International Bolshevik Tendency
International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT)
The International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) is an international Trotskyist organisation.
History
The International Bolshevik Tendency was originally known as the External Tendency (ET) and was formed in 1982 by former members of the International Spartacist Tendency (iSt) (now known as the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)).
While identifying the International Spartacists Tendency, from the 1960s until the late 1970s, as the only grouping with a consistent revolutionary programme, members of the External Tendency alleged a 'process of political degeneration' in the late 70s and early 80s. A claim disputed by the International Spartacist Tendency (iSt) and subsequently, the International Communist League (ICL).
While the External Tendency had engaged in polemical exchanges with leaders of the iSt by 1985 the External Tendency characterised the Spartacist League's break from its revolutionary past as "qualitatively complete".
In 1991, the North American-based Bolshevik Tendency fused with the Permanent Revolution Group (PRG) of New Zealand at a joint conference in Oakland, California. This unified tendency then joined forces in August with members of the former Gruppe IV. Internationale based in West Berlin. These mergers resulted in the organisation renaming itself the International Bolshevik Tendency.
In October 2018 a number of members of the International Bolshevik Tendency left the organisation. Those leaving formed a separate organisations called the Bolshevik Tendency and Bolshevik Group (South Korea), identifying political alignment with the organisation before its fusion with the Permanent Revolution Group (PRG).
“International Bolshevik Tendency” enters the record as international Bolshevik Tendency (IBT). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what International, Bolshevik and Tendency can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “International Bolshevik Tendency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.