The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has a fair claim to be the largest far left organisation in Britain. It has fraternal organisations in another dozen countries. Its publications are read and respected by thousands beyond its ranks. But how exactly should we define its politics? Its founding members originated in a split from Trotsky’s Fourth International yet today the SWP claims allegiance to Trotskyism and Leninism.

This workers power pamphlet shows that far from standing in this tradition the key tenets of the SWP’s politics represent a fundamental break with Trotskyism: on party building, on the analysis of the USSR and Eastern Europe, on the revolutionary programme amd on the relationship between the revolutionary vanguard and the working class.

This Trotskyist critique of the SWP’s politics shows how, far from being irrelevant or purley theoretical, the SWP’s departure from revolutionary Marxism leads to systematic opportunism in practice.

The politics of the SWP - a Trotskyist critique

• SWP: The view from the Third Camp (1993)
• The Downturn: New mood, same politics
• Introduction
• State capitalism - “Call that socialism?”
• “Neither Washington nor Moscow” The view from the third camp
• Bosnia - which side are you on?
• Building the Party - A parody of Leninism
• What is to be done? - The question economism can’t answer
• The SWP and Trotskyism: Would Trotsky have joined the SWP?
• SWP and women’s liberation - Economism versus feminism?
• SWP and the unions: Syndicalism’s fear of the bureaucracy
• 1984 and 1992 - Revolutionaries and the general strike
• Irish peace talks - Give peace a chance?
• The Poll Tax struggle: No strategy to win