George Breitman

George Breitman as he appeared at the time of his 1942 campaign for US Senate.

George Breitman (February 28, 1916 – April 19, 1986) was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. He is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and as a long-time editor of that organization's weekly paper, The Militant. Breitman also supervised and edited several important publishing projects as the head of the SWP's publishing house in the 1960s and 1970s.

Biography

Early years

George Breitman was born February 28, 1916 in a working-class neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, the son of Benjamin Breitman, an iceman, and his wife Pauline Trattler Breitman.[1] He attended public school in Newark. Upon graduation from Newark Central High School, Breitman was employed in the ranks of the Civilian Conservation Corps. He later found a job working in the New Deal's Works Progress Administration.[2]

Political career

Breitman returned to Newark in 1935 and joined the Trotskyist movement as a member of the Spartacus Youth League, the youth section of the Workers Party of the United States (WPUS).[3] He joined the adult WPUS that same year.[4] He also of became involved in the unemployed movement of the period as a leading activist in the New Jersey Workers Alliance.[2]

Breitman followed the Workers Party into the Socialist Party of America in the middle 1930s, before leaving to become a founding member of the Socialist Workers Party in December 1937.[2]

Breitman was elected to the SWP's governing National Committee for the first time in 1939 and served continuously in that position until 1981.[3] He was also frequently a member of the party's Political Committee, which handled day-to-day operations of the organization.[3]

In 1940, Breitman married Dorothea Katz (1914–2004).

Breitman was four times a candidate for the U.S. Senator from New Jersey on the SWP ticket, running in 1940, 1942, 1948, and 1954.[5]

Following the departure of Max Shachtman and his political associates to form a new Workers Party, Breitman was named editor of the SWP's weekly paper, The Militant. He held that post from 1941 until 1943, when he found himself drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to France. In March 1946 he participated in the first post-war conference of the Fourth International, held in Paris. He was arrested at this meeting along with other participants but quickly released, owing to his American citizenship.[3]

After the war, Breitman was once again named editor of The Militant, handling primary editorial duties from 1946 to 1954.[3] During this time, Breitman wrote copiously, publishing over 500 articles in The Militant from 1947 to 1955.[3]

In 1954, the Breitmans moved to Detroit, Michigan, where for the next 13 years they served as District Organizers for the SWP.[3] There George and Dorothea Breitman helped to organize the "Friday Night Socialist Forum" (later called the "Militant Labor Forum"), a weekly lecture series that attracted participants a broad range of activists from labor, radical, and black liberation groups.[2] To pay the bills, Breitman worked as a printer and proofreader for the Detroit Free Press.[3] As such, he was a member of the International Typographical Union.[2]

Breitman returned from Detroit to New York in the late 1960s to take over management of the SWP's publishing arm, Pathfinder Press. In that capacity, he served as editor of a 14-volume collection entitled Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1929–1940, which was published from 1969 to 1979. During his time at the helm of Pathfinder, Breitman was instrumental in the publication of various collections of writings by SWP leading light James P. Cannon and a pioneering selection of writings by Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X Speaks (1965).[2]

In the late 1970s Breitman opposed what he saw as a growing fixation of the SWP's top leadership on the Castroist leadership of the Cuban Communist Party. Breitman became involved in a factional opposition group in the SWP beginning in 1981.[6] This disagreement over the direction ultimately led to Breitman's expulsion from the SWP in 1984.[3]

Despite ill health, Breitman played a leading role in the foundation of the Fourth Internationalist Tendency, which sought to unify U.S. supporters of the Fourth International.[2]

Breitman used several pseudonyms over the course of his life, including most famously "Albert Parker," but also ""Philip Blake," "Drake," "Chester Hofla," "Anthony Massini," "John F. Petrone,"[7] and "G. Sloane."[1]

Death and legacy

Breitman died of a heart attack on April 19, 1986, in New York City.

Breitman's papers are held by the Tamiment Library at New York University. The Breitman papers, consisting of 30 linear feet of material collected in 63 archival boxes, is open for use by scholars without restriction.[2]

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Wolfgang Lubitz and Petra Lubitz, "George Breitman," Lubitz TrotskyanaNet, May 1, 2009; p. 1.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Guide to the George Breitman Papers TAM 169," Tamiment Library, New York University.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Lubitz and Lubitz, "George Breitman," p. 2.
  4. ↑ George Breitman, "Answers to Questions," in The Founding of the Socialist Workers Party: Minutes and Resolutions, 1938-39. New York: Monad Press, 1982; p. 17.
  5. ↑ Lawrence Kestenbaum (ed.), "George Breitman," politicalgraveyard.com Retrieved March 18, 2010.
  6. ↑ Lubitz and Lubitz, "George Breitman," p. 3.
  7. ↑ Jeffrey B. Perry, "Pseudonyms: A Reference Aid for Studying American Communist History," American Communist History, vol. 3, no. 1 (June 2004), p. 110.

Works

External links

Further reading

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