Pathfinder tendency
Encyclopedia
Socialist Workers Party (United States)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far-left political organization in the United States. The group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba...
of the United States and its perspective of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
and the Cuban Communist Party.
The current is informally referred to as the Pathfinder tendency because its members operate Pathfinder Bookstores which sell the products of the SWP's publishing arm, Pathfinder Press. The current is also known as the International Communist League, although this term is not widely used, and can cause confusion with other organizations of the same name. The Communist Leagues, even those in non-English speaking countries, sell the publication of the SWP, The Militant
The Militant
The Militant is an international Socialist newsweekly connected to the Socialist Workers Party and the Pathfinder Tendency. It is published in the United States and distributed in other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Sweden, Iceland, and New...
.
In the 1980s the Socialist Workers Party and its international supporters within the Fourth International (FI) broke from many of the traditional positions of Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
, including the theory of Permanent Revolution
Permanent Revolution
Permanent revolution is a term within Marxist theory, established in usage by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels by at least 1850 but which has since become most closely associated with Leon Trotsky. The use of the term by different theorists is not identical...
, and embraced positions that marked a political convergence with the Cuban Communist Party and the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional. Upon adopting these new positions, the SWP expelled supporters of the FI from the party, and SWP supporters abroad split from or attempted to take over sections of the FI in various countries. By the late 1980s this process was completed and national sections of the FI had either been taken over with supporters of the international's mainstream being expelled—this happened with the Revolutionary Workers League in Canada, the Socialist Action League in New Zealand and the SWP in the US—or supporters of the US SWP had split from FI sections and founded their own organisations, as occurred in Australia, Sweden and Britain.
In 1990, the SWP and its supporters formally left the FI. Supporters of the SWP internationally renamed their organisations the Communist League in each country. Since the creation of the Pathfinder tendency, new Communist Leagues have been created to organise previously existing groups of supporters in Iceland and France (1999).
The Youth sections of the Pathfinder Tendency are increasingly active in the World Federation of Democratic Youth
World Federation of Democratic Youth
The World Federation of Democratic Youth is a progressive youth organization, recognized by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organization. WFDY describes itself as an "anti-imperialist, left-wing" organisation...
. The Young Socialists of USA, Britain and New Zealand have been able to become members of the Federation.
- Australia - Communist League
- Britain - Communist LeagueCommunist League (UK, 1988)The Communist League was formed by a group of members expelled in 1988 from Socialist Action. Those members had joined the American Socialist Workers Party's Pathfinder tendency. It maintains a bookshop in London, originally in The Cut but now in Bethnal Green Road.The League's members sell The...
- Canada - Communist LeagueCommunist League (Canada)The Communist League in Canada was founded as the "Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire" in 1977 as the result of a merger of the League for Socialist Action , the Revolutionary Marxist Group and the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionaire.Originally a Trotskyist party, the RWL was...
- Iceland - Communist LeagueCommunist League (Iceland)The Icelandic Communist League was a grouping affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party , a part of its international network of affiliates, the so-called Pathfinder Tendency...
- New Zealand - Communist LeagueCommunist League (New Zealand)-History:The party was founded in 1969 by students from Victoria University of Wellington, and was originally named the Socialist Action League. The new party rejected the more established groups such as the Communist Party as too authoritarian, conservative, and unimaginative, but at the same...
- Sweden - Communist LeagueCommunist League (Sweden)Communist League . A small political communist party in Sweden, connected to the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, and distributor of the Militant and part of the Pathfinder organization....
(Kommunistiska Förbundet) - United States - Socialist Workers Party