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Socialist Workers Party (United States)

political party in the United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ581177 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a socialist party in the United States. SWP was created in 1938 after Communist Party USA expelled supporters of Leon Trotsky (against Joseph Stalin).

For most of its history, SWP was the largest Trotskyist organization in the US. In the 1980s, the SWP turned from Trotskyism towards Castroism. Since the 2000s, SWP has supported Zionism.

In the 1960s and 1970s, SWP and its youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance, were together the 3rd-largest socialist organizations, below the Communist Party USA and Students for a Democratic Society. SWP suffered many splits and its membership declined. The modern SWP is smaller than its progeny, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative and the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation.

SWP focuses much of its energy on distributing The Militant, a socialist weekly, selling Pathfinder Press books, and running candidates on the SWP ballot line.

Ideology

The SWP is strongly supportive of Cuba. It also condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Socialist Workers Party (United States)” as political party in the United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Socialist, Workers and Party.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1938—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1938-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Socialist, Workers and Party providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Socialist Workers Party (United States)”, the useful work is to connect “political party in the United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q581177. VIAF identifies the subject as 130173055. The Library of Congress control number is n79063200. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Socialist Workers Party (United States)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Socialist Workers Party (United States) primary sources, Socialist Workers Party (United States) archive and Socialist research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Socialist Workers Party (United States)”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Socialist Workers Party (United States)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.