International Bolshevik Tendency
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The International Bolshevik Tendency is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was formed by former members of the International Spartacist Tendency (iSt) in the USA and Canada, but many of its current members are not former Spartacists.
The IBT group in Germany was also drawn from members of the iSt who had formed the Group IV Internationale (GIVI) before joining the newly formed IBT as the Spartacus Group. The IBT section in New Zealand, the Permanent Revolution Group (PRG), was founded by former Spartacist leader Bill Logan, expelled by the Spartacist League in 1979 for "gross moral turpitude".
Politically it claims to continue the Spartacist tradition which it is argued degenerated in the late 1970s. They claim that it is no coincidence that most of the founding cadre of the IBT were pushed out of the iSt in those years. They also claim that the iSt abandoned much of its trade union work at the same time.
After a period known as the External Tendency of the iSt the USA and Canada based founders of the IBT renamed themselves the Bolshevik Tendency. They briefly won the allegiance of a small group on the US west coast called the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency only to lose them again. After a period of work with the German GIVI they fused with them and the PRG of New Zealand and became the International Bolshevik Tendency. They have since gained a tiny group of supporters in Britain who spent some time in Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party before resuming an independent existence.
The IBT publishes a journal, entitled 1917.
It is a tiny organisation, with members in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Germany.
External link
- IBT (http://www.bolshevik.org)
See also: List of Trotskyist internationals