Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party

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The Committee for a Revolutionary Socialist Party was an attempt to set up a "united front" of several dissident American Trotskyist groups in the 1980s.

The participating groups came from different backgrounds, but all ultimately traced their lineage to the Socialist Workers Party.

A First National Conference attended by 100 members and fraternal representatives of these groups met in Union, Washington, October 6–9, 1978. It adopted resolutions emphasizing the importance of women, minorities, gays and undocumented workers as the most oppressed section of the working class, and were anticipated to be the "vanguard of the proletariat". It also noted that "privileged layers within the working class" increased the gulf between workers and bred "reactionary habits". [5]

The conference also issued a document that tried to appeal to those leaders within the United Secretariat of the Fourth International who were hostile to Socialist Workers Party, criticizing the latter for bureaucratism, Stalinophobia and sexophobia and accused the USFI of attempting to form an "unprincipled bloc" with the SWP. At the time of the Morenoist split with the United Secretariat and its parity commission with the Lambertist faction of the Fourth International, the CRSP sought affiliation with it, but does not appear to have been successful. [6]

The group imploded when its steering committee held a plenum in Seattle, July 4–7, 1980. There a decision was made to drop the united front type of organization in favor of a disciplined democratic centralist party. After this, the Turnerites and the Socialist Union left the CRSP. Murry Weiss joined the FSP. [7] [8]

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References

  1. Alexander, Robert International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement Durham, Duke University Press 1991 p. 937
  2. Alexander pp. 936–37
  3. Alexander p. 938
  4. Alexander pp. 931–32
  5. Alexander pp. 937–38
  6. Alexander pp. 937–38
  7. Alexander p. 938
  8. Megan Cornish (4 August 2023). "History". socialism.com.

Further reading