Workers Party (1940-1949)

The Workers Party (1940-1949), a Trotskyist organization founded and led by Max Shachtman, split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1940, holding the Soviet Union to be a novel exploitative social formation, bureaucratic collectivism. Opposing the "two camps" of imperialism, the WP led struggles against the World War II no-strike pledge, and published Labor Action, a rank-and-file newspaper, and The New International, a political/theoretical journal, both continuing until 1958, when the successor to the WP, the Independent Socialist League (1949-1958) merged with the Socialist Party. The Workers Party was a source for many of the ideas, personalities and journals of the post-World War II non- and anti-communist left, and former members influenced the development of the Socialist Party and helped found the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (later Democratic Socialists of America).

From the guide to the Workers Party and Independent Socialist League Records, 1945-1958, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)