Socialist Workers Party (U.S.)
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Socialist Workers Party
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| Chairman | Jack Barnes |
| Founded | January 1938 |
| Split from | Communist Party USA |
| Newspaper | The Militant |
| Ideology |
Communism Marxism Leninism Castroism Trotskyism (until 1982) |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation | Pathfinder tendency |
| Colors | Red |
| Website | |
| www |
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The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Communist leader Joseph Stalin, the group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928, and maintains Pathfinder Press.
The Socialist Workers Party traces its origins back to the former Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of the Communist Party USA expelled for supporting Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin.
Concentrated almost exclusively in New York City and Minneapolis, in 1929 the CLA did not have more than 100 adherents.
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 in Nazi Germany and the failure of the communist and social democratic left to unite against the common danger created a situation where certain radical parties throughout the world reexamined their priorities and sought a mechanism for building united action. As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the Communist League of Struggle (CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader Albert Weisbord and his wife Vera Buch, approached Norman Thomas 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, but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted.
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