ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly recaps the framework employed earlier to make sense of the fissiparous character of the British Trotskyist movement and then maps the contemporary world of Trotskyist Internationals. The definition of an International is far from straightforward not least because many Trotskyist leaders often claim their own organization is the only 'true' International and that other, small bodies have no organizational reality. It was suggested earlier that in the international sphere the pressures towards organizational cooperation and unity were likely to be weak, allowing free rein for sectarian impulses rooted in the defence of particular versions of Trotskyist doctrine. In the International sphere, it is the sectarian impulse towards differentiation that has proved far more prevalent and powerful than the feeble pressures towards unity. The record of international Trotskyism from 1938 to the present day amply confirms this proposition although there are significant variations in the degree of sectarianism across the different international organizations.
