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Workers Party (1940–1949)
Independent Socialist League (1949–1958) | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Max Shachtman |
| Founded | April 1940 |
| Dissolved | August 1958 |
| Split from | Socialist Workers Party |
| Merged into | Socialist Party of America |
| Succeeded by | International Socialists |
| Youth wing | Socialist Youth League |
| Ideology | Third camp Trotskyism Shachtmanism Factions: Johnson–Forest Tendency (1940–47) |
| Political position | Far-left |
| Part of a Politics series |
| Third camp |
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The Workers Party (WP) was a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. It was founded in April 1940 by members of the Socialist Workers Party who opposed the Soviet invasion of Finland and Leon Trotsky's belief that the USSR under Joseph Stalin was still innately proletarian, a "degenerated workers' state." They included Max Shachtman, who became the new group's leader, Hal Draper, C. L. R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Martin Abern, Joseph Carter, Julius Jacobson, Phyllis Jacobson, Albert Glotzer, Stan Weir, B. J. Widick, James Robertson, and Irving Howe. The party's politics are often referred to as "Shachtmanite."
At the time of the split, almost 40% of the membership of the SWP left to form the Workers Party. The WP had approximately 500 members. Although it recruited among workers and youth during World War II it never grew substantially, despite having more impact than its numbers would suggest.