The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a
communist party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
in the United States. Originally a group in the
Communist Party USA that supported
Leon Trotsky against
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid
strike
Strike may refer to:
People
* Strike (surname)
Physical confrontation or removal
*Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm
*Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...
s and is strongly supportive of
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
. The SWP publishes ''
The Militant'', a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains
Pathfinder Press
Pathfinder may refer to:
Businesses
* Pathfinder Energy Services, a division of Smith International
* Pathfinder Press, a publisher of socialist literature
Computing and information science
* Path Finder, a Macintosh file browser
* Pathfinder ...
.
History
Communist League of America
The SWP traces its origins back to the former
Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of the CPUSA expelled for supporting Russian communist leader
Leon Trotsky against
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
. Concentrated almost exclusively in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
and
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
, the CLA did not have more than 100 adherents in 1929. After five years of propaganda work, the CLA remained a tiny organization, with a membership of about 200 and very little influence.
The rise of
fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
and the failure of the communist and social democratic left to stop its rise created a situation where radical parties throughout the world reexamined their priorities and sought mechanisms for building united action. As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the
Communist League of Struggle
The Communist League of Struggle (CLS) was a small communist organization active in the United States during the 1930s. Founded by Albert Weisbord and his wife, Vera Buch, who were veterans of the Left Socialist movement and the Communist Party ...
(CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader
Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord (1900–1977) was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered, along his wife Vera Buch, as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a s ...
and his wife Vera Buch, approached
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
Early years
Thomas was the ...
of the
Socialist Party of America seeking a
united front hunger march of the two organizations followed by a general strike. This suggestion was dismissed as "
poppycock" by SP Executive Secretary
Clarence Senior
Clarence Ollson Senior (1903–1974) was an American socialist political activist best remembered as the National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America during the 1930s. Originally a protégé of Presidential candidate Norman Thom ...
, but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted.
[Myers, ''The Prophet's Army,'' pg. 112.]
Entryism
Early in 1934, some French Trotskyists of the Communist League conceived of the idea of entering the
French Socialist Party (the ''Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière'' or SFIO) in order to recruit members for the Trotskyists, or so some critics have charged. The group retained its identity as a factional organization inside the SFIO and built a base among the party's youth section, continuing their activity until
popular front
A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault".
More generally, it is "a coalition ...
action between the SFIO and the mainline
Communist Party of France
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Uni ...
made their position untenable. This tactic of "entering" the larger social democratic parties of each country, endorsed by Trotsky himself, became known as the "
French Turn
The French Turn was the name given to the entry between 1934 and 1936 of the French Trotskyists into the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, the contemporary name of the French Socialist Party). The French Turn was repeated by Tr ...
" and was replicated by various Trotskyist parties around the world. In 1934, the Communist League of America merged with the
American Workers Party led by
A. J. Muste
Abraham Johannes Muste ( ; January 8, 1885 – February 11, 1967) was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, antiwar movement, and civil rights movemen ...
, forming the
Workers Party of the United States
The Workers Party of the United States (WPUS) was established in December 1934 by a merger of the American Workers Party (AWP) led by A.J. Muste and the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA) led by James P. Cannon. The party was dissolved i ...
.
Throughout 1935, the Workers Party was deeply divided over the "
entryism
Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand the ...
" tactic called for by the "French Turn" and a bitter debate swept the organization. Ultimately, the majority faction of
Jim Cannon,
Max Shachtman and
James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burn ...
won the day and the Workers Party determined to enter the
Socialist Party of America, though a minority faction headed by
Hugo Oehler Edward Hugo Oehler (1903–1983) was an American communist.
Biography
An active trade unionist, Oehler joined the Communist Party USA in its early days, and by 1927 was a district organizer for the party in Kansas. He was also known for his abilit ...
refused to accept this result and split from the organization.
The Socialist Party was itself beset with factional disagreements. The party's left-wing Militant faction sought to expand the organization into an "all-inclusive party"—inviting in members of the
Lovestone and Trotskyist movements as well as radical individuals as the first step towards making the Socialist Party a mass party. Although there were no mass entries at this time, several radical oppositionists did make their way into the party, including former
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
leader
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow (December 22, 1891 – July 19, 1965) was a prominent American socialist politician of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. During the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote t ...
, youth leader and ex-
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone (15 December 1897 – 7 March 1990) was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Centr ...
supporter Herbert Zam and attorney and American Workers Party activist
Albert Goldman
Albert Harry Goldman (April 15, 1927 – March 28, 1994) was an American academic and author.
Goldman wrote about the culture and personalities of the American music industry both in books and as a contributor to magazines. He is best known f ...
.
Goldman at this time also joined with YPSL leader Ernest Erber to establish a newspaper in Chicago with a Trotskyist orientation, ''
The Socialist Appeal,'' later to serve as the organ of the Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party.
[Myers, ''The Prophet's Army,'' pg. 113.]
In January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard for their factional organization and alleged "violation of party discipline", James Cannon and his faction won their internal battle in the Workers Party to join the Socialist Party, when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry.
Negotiations commenced with the Socialist Party leadership, with the admissions ultimately made on the basis of individual applications for membership rather than admission of the Workers Party and its approximately 2,000 members as a group. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, ''The New Militant,'' published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party".
Although party leader Jim Cannon later hinted that the entry of the Trotskyists into the Socialist Party had been a contrived tactic aimed at stealing "confused young Left Socialists" for his own organization, it seemed that at its inception the entryist tactic was made in good faith. Historian Constance Myers notes that while "initial prognoses for the union of Trotskyists and Socialists were favorable", it was only later when "constant and protracted contact caused differences to surface". The Trotskyists retained a common orientation with the radicalized Socialist Party in their opposition to the European war, their preference for
industrial unionism and the
Congress of Industrial Organizations over the trade unionism of the
American Federation of Labor, a commitment to trade union activism, the defense of the Soviet Union as the first workers' state while at the same time maintaining an antipathy toward the Stalin government and in their general aims in the 1936 election.
Cannon went to
Tujunga, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, to establish another new newspaper, ''Labor Action,'' targeted to trade unionists and Socialist Party members and aimed at winning them over to Trotskyist views while Shachtman and Burnham handled the bulk of the faction's activities in New York.
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
Early years
Thomas was the ...
attracted nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in historic strongholds of the party. Moreover, the party's membership had begun to decline. The organization was deeply factionalized, with the Militant faction split into right ("Altmanite"), center ("Clarity") and left ("Appeal") factions, in addition to the radical pacifists led by Thomas. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to set the party's future policy, initially intended as an unprecedented "secret" gathering.
[Myers, ''The Prophet's Army,'' pg. 127.]
Split from the Socialist Party of America
Prior to the March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937.
The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis, electing a National Action Committee of five to "coordinate branch work" and "formulate Appeal policies". Two delegates from the Clarity caucus were in attendance. James Burnham vigorously attacked the Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged and tension rose along these lines among the Trotskyists. United action between the Clarity and Appeal groups was not forthcoming and an emergency meeting of Vincent Dunne and Cannon was held in New York with leaders of the various factions including Thomas,
Jack Altman and Gus Tyler of Clarity. At this meeting, Thomas pledged that the upcoming convention would make no effort to terminate the newspapers of the various factions.
There was no action to expel the Trotskyist Appeal faction, but pressure continued to build along these lines, egged on by the Communist Party's increasingly vehement denunciations of Trotsky and his followers as wreckers and agents of international fascism. The convention passed a ban on future branch resolutions on controversial matters, an effort to rein in the activities of the factions at the local level. It also banned factional newspapers, establishing a national organ instead.
Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the Trotskyists' expulsion from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move toward a break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the Thomas group, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to capture it for their own purposes.
On June 24–25, 1937, a meeting of the Appeal faction's National Action Committee voted to ratchet up the rhetoric against the
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party (ALP) was a political party in the United States established in 1936 that was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party of A ...
and
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
nominee for
mayor of New York
The mayor of New York City, officially Mayor of the City of New York, is head of the executive branch of the government of New York City and the chief executive of New York City. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property ...
Fiorello LaGuardia
Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (; born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, ; December 11, 1882September 20, 1947) was an American attorney and politician who represented New York in the House of Representatives and served as the 99th Mayor of New York City from ...
(a favorite son of many in Socialist ranks) and to reestablish their newspaper, ''The Socialist Appeal.''
[Myers, ''The Prophet's Army,'' pg. 139.] This was met with expulsions from the party beginning August 9 with a rump meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, which expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by a vote of 48 to 2 (with 18 abstentions) and ordering 70 more to be brought up on charges.
Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the
Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) leaving the party with the Trotskyists.
The 1,000 or so Trotskyists who entered the Socialist Party in 1936 exited in the summer of 1937 with their ranks swelled by another 1,000. On December 31, 1937, representatives of this faction gathered in Chicago to establish a new political organization—the Socialist Workers Party.
Formation of the Socialist Workers Party
The October 2, 1937 issue of the ''Socialist Appeal'' included a convention call from the so-called "Left Wing" to "All Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party", accusing the NEC of the party of having "betrayed the principles of socialism" by withdrawing the party's candidate for mayor of New York in favor of LaGuardia and for having ordered "the bureaucratic expulsion of all the revolutionary members of the party who oppose and obstruct this sell-out policy". A convention was called by four Socialist Party State Committees, the NEC of the YPSL and the organized Left Wing organizations of Chicago and New York, originally slated for Thanksgiving weekend, November 25–28, in Chicago, but it was soon postponed until December 31 "in order to provide adequate time for discussion by the membership" of important questions.
In December 1937, an agenda was published by the Convention Organizing Committee naming Cannon as the primary reporter on the Trade Union question, Shachtman on the Russian Resolution, Goldman on the Spanish Resolution, Canadian
Maurice Spector
Maurice Spector (March 19, 1898 – August 1, 1968) was a Canadian politician who served as the chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and the editor of its newspaper, '' The Worker'', for much of the 1920s. He was an early follower of Leon Tro ...
on the International Resolution, Burnham on the Declaration of Principles of the new organization and Abern on Party Organization and Constitution. The gathering was to conclude with the election of a new National Committee.
On December 31, over 100 regular and fraternal delegates gathered in Chicago, where they were greeted by a speech of welcome delivered by Chicago leader Albert Goldman, a labor attorney. As editor of the Trotskyist movement's ongoing theoretical magazine, ''The New International'', Shachtman delivered the first official report to the gathering, dealing with the political situation in the United States. He declared:
It is entirely inconceivable that American imperialism
American imperialism refers to the expansion of American political, economic, cultural, and media influence beyond the boundaries of the United States. Depending on the commentator, it may include imperialism through outright military conques ...
can succeed in resisting the inexorable tendencies that are pulling it into the vortex of the coming world war.
If the working class is unable to prevent the outbreak of war, and the United States enters directly into it, our party stands pledged to the traditional position of revolutionary Marxism.
It will utilize the crisis of capitalist rule engendered by the war to prosecute the class struggle with the utmost intransigence, to strengthen the independent labor and revolutionary movements, and to bring the war to a close by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of proletarian rule in the form of the workers state.
The convention devoted a full day to discussion of the labor movement's problems and the role of the new organization in the unions, with Cannon delivering the primary report. While criticizing the "reactionary role which the
AFL leadership has played", Cannon declared that "our party...takes a clear-cut position in favor of the earliest and completest possible unification of the
AFL and the
CIO, and also the hitherto unaffiliated Railroad Brotherhoods".
1940 split
The 1940 split in the SWP followed an internal factional debate over the party's internal government, the class nature of the Russian state and
Marxist philosophy and other questions. The SWP experienced many other factional conflicts and splits in its history, but this was the largest and foreshadowed many features of those to come.
The majority faction, led by Cannon, supported Trotsky's position that the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
remained a "
workers' state
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term ''communist state'' is ofte ...
" and should be supported in any war with capitalist states, despite their opposition to Stalin's government. The minority faction, led by Shachtman, held that the Soviet Union should not be supported in its war with
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
. One of its leaders,
James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burn ...
, held in addition that the Soviet Union had degenerated so far that it deserved no defense whatsoever. Like this debate, most later factional disputes within the SWP centered on different attitudes toward revolutions in other countries.
The opposition faction alleged that Cannon's leadership of the SWP was "bureaucratic conservative" and demanded the right to its own publications to express its views outside the party. The majority faction said this was contrary to Lenin's concept of
democratic centralism and that disagreements within the SWP should be debated only internally. Similar disagreements over the SWP's internal government have surfaced in most later faction fights, with most later opposition factions raising similar demands and accusations. Despite this, most of these later factions claimed political descent from Cannon and the SWP majority, not from earlier opposition factions and splinter parties.
The minority faction led by Shachtman eventually split away almost 40% of the party's membership as well as its youth organization, the
Young People's Socialist League, forming the
Workers Party.
World War II
A number of members were imprisoned under the
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, , is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of th ...
of 1941, under
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's administration, including Cannon (see
Smith Act Trials). Those imprisoned included the main national leaders of the SWP and those members most prominent in the Midwest Teamsters. With Roosevelt's decision to increase the power of the
FBI during this time, the arrests were made swiftly.
The party put into practice the so-called
Proletarian Military Policy The Proletarian Military Policy was a policy adopted by the Fourth International in response to World War II. It was an attempt to apply transitional demands such as trade union control of military training and the election of officers to transform ...
of opposing the war politically while attempting to transform what they saw as an imperialist war into a civil war. The party lost a number of its members while sailing in extremely perilous convoys to Murmansk. Problems caused by some experienced leaders' imprisonment and many others' enlistment in the armed forces meant that the editorship of ''
The Militant'' passed through a number of hands during the war.
The SWP was active in supporting labor strikes that occurred despite the wartime "no-strike pledge" and protests against racist discrimination during the war, such as
A. Philip Randolph's
March on Washington Movement. The Post Office refused to mail some issues of ''The Militant'' and threatened to cancel its third-class mailing permit, citing objections to its articles calling for violent overthrow of the government. The SWP said it was being persecuted for opposing racist discrimination.
Postwar years
After the war, the SWP and the
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of ...
both expected that there would be a wave of revolutionary struggles like those that accompanied the end of the previous war. Indeed, revolutions did occur in
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
,
Albania
Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...
,
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
and
China, to name only those that resulted in the overthrow of capitalism, but contrary to Trotskyist expectations they were headed by Moscow-oriented "
Stalinist" parties.
The largest strike wave in United States history, involving over five million workers, occurred with the end of the war and the wartime pledge made by many
union
Union commonly refers to:
* Trade union, an organization of workers
* Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets
Union may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Music
* Union (band), an American rock group
** ''Un ...
leaders not to strike for the duration, but this did not mean there were not many strikes during wartime as there were many
wildcat strikes during this period as well as strikes officially called by the
United Mine Workers of America. There were also protests by GIs demanding rapid demobilization after the end of the war, sometimes called the going-home movement. The SWP participation in this upsurge led to a brief period of rapid growth for the SWP immediately after the war.
The end of the war also saw the reorganization of the Fourth International in which the SWP played a major role. As part of this process, moves were made to heal the breach with Shachtman's supporters in the Workers Party (WP) and for the two groups to fuse. This eventually came to nothing, but some SWP members who supported the views of
Felix Morrow
Felix Morrow (June 3, 1906 – May 28, 1988) was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. In later years, Morrow left the world of politics to become a book publisher. He is best remembered as a factional leader of the Americ ...
and
Albert Goldman
Albert Harry Goldman (April 15, 1927 – March 28, 1994) was an American academic and author.
Goldman wrote about the culture and personalities of the American music industry both in books and as a contributor to magazines. He is best known f ...
grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the SWP's ultra-leftist attitude towards revolutionary policies. Eventually, they left the SWP in a state of demoralization and some joined the WP.
Meanwhile, a faction within the WP called the
Johnson-Forest Tendency, named for
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989),Fraser, C. Gerald, '' The New York Times'', 2 June 1989. who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are i ...
(known as Johnson) and
Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya (born Raya Shpigel, ; May 1, 1910 - June 9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's s ...
(Forest), was impatient with the WP's caution and felt the situation could rapidly become pre-revolutionary. This led them to leave the WP and rejoin the SWP in 1947. This tendency had moved further away from the "
orthodox Trotskyism" of the SWP, producing tension. For example, they continued to hold the position that the Soviet Union was a "
state capitalist
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital ac ...
" society. By 1951, their presence in the SWP was ever more anomalous and most left to form the
Correspondence Publishing Committee. Dunayevskaya and her supporters eventually formed the News and Letters Committees in 1955 after splitting with James, who was deported from the United States to Britain, where he continued to advise the Correspondence Publishing Committee, which split again in 1962, with those loyal to James taking the name
Facing Reality {{Short description, 1960's Radical Left Group
Facing Reality was a radical left group in the United States that existed from about 1962 until 1970.
History
Facing Reality originated in the Johnson-Forest Tendency led by C. L. R. James and Raya ...
.
Cold War period
The brief postwar wave of labor unrest gave way to the conservatism of the 1950s, the reform of previously radical labor unions and
McCarthyism. The SWP's attempt at entryism into the growing civil rights movement, which continued uninterrupted out of World War II, could not fully offset these trends and the SWP experienced a period of decline and isolation.
The party also had a number of splits over these years. One saw the departure of the faction of
Bert Cochran and Clarke, who formed the
American Socialist Union, which lasted until 1959. That 1953 opposition supported some of the positions of
Michel Pablo
Michel Pablo ( el, Μισέλ Πάμπλο; 24 August 1911, Alexandria, Egypt – 17 February 1996, Athens) was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis ( el, Μιχάλης Ν. Ράπτης), a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin.
Early activism ...
, the Secretary of the Fourth International, although Pablo disagreed with their wish to dissolve the Fourth International.
The next, smaller split was that of
Sam Marcy's Global Class War faction, which called within the SWP for support of
Henry Wallace's
Progressive Party Progressive Party may refer to:
Active parties
* Progressive Party, Brazil
* Progressive Party (Chile)
* Progressive Party of Working People, Cyprus
* Dominica Progressive Party
* Progressive Party (Iceland)
* Progressive Party (Sardinia), Ita ...
presidential run in 1948 and regarded
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
as a revolutionary leader. This faction ended up leaving the SWP in 1958 after supporting the suppression of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...
, a position contrary to that of the SWP and other Trotskyist tendencies. It went on to form the
Workers World Party
The Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist–Leninist communist party founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Marcy and his followers split from the SWP in 1958 over a series of long-sta ...
.
Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the remaining members of the SWP clung to its firmly held beliefs and grew older. Consequently, the party membership shrank over these years from a postwar high in 1948 until the tide began to turn in the early 1960s. The
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...
signaled a change in the SWP's political direction as it embarked on pro-Castro "solidarity work" through the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City by Robert Taber in April 1960.
History
The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States gove ...
. The result was a small accretion of youth to the party's ranks. In the same period, longtime SWP leader Murry Weiss won another group of youth from the
Shachtmanites as they joined the
Socialist Party of America. Many of the new recruits were drawn from the student movement, unlike those who had led the party since the 1930s; as a result, the party's internal culture began to change.
1960s
Despite such growing signs of an end to the isolation the group endured during the McCarthyite period, it experienced a new split in the early 1960s. A number of small oppositional groups developed within the party. One of the key issues was the Cuban Revolution and the SWP's response to it. Cannon and other SWP leaders such as
Joseph Hansen saw
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
as qualitatively different from the Stalinist states of
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
. Their analysis brought them closer to the
International Secretariat of the Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of wor ...
(ISFI), from which the SWP had split in 1953. The SWP successfully negotiated a reunification of the ISFI and the International Committee of the Fourth International, leading to the creation in 1963 of the
reunified Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Comm ...
. Two sections of the ICFI, including
Gerry Healy
Thomas Gerard Healy (3 December 1913 – 14 December 1989) was a political activist, a co-founder of the International Committee of the Fourth International and the leader of the Socialist Labour League and later the Workers Revolutionary Part ...
's
Socialist Labour League
The Workers Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist group in Britain once led by Gerry Healy. In the mid-1980s, it split into several smaller groups, one of which retains possession of the name.
The Club
The WRP grew out of the faction Gerry Healy ...
, rejected the merger and turned against the SWP leadership, working with opponents within the party.
The most important faction opposing the SWP leadership's new line was the Revolutionary Tendency (RT), led by
James Robertson and
Tim Wohlforth
Timothy Andrew Wohlforth (May 15, 1933 – August 23, 2019), was a United States Trotskyist leader. On leaving the Trotskyist movement he became a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction.
As a student, Wohlforth joined the ...
, which rejected the SWP's "capitulation" to
Pabloism and opposed joining the USFI. It was critical of the Castro government, arguing that Cuba remained a "
deformed workers' state
In Trotskyist political theory, deformed workers' states are states where the capitalist class has been overthrown, the economy is largely state owned and planned, but there is no internal democracy or workers' control of industry. In a deformed ...
". However, a split developed within this faction between groups headed by the two men. Nonetheless, both the RT and the Reorganized Minority Tendency split to form the Spartacist (see
Spartacist League
The Spartacus League (German: ''Spartakusbund'') was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I. It was founded in August 1914 as the "International Group" by Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and other ...
) and the
American Committee for the Fourth International
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyism, Trotskyist Political parties in the United States, political party in the United States, one of several Socialist Equality parties around the world affiliated with the International Committee of ...
respectively, with the latter becoming aligned with Healy's SLL.
In the aftermath, the
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
branch also left to found the
Freedom Socialist Party
The Freedom Socialist Party is a left-wing socialist political party with a revolutionary feminist philosophy based in the United States. It views the struggles of women and minorities as part of the struggle of the working class. It emerged fro ...
after protesting the alleged suppression of internal democracy, as did Murray and
Myra Tanner Weiss
Myra Tanner Weiss (May 17, 1917 – September 13, 1997) was an American Communist following Trotskyism, and a three time U.S. vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Biography
Myra Tanner was recruited to the American T ...
.
The SWP supported both the civil rights movement and the black nationalist movement that grew during the 1960s. It particularly praised the militancy of black nationalist leader
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...
, who in turn spoke at the SWP's public forums and gave an interview to ''Young Socialist'' magazine. After his assassination, the SWP had limited success in forming alliances with his followers and other black nationalists. But these movements were part of the
radicalization
Radicalization (or radicalisation) is the process by which an individual or a group comes to adopt increasingly views in opposition to a political, social, or religious status quo. The ideas of society at large shape the outcomes of radicalizat ...
that aided the SWP's growth.
The SWP provided a political ideology for African Americans seeking equality in the early 20th century. Black nationalists were in favor of socialist policy and ideas. During the 1960s, the SWP had begun selecting African American candidates on their presidential ticket. The SWP hoped to change American values and ensure each citizen had equal rights under the law. "Many black nationalists turned to the Socialist Workers Party because the SWP proposed that its black members collaborate with other militant African Americans," according to a group of historians studying the public service of African Americans. The SWP expanded the ideas of nationalism to African Americans and arguably expanded black nationalism for generations.
Like all left-wing groups, the SWP grew during the 1960s and experienced particularly brisk growth in early 1970s. Much of this was due to its involvement in many of the campaigns and demonstrations against the
war in Vietnam
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. The SWP advocated that the antiwar movement should call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops and focus on organizing large, legal demonstrations for this demand. It was recognized by friend and foe alike as a major factor influencing the direction of the antiwar movement along these lines. One of the leaders of the antiwar movement at this time, along with
Dave Dellinger and many others, was
Fred Halstead
Fred W. Halstead (April 21, 1927 – June 2, 1988) was the Socialist Workers Party's candidate for President of the United States in 1968. His running mate was Paul Boutelle.
Halstead played a significant role in the movement against the ...
, a World War II veteran and former leader of the garment workers union in New York City. Halstead was the 1968 presidential candidate of the SWP and visited Vietnam in that capacity.
The SWP was also increasingly outspoken in its defense of the Castro government and its identification with that government. A new leadership led by
Jack Barnes
Jack Barnes (born 1940) is an American Communist and the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes was elected the party's national secretary in 1972, replacing the retiring Farrell Dobbs. He joined the SWP in the early 1960s a ...
(who became national secretary in 1972) made identification with Cuba an ever-greater part of the politics of the SWP throughout the 1970s.
The party also published many of Trotsky's works in these years through its publishing house, Pathfinder Press. Not only were the better-known writings reprinted, many for the first time since the 1930s, but other more obscure articles and letters were collected and printed for a wider audience than they had when first distributed. The expansion of the press also allowed the SWP to host ''
Intercontinental Press
''Intercontinental Press'' (IP) was a weekly news magazine produced on behalf of the Fourth International (FI) between 1963 and 1986. The magazine was founded in Paris as ''World Outlook'' in 1963 under the editorial direction of Joseph Hansen, Pi ...
'', the FI magazine that moved from Paris to New York in 1969, which later merged with ''
Inprecor
''Inprecor'' is a multilingual monthly Marxist magazine published by the reunified Fourth International. Its name is a contraction of International Press Correspondence and indicates that the magazine translates articles and letters from revo ...
''.
1970s and new leadership
The growth of labor militancy in the early 1970s affected the SWP and currents developed within it urging a reorientation of the party toward this militancy. One such current was the Proletarian Orientation Tendency, which included
Larry Trainor
Larry Trainor (April 20, 1905 – July 22, 1975) was a leading activist of the Socialist Workers Party (US) in Boston and a member of the party's National Committee.
Trainor was a noted socialist educator, giving classes on Marxism, the history o ...
, and eventually dissolved.
Another tendency developed called the Internationalist Tendency (IT). The IT posed a greater challenge to the group's leadership as it agreed with the Fourth International's advocacy of guerrilla warfare as a "tactic on a continental scale" in Latin America. But despite tensions between the SWP and the rest of the international, when the former expelled the IT, the International refused to side with the tendency. The IT disintegrated over the next few months, some of its supporters finding their way back into the SWP.
The international tensions developed further when the SWP and its co-thinkers established the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency in 1973 in order to contribute to the debate for the
Tenth World Congress. It argued for a reversal of the
Latin America
Latin America or
* french: Amérique Latine, link=no
* ht, Amerik Latin, link=no
* pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
n
guerrilla war
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactic ...
orientation adopted at the
Ninth World Congress. This period was the peak of the SWP's growth and influence. The party continued its involvement in the movement against the war in Vietnam, which peaked in 1970–71. The SWP also supported Chicano nationalism, including the
Raza Unida Party. It helped organize protests demanding legal abortion through the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition. With the mid-to-late 1970s decline of these movements and the end of the 1960s–1970s youth radicalization, SWP membership and influence went into decline.
In 1978, the SWP leadership decided that the key task was for party members to make a turn to industry. This turn entailed party members getting jobs in blue-collar industries in preparation for, the SWP leadership projected, increasing mass struggles. The 1977–78 coal miners' strike and developments like Steelworkers Fight Back were among the events pointed to in arguing for this change in policy. Party members sought to get jobs in the same workplaces in order to work as organized "fractions", doing "communist political work" as well as union activity.
As a result, many members were asked to move and change jobs, often out of established careers and into low-paying jobs in small towns. Many of the older members with experience in
trade union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
s resisted this "colonization program", which upset their established routine in the unions, as did some of the younger members.
1980s and after
Internal affairs
Opposition to the "turn to industry" developed within the SWP. This opposition was not homogeneous and was itself beset by differences among different factions.
A further factor in the growing divisions within the SWP was the move by
Jack Barnes
Jack Barnes (born 1940) is an American Communist and the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes was elected the party's national secretary in 1972, replacing the retiring Farrell Dobbs. He joined the SWP in the early 1960s a ...
,
Mary-Alice Waters Mary-Alice Waters is a socialist feminist, journalist and activist in the United States.
Waters became involved in Trotskyist politics at a young age, and joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the fall of 1962 while a student at Carleton Co ...
and others in the leadership away from the Trotskyist label. In 1982, Barnes gave a speech, later published as ''Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today,'' in which he rejected Trotsky's theory of
permanent revolution
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and ...
, arguing that it failed to sufficiently distinguish between the democratic and socialist tasks of a workers' revolution. Barnes argued that anticapitalist revolutions typically began with a "workers' and farmers' government" that initially concentrated on bourgeois-democratic measures and only later moved on to the abolition of capitalism.
Barnes also argued that the Trotskyist label unnecessarily distinguished leftists in that tradition from leftists of other origins, such as the
Cuban Communist Party
The Communist Party of Cuba ( es, Partido Comunista de Cuba, PCC) is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26t ...
or the
Sandinista National Liberation Front
The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a Socialism, socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after ...
. He argued that the SWP had more in common with these organizations than with many groups calling themselves Trotskyist. The SWP has continued to publish numerous books by Trotsky and advocate a number of ideas commonly associated with Trotskyism, including Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism.
The opposition factions continued to support the theory of permanent revolution and the Trotskyist label: they anticipated that the SWP leadership was reassessing its place in the Fourth International. While declaring their support for the Cuban and the leftist Nicaraguan governments, they were more critical of the Castroist and Sandinista leadership. They also continued to oppose the "turn to industry".
One opposition group rallied around the Weinsteins on the West Coast (with supporters elsewhere too) while a second group rallied around
George Breitman
George Breitman (February 28, 1916 – April 19, 1986) was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. He is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and as a long-time editor of that organiz ...
and
Frank Lovell
Frank Lovell (July 24, 1913 – May 1, 1998) was an American communist politician.
Lovell was born in Ipava, a town situated in the farming district of Illinois. Lovell studied psychology at the University of California in Berkeley. After he ...
. Together they formed an opposition bloc on the SWP's National Committee, but in 1983 both groups were expelled. The opposition factions, having split from the SWP, formed new organizations. The Weinstein group formed the San Francisco-based
Socialist Action. The Breitman-Lovell group after a time formed the
Fourth Internationalist Tendency {{Trotskyism
The Fourth Internationalist Tendency (FIT) was a public faction of the Socialist Workers Party (US), formed after the 1983 expulsion from that organization of a group of supporters of the Fourth International. While the SWP was not for ...
. Both groups described themselves as "public factions" of the SWP and set the task of recapturing the SWP to their understanding of Trotskyism. Another group, mainly in Los Angeles, had been close to Breitman, belonged briefly to Socialist Action, and left to join the "regroupment" organization
Solidarity
''Solidarity'' is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. It is based on class collaboration.''Merriam Webster'', http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictio ...
.
This was the most recent split or major faction fight in the SWP. The organization has experienced an unusually long period of internal peace since, although it has declined steadily in both its membership and its political influence within the American left. Numerous recent expulsions—sometimes of long-standing SWP veterans—have contributed to the membership decline. In 2003, the party sold its major headquarters building in New York City for $20 million and moved to another location in Manhattan. Party leaders Barnes and Mary-Alice Waters subsequently sold their West Village condominium for $1.87 million.
Activities
The SWP's most high-profile and controversial campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s was its
Mark Curtis Defense Committee, established after Curtis, an SWP activist and trade union organizer, was charged and convicted on burglary and rape charges in 1988. The party claimed that Curtis had been framed by police for his role in defending immigrant workers. Curtis was eventually paroled, but he was later arrested in Chicago on prostitution-related charges and then expelled from the SWP.
The SWP now focuses much of its energy on raising awareness about socialist ideas by running political candidates for office, holding weekly Militant Labor Forums and distributing ''The Militant'', a socialist weekly, as well as Pathfinder books, many of which feature Barnes's speeches and writings. SWP members are present in a handful of trade unions and take part in such activities as promoting Cuban solidarity, joining striking workers' picket lines, actions against racism and police brutality, opposing US imperialist wars, defending the
Bundy family, speaking out against attacks on democratic rights, and promoting the creation of a broad-based labor party.
On November 5, 2022, during the
California abortion proposition debate, Betsey Stone announced the SWP's opposition to the constitutional amendment in ''The Militant'', arguing that "we need to fight to make abortion rarer by changing the social conditions that have led to its widespread use".
International affiliation
Due to legal constraints, the SWP ended its formal affiliation with the
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of ...
in the 1940s. It remained in close political solidarity with the Fourth International. The SWP broke formally with the
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) is a revolutionary socialist international organization consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, also known as Trotskyists, whose declared goal is the overthrowing of global capitalism and the establishment of wor ...
in 1990, though it had been increasingly inactive in the Trotskyist movement since Barnes's 1982 speech "
Their Trotsky and Ours", which some view as signaling a break with Trotskyism. The SWP action followed the 1985 World Congress and the SWP closed Intercontinental Press in 1986. The SWP's international formation is sometimes called the
Pathfinder tendency
The Pathfinder tendency is the unofficial name of a group of historically Trotskyist organizations that cooperate politically and organizationally with the Socialist Workers Party of the United States and support its solidarity with the Cuban Re ...
because they each operate a Pathfinder Bookstore which sells the publications of the SWP's publishing arm, ''Pathfinder Press''.
In 1986, the party won a lawsuit against the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
as a result of years of spying and disruption. It was also found that Herbert Hill of the NAACP, a former SWP member, was an informant on the party after he left in the 1940s.
Presidential politics
The SWP has run candidates for President since 1948. It received its greatest number of votes in 1976, when its candidate
Peter Camejo
Peter Miguel Camejo Guanche (December 31, 1939 – September 13, 2008) was a Venezuelan American author, activist, politician and Sailing Olympian. In the 2004 United States presidential election, he was selected by independent candidate Ralp ...
received 90,310 votes.
In the
presidential election of 2004, the SWP ran
Róger Calero
Róger Calero (born 1969) is a Nicaraguan journalist living in the United States and one of the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. He was SWP candidate for President of the United States in 2004 and 2008, and for the United States Senate ...
for President and
Arrin Hawkins
Arrin Hawkins is an American activist and political candidate. Hawkins ran as the vice presidential nominee of the Socialist Workers Party in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, while Róger Calero ran for president.
Because she could not reach ...
for Vice President. Both candidates were constitutionally unqualified for the positions (under Article II, section 1) because Calero is not an American citizen and Hawkins was 29 years old, with the minimum age being 35 (this had been done before, notably by running 31-year-old
Linda Jenness
Linda Jenness (born 1941) was a Socialist Workers Party candidate for president of the United States in the 1972 election. She received 83,380 votes (vs. 47,169,911 for Richard Nixon), making her the 4th most voted for candidate.In Arizona, Pima ...
in 1972).
James Harris and
Margaret Trowe
Margaret Trowe (born 1948) is an American politician and women's rights activist. She was the 2000 United States vice presidential candidate for the Socialist Workers Party; she also appeared as their VP candidate in 2004 in those states where of ...
, the SWP's ticket from 2000, stood in on the ballot in some states where Calero and Hawkins could not be listed. The two tickets combined received over 10,000 votes. They were on the ballot in 11 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other socialist candidates. The vote total does not reflect the actual vote because of the unqualified status of the candidates. County clerks (in some states) and statewide Secretaries of State have discretion in reporting votes for ineligible candidates. The same situation obtained in 2008.
Target of COINTELPRO
The
Church Committee
The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence ...
report of 1976 stated that the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) had investigated the SWP since 1940 and, in 1961, initiated a
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
program against it. The FBI said it had targeted the SWP because of its support for "such causes as Castro's Cuba and integration problems arising in the South". Under the COINTELPRO operation the FBI collected information about SWP members' political views, conducted up to 92 break-ins of the SWP's offices, and interfered in elections to damage the campaigns of SWP candidates. FBI officials testified to the Church Committee that the SWP has "not been responsible for any violent acts nor has it urged actions constituting an indictable incitement to violence".
Anchor Foundation
A 2016 study published in the peer-reviewed
Journal of Business Case Studies used public records to study the sale of the assets of the Anchor Foundation, "a private 501(c)(3) foundation associated with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a small radical organization."
[Eagan, J. V. (2016). The Anchor Foundation: A Tax Case Study In The Use Of Foundations By Adversarial Groups. Journal of Business Case Studies (JBCS), 12(4), 145–152. https://doi.org/10.19030/jbcs.v12i4.9791] The study noted, "The case raises issues under the tax rules covering private foundations of 'disqualified persons,' fiduciary duty of care, excessive compensation, disclosure of contributors, political expenditures, and disclosures in the Form 990s."
The study reported, "The key event in this case is the sale of 410 West Street. In June 2003, about three years after part ownership was donated to the Anchor Foundation, 410 West Street was sold by 406 West Street Realty Corp (signed for by Jack Barnes) and Anchor Foundation (signed for by Norton Sandler) for $20 million to 410 West LLC (City of New York, 2003). The 410 West LLC is a private company with no apparent relationship to the SWP (New York State, 2003)."
According to the paper, there was a rapid depletion of assets while the compensation for Barnes and Waters saw manifold increases. The study added, "One interesting component of the 2003 West Street transaction was the 'Finder’s Fee & Supervisory Services' for sale of 410 West St that was paid to Jack Barnes ($475,000) and Mary Alice Waters ($263,735), for a total finder's fee of $738,735, 3.7% of the sale price (Anchor Foundation 2004 Form 990).”
Personnel
National Secretaries
*
James P. Cannon (1938–1953)
*
Farrell Dobbs
Farrell Dobbs (July 25, 1907 – October 31, 1983) was an American Trotskyist, trade unionist, politician, and historian.
Early years
Dobbs was born in Queen City, Missouri, where his father was a worker in a coal company garage. The family ...
(1953–1972)
*
Jack Barnes
Jack Barnes (born 1940) is an American Communist and the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. Barnes was elected the party's national secretary in 1972, replacing the retiring Farrell Dobbs. He joined the SWP in the early 1960s a ...
(since 1972)
Prominent current and former members
*
Martin Abern Martin may refer to:
Places
* Martin City (disambiguation)
* Martin County (disambiguation)
* Martin Township (disambiguation)
Antarctica
* Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land
* Port Martin, Adelie Land
* Point Martin, South Orkney Islands
Austral ...
*
Harry Braverman
Harry Braverman (1920 – 1976)
Agitating during the Red Scare
After serving in the shipbuilding industry during World War II, Braverman began to deepen his commitment to revolutionary struggle, joining the first Trotskyist party in the United ...
*
George Breitman
George Breitman (February 28, 1916 – April 19, 1986) was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. He is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and as a long-time editor of that organiz ...
*
James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burn ...
*
Peter Camejo
Peter Miguel Camejo Guanche (December 31, 1939 – September 13, 2008) was a Venezuelan American author, activist, politician and Sailing Olympian. In the 2004 United States presidential election, he was selected by independent candidate Ralp ...
*
Joseph Carter
*
Bert Cochran
*
Jake Cooper
*
Stephanie Coontz
Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an American author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Fami ...
*
Clifton DeBerry
Clifton DeBerry (September 18, 1923 – March 24, 2006) was an American communist and two-time candidate for President of the United States of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the first black American in the 20th century to be chosen by a p ...
*
Farrell Dobbs
Farrell Dobbs (July 25, 1907 – October 31, 1983) was an American Trotskyist, trade unionist, politician, and historian.
Early years
Dobbs was born in Queen City, Missouri, where his father was a worker in a coal company garage. The family ...
*
Hal Draper
Hal Draper (born Harold Dubinsky; September 19, 1914 – January 26, 1990) was an American socialist activist and author who played a significant role in the Berkeley, California, Free Speech Movement. He is known for his extensive scholarship on t ...
*
Raya Dunayevskaya
Raya Dunayevskaya (born Raya Shpigel, ; May 1, 1910 - June 9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's s ...
*
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) was an American novelist, short-story writer and poet.
He is most remembered for the ''Studs Lonigan'' trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and a television series in 1979.
B ...
*
Eric Flint
Eric Flint (February 6, 1947 – July 17, 2022) was an American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are alternate history science fiction, but he also wrote humorous fantasy adventures. His works have been listed ...
*
Clara Fraser
Clara Fraser (March 12, 1923 – February 24, 1998) was a socialist feminist political organizer, who co-founded and led the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
Biography
Early life and activism
Clara Fraser was born in 1923 to Jewis ...
*
Richard Fraser
*
Albert Goldman
Albert Harry Goldman (April 15, 1927 – March 28, 1994) was an American academic and author.
Goldman wrote about the culture and personalities of the American music industry both in books and as a contributor to magazines. He is best known f ...
*
Joseph Hansen
*
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook (December 20, 1902 – July 12, 1989) was an American philosopher of pragmatism known for his contributions to the philosophy of history, the philosophy of education, political theory, and ethics. After embracing communism in his youth ...
*
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989),Fraser, C. Gerald, '' The New York Times'', 2 June 1989. who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are i ...
*
Martin Koppel
*
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche Jr. (September 8, 1922 – February 12, 2019) was an American political activist who founded the LaRouche movement and its main organization the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC). He was a prominent conspiracy ...
*
Frank Lovell
Frank Lovell (July 24, 1913 – May 1, 1998) was an American communist politician.
Lovell was born in Ipava, a town situated in the farming district of Illinois. Lovell studied psychology at the University of California in Berkeley. After he ...
*
Sam Marcy
*
Kathleen Mickells
Kathleen Mickells (born 1951) is an American oil refinery worker, coal miner and activist with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Mickells was born in Omaha, Nebraska and worked at the Cumberland Mine in Greene County, Pennsylvania before being ...
*
Paul Montauk Paul Montauk (1922–1998) was an American communism, communist and lifelong member of the Socialist Workers Party (United States), Socialist Workers Party.
Paul Montauk was born in Staten Island, New York (state), New York, in 1922. His father was ...
*
Felix Morrow
Felix Morrow (June 3, 1906 – May 28, 1988) was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. In later years, Morrow left the world of politics to become a book publisher. He is best remembered as a factional leader of the Americ ...
*
George Novack
George Novack (August 5, 1905, Boston, Massachusetts – July 30, 1992, New York City) was an American Marxist theoretician, editor, and activist.
Biography
Novack attended Harvard University for five years, though without earning a degree, ...
*
Evelyn Reed
Evelyn Reed (31 October 1905 – 1979) was an Communist Party USA, American communist and women's rights activist.
In January 1940, she traveled to Mexico to see the exiled Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalia Sedova. Ther ...
*
Harry Ring
Harry Ring (1918 - April 18, 2007) was an American communist and a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Ring joined the communist movement in Newark, New Jersey in 1936, and he served on the SWP’s National Committee from 1954 to 198 ...
*
James Robertson
*
Olga Rodriguez
*
Max Shachtman
*
Ed Shaw
*
Carl Skoglund Carl Skoglund (April 10, 1884 – December 11, 1960) was a Swedish-American socialist, affectionately called ''Skogie'' by all his American friends and comrades. He was born in Dalsland and went to the United States in 1911, sailing in steerage firs ...
*
Morris Starsky
Morris Joseph Starsky (February 1, 1933 – January 20, 1989), an American political and social activist and philosophy professor, served as a tenured faculty member in the Arizona State University Philosophy Department until his termination by the ...
*
Arne Swabeck Arne Swabeck (1890–1986) was an American Communist leader.
Swabeck was born in Denmark and emigrated to the United States where he became one of the founding members of the Communist Party. In the late 1920s he was expelled from the party as a Tr ...
*
Larry Trainor
Larry Trainor (April 20, 1905 – July 22, 1975) was a leading activist of the Socialist Workers Party (US) in Boston and a member of the party's National Committee.
Trainor was a noted socialist educator, giving classes on Marxism, the history o ...
*
Mary-Alice Waters Mary-Alice Waters is a socialist feminist, journalist and activist in the United States.
Waters became involved in Trotskyist politics at a young age, and joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the fall of 1962 while a student at Carleton Co ...
*
Eduard Limonov
Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko ( rus, Эдуард Вениаминович Савенко, , ɨdʊˈart vʲɪnʲɪɐˈmʲinəvʲɪtɕ sɐˈvʲenkə, links=yes; 22 February 1943 – 17 March 2020), known by his pen name Eduard Limonov ( rus, Эд ...
*
David Loeb Weiss
David Loeb Weiss (c. 1911 - August 11, 2005) was a Polish-born American socialist activist, filmmaker, and co-founder of the Socialist Workers Party (United States), Socialist Workers Party in 1938.
Early life
David Loeb Weiss was born in Warsa ...
*
Myra Tanner Weiss
Myra Tanner Weiss (May 17, 1917 – September 13, 1997) was an American Communist following Trotskyism, and a three time U.S. vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Biography
Myra Tanner was recruited to the American T ...
*
Herbert Hill
See also
*
American Left
The American Left consists of individuals and groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives b ...
*
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
*
History of the socialist movement in the United States
The history of the socialist movement in the United States spans a variety of tendencies, including Anarchism in the United States, anarchists, Communism in the United States, communists, democratic socialists, Marxists, Marxist–Leninists, T ...
*
List of communist parties
There are a number of communist parties active in various countries across the world and a number that used to be active. They differ not only in method, but also in strict ideology and interpretation, although they are generally within the tradi ...
*
List of political parties in the United States
This is a list of political parties in the United States, both past and present. The list does not include independents.
Active parties
Major parties
Third parties
Represented in state legislatures
''The following third parties have ...
*
Pathfinder Mural
The Pathfinder Mural is a work of art formerly located at 410 West Street in the New York City neighborhood known as the West Village. It was conceived of by artist Mike Alewitz in 1988 and painted as a collaboration among eighty artists from twe ...
*
Socialist Workers Party (disambiguation) Socialist Workers Party may refer to:
*Flemish Socialist Workers Party
*Estonian Socialist Workers' Party
* German Socialist Workers Party in Poland - Left
* Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party
* Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (1993)
* Independe ...
*
Socialist Equality Party (United States)
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States, one of several Socialist Equality parties around the world affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI publishes ...
(SEP)
Footnotes
Further reading
Books
* Breitman, George (ed.) ''Founding of the Socialist Workers Party: Minutes and Resolutions, 1938-39.'' New York: Monad Press, 1982.
* Cannon, James P., ''The History of American Trotskyism: Report of a Participant.'' New York: Pioneer Press, 1944.
* Fields, A. Belden, ''Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States.'' Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1988. .
* Halstead, Fred, ''Out Now!: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War.'' New York: Monad Press, 1978.
* Jayko, Margaret (ed.), ''FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit Against Government Spying.'' New York: Pathfinder Press, 1988.
* LeBlanc, Paul; Bryan Palmer, and Thomas Bias (eds.), ''US Trotskyism, 1928-1965.'' In Three Volumes. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.
* McDonald, Larry, ''Trotskyism and Terror: The Strategy of Revolution.'' Washington, D.C.: ACU Education and Research Institute, 1977.
* Myers, Constance Ashton, ''The Prophet's Army: Trotskyists in America, 1928-1941.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.
* Sheppard, Barry, ''The Party: The Socialist Workers Party, 1960-1988. A Political Memoir. Volume 1: The Sixties.'' Chippendale, Australia: Resistance Books, 2005.
* Sheppard, Barry, ''The Party: The Socialist Workers Party, 1960-1988. A Political Memoir. Volume 2: Interregnum, Decline, and Collapse, 1973-1988.'' Chippendale, Australia: Resistance Books, 2012. .
* Wohlforth, Tim, ''The Prophet's Children: Travels on the American Left.'' Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Press, 1994.
Archival material
* George Breitman Papers.
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. T ...
at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, New York
Finding Aid
* James P. Cannon Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. Also available on microfilm.
* Frank Lovell Papers. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University
Finding Aid
* Max Shachtman Papers. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University
Finding Aid
* David Loeb Weiss Papers. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University.
* Myra Tanner Weiss Papers. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, New York University.
* Socialist Workers Party records 1928-1990. Hoover Institution for War and Peace, Stanford, California
Finding aid
* Melba Windoffer Papers. Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington
Finding Aid
* George E. Rennar Papers. Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington
Finding Aid
External links
''The Militant'' homepagePathfinder Press homepage Marxists Internet Archive.
Includes ephemera produced by the SWP.
Catalogue of the SWP publications within Tony Whelan's papers Held at the
Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collecti ...
.
{{Authority control
Anti-capitalist political parties
COINTELPRO targets
Communism in the United States
Trotskyism in the United States
New Left
Far-left political parties
Far-left politics in the United States
Socialism in the United States
Political parties in the United States
1938 establishments in the United States
Trotskyist parties in the United States