Contains discussions between leaders of the US Socialist Workers Party and exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1938. The product of these discussions, a program of immediate, democratic, and transitional demands, was adopted by the SWP later that year. This program for socialist revolution remains an irreplaceable component of a fighting guide for communist workers today.
Also available in Farsi (ISBN: 9789645783578).
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) was part of the central leadership forged by Bolshevik party leader V.I. Lenin that organized the revolutionary conquest of power by workers and peasants in Russia in October 1917. Trotsky commanded the Red Army, was a founding leader of the Communist International, and of communists in the Soviet Union and worldwide who fought to continue Lenin’s proletarian internationalist course. He continued that struggle from exile after being deported in 1929. Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by Stalin’s secret police.
Since the early 1930s Pathfinder and its predecessors have translated, published, and kept in print Trotsky’s principal works. These include:
The Third International after Lenin (1996)
In Defense of Marxism (1995)
History of the Russian Revolution (1980)
The Revolution Betrayed (1972)
The First Five Years of the Communist International (two volumes, 1972)
Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1929–40 (14 volumes, 1972–79)
Other Contributors:
Joseph Hansen (1910–1979) was a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party and a member of its National Committee from 1940 to 1975. Editor of the Militant, International Socialist Review, and Intercontinental Press. Hansen joined the Communist movement in 1934 and served as secretary to Leon Trotsky in Mexico 1937–40.
His writings include:
Maoism vs. Bolshevism (1998)
Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women (1986, coauthor)
My Life by Leon Trotsky (1980, introduction)
James P. Cannon: The Internationalist (1980)
Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation (1978)
The Workers and Farmers Government (1974)
James P. Cannon: A Political Tribute (1974, coauthor)
George Novak (1905–1992) joined the communist movement in the United States in 1933 and remained a member and leader of the Socialist Workers Party until his death.
As national secretary of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, Novack helped organize the 1937 International Commission of Inquiry that investigated the charges fabricated by Stalin’s Moscow trials. In the 1940s Novack was national secretary of the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which gathered support for leaders of the SWP and the Midwest Teamsters’ strikes and organizing drive who were framed up and jailed under the witch-hunting Smith Act. He played a prominent role in numerous other civil liberties and civil rights battles over subsequent decades, including the landmark lawsuit against FBI spying and disruption won by the Socialist Workers Party in 1986. He was also active in defense of the Cuban Revolution and against the war in Vietnam.
His works include:
An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism Genocide against the Indians The Origins of Materialism Existentialism versus Marxism Empiricism and Its Evolution The Marxist Theory of Alienation; Democracy and Revolution Understanding History Humanism and Socialism Pragmatism versus Marxism America’s Revolutionary Heritage Polemics in Marxist Philosophy.
