Revolutionary Tendency (SWP)

The Revolutionary Tendency within the US Socialist Workers Party (United States) was an internal faction that disagreed with the direction the leadership was taking the party on several important issues. Many groups and movements would have the roots in the RT, both in the United States and internationally, including the Socialist Equality Party, and the world Spartacist and LaRouche movements, and their various splinters.

The Revolutionary Tendency first crystallized around opposition to the SWPs line regarding the Cuban Revolution. The leadership regarded the Cuban regime as a full blown workers' state deserving unqualified defense by the Party. The RT rejected this because of the revolutions "petty bourgeoisie" leadership, and the absence of a vanguard party prior to the revolutions coming to power. The RT also objected to the moves of the SWP toward leaving the International Committee of the Fourth International and joining the "Pabloite" International Secretariat of the Fourth International. They also a danger of Pabloism within the SWP as well, because of what they regarded as a downplaying of the counter-revolutionary role of the Stalinism. All of these positions were spelled out in a document called "In Defense of a Revolutionary Perspective - A Statement of Basic Positions", drawn up be Tim Wohlforth and others and presented to the SWP national committee in March 1962.

The tendency was concentrated among members who had been in the left wing of the Young Socialist League who had rejected merger into the Young People's Socialist League when Max Shachtman, leader of the parent Independent Socialist League had merged with the YPSLs parent group, the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. This group had subsequently been recruited by the SWP and were instrumental in founding the SWPs new youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance in 1960.

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