It was founded in 1971 as the Federation of Socialist Workers (Bund Sozialistischer Arbeiter) by West German supporters of Gerry Healy's Socialist Labour League and was renamed the Party for Social Equality, Section of the Fourth International (Partei für Soziale Gleichheit, Sektion der Vierten Internationale, PSG) in 1997.

[3] The party sees itself as the German section of the Fourth International in the tradition of Leon Trotsky.

[5] It has contacts to other member parties of the ICFI in England, the US, Sri Lanka, France, Canada and Australia.

The SGP is critical of trade unions (which it views as merely a tool of the labour aristocracy), social democrats, and Stalinist organisations.

[7] The SGP is classified as a left-wing extremist organization by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and is as such under observation.