Max Shachtman

Workers' Liberty 3/30: The 1939-40 split in the Fourth International

Submitted on 8 July, 2010 - 01:50

Author:

Two documents by Max Shachtman

In 1940 the Trotskyist movement split over attitudes to Stalinism. The participation and victory of Stalin's USSR in World War 2 as an imperialist power would make that split a fundamental political dividing-point.

Click here to download pdf of the whole text.

1871: the Paris Commune

Submitted on 18 April, 2013 - 09:32

Author:

Max Shachtman

The following account was written by Max Shachtman for the then-revolutionary US Communist Party’s “Little Red Library” in the early 1920's.

An enthusiast for the rank-and-file

Submitted on 1 March, 2013 - 18:52

Stan Weir (1921-2001) was a Third Camp socialist, trade union militant and intellectual at the forefront of the post-Second World War US labour movement.

What were the Communist Parties?

Submitted on 16 January, 2013 - 14:48

Author:

Mike Wood

Mike Wood has spent some years researching the evolution of the Workers Party, the group formed by Max Shachtman and his comrades after the 1940 split in the US Trotskyist movement.

A forgotten newspaper of critical Trotskyism

Submitted on 11 December, 2012 - 23:49

Author:

Ira Berkovic

Socialists will have unprecedented access to a largely-forgotten but incredibly valuable body of literature, following the Marxist Internet Archive’s digitisation of the entire run of Labor Action.

Debating Stalinism in the 1940s

Submitted on 11 December, 2012 - 23:28

Author:

Martin Thomas

Mike Wood’s very valuable account of the “Third Camp” Trotskyists of the Workers Party in the 1940s (Solidarity 267) misses three points, I think.

Facing up to Stalin's strength: how “Third Camp” socialists developed their assessments

Submitted on 5 December, 2012 - 15:17

Author:

Mike Wood

In 1940 the US Trotskyist movement split, primarily over its attitude to the 1939-40 Russian invasion of Finland. The split would prove far-reaching.

Complete run of Labor Action online

Submitted on 27 November, 2012 - 16:22

David Walters has announced the completion of a major milestone for the Left Opposition Digitization Project for the Marxist Internet Archive: the complete run of Labor Action, the newspaper of the Workers Party (U.S.) and Independent Socialist League from 1940 through the Autum of 1958.

Continuing and renewing the tradition

Submitted on 10 October, 2012 - 11:25

Author:

Phyllis Jacobson

In Solidarity 242 (18 April 2012), we began series of recollections and reflections from activists who had been involved with the “third camp” left in the USA — those “unorthodox” Trotskyists who broke from the SWP USA in 1939/40 to form the Workers Party, and the tradition they built (the Independent Socialist League, and later the Independent Socialists and International Socialists). Here, we reprint an extract from a speech by Phyllis Jacobson given at the “Oral History of the American Left Conference”, organised by the Tamiment Library in New York from May 6-7, 1983.

Renewing the Third Camp legacy

Submitted on 27 September, 2012 - 12:43

Author:

Peter Drucker

Workers' Liberty recently began compiling series of recollections and reflections from activists who had been involved with the “third camp” left in the USA — those “unorthodox” Trotskyists who broke from the SWP USA in 1939/40 to form the Workers Party, and the tradition they built (the Independent Socialist League, and later the Independent Socialists and International Socialists).

The following is a contribution from Peter Drucker, author of Max Shachtman and His Left. It comprises (slightly updated) excerpts from his response in Workers’ Liberty No. 30 (April 1996) to Ernest Haberkern‘s critique of his book (Workers' Liberty Nos. 25 & 27, October 1995 & January 1996). Drucker advocates a Third Camp socialism with room for theoretical pluralism and open to a changing world. Drucker is currently based in Rotterdam, and is a member of Socialistische Alternatieve Politiek (Socialist Alternative Politics), the Dutch section of the Fourth International.