International Marxist Tendency

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The International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is a Trotskyist tendency based on the ideas of Ted Grant. Alan Woods is its main leader and theoretician. It was founded as the Committee for a Marxist International, but has referred to itself as the IMT since 2006.[1]

Grant was a long time leader of the Militant tendency in the British Labour Party until it split in early 1992 over whether to try to continue working in the Labour Party. The majority formed Militant Labour outside the Labour Party, which subsequentially became the Socialist Party. Grant argued that leaving Labour would amount to throwing away many decades of patient work and maintained that Marxists should remain within the party. However, he and his supporters were expelled from the tendency and together with Alan Woods he formed Socialist Appeal in Britain.

In 1974, Militant and its co-thinkers from Sweden, Ireland and elsewhere around the world formed the Committee for a Workers International. The faction fight within the Militant tendency that led to the expulsion of Grant and Woods also played itself out within the CWI with supporters of the Grant minority leaving to form the Committee for a Marxist International in other countries than Britain, which later became known as the "International Marxist Tendency".

Just as the Grant and Woods led Socialist Appeal tendency pursues a policy of entrism in the British Labour Party, IMT groups outside Britain pursue entrism in equivalents of the Labour Party (where they exist), some Communist Parties such as those in France and Italy and, in some countries, progressive bourgeois parties (or "popular-front parties" as they are sometimes called by some Marxists) such as the Pakistan Peoples Party of Benazir Bhutto. This work, however, is always combined with independent work outside these parties.

Since its World Congress 2006, the organisation was renamed the "International Marxist Tendency".

The IMT had three MPs in Pakistan (who ran as candidates of the Pakistan Peoples Party) and has spread to parts of Latin America, where it now has groups in Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia and Brasil. At the end of 2002 it promoted the launching of the solidarity campaign at Hands Off Venezuela, which is now active in 30 countries and has had resolutions passed within the trade union movements in Britain, Canada, Italy and other countries. The IMT activists also play an important role in FRETECO (Front of Factories Under Workers' Control) movement in Brazil[2], Venezuela[3] and have been very active in Venezuela, where they support the popular revolution and spread the ideas of Marx and Trotsky. Its largest European section is in Spain, where IMT youth organised the national student organisation Sindicato de Estudiantes[4].

Every year all the sections of IMT take part in a large event that is either a World Congress or a World School of Marxism. The difference is that the congresses are held mainly to discuss the progress of IMT in the world, present reports and plan the future activities, while the World School is aimed mainly to deepen the knowledge of Marxist theory, history of workers' movement and the actual situation of world socialism. The last event, the World School, took place at the beginning of August 2007.