Socialist Workers Party collection

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a political organization that was founded in 1938 by James P. Cannon. It was established as a Trotskyist political party that had the goal of establishing international socialism by way of permanent revolution. After James P. Cannon, Max Shachtman, and Martin Abern were expelled from the Communist Party USA for their Trotskyist ideas in 1928, they formed the Communist League of America (CLA), which became the United States section of the International Left Opposition (ILO). The ILO was an opposition group within the Comintern that was founded in 1930 and was renamed the International Communist League (ICL) in 1933. In 1934, the Communist League of America joined the American Workers Party, and in 1936 the party joined the Socialist Party of America, following the trend started by the French Trotskyist Communist League of entering Socialist organizations to spread Trotskyism, which was known as the French Turn. While part of the Socialist Party of America, Cannon, Schachtman, and Abern’s faction maintained their allegiance to Trotsky and their support of the Soviet Union while denouncing Stalin, which led to their expulsion in 1937. On December 31, 1937, the expelled faction members established the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) at a founding convention in Chicago. In 1940, an internal dispute between Cannon and Shachtman regarding the definition of the Soviet Union as a socialist state led to Shachtman and his oppositional faction leaving the SWP and establishing the Workers Party.

In 1938, the Fourth International was established in France by Leon Trotsky and his followers, who believed that the Comintern was too closely affiliated with Stalin which was contrary to what Trotsky thought would lead to the establishment of an international socialist revolution. The SWP was originally affiliated with the Fourth International, but the 1940 Voorhis Act, which required anti-American foreign political organizations that had sections in the United States to officially register with the Justice Department, led to the SWP leaving the Fourth International.. Although the SWP never officially rejoined the Fourth International, it shared the Fourth International’s goal of non-Stalinist socialist revolution and supported revolutionary movements in Latin America and Asia. In the 1970s, the Internationalist Tendency (IT) was developed within the SWP which condoned guerrilla warfare tactics in Latin America, a position that the Fourth International supported but that led to the faction’s expulsion from the SWP. The Leninist Trotskyist Faction (LTF) of the SWP, which was active from 1973 to 1977, opposed the Fourth International’s stance on guerrilla warfare as well. In the 1960s the SWP reunified with the International Secretariat of the Fourth International on the basis of their shared opinion that Cuba was not a Stalinist state.

In 1982, Jack Barnes, who was the National Secretary of the SWP, gave a speech at a SWP plenum denouncing Trotskyism and the theory of the Permanent Revolution, and advocated for a worker and farmer-led government instead of an anti-capitalist revolution. An opposition bloc formed in the SWP’s National Committee that was expelled from the Party in 1983. Expelled members founded the Socialist Action and Fourth Internationalist Tendency organizations that maintained their allegiance to James P. Cannon’s Trotskyist ideas. After the shift away from Trotskyism, the SWP has been known as a communist organization. The Party has published The Militant, the since it was founded by James P. Cannon in 1928, and has maintained Pathfinder Press as its publishing arm.

The SWP supported the Cuban Revolution, as demonstrated by its involvement with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, as well as the civil rights and black nationalist movements. The Young Socialist Alliance, the youth group of the SWP that was founded in 1960, dissolved in 1992, and published the Young Socialist magazine, was active during the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The SWP also advocated for Chicano nationalism by endorsing La Raza Unida and supported women’s rights. The SWP also supported industrial unionism, in which workers in the same industry are organized rather than workers affiliated with a specific union, and has endorsed various strikes such as those led by the United Mine Workers of America after World War II.