DOCSLIB.ORG

Volume 5: the Fight for the Continuity of the Fourth International

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Volume 5: the Fight for the Continuity of the Fourth International TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY VOLUME FIVE The fight for the continuity of the Fourth International $5 .95 TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY edited by C. Slaughter VOLUME FIVE The fight for the continuity of the Fourth International NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS Published by New Park Publications Ltd., 186a Oapham High Street, London SW4 7UG 1975 Set up, Printed and Bound by Trade Union Labour Distributed in the United States by: Labor Publications Inc., 135 West 14 Street, New York, New York 10011 ISBN 0 902030 72 8 Printed in Great Britain by Plough Press Ltd.(TU) r/o 180 Oapham High Street, London SW4 7UG Contents FOREWORD CHAPTER ONE: THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL LIVES Document 1 Resolution of the seventh annual conference of the Sociaist Labour League, June 7,1965 Document 2 Preiminary record of the Third World Conference of the International Committee, April 4-8,1966 5 Document 3 Resolution of the Third World Conference, April 8,1966 8 CHAPTER TWO: THE THIRD CONFERENCE OF THE IC IN STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM Document 4 Report of the commission on rebuilding the Fourth International and the tasks of the IC, April 8,1966 30 Document 5 Resolution of the American Commission, April 8,1966 34 Document 6 Statement of the IC on he Robertson group (USA), April 9, 1966 36 Document 7 Manifesto of the International Committee, April 1966 40 Document 8 Submissions to the Third Conference from Voix Ouvrhra, March 8 and 22,1966 64 Document 9 Declaration of the Union Communiste InternatJonalste to an OCI meeting, March 20,1966 75 CHAPTER THREE: THE LIQUIDATIONS THEORIES OF THE OCI Document 10 Record of work of the IC since the Third Conference, May 1967 80 Document 11 Statement by the OCI, May 1967 84 Document 12 Reply to the OCI by the Central Committee of the SLL, June 19,1967 107 CHAPTER FOUR: THE STRUGGLE IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE Document 13 Notes by Cliff Slaughter of the IC meeting of June 17-18,1967 134 Document 14 Notes for proposed speech by Dany Sylveire to Revokes National Youth Assembly, June 24, 1967 140 Document 15 Letter from the SLL to the OCI, June 27,1967 142 Document 16 The OCI announces more differences with the SLL, August 1967 144 Document 17 Minutes of the International Committee meeting, September 30-October 1,1967 152 Document 18a SLL statement in defence of the OCI, June 22, 1968 155 18b Declaration by the International Committee, June 25,1968 157 18c Statement on the OCI by the Newsletter Editorial Board, June 25,1968 160 CHAPTER FIVE: THE OCI BLOCS WITH THE CENTRISTS Document 19 The Rebutting of the Fourth International In Latin America is underway, by Marc-EtJenne Laurent, May 1971 166 Document 20 Resolution before the Essen Youth Rally, July 1971 184 Document 21 Young Sociaists amendment to the Essen Resolution, July 1971 194 Document 22 Letter from the Essen Liaison Committee to the Young Sociaists National Committee, November 1971 195 Document 23 Extracts from the discussion of the Essen Liaison Committee, November 5-6,1971 198 GLOSSARY OF NAMES AND ORGANIZATIONS 201 INDEX 204 Note on sources The documents published in these volumes have been collected from the journals, internal bulletins and correspondence of the Trotskyist movement over the period since 1951. The series is designed to provide the basic documentation of the fight within the Fourth Inter­ national during that time. Editing of the text has been kept to a minimum: footnotes and bracketed explanatory notes have been added only for essential reference. In all other respects the documents have been reproduced as they appear in the sources indicated below. Each volume has a foreword introducing the reader to the main developments covered in it, with a glossary of names and an index provided as additional guides to the documents. The sources for the documents used in this volume are as follows: 1. Original document before the 7th Annual Conference of the Socialist Labour League 2. Official Record of the Third World Conference of the Interna­ tional Committee 3. 4, 5, 6, 7. Fourth International, Vol.3, No. 3, August 1966 8. Translated from Voix Ouvriere, March 8 and 22, 1966 9. Translated from a verbatim account taken at the OCI meeting of March 20, 1966 10. Original document before the 9th Annual Conference of the Socialist Labour League 11,12. Pre-Conference discussion Bulletins for the 9th Annual Con­ ference of the Socialist Labour League 13, 14, IS. Internal Bulletin of the Socialist Labour League 16. Translated iromStudies and Documents, Vol. 2, No. 8(b), August 1967 17. Minutes of the International Committee 18a. The Newsletter, June 22, 1968 18b. The Newsletter, June 25, 1968 18c. The Newsletter, June 25, 1968 19. Translated for this volume from La Correspondance Internationale ('Bulletin du Comite International pour la reconstruction de la IV Internationale'), No. 1 20. Translated from the original draft of the Resolution before the Essen Rally 21. As quoted in the statement of the International Committee, October 24, 1971 22,23. Translated for this volume from correspondence received by the Young Socialists, November 1971 Foreword After 18 years membership of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the French Organization Communiste Inter- nationaliste (OCI) in 1971 split with the majority of this Committee. At that time, the OCI leaders claimed to be the true representatives of the continuity of the struggle against revisionism and the building of the Fourth International carried forward since 1953 by the Interna­ tional Committee (see the companion volumes I-IV of this series). By 1974, however, the OCI was publicly on record as having commenced formal discussions at the level of leadership, with the so-called 'United Secretariat', i.e. the revisionist political organiza­ tion carried on by Pablo after the split of 1953. Present at the negotia­ tions were Pierre Frank and Livio Maitan, among the most prominent and right-wing liquidationist leaders of the Pabloite revisionists ever since 1953. The talks were arranged and attended, by leaders of the Socialist Workers' Party of the United States, who had been working with the OCI to this end for over a year. (Jntercontinental Press, January 1975: see appendix to Volume VI of this series). At first sight, these events represent a remarkable about-face from the position of the OCI in the 1950s and 1960s. When it suited them, the OCI leaders would draw attention to the fact that they were the first to clash, politically and organizationally, with Pablo, Frank and Mandel (Germain). When the SWP, founder-member of the IC, participated at the Pabloite 'reunification' of 1963 (See Volume IV), die OCI supported (though making little or not independent con­ tribution to the struggle) every step in the struggle against liquidationism. Indeed, the CXI affected a very intransigent stance. For example when the SLL (predecessor of the Workers Revolutio­ nary Party) proposed a 'parity committee' to engage the SWP and the XI XII THE FIGHT FOR CONTINUITY OF THE FI Pabloites in open political discussion, they first opposed this and then accepted it very reluctantly. Yet now it is the same leadership of the OCI who appears in talks with the Pabloite revisionists, and who are commended by the latter for their 'sincerity' and 'seriousness'. For its part, the IC majority was in no doubt that the questions on which the OCI split from the IC in 1971 were just as fundamental as those which had been at the centre of the struggle in 1953 and 1963. There could be no compromise once the OCI had persisted in a basic revision of Marxism (the rejection of dialectical materialism as the theory of knowledge of Marxism) to the point of publicly voting with enemies of Trotskyism against the IC, at the Essen Youth Rally of July 1971. (See Chapter Five below, and statement of the IC of the FI (Majority) October 24, 1971). The act of splitting in 1971, and the political basis on which it was carried out, were in all essentials a capitulation to the same Pabloite revisionism to which the OCI for­ mally returned in 1974. It is now time to make available in one place not only all the already public documents of the 1971 split and the work of the IC in the years leading up to it, but also certain internal reports and communications which make absolutely clear the principled struggle of the IC to answer and clarify the growing revisionist tendencies in the OCI between 1967 and 1971. Whilst the IC took up in detail the distortions of the OCI leadership and the questions of Bolshevik leadership and internationalism and then, in 1970, more and more openly on the basic philosophical issues, it also fought in complete solidarity with the OCI when De Gaulle's government declared it illegal following the May-June General Strike in 1968. The Socialist Labour League, for example, led a broad public campaign in the British labour movement against the repression, and considerable funds were raised to help the OCI (See Document 18 below). When the SWP took the road back to Pabloism in 1957-63, they attempted to justify this capitulation on the grounds that the Pabloites were returning to the principled positions on the main political questions. This manoeuvre failed when it was attempted on the basis of the Pabloites' reaction to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, was eventually carried through on the bandwagon of the Cuban Revolution and the supposedly new, independent, and 'naturally Marxist' leadership of Castro and Castroism. On this entirely spurious basis, the 'reunification' was carried through with an agreement not ot discuss at all the fundamental issues which had necessitated the split of 1953.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Ecosocialism & Environmental Activism
    Ecosocialism & environmental activism SUBSCRIBE TODAY CANADA U.S. 1 year $20 $25 2 years $35 (save $5) $45 (save $5) 3 years $50 (save $10) $65 (save $10) Supporting: Add $20 Institutional and overseas international: $50 per year All prices in Canadian dollars Send cheques to: New Socialist Box 167, 253 College Street Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R5 www.newsocialist.org Union rights in Canada FALL 2007 Indigenous politics Issue No. 62 $4.95 Socialist history www.newsocialist.org Palestine The Ugly Canadian EDITORIAL here is an ever-widening chasm between the myth of met in an effort to promote the agenda of the Security and Canada as a peaceful and humanitarian nation and the Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which is pushed by the North realityT of Canadian foreign policy. American Competitiveness Council made up of 30 key cor- Stephen Harper says Canada is back as a credible politi- porate figures from the three states. cal and military player in world affairs. This highlights the The SPP’s proponents are pushing for weaker regulations urgency of building a strong movement of opposition to Ca- on business under the guise of “harmonization.” The consoli- nadian imperialism. dation of a US-style Homeland Security model in Canada is In Afghanistan, Canadian troops are on the front lines of also being pursued. Far more integrated and openly restric- counter-insurgency war, propping up the US puppet regime tive and racist border security policies are being promoted. of Hamid Karzai. Ninety percent of Canadian spending in North America is to be made even safer for profit-making, Afghanistan is military.
    [Show full text]
  • 1Contents FSC Contents.Qxd
    22REVIEWS (Composite)_REVIEWS (Composite).qxd 2/11/2019 11:39 AM Page 123 123 Reviews Latin America Grace Livingstone, Britain and the Dictatorships of Argentina and Chile 1973­1982, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 292 pages, ISBN 9783319782911, £16 During the twentieth century, Latin America was the scene of numerous military coups which established oppressive dictatorships notorious for their abuse of democratic and human rights. This book is a detailed study of the policies adopted by Britain towards two of them – in Chile and Argentina. On 11 September 1973, Augusto Pinochet, the head of Chilean armed forces, launched a coup against the democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. He bombed the presidential palace, fired on and arrested thousands of Allende supporters and other left­wingers, and shut down all democratic institutions. In Argentina on 26 March 1976, the widowed third wife of former dictator Juan Peron, Isabella Peron, who had been elected president, was overthrown by the army, which closed down the Congress, banned political parties, dissolved the Supreme Court, and arrested thousands of political activists including former ministers. In the cases of both Chile and Argentina, the British Foreign Office and leading ambassadorial staff – despite theoretical commitments to democracy – recommended recognition of the military juntas established and downplayed reports of human rights infringements. Grace Livingstone attributes this to the class basis of the personnel involved. She states that, in 1950, 83% of Foreign Office recruits attended private schools and the figure was still 68% ten years later. In 1980, 80% of ambassadors and top Foreign Office officials had attended fee­paying schools.
    [Show full text]
  • University of California Santa Cruz Marxism
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ MARXISM AND CONSTITUENT POWER IN LATIN AMERICA: THEORY AND HISTORY FROM THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY THROUGH THE PINK TIDE A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS with an emphasis in POLITICS by Robert Cavooris December 2019 The dissertation of Robert Cavooris is approved: _______________________________________ Robert Meister, Chair _______________________________________ Guillermo Delgado-P. _______________________________________ Juan Poblete _______________________________________ Megan Thomas _________________________________________ Quentin Williams Acting Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Robert Cavooris, 2019. All rights reserved. Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements and Dedication vi Preface x Introduction 1 Chapter 1 41 Intellectuals and Political Strategy: Hegemony, Posthegemony, and Post-Marxist Theory in Latin America Chapter 2 83 Constituent Power and Capitalism in the Works of René Zavaleta Mercado Chapter 3 137 Bolivian Insurgency and the Early Work of Comuna Chapter 4 204 Potentials and Limitations of the Bolivian ‘Process of Change’ Conclusions 261 Appendix: List of Major Works by Comuna (1999–2011) 266 Bibliography 271 iii Abstract Marxism and Constituent Power in Latin America: Theory and History from the Mid-Twentieth Century through The Pink Tide Robert Cavooris Throughout the history of Marxist theory and practice in Latin America, certain questions recur. What is the relationship between political and social revolution? How can state institutions serve as tools for political change? What is the basis for mass collective political agency? And how can intellectual work contribute to broader emancipatory political movements? Through textual and historical analysis, this dissertation examines how Latin American intellectuals and political actors have reframed and answered these questions in changing historical circumstances.
    [Show full text]
  • The Soviet Union and the Fourth International, the Class Nature of the Soviet State
    University of Central Florida STARS PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements 1-1-1934 The Soviet union and the fourth International, the class nature of the soviet state Leon Trotsky Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Trotsky, Leon, "The Soviet union and the fourth International, the class nature of the soviet state" (1934). PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements. 152. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/152 FOURTH TERNATIONAL Tht Ciass Nature of the Soviet state TEN CENTS THE CLASS NATURE OF THE SOVIET STATE HOWthe Question is Posed The break with the Commdt I$termtional and thc orientation toward the New InterPatid have pod anew the question of the social character of the U. S. S. R. Doesn't the cohpse of the Communist International dao mean at the same time the collapse of that state whi& emerged from the October Revolution? Here, indeed, h both instances one and the same ruling organization is con- cerned : the Stalinieb apparatus. It had applied identical methods within the U. S. 6. R. as in the international arena. We, Marxists, were never patrons of the double bookkeep iag system of the Braadlerites according to which the pol- idea of the St~lini~itrare impeccable in the U.8.S.R.
    [Show full text]
  • Socialist Re­ Yvonne Groseil View, and I Was Quite Impressed by It
    Tvvo Vievvs on the Dialectics of Nature To William F. Warde tal to Sartre and Hyppolite. There is and I hope it will precipitate in this I have just read your article, "Is Na­ one point in your article, however, with country a greater appreciation of the ture Dialectical?" in the Summer 1964 which I would take some exception. problem and wide discussion of it. That is when you argue against the issue of the International Socialist Re­ Yvonne Groseil view, and I was quite impressed by it. anti-dialecticians by pointing out the Although I must plead guilty to a advances made in science, especially by November 15, 1964 rather superficial knowledge of Marx­ Oparin, through the use of dialectical ism, I am very interested in Hegel's method. Dialectical logic may help the Reply work. During my study of Hegel, I have scientist reach some useful hypotheses Here are some comments on the main come to the conclusion that the ques­ for later investigation, but this is not questions of theoretical interest raised tion of the philosophy of nature is a the essential point here. by this friendly letter. crucial one. In my opinion, Hegel's I t seems to me that the method or 1. Would knowledge of the method of philosophy falls apart into a dualism of means by which scientific discoveries the materialist dialectic, which is based mind and matter instead of being the are made is secondary in this argument. on the most general laws of being and synthesis he desired just because of the What is really vital is the fact that only becoming, assist the physical scientist failure of his philosophy of nature.
    [Show full text]
  • "Why It Is Worth Preparing for Breaches to Open in These Two Systems and Strive for Socialism"
    "Why it is worth preparing for breaches to open in these two systems and strive for socialism" https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6854 Book review "Why it is worth preparing for breaches to open in these two systems and strive for socialism" - Reviews section - Publication date: Tuesday 13 October 2020 Copyright © International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine - All rights reserved Copyright © International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine Page 1/5 "Why it is worth preparing for breaches to open in these two systems and strive for socialism" Livio Maitan, Memoirs of a critical communist. Towards a History of the Fourth International, Preface by Daniel Bensaid, translated by Gregor Benton, edited and with an introduction by Penelope Duggan, Resistance Books, IIRE, Merlin Press, 2019, 455 pages. Livio Maitan was born in Venice in 1923 ; he was politically active from 1943 until his death in 2004. During this period, both the world capitalist system and the bureaucratic countries that escaped its grip, generated great discontents, social movements and crises. Unfortunately none of these upsurges was able to establish a society that was democratic and egalitarian in a lasting way. As a young socialist in postwar Italy, Livio could see the problem as it was crystallizing into the Cold War. [1] When he met the Fourth International in Paris in April 1947, he decided to dedicate his life to making the perspective of socialist democracy a real political alternative for militants searching a way out of the "Washington or Moscow" dilemma. He stood by this commitment all his life. What was needed, he thought, was not just more brilliant books like The Revolution Betrayed by Trotsky, but a network of militants organized on a global scale and sharing information, analysis and at times, a helping hand.
    [Show full text]
  • The Organisation Communiste Internationaliste Breaks with Trotskyism
    TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY VOLUME SIX The Organisation Communiste Internationaliste breaks with Trotskyism NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM TROTSKYISM VERSUS REVISIONISM A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY edited by C. Slaughter VOLUME SIX The Organisation Comtnuniste Internationaliste breaks with Trotskyism NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS Pubtiahcd by New Park PuWic«ioMLtd.. ItSTaStomHi* Stmt, London SW4 7UG 1975 Set up, Printed and Bound by Trade Union Labour Distributed in the United States by: Labor Publication! Inc., 13S West 14 Street, New York, New York 10011 ISBN 0 902030 73 6 Printed in Great Britain by New Press (T.U.) 186a Oapham High Street, London SW4 7UG Contents FOREWORD xli CHAPTER ONE: THE BOLIVIAN REVOLUTION AND REVISIONISM Document 1 BoMa: Biter Lessons of Defeat, by Tim WohBorth August 30,1971 2 Document 2 What Happened In BoMa? by QuWermo Lore September 1971 8 Document 3 Statement by the OCI Central Committee, September 19,1971 19 Document 4 Statement by the OCI, the POR and the Organizing Committee of Eastern Europe, October 12,1971 23 CHAPTER TWO: THE SPLIT Document S Statement by the International Committee (Majority), October 24,1971 28 Document 6 Declaration of the Central Committee of the OCI, November 24,1971 45 Document r Statement by the International Committee (Majority), March 1,1972 72 CHAPTER THREE: THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE Document • Report of the Fourth Conference of the International Committee, April 10-15,1972 104 Document 9 Manifesto of the Fourth Conference of the International
    [Show full text]
  • Exemplar De Assinante Da Imprensa Nacional
    ISSN 1677-7050 Ano LVI No- 161 Brasília - DF, segunda-feira, 24 de agosto de 2015 DESIGNAR CASA CIVIL Sumário SECRETARIA EXECUTIVA . FLÁVIO HENRIQUE DE SOUZA, Presidente do Conselho Nacional PORTARIAS DE 21 DE AGOSTO DE 2015 PÁGINA dos Direitos da Pessoa com Deficiência, e JOÃO ADILBERTO PE- Atos do Poder Executivo.................................................................... 1 REIRA XAVIER, que o acompanhará, com ônus, no período de 23 a O SECRETÁRIO-EXECUTIVO DA CASA CIVIL DA Presidência da República.................................................................... 1 27 de agosto de 2015, inclusive trânsito, para participar da reunião de PRESIDÊNCIA DA REPÚBLICA, no uso da competência que lhe Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento ...................... 3 avaliação do I Relatório sobre Implementação da Convenção sobre os foi subdelegada pelo inciso I do art. 1º da Portaria nº 590, de 13 de Direitos da Pessoa com Deficiência da Organização das Nações Uni- junho de 2007, da Ministra de Estado Chefe da Casa Civil da Pre- Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação.................................. 7 sidência da República, e tendo em vista o disposto no Decreto nº Ministério da Cultura.......................................................................... 8 das, em Genebra, Suíça. 4.734, de 11 de junho de 2003, resolve: Ministério da Defesa........................................................................... 8 o o Nº 182 - EXONERAR, a pedido, Ministério da Educação ...................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Anti-Capitalism Or Anti-Imperialism? Interwar Authoritarian and Fascist Sources of a Reactionary Ideology: the Case of the Bolivian MNR
    Anti-Capitalism or Anti-Imperialism? Interwar Authoritarian and Fascist Sources of A Reactionary Ideology: The Case of the Bolivian MNR Loren Goldner Abstract The following recounts the evolution of the core pre-MNR intelligentsia and future leadership of the movement and its post- 1952 government from anti-Semitic, pro-fascist, pro-Axis ideologues in the mid-1930's to bourgeois nationalists receiving considerable US aid after 1952. The MNR leadership, basically after Stalingrad, began to "reinvent itself" in response to the impending Allied victory, not to mention huge pressure from the U.S. in various forms starting ca. 1942. However much the MNR purged itself of its "out-of-date" philofascism by the time it came to power, I wish to show it in the larger context of the top-down, state-driven corporatism that developed in key Latin American countries in this period, specifically Argentina, Brazil and (in a different way) Mexico through the Cardenas period. The following is a demonstration that, contrary to what contemporary complacent leftist opinion in the West thinks, there is a largely forgotten history of reactionary populist and "anti- imperialist" movements in the underdeveloped world that do not shrink from mobilizing the working class to achieve their goals. This little-remembered background is all the more important for understanding the dynamics of the left-populist governments which have emerged in Latin America since the 1990’s. Introduction The following text is a history and analysis of the fascist and proto- fascist ideologies which shaped the pre-history and early history of the Bolivian MNR (Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario) from 1936 to its seizure of power in 1952.
    [Show full text]
  • Goerge Lavan Weissman Papers
    George Lavan Weissman Collection Papers, 1935-1985 3 linear feet 3 storage boxes Accession #1347 DALNET # OCLC # George Lavan Weissman was born in Chicago in 1916 and grew up in Boston, where he attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College. While at Harvard during the Great Depression, he became a Marxist, joined the Young People’s Socialist League and the Socialist Party and volunteered as an organizer for several labor unions in New England. Weissman followed the Trotskyists out of the SP after their expulsion in 1937 and helped found the Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International in 1938. He married fellow SWP activist, Constance Fox Harding, in 1943. As a self-described “party functionary,” Weissman was a branch organizer in Boston (1939-41) and Youngstown (1946), director and editor of Pioneer Publishing and Pathfinder Press (1947-81), manager of Mountain Spring Camp (1948-62) and editor and writer for the Militant and other party publications, including the first English-language anthology of Che Guevara’s writings, Che Guevara Speaks and The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913 (He had become United States literary representative of the Trotsky estate after Natalia Sedova Trotsky’s death in 1962). After his expulsion from the SWP in the great purge of 1983-1984, Weissman joined with others to form the Fourth Internationalist Tendency and became a member of the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism editorial board. He died on March 28, 1985. The George Lavan Weissman Collection consists of correspondence (both his and Connie Weissman’s), the manuscript for volume two of Trotsky’s war correspondence, on which Weissman was working at the time of his death, and numerous pamphlets and other publications put out by the SWP and a variety of civil rights and civil libertarian organizations to which he belonged.
    [Show full text]
  • Trotskygrad on the Altiplano by Bill Weinberg
    JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 reviews Trotskygrad on the Altiplano By Bill Weinberg a militant (at times, even revolution- ian labor movement (from the 1930s ary) labor movement that aligned through the 1980s) with articles with Leon Trotsky and his Fourth from the left and especially Trotsky- International, and rejected Joseph ist press of the day, in both Bolivia Stalin and his Kremlin successors. In and the United States—rescuing a Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent wealth of information from falling Revolution in the Andes, S. Sándor John into pre- digital oblivion. The book explores the roots of this exceptional- is illustrated with reproductions of ism. To his credit, he resists the temp- radical art and propaganda as well as tation of mechanistic explanations— period photos. John also offers first- but the answer is pretty clearly rooted hand interviews with veterans of the in sheer oppression. miners’ struggle. Faced with a nasty, brutish, and The POR and the PIR were both short life in the tin mines of the founded in the aftermath of the di- altiplano (chronic silicosis made sastrous Chaco War (1932–5), a for an average lifespan of 40 years), senseless and costly conflict with Bolivia’s miners had little patience Paraguay, in which Bolivia’s old oli- for the Moscow-mandated line of garchic political class lost much “two-stage” revolution, which urged credibility—in John’s words, “the subordination to the “bourgeois- death throes of the ancien régime.” BOLIVIA’s Radical TRADITION: democratic” political process un- More enlightened sectors of this PERMANENT REVOLUTION IN THE til feudalism was dismantled and class subsequently began affecting a ANDES by S.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Hansen Papers
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf78700585 No online items Register of the Joseph Hansen papers Finding aid prepared by Joseph Hansen Hoover Institution Archives 434 Galvez Mall Stanford University Stanford, CA, 94305-6003 (650) 723-3563 [email protected] © 1998, 2006, 2012 Register of the Joseph Hansen 92035 1 papers Title: Joseph Hansen papers Date (inclusive): 1887-1980 Collection Number: 92035 Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Archives Language of Material: English Physical Description: 109 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box, 3 envelopes, 1 audio cassette(46.2 linear feet) Abstract: Speeches and writings, correspondence, notes, minutes, reports, internal bulletins, resolutions, theses, printed matter, sound recording, and photographs relating to Leon Trotsky, activities of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, and activities of the Fourth International in Latin America, Western Europe and elsewhere. Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives Creator: Hansen, Joseph, Access The collection is open for research; materials must be requested at least two business days in advance of intended use. Publication Rights For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Joseph Hansen papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Archives. Acquisition Information Acquired by the Hoover Institution Archives in 1992. Accruals Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. To determine if this has occurred, find the collection in Stanford University's online catalog at http://searchworks.stanford.edu . Materials have been added to the collection if the number of boxes listed in the online catalog is larger than the number of boxes listed in this finding aid.
    [Show full text]