[1] After the death of his mother, he and his brothers and sisters had to beg from neighbours and do odd jobs for pennies in order to survive.
He then joined the Partido de la Revolución Socialista, which affiliated to the Fourth International in 1941 but the party quickly declined.
In 1947, Cristalli and Dante Minazzoli founded the Grupo Cuarta Internacional (GCI) as a small circle of working class militants committed to Trotskyism.
[citation needed] With Luis Naguill, Posadas directed the "subversive apparatus" founded according to instructions from the Tri-Continental - the Peasant Workers Alliance in 1966.
[4] In those letters, Posadas and his followers made bold criticisms such as Trotskyist movements worldwide were largely influenced by the Bureau of Latin America (BLA) of the Fourth International at that time, and that the Europeans had become a passive force.
[citation needed] The Posadist Fourth international developed a concept of its organizational nature, with changes that were introduced in 1966 which varied substantially from the rest of the Trotskyist movement.
[2] This stance was made more specific at a 1966 meeting of the International Secretariat, where a manifesto written by Posadas was adopted:[2] "After destruction commences, the masses are going to emerge in all countries – in a short time, in a few hours.
His idea was that rather than wait for the forces of capitalism, the nuclear-armed socialist states should launch a preemptive attack that would destroy the nuclear capabilities of capitalist countries.
[2][10] Posadas vocally opposed the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, believing that a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union was inevitable and desirable, and would create the conditions for socialism, with the "workers' states" winning and resetting society.
[11][12] The Posadists held to mainstream Trotskyist notions of describing the Soviet Republics that were established with the end of World War 2 as "deformed workers' states" based on the existence of generally nationalized means of production, but unlike the rest of the Trotskyist movement, Posadas went further, declaring other Regimes (such as "Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Mali, Guinea, Congo Brazzaville etc.")
[2] The justifications for these classifications as well as the explanations for the supposed progressive role of these regimes were compiled into Posadas' 1969 book "The Revolutionary State".
[13][citation needed] The Posadist group in Cuba, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (Trotskyist) or POR(T), gained importance due to the Cuban Revolution, in which it had a minor role.
The POR(T) denied the allegation, but it was repeated by the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the US, which was pro-Castro and denounced the Posadists as ultra-left.
Guevara, when asked in an interview about this event, commented: The Cuban Posadist section became increasingly militant and was banned by the government; Castro denounced them as "pestilential" at the Tricontinental Conference held in January 1966.
[14] He also writes that capitalism tends to make people self-centered and focus on profits, rather than work on the scientific and civilizational progress of mankind.
We can foresee the existence of such beings, even taking into account the fantasies that exist among the reports, stories, observations, and statements"[14] Posadist newspapers such as Red Flag, published by the Revolutionary Workers Party (Trotskyist) in Britain, ran headlines praising Soviet cosmonauts and the launching of Chinese rockets as well as articles on local industrial disputes.
The author reviews the history of Posadism and its ultimate collapse, and analyzes the significance of the current rise of interest on this topic.