Origin
The group originated in the International Socialists (IS) as the Left Faction. The Faction argued that IS needed a fully developed programme. It also criticised the stance IS adopted on the Provisional Irish Republican Army's terrorist actions in 1972. In 1973 it set up a faction, then when it refused to dissolve in 1974 it was excluded from IS and formed the Workers Power Group. In 1975 it briefly joined with Workers Fight to form the International-Communist League which split into its constituent parts soon afterward.
In 1980 Workers Power abandoned the position that the "Stalinist states" were 'state capitalist', seeing this position as an error on the part of Tony Cliff who argued that the USSR was state capitalist, functioning as a giant company which competed on the world market militarily. In that year it co-published "The Degenerated Revolution" which adopted a unique term, that countries other than the USSR (such as those in Eastern Europe and countries such as Cuba) were "degenerate workers states" and "degenerate from birth", representing a nuance to the Fourth International's 1948 analysis that the USSR was a 'degenerated workers state' while the other countries were 'deformed workers' states'. (See the theoretical section in League for the Fifth International article and below.)
Read more about this topic: Workers' Power (UK)
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