The Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) was a Trotskyist group in the United States established in 1973 and disbanded in 1989. History The RSL originated in the Revolutionary Tendency within the International Socialists (U.S.) (IS) led by Sy Landy and Ron Tabor. 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. While the RT at first seemed to have the upper hand, with Landy elected national secretary in 1972, by the next year Landy and his faction had been expelled. At the time of the split, the RSL took 100 of the IS's 300 members. 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. This last position cost them unity with the Class Struggle League, who advocated a Fifth International. Landy wrote "To preserve the program is to preserve the number and out right to it". Despite this the RSL never joined any existing Trotskyist international or attempted to organize a new one. Its sole international organizational tie was with the Revolutionary Marxist League of Jamaica. The RSL was active within a few unions, particularly United Auto Workers (UAW) and USW and among Hispanic workers in the Los Angeles ILGWU. Within the UAW they organized a "Revolutionary Action Caucus". Outside of organized labor they participated in anti-apartheid and anti-racist movements and developed a prisoner support network. The RSL was one of the left groups most active in the pre-AIDS gay movement. Rick Miles considered this area "particularly important" because he believed that much of the left suffered from the same homophobia as the rest of society, and because the "gay question" had a direct bearing on their concept of socialism as a "free society" run directly by workers and oppressed people, rather than an authoritarian society run by a state capitalist class. It also emphasized the oppressive nature of the Stalinist countries where homosexuals were repressed. The RSL recruited a minority tendency of the Red Flag Union, a gay socialist collective, to its