Shachtmanism
Shachtmanism is a form of Trotskyism associated with Max Shachtman. It originated as a tendency within the US Socialist Workers Party in 1940.Shachtmanites believe that the Stalinist rulers of Communist countries are a new (ruling) class, distinct from the workers; therefore, they go beyond Trotsky's description of Stalinist Russia as being a "degenerated workers' state". Max Shachtman described the USSR as a "bureaucratic collectivist" society. Other Trotskyist thinkers have described such societies as "state capitalist" and are often said to share a basic theoretical agreement with Shachtman. For instance, Tony Cliff worked closely with Shachtman in the early 1940s, though he later distanced himself.
Left Shachtmanism, influenced by Max Shachtman's work of the 1940s, sees Stalinist nations as being potentially imperialist and does not offer any support to their leadership. This has been crudely described as seeing the Stalinist and capitalist countries as being equally bad, although it would be more accurate to say that neither is seen as a more progressive alternative for the working class. A more prevalent term for Left Shachtmanism is Third Camp Trotskyism, the Third Camp being differentiated from capitalism and Stalinism. This position is broadly held by the Workers' Liberty grouping in Australia and the United Kingdom, and by the International Socialist wing of Solidarity in the United States. The foremost left Shachtmanite was Hal Draper a writer who worked as a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley and became influential with left wing students during the Free Speech Movement.
Social democratic Shachtmanism, called "Right Shachtmanism" by detractors, later developed by Shachtman and espoused by the Social Democrats USA holds Stalinist nations to be worse than Western capitalism, and will as a result often side with the U.S. government in international conflicts against Stalinist groups, such as the Vietnam War. A number of neoconservatives such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle are former Shachtmanites and a number of others were influenced by Schachtmanism in their youth.