Cultural Writing. The story of how and why the Socialist Workers Party abandoned its revolutionary program is an important chapter in American history. The party was the inheritor of the ideas of the Russian Revolution and Leon Trotsky, but when the radical 1960s exploded the SWP was paralyzed by its ties to the most privileged sectors of labor and its ambivalent and wildly contradictory approach to people of color, youth, and women. Written in 1965 by partisans of the fight to reorient the party, CRISIS AND LEADERSHIP provides a visionary analysis of economic and political developments and a hard-hitting indictment of racism and sexism in the union movement and the Left.