The
Fourth International (
FI) is the
communist international organisation consisting of followers of
Leon Trotsky, or
Trotskyists, with the declared goal of helping the working class bring about
socialism and work toward
international communism. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938: Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the
Soviet Union, considered the
Comintern or Third International to have become "lost to"
Stalinism and incapable of leading the
international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own, competing "Fourth International".