which opposed the philosophical influence of Francis Hutcheson.

Princeton 

At the urging of Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, whom he met in Paisley, Witherspoon finally accepted their renewed invitation (having turned one down in 1766) to become president and head professor of the small Presbyterian College of New Jersey in Princeton.  Thus, Witherspoon and his family emigrated to New Jersey in 1768.

At the age of 45, he became the sixth president of the college, later known as Princeton University. Upon his arrival, Witherspoon found the school in debt, with weak instruction, and a library collection which clearly failed to meet student needs. He immediately began fund-raising—locally and back home in Scotland—added three hundred of his own books to the library, and began purchasing scientific equipment including the Rittenhouse orrery, many maps, and a terrestrial globe.

Witherspoon also instituted a number of reforms, including modeling the syllabus and university structure after that used at the University of Edinburgh and other Scottish universities. He also firmed up entrance requirements, which helped the school compete with Harvard and Yale for scholars.

Witherspoon personally taught courses in eloquence or belles lettres, chronology (history), and divinity.  However, none was more important than moral philosophy (a required course). An advocate of natural law within a Christian and republican cosmology, Witherspoon considered moral philosophy vital for ministers, lawyers, and those holding positions in government (magistrates). Firm but good-humored in his leadership, Witherspoon was very popular among both faculty and students.

Witherspoon had been a prominent evangelical Presbyterian minister in Scotland before accepting the Princeton position. As the college's primary occupation at the time was training ministers, Witherspoon became a major leader of the early Presbyterian Church in America. He also helped organize Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey.

Nonetheless, Witherspoon transformed a college designed predominantly to train clergymen into a school that would equip the leaders of a new country. Students who later played prominent roles in the new nation's development included James Madison, Aaron Burr, Philip Freneau, William Bradford, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge. From among his students came 37 judges (three of whom became justices of the U.S. Supreme Court); 10 Cabinet officers; 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 U.S. senators, and 49 United States congressmen.

Revolutionary War 

Long wary of the power of the British Crown, Witherspoon saw the growing centralization of government, progressive ideology of colonial authorities, and establishment of Episcopacy authority as a threat to the Liberties of the colonies.  Of particular interest to Witherspoon was the crown's growing interference in the local and colonial affairs which previously had been the prerogatives and rights of the American authorities. When the crown began to give additional authority to its appointed Episcopacy over Church affairs, British authorities hit a nerve in the Presbyterian Scot, who saw such events in the same lens as his Scottish Covenanters.  Soon, Witherspoon came to support the Revolution, joining the Committee of Correspondence and Safety in early 1774. His 1776 sermon "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men" was published in many editions and he was elected to the Continental Congress as part of the New Jersey delegation, appointed Congressional Chaplain by the President of the Continental Congress John Hancock, and in July 1776, voted to adopt the Virginia Resolution for Independence. In answer to an objection that the country was not yet ready for independence, according to tradition he replied that it "was not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of rotting for the want of it." He lost his son Major James during the Battle of Germantown in 1777.

Witherspoon served in Congress from June 1777 until November 1784 and became one of its most influential members and a workhorse of prodigious energy. He served on over 10,000 committees, most notably the sitting committees, the board of peace and the committee on public correspondence or common affairs. He spoke often in concurrence; helped draft the Articles of Confederation; helped organize the executive departments; played a major role in shaping public policy; and drew up the instructions for the peace commissioners. He fought against the flood of paper money, and opposed the issuance of bonds without provision for their amortization. "No business can be done, some say, because money is scarce", he wrote.  He also served twice in the New Jersey Legislature, and strongly supported the adoption of the United States Constitution during the New Jersey ratification debates.

In November 1777, American forces neared, Witherspoon closed and evacuated the College of New Jersey.  The main building, Nassau Hall, was badly damaged and his papers and personal notes were lost. Witherspoon was responsible for its reconstruction after the war, which caused him great personal and financial difficulty. In 1780 he was elected to a one-year term in the New Jersey Legislative Council representing Somerset County. At the age of 68, he married a 24-year-old widow, with whom he had two more children.

Death and burial 

Witherspoon suffered eye injuries and was blind by 1792. He died in 1794 on his farm Tusculum, just outside Princeton, and is buried along Presidents Row in Princeton Cemetery. An inventory of Witherspoon's possessions taken at his death included "two slaves ... valued at a hundred dollars each".

Family 
Witherspoon and his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, had a total of 10 children, only five of whom survived to accompany their parents to America. James, the eldest, a young man of great promise, graduated from Princeton in 1770, and joined the American army as an aide to General Francis Nash, with the rank of major and was killed at the Battle of Germantown on 4 October 1777. The next youngest son, John, graduated from Princeton in 1779, practiced medicine in South Carolina, and was lost at sea in 1795. David, the youngest son, graduated the same year as his brother, married the widow of Abner Nash, brother of General Francis Nash, and practiced law in New Bern, North Carolina. Anna, the eldest daughter, married Reverend Samuel Smith on June 28, 1775. Reverend Samuel Smith succeeded Dr. Witherspoon as president of Princeton in 1775. Frances, the youngest daughter, married Dr. David Ramsay, a delegate from South Carolina to the Continental Congress, on March 18, 1763.

Philosophy 

According to Herbert Hovenkamp, Witherspoon's most lasting contribution was the initiation of the Scottish common sense realism, which he had learned by reading Thomas Reid and two of his expounders Dugald Stewart and James Beattie. 

Witherspoon revised the moral philosophy curriculum, strengthened the college's commitment to natural philosophy, and positioned Princeton in the larger transatlantic world of the republic of letters. Witherspoon was a proponent of Christian values, his common sense approach to the public morality of civil magistrates was influenced by the ethics of Scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid rather than Jonathan Edwards. In regard to civil magistrates, Witherspoon thus believed moral judgment should be pursued as a science. He held to old concepts from the Roman Republic of virtuous leadership by civil magistrates, but he also regularly recommended that his students read such modern philosophers as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and David Hume, even though he disapproved of Hume's "infidel" stance on religion.

Virtue, he argued, could be deduced through the development of the moral sense, an ethical compass instilled by God in all human beings and developed through religious education (Reid) or civil sociability (Hutcheson).  Witherspoon saw morality as having two distinct components: spiritual and temporal. Civil government owed more to the latter than the former in Witherspoon's Presbyterian doctrine. Thus, public morality owed more to the natural moral laws of the Enlightenment than to revealed Christianity.

In his lectures on moral philosophy at Princeton, required of all juniors and seniors, Witherspoon argued for the revolutionary right of resistance and recommended checks and balances within government. He made a profound impression on his student James Madison, whose suggestions for the United States Constitution followed both Witherspoon's and Hume's ideas. The historian Douglass Adair writes, "The syllabus of Witherspoon's lectures . . . explains the conversion of the young Virginian to the philosophy of the Enlightenment."

Witherspoon accepted the impossibility of maintaining public morality or virtue in the citizenry without an effective religion. In this sense, the temporal principles of morality required a religious component which derived its authority from the spiritual. Therefore, public religion was a vital necessity in maintaining the public morals. However, in this framework, non-Christian societies could have virtue, which, by his definition, could be found in natural law.  Witherspoon, in accordance with the Scottish moral sense philosophy, taught that all human beings, Christian or otherwise, could be virtuous, but he was nonetheless committed to Christianity as the only route to personal salvation.

Witherspoon owned slaves and lectured against the abolition of slavery.

However, in his "Lectures on Moral Philosophy", Dr. Witherspoon advocated for the humane treatment of laborers and servants (including slaves), stating:

The settled opinion among the American founding fathers, including Dr. Witherspoon, was that slavery would eventually disappear naturally within a generation. For this reason, Rev. Witherspoon advocated for "gradual emancipation" of slaves.

Legacy 
Witherspoon is not known for being a particularly insightful, significant, or even consistent Reformed preacher and thinker. However, he was firmly grounded in the Reformed tradition of High to Late Orthodoxy, embedded in the transatlantic Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century, and frustrated by the state of religion in the Scottish Kirk. Like Benedict Pictet (1655-1724), Witherspoon held firmly to the tenets of confessional Calvinism. And like Pictet, Witherspoon was eager to show that the truths of supernatural revelation could be squared with reason. His aim as a minister was to defend and rearticulate traditional Scottish Presbyterian theology, without altering or disguising it.

Statues
 Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 
 Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia
 University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, Scotland, United Kingdom
 Doctor John Witherspoon, Connecticut Avenue and N Street, N.W., near Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.

Buildings
 Witherspoon Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
 Witherspoon Building, in the Market East neighborhood of Philadelphia 
 The former Witherspoon Street School for Colored Children, Princeton, New Jersey
 The former John Witherspoon Middle School, Princeton, New Jersey. In August 2021, the Princeton School Board voted to remove John Witherspoon's name from the local public middle school due to Witherspoon's history as a slave owner who opposed abolition. The Board had previously voted not to make the change, but reversed itself after local residents submitted a petition with more than 1,500 signatures and input gathered at two public forums, temporarily changing the name to the Princeton Unified Middle School until a permanent new name is identified.

Memberships 

Witherspoon was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1789

Other
 John Witherspoon College, a non-denominational Christian liberal arts college in Rapid City, South Dakota
 Witherspoon Institute, a research center, in Princeton, New Jersey
 Witherspoon Society, an organization of laypeople within the Presbyterian Church (USA)
 Witherspoon Street, in: Princeton, New Jersey; Louisville, Kentucky; and, Paisley, Scotland 
 SS John Witherspoon, a Liberty ship class United States Merchant Marine ship during World War II; participated in an Allied convoy, code named PQ 17, and was sunk in the Barents Sea by the German submarine U-255 on July 6, 1942
 Portrayed in the musical 1776, about the debates over and eventual adoption of the Declaration of Independence, by Edmund Lyndeck in the 1969 stage play and by James Noble in the 1972 film

See also
 Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence

References

Citations

Sources 
 
 Collins, Varnum L.  President Witherspoon:  A Biography, 2 vols. (1925, repr. 1969)
 Ashbel Green, ed.  The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 4 vols. (1802, repr. with a new introduction by L. Gordon Tait, 2003)
 Morrison, Jeffry H. John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (2005)
 Pomfret, John E.. '"Witherspoon, John" in Dictionary of American Biography (1934)
 Tait, L. Gordon. The Piety of John Witherspoon: Pew, Pulpit, and Public Forum (2001)
 Moses Coit Tyler "President Witherspoon in the American Revolution" The American Historical Review Volume 1, Issue 1, July 1896. pp. 671–79. 
 Woods, David W.. John Witherspoon (1906)
 An Animated Son of Liberty – A life of John Witherspoon J. Walter McGinty (2012)

Further reading

External links 

 Biography on Princeton University's website
 
 
 Photographic tour of John Witherspoon's grave at Princeton Cemetery.
 Biography by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, 1856

1723 births
1794 deaths
18th-century American politicians
18th-century American theologians
18th-century American writers
18th-century Calvinist and Reformed theologians
18th-century Scottish theologians
18th-century Scottish writers
Alumni of New College, Edinburgh
American Calvinist and Reformed theologians
American evangelicals
American slave owners
Blind people from the United States
Burials at Princeton Cemetery
Clergy in the American Revolution
Continental Congressmen from New Jersey
Members of the New Jersey Legislative Council
18th-century Ministers of the Church of Scotland
Musical theatre characters
People from East Lothian
People from Paisley, Renfrewshire
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ministers
Presidents of Princeton University
Scottish Calvinist and Reformed theologians
Scottish emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies
Scottish evangelicals
Signers of the Articles of Confederation
Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence
Witherspoon Institute
People of colonial New Jersey
American proslavery activists
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine and tradition within socialism which stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary in order to bring about structural changes to society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for a transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.

Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe that it is inevitable but not predetermined. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple political and social movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. These include movements based on orthodox Marxist theory such as De Leonism, impossibilism and Luxemburgism as well as movements based on Leninism and the theory of vanguardist-led revolution such as Maoism, Marxism–Leninism and Trotskyism. Revolutionary socialism also includes other Marxist, Marxist-inspired and non-Marxist movements such as those found in democratic socialism, revolutionary syndicalism, social anarchism and social democracy.

Revolutionary socialism is contrasted with reformist socialism, especially the reformist wing of social democracy and other evolutionary approaches to socialism. Revolutionary socialism is opposed to social movements that seek to gradually ameliorate the economic and social problems of capitalism through political reform.

History

Origins 

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:

Twenty-four years after The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848, Marx and Engels admitted that in developed countries "labour may attain its goal by peaceful means". Marxist scholar Adam Schaff argued that Marx, Engels and Lenin have expressed such view "on many occasions". By contrast, the Blanquist view emphasised the overthrow by force of the ruling elite in government by an active minority of revolutionaries, who then proceed to implement socialist change, disregarding the state of readiness of society as a whole and the mass of the population in particular for revolutionary change.

In 1875, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) published a somewhat reformist Gotha Program which was attacked by Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program, where he reiterated the need for dictatorship of the proletariat. The reformist viewpoint was introduced into Marxist thought by Eduard Bernstein, one of the leaders of the SPD. From 1896 to 1898, Bernstein published a series of articles entitled "Probleme des Sozialismus" ("Problems of Socialism"). These articles led to a debate on revisionism in the SPD and can be seen as the origins of a reformist trend within Marxism.

In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg wrote Social Reform or Revolution?, a polemic against Bernstein's position. The work of reforms, Luxemburg argued, could only be carried on "in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution". In order to advance society to socialism from the capitalist 'social form', a social revolution will be necessary:

In 1902, Vladimir Lenin attacked Bernstein's position in his What Is to Be Done? When Bernstein first put forward his ideas, the majority of the SPD rejected them. The 1899 congress of the SPD reaffirmed the Erfurt Program as did the 1901 congress. The 1903 congress denounced "revisionist efforts".

World War I and Zimmerwald 
On 4 August 1914, the SPD members of the Reichstag voted for the government's war budget while the French and Belgium socialists publicly supported and joined their governments. The Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915, attended by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, saw the beginning of the end of the uneasy coexistence of revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists in the parties of Second International. The conference adopted a proposal by Trotsky to avoid an immediate split with the Second International. At first opposed to it, in the end Lenin voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.

In December 1915 and March 1916, eighteen Social Democratic representatives, the Haase-Ledebour Group, voted against war credits and were expelled from the Social Democratic Party. Liebknecht wrote Revolutionary Socialism in Germany in 1916, arguing that this group was not a revolutionary socialist group despite their refusal to vote for war credits, further defining in his view what was meant by a revolutionary socialist.

Russian Revolution and aftermath 

Many revolutionary socialists argue that the Russian Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin follows the revolutionary socialist model of a revolutionary movement guided by a vanguard party. By contrast, the October Revolution is portrayed as a coup d'état or putsch along the lines of Blanquism.

Revolutionary socialists, particularly Trotskyists, argue that the Bolsheviks only seized power as the expression of the mass of workers and peasants, whose desires are brought into being by an organised force—the revolutionary party. Marxists such as Trotskyists argue that Lenin did not advocate seizing of power until he felt that the majority of the population, represented in the soviets, demanded revolutionary change and no longer supported the reformist government of Alexander Kerensky established in the earlier revolution of February 1917. In the Lessons of October, Leon Trotsky wrote:

For these Marxists, the fact that the Bolsheviks won a majority (in alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) in the second all-Russian congress of Soviets—democratically elected bodies—which convened at the time of the October revolution, shows that they had popular support of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, the vast majority of Russian society.

In his pamphlet Lessons of October, first published in 1924, Trotsky argued that military power lay in the hands of the Bolsheviks before the October Revolution was carried out, but this power was not used against the government until the Bolsheviks gained mass support.

The mass of the soldiers began to be led by the Bolshevik party after the July days of 1917 and followed only the orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee under the leadership of Trotsky in October, also termed the Revolutionary Military Committee in Lenin's collected works. Trotsky mobilized the Military Revolutionary Committee to seize power on the advent of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies which began on 25 October 1917.

Following the October Revolution, the Communist International (also known as the Third International) was founded. This International became widely identified with communism, but also defined itself in terms of revolutionary socialism. However, in 1938 Trotskyists formed the Fourth International because they thought that the Third International turned to Marxism–Leninism—this latter International became identified with revolutionary socialism. Luxemburgism is another revolutionary socialist tradition.

Emerging from the Communist International, but critical of the post-1924 Soviet Union, the Trotskyist tradition in Western Europe and elsewhere uses the term "revolutionary socialism". In 1932, the first issue of the first Canadian Trotskyist newspaper The Vanguard published an editorial entitled "Revolutionary Socialism vs Reformism". Today, many Trotskyist groups advocate revolutionary socialism as opposed to reformism and consider themselves to be revolutionary socialists. The Committee for a Workers International states that "[w]e campaign for new workers' parties and for them to adopt a socialist programme. At the same time, the CWI builds support for the ideas of revolutionary socialism". In "The Case for Revolutionary Socialism, Alex Callinicos from the Socialist Workers Party in Britain argues in favor of it.

See also 

 Anarchism
 Anarcho-communism
 Anarcho-syndicalism
 Authoritarian socialism
 Communism
 Criticism of capitalism
 Libertarian socialism
 Political revolution

References 

Economic ideologies
Far-left politics
History of socialism
Political theories
Types of socialism This is a list of Trotskyist internationals.  It includes all of the many political internationals which self-identify as Trotskyist.

Of the organizations listed, three claim to be the original Fourth International founded in 1938: the reunified Fourth International and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). Certain organizations which claim to be Trotskyist make no attempt to claim any relationship to the Fourth International in an organizational sense and argue that it no longer exists. Some claim to represent a continuity from the Fourth International or to have re-established it: for example the Fourth International (ICR) International Centre/Center of Reconstruction, also known as the FI (La Verité), also calls itself the "Fourth International". Others argue that the title "Fourth International" is so discredited that a Fifth International or another new organisation is needed.

The various organizations listed here range in size from those having thousands of adherents in dozens of countries to tendencies which can barely claim a dozen members in three or four countries.

List of internationals

Active 
Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) - claims to be refoundation of Committee for a Workers' International (1974)

Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR)
reunified Fourth International
Fourth International (ICR), also called FI (La Verité) or FI (International Secretariat)
International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
International Committee of the Fourth International (Workers Revolutionary Party) 
International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) (ICL-FI), previously the International Spartacist Tendency
International Marxist Tendency (IMT), previously the Committee for a Marxist International
Socialist Network (Post-Trotskyist, split from IMT)
International Revolutionary Left, split from CWI
International Socialist Alternative, claims to be successor to Committee for a Workers' International (1974)
International Socialist League (ISL-LIS)
International Socialist Tendency (IST (post-trotskyist))
Internationalist Communist Union (ICU)
International Workers League – Fourth International (IWL-FI)
International Workers' Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
League for the Fifth International (L5I)
League for the Fourth International (LFI) [split from (ICL-FI)]
League for the Revolutionary Party – Communist Organization for the Fourth International
Organising Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI), split from Fourth International (ICR) in 2016
Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International (TF-FI)
Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International (WIRFI)
Revolutionary Communist International Tendency
International Bolshevik Tendency
Bolshevik Tendency
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency
Permanent Revolution Collective 
International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction
Tendency for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International
Internationalist Trotskyist Nucleus-Fourth International
Fourth International Posadist
Pathfinder tendency

Defunct or inactive 
Bolshevik Current for the Fourth International
Collective for an International Conference of the Principled Trotskyism
Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI), 1995–2004
Organizing Committee of Principist Trotskyism (Fourth International)
Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), 1974–2019 – split into Committee for a Workers' International (Refounded) and International Socialist Alternative
Committee for the Fourth International, 1940-
Communist Organisation for a Fourth International, 2003–2007, currently inactive
Coordination Committee for the Construction of the International Workers Party (KoorKom) – dissolved into International Workers' League in 2002
Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International (CRFI)
Fifth International of Communists
Fourth International (International Committee (FIIC), 1980–1981
Group of Opposition and Continuity of the Fourth International
International Centre for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (CIRQI)
International Centre of Orthodox Trotskyism
International League for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (ILRFI), 1973–1995
International Liaison Committee of Communists (ILCC)
International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (TMRI), 1965–1992 – rejoined the Fourth International (post-reunification)
International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International
International Trotskyist Opposition
International Workers' Committee
International New Course
Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency (LTT), 1991–1997
Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (CERCI) 1988–1997
Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (CORQI), 1972–1980
Organizing Committee of Principist Trotskyism (Fourth International)
Permanent Revolution
Revolutionary Workers Ferment (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, FOR)
Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1979–1984
Tendência Quarta Internacionalista
Workers' Voice (formerly Revolutionary Trotskyist League, formerly Revolutionary Trotskyist Tendency)

See also 
 List of Trotskyist organizations by country
 List of left-wing internationals
 List of communist parties
 List of members of the Comintern

References

External links 
 List of socialist internationals
 List of Trotskyist parties and their internationals