Although the Shachtman group's resignation from the SWP was not only over the defence of the Soviet Union, rather than the class nature of the state itself, that was a major point in the internal polemics of the time.
The theory was never fully developed by anybody in the Workers Party and Shachtman's book, published many years later in 1961, consists earlier articles from the pages of New International with some political conclusions reversed.
Ted Grant (1913–2006) has alleged that some Trotskyist thinkers, including Tony Cliff (1917–2000), who have described such societies as "state capitalist" share an implicit theoretical agreement with some elements of Shachtmanism.
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 occupying a more progressive stage in the global class struggle.
Dwight Macdonald left the Workers Party shortly after it was first established, founding the Politics magazine and becoming an anarcho-pacifist during World War II.
An anarchist newspaper noted that the ISL's political thought had developed greatly since its break with orthodox Trotskyism in 1939, stating that "in some respects these comrades are evolving in a generally libertarian direction.
[9] Tabor later identified Left Shachtmanism as having provided a bridge between Trotskyism and anarchism, through the concepts of the "Third Camp", "socialism from below" and the "united front".