Workers World Party

The WWP had its origins in the Global Class War Tendency, led by Sam Marcy and Vincent Copeland, within the SWP. This group crystallized during the 1948 presidential election when they urged the SWP to back Henry Wallace's Progressive Party campaign, rather than field their own candidates. Throughout the 1950s, the Global Class War Tendency expressed positions at odds with official SWP policy, categorizing the Korean War as a class, rather than imperialist, conflict; support of the People's Republic of China as a workers' state, if not necessarily supporting the Mao Zedong leadership; and supporting the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Union in 1956.[6]

The Global Class War Tendency left the SWP in early 1959. Although they would later abandon Trotskyism, in their International Workers Day issue (no. 3) of their new periodical the group proclaimed: "We are THE Trotskyists. We stand 100% with all the principled positions of Leon Trotsky, the most revolutionary communist since Lenin". The nascent group appears to have organized as the Workers World Party by February 1960.[7] At its inception, the WWP was concentrated among the working class in Buffalo, Youngstown, Seattle and New York. A youth organization, first known as the Anti-Fascist Youth Committee and later as Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF), was created in April 1962.[8]

From the beginning, the WWP and YAWF concentrated their energies on street demonstrations. Early campaigns focused on support of Patrice Lumumba, opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee and against racial discrimination in housing. They conducted the first protest against American involvement in Vietnam on August 2, 1962.[9] Their opposition to the war also included the tactics of "draft resistance" and "GI resistance". After organizing demonstrations at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in support of a soldier being tried for possessing anti-war literature, they founded the American Servicemen's Union, intended to be a mass organization of American soldiers. However, the group was completely dominated by the WWP and YAWF.[10]

During the late 1960s and 1970s, the party was involved in protests other causes, including "defen[se] of the heroic black uprisings in Watts, Newark, Detroit, Harlem" and women's liberation. During the Attica Prison riot, the rioters requested YAWF member Tom Soto to present their grievances for them. The WWP was most successful in organizing demonstrations in support of desegregation "busing" in the Boston schools in 1975. Nearly 30,000 people attended the Boston March Against Racism which they had organized. During the 1970s, they also attempted to begin work inside organized labor, but apparently were not very successful.[11]

In 1980, the WWP began to participate in electoral politics, naming a presidential ticket as well as candidates for New York Senate, congressional and state legislature seats. In California, they ran their candidate Deirdre Griswold in the primary for the Peace and Freedom Party nomination. They came in last with 1,232 votes out of 9,092. In 1984, the WWP supported Jesse Jackson's bid for the Democratic nomination, but when he lost in the primaries they nominated their own presidential ticket, along with a handful of congressional and legislative nominees.[12]

Members staffing a WWP information booth at Occupy Wall Street, October 2011

The WWP has organized, directed or participated in many coalition organizations for various causes, typically anti-imperialist in nature. The International Action Center, which counts many WWP members as leading activists, founded the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) coalition shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and has run both the All People's Congress (APC) and the International Action Center (IAC) for many years. The APC and the IAC in particular share a large degree of overlap in their memberships with cadre in the WWP. In 2004, a youth group close to the WWP called Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST) was founded.

The WWP has participated in presidential election campaigns since the 1980 election, though its effectiveness in this area is limited as it has not been able to get on the ballots of many states. The party also has run some campaigns for other offices. One of the most successful was in 1990, when Susan Farquhar got on the ballot as a Senate candidate in Michigan and received 1.3% of the vote. However, the party's best result was in the 1992 Ohio Senate election, when the WWP candidate received 6.7% of the vote, running against a Democrat and a Republican.[13]

WWP protesters in January 2017

In 1968, the WWP absorbed a small faction of the Spartacist League that had worked with it in the Coalition for an Anti-Imperialist Movement called the Revolutionary Communist League (Internationalist). This group left the WWP in 1971 as the New York Revolutionary Committee. The NYRC's newspaper provided rare details about the internal functioning of the group that have subsequently been used by scholars as a primary source. The NYRC later reconstituted as the Revolutionary Communist League (Internationalist).[22]

In 2004, the WWP suffered its most serious split when the San Francisco branch and some other members left to form the Party for Socialism and Liberation.[23][24]

In July 2018, the WWP experienced another schism in which one of its oldest branches, the Detroit branch, resigned from the organization along with several other branches to form the Communist Workers League.[25]

• Vince Copeland, actor
• Leslie Feinberg, author
• Sara Flounders, activist
• Sam Marcy, author

• Democratic Socialists of America
• Communist Party, USA
• Socialist Alternative (United States)

• House of Representatives Committee on Internal Security (1974). The Workers World Party and Its Front Organizations. Washington: United States Congress.
• Alexander, Robert (1991). International Trotskyism: a documented analysis of the world movement. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Alexander, Robert (1973). "Schisms and unifications in the American Old Left 1953–1970". Labor History. 14 (Fall 1973).

• Ken Lawrence (January 1999). "Roots of the Workers World Party". Marxmail Discussion List.
• "Politics 1 Guide to US Political parties". It contains brief entry on WWP.
• "A Clarification on Sam Marcy and Henry Wallace". A correspondence on the early history of the Global Class War tendency.
• Kevin Coogan. "'Peace Activists' with a Secret Agenda Part Three: Stealth Trotskyism and the Mystery of the WWP".

• Official website
• Sam Marcy (1979). The Global Class War and the Destiny of American Labor. New Haven, Connecticut: Revolutionary Communist League (Internationalist). A foundational document of the Global Class War tendency.
• V. Grey New York (November 3, 1956). The Class Character of the Hungarian Uprising: Proposed Resolution on the Class Character of the Hungarian Uprising. Reissued by Workers World in 1959. Another foundational document of the Global Class War tendency.