League for the Revolutionary Party

The League for the Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist organisation in the United States.

The group was founded by a faction of the now defunct Revolutionary Socialist League in 1973. The RSL had in turn split from the International Socialists in 1971.

The LRP took from the RSL a strong stress on the need for a Leninist party and coupled this with an emphasis on the general strike tactic. They also developed their own version of what is called "state capitalist theory" to explain the class nature of the USSR and similar states. In later years they abandoned use of the term "state capitalist" in favor of the term "statified capitalism, arguing the difference between Stalinist and traditional capitalist countries is in the form that the ruling class holds its property, and that the proletariat is still exploited and surplus value created in the same way. The LRP views the state in Stalinist countries as a weaker form of the capitalist state, less capable of exploiting the workers but still ruling in the interest of the bureaucracy. This form of state is seen as a compromise by the ruling class, sacrificing a portion of profits to pacify the workers and prevent proletarian revolutions. As such, the LRP viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union as a defeat for the workers not because the workers lost control of the state, as many Trotskyists believe, but because of the increased rate of exploitation and destruction of social welfare programs that accompanied the collapse.

The group is based in New York with a branch in Chicago. It also organizes a group of international co-thinkers called the Communist Organisation for a Fourth International. They publish a journal called "Proletarian Revolution", formerly "Socialist Voice", to which Sy Landy and Walter Daum are notable contributors.

External links

* [http://www.lrp-cofi.org/ COFI home page]