During this interview both Niles Niemuth at 3:30 and Patrick Martin 4:00 argue that certain people with successful careers in politics and intelligence are war criminals engaged in criminal activity without using the word alleged.

Is this a trial in the media? Why can Patrick Martin, Niles Niemuth, and in other places Bill Van Auken try and convict successful government officials, while the #metoo movement is held to different standards? Because they arrest and convict oligarchs and media industry executives? How can you justify such language in the case of John Negroponte but not Les Moonves? Is it because of the actual accomplishment of bringing these capitalist leaders to task?

The failure to delegitimize John Negroponte and other alleged “war-criminals” may be due to your self-satisfaction of having tried them in the media. It may also be connected to your willingness to turn on the more accomplished #metoo movement and defend such people as the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Weren’t you accusing the New York Times of having founded the movement and secretly controlling it? Why would their own leading editor fall from power if he himself controlled the movement?

Lenin, in an argument with Plekhanov about the Paris Commune and 1905, wrote that once revolutionary measures are undertaken, Marxists must support the workers uprising regardless of the inadequacy they may observe in their theories or in their leaders’ theories. Marx respected Blanqui even if they had disagreements over the International. Marx may have been right in his criticism of Paris Commune revolutionary leaders, but he would have been wrong to deny them support as they organized a new government in defiance of the imperialist Third Republic.

Marx saw the attempt as “desperate folly”, telling the workers not to take up arms, but once they did he took their side, praised their leaders, and covered and analyzed events closely with the purpose of providing their historic accomplishments their proper place in revolutionary history.

Plekhanov, Lenin argued, did the opposite in 1905. At first he encouraged the workers too eagerly to take up arms, then once they did, he turned on their leaders, denying them support in their time of greatest need. In other words, the struggle for leadership and theory should take place before the revolution, while mutual understanding between leaders should overtake the old theoritical and organizational divisions, which had their place in the clarification of theory and the preparation of the class consciousness of the workers. This unifying principle, later, besides opening the door to Trotsky’s return, allowed Lenin to form the three-party Soviet opposition to the provisional government in 1917.

The Fourth International exists to provide leadership to the working class revolution. This does not mean that all worker leaders or popular revolutionaries will be members or in full agreement with the Fourth International.

Recognition of this historical constant does not diminish the importance of the old Trotskyist movement, but in fact renews it, bringing it closer to the leadership of the new society forming in the cracks of political persecution. It positions the ICFI to unite all revolutionary opposition to the government within a viable movement and future government. As such, it can serve the revolution more humbly, with its long history outside of power, than any other organization, and yet more professionally. It allows it to participate, welcomed, everywhere the people take or require action. With it, the ICFI gains itself a wider acceptance as a vital part of a successful movement to end capitalism, inequality, and imperialist war.