'From Trotsky to Respect'

Geoffrey Wall on the SWP, on BBC Radio 3... having listened to Part 2 (the repeat last night - it should still be on the BBC's website)

For anybody interested in the early history of the SRG / International Socialism / International Socialists, I suggest Jim Higgins' book, which is now available in electronic form (see here).

Everybody agreed that East Germany, say, was 'state capitalist', but there was an arcane dispute about whether the Soviet Union was or a 'workers' state'. I remember going to a discussion in the mid-'70s (chaired by none other than David Aaronovitch, who was not of course a Trotskyist, merely a Communist) called something like "Is the Soviet Union state capitalist?", unaware of the subtext.

(From Trotsky to Respect - Geoffrey Wall looks at the history of the Socialist Workers Party. 2/2, 13 &16 April)