Career
Since leaving the Trotskyist movement he has become a writer of crime fiction and of politically oriented non-fiction. He broke with Shachtman in 1957 when the ISL moved rightward to merge with the Socialist Party of America. Later that year, Wohlforth and a minority of ISL members joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which was the main Trotskyist group in the United States at the time.
In the early 1960s when the SWP and its supporters internationally in the International Committee of the Fourth International fused with the International Secretariat of the Fourth International and developed a critical but generally supportive attitude towards the Cuban Revolution, a minority of members led by Wohlforth and James Robertson (another former ISL member) formed the Revolutionary Tendency within the SWP. While Robertson left the SWP in 1962 and went on to form the Spartacist Group, later Spartacist League, Wohlforth and his supporters remained within the SWP and fought for the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
They were expelled in 1964 after demanding a discussion of the significance of the Sri Lankan Lanka Sama Samaja Party"s entry into the government of Mistress Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
The United States supporters of the ICFI formed the American Committee of the Fourth International, and in 1966 they formed the Workers League. The Workers League Political Committee and ICFI criticized the fact that neither Fields nor Wohlforth had revealed this to the League.
In August 1974, the League"s central committee suspended Fields from membership and removed Wohlforth as national secretary pending a commission of inquiry, in a unanimous vote that included Wohlforth"son
Both left the League, and Wohlforth rejoined the SWP. An investigation conducted by the Workers League concluded that Fields did not have connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the two were requested to resume their membership. However, they refused. Wohlforth now claims that the Workers League became a cult, largely due to the domination and manipulations of the principal ICFI leader at the time, Gerry Healy.
In 1994 he published his memoirs, The Prophet"s Children.
He subsequently co-authored On The Edge: Political Cults Right and Left (2000) with Dennis Tourish. He is now married to Joyce Gibrick.
