They had three principal differences with the IS: they believed that the IS had abandoned strict adherence to Trotskyism; they felt that the emphasis on the day-to-day work within the trade unions diminished propagating the revolutionary objectives outlined in the Fourth International's transitional program; and they felt that the USSR and the other Communist states were state capitalist, rather than bureaucratic collectivist.
The expelled group, now styling itself the Revolutionary Socialist League, adopted generally orthodox Trotskyist positions based on the transitional program including permanent revolution, opposition to popular fronts and the need for a Fourth International.
The RSL recruited a minority tendency of the Red Flag Union, a gay socialist collective, to its state capitalist characterization, and they merged into the League in 1977.
[2]) In New York, the RSL was active in the Gay Activists Alliance, its members and sympathizers participating in a polarizing split that proved the end of that organization.
The origins of this split went back to a group called the Communist faction within the Socialist Workers Party that left to SWP to enter IS, and subsequently the RSL.
In 1985 they released a statement What we stand for that proclaimed their adherence to the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky but emphasized the theoretical contributions of Marx and Engels, Trotsky's fight against Stalinism and Lenin's "conception of the party, stress on the importance of national liberation struggles and the anti-statism shown in the State and Revolution".
The RSL disbanded in 1989, with about twenty of its remaining members helping in the formation of Love and Rage Network, a revolutionary anarchist newspaper and organization.
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.
They publish a journal called Proletarian Revolution, formerly Socialist Voice, to which the late Sy Landy and Walter Daum have been notable contributors.