The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States.
SWP was created in 1938 after Communist Party USA expelled supporters of Leon Trotsky (against Joseph Stalin). For most of its history, SWP was the largest Trotskyist organization in the US. In the 1980s, the SWP turned from Trotskyism towards Castroism. Since the 2000s, SWP has supported Zionism. In the 1960s and 1970s, SWP and its youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance, were together the 3rd-largest socialist organizations, below the Communist Party USA and Students for a Democratic Society. SWP suffered many splits and its membership declined.
The modern SWP is smaller than its progeny, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative and the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation. SWP focuses much of its energy on distributing The Militant, a socialist weekly, selling Pathfinder Press books, and running candidates on the SWP ballot line.
Contents
History
Origins
The SWP traces its origins back to the former Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) who were expelled for supporting Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin.
In the 1930s, the CLA pursued a "French Turn" of entryism into larger groups. In 1934, CLA merged with the American Workers Party to form the Workers Party of the United States (WPUS). WPUS was deeply divided over entryism. In 1935, the pro-entryism majority faction won, and WPUS determined to enter the Socialist Party of America. A minority faction split to form the Revolutionary Workers League. In 1936, the WPUS joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA), the largest US socialist organization. In 1937, after a year of acrimony, the SPA expelled the Trotskyists, who formed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
1940s–1950s
In 1940, the SWP was split between a majority faction, led by Jim Cannon, who held Trotsky's position that the Soviet Union was a "degenerated workers' state" that should be supported, and a minority faction, led by Max Shachtman and James Burnham who opposed the SU in its war with Finland. Like this debate, most SPW factional disputes centered on revolutions in other countries. The minority faction split and formed the Workers Party, taking almost 40% of the party's membership and 80% of its youth organization.
During World War II, the SWP adopted the Fourth International's "Proletarian Military Policy", which opposed the war as "imperialist". Many party leaders were arrested under the Smith Act of 1941, including Cannon. (See also Smith Act Trials.) The SWP supported labor strikes, despite the popular wartime "no-strike pledge". The SWP also held protests against racist discrimination, such as A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement.
The SWP grew after the war, but was soon beset by splits. In 1947, the Johnson–Forest Tendency left the Workers Party and rejoined the SWP, then left in 1951 to form the Correspondence Publishing Committee. In 1953, supporters of Pabloism split from the SWP to form the American Socialist Union. In 1958, Sam Marcy's Global Class War faction, which supported the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, split from the SWP to form the Workers World Party.
1960s–1970s
In the 1960s and 1970s, The SWP grew again amidst anti-war activism and radical youth movements. In 1963, the SWP successfully negotiated a reunification of the splintered Fourth International, leading the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to merge into the reunified Fourth International (USFI). In 1962, the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) faction rejected this merger. The RT itself split into a majority faction and the Reorganized Minority Tendency (RMT) minority faction. In 1963, the SWP expelled both, and the RT formed the Spartacist League and the RMT formed the Socialist Equality Party. In 1966, in protest of alleged suppression of internal democracy, the Seattle branch left to form the Freedom Socialist Party, as did Murray and Myra Tanner Weiss. These groups later attempted to form the Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party. After the collapse of Students for a Democratic Society in 1969, the SWP's youth organization saw massive growth. In the 1970s, SWP membership and influence went into decline.
During the 1960s, the SWP supported both the civil rights movement and the black nationalist movement, specifically praising the militancy of black nationalist leader Malcolm X, who spoke at SWP forums until his 1965 assassination. The SWP also increasingly supported the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro, which SWP leaders including Cannon and Joseph Hansen saw as qualitatively different from the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe. In 1972, Jack Barnes became national secretary and further shifted the SWP toward Castroism. From 1961 to 1976, the FBI conducted COINTELPRO operations against the SWP, revealed by the Church Committee report of 1976. Between 1960 and 1976, the FBI obtained 1,300 informants within the SWP and YSA, including a member of the SWP National Committee. In 1986, the SWP won a lawsuit against the FBI.
1980s–1990s
In 1978, the SWP decided the party's key task was the "turn to industry", which entailed party members getting jobs in blue-collar industries in preparation for increasing mass struggles. This provoked enormous dissent.
In the 1970s–1980s, the SWP drifted away from the Trotskyist label. In 1982, SWP director Jack Barnes gave a speech, Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today, in which he rejected Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Several Trotskyist opposition groups formed, which were expelled in 1983, and would form Fourth Internationalist Tendency, Socialist Action, and Solidarity. The SWP formally left the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1990. SWP's international formation is the Pathfinder tendency, named because each party operates a Pathfinder Bookstore that sells SWP's Pathfinder Press publications.
Decline
Since the 1990s, the SWP has experienced an unusually long period of internal peace. It has also declined steadily in both membership and political influence. In 2003, the party sold its headquarters. In 2021, a former member said SWP's 100 remaining members were "retired or nearly so".
Structure and composition
SWP is a dues-paying membership organization. The SWP's membership was under 100 in 1929, about 200 in the 1930s, about 1000 in 1936 and 2000 in 1937 after entryism in the Socialist Party of America, about 1500 in 1975 after Students for a Democratic Society collapsed, and about 100 members in 2021.
Ideology
The SWP is strongly supportive of Cuba. It also condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, the SWP opposed Zionism. But in the late 2000s, the SWP began to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Unlike many other U.S. socialist organizations, which have maintained, or adopted, anti-Zionist positions, the SWP has become increasingly supportive of Israel. It denies Israeli war crimes and the Gaza genocide.
On November 5, 2022, during the California abortion proposition debate, Betsey Stone announced the SWP's opposition to the constitutional amendment in The Militant, saying, "We need to fight to make abortion rarer by changing the social conditions that have led to its widespread use".
Election results
SWP has fielded electoral candidates for local, state, and federal offices.
No SWP candidate has yet won a major contested, partisan election.
Presidential elections
The SWP has run candidates for President since 1948. It received its greatest number of votes in 1976, when its candidate Peter Camejo received 90,310 votes.
Congressional elections
SWP has not fielded a candidate for Congress who achieved ballot access since 2012.
Notable members
National Secretaries
James P. Cannon (1938–1953)
Farrell Dobbs (1953–1972)
Jack Barnes (since 1972)