George Breitman

I've been listening to audio of some compelling lectures by George Breitman this week. You can hear them here.

Below is his obit:

George Breitman: lifelong Socialist

Nearly five decades in revolutionary struggle for world socialism

BY MALIK MIAH 

George Breitman, who had been a member of the Socialist Workers Party for 46 years, died of a heart attack in New York on April 19. He was 70 years old. 

Breitman was first attracted to the Socialist movement in the mid-1930s. After leaving high school in Newark, New Jersey, Breitman enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps - a government agency for youth, especially unemployed youth. He spent a year in Alabama working on the building of a fire tower. 

Upon his return to Newark in 1935, after coming to the conclusion that he wanted to fight for a better society, Breitman joined the Spartacus Youth League. The League was a youth group in political solidarity with the Workers Party, a forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party. A few months later, he joined the Workers Party. 

In the 1930s he was a leader of the Workers Alliance of America, an organization based on the unemployed and Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers, who worked on government-sponsored jobs. He was New Jersey state organization secretary of the alliance.

While leading an important Workers Alliance-organized struggle in Burlington County, New Jersey, in 1936, Breitman was arrested for allegedly inciting to riot. The charges were later dropped. 

Delegate to founding SWP convention 

In the spring of 1936 the Workers Party dissolved and its members joined the Socialist Party, in which a substantial left wing was developing. The Newark branch of the SP, which Breitman joined, was led by left-wing forces. 

In July 1937 the Socialist Party leadership bureaucratically expelled all the left-wing branches, including Newark, 

On Dec. 31, 1937-Jan. 3, 1938, the expelled left-wing branches of the Socialist Party held a convention in Chicago. That convention launched the Socialist Workers Party. 

Breitman attended the founding SWP convention as a delegate from Newark and served on the Credentials Committee and Unemployed Commission. 

At the 1939 convention he was elected to the Socialist Workers Party National Committee. He remained a member of the national committee until 1981 . 

Breitman carried out many tasks in his long service to the revolutionary movement. This included being elected by the branch executive committee to serve as branch organizer for the SWP in Newark and Detroit on several occasions between 1935 and 1967. 

The Detroit branch executive committee, which Breitman was a member of, placed special importance on organizing weekly Militant Labor Forums and running professional socialist election campaigns to get out the party's views. 

While in Detroit, he worked for a number of years as a proofreader for the Detroit Free Press and was a member of the International Typographical Union. Breitman was initially assigned to the editorial staff of the Militant in 1941.

That year, the government indicted 28 leaders of the SWP and Teamsters General Drivers Local 544 in Minneapolis. The defendants were charged with advocating the overthrow of the government by force and violence under the recently passed Smith Act for their opposition to World War II and U.S. government preparations to enter the war. Teamsters' President Daniel Tobin joined with the government in attacking the democratically elected local union leadership. 

Eighteen defendants were convicted. 

They were sentenced to prison Dec. 8, I 941, the day Washington declared war on Japan. 

It was in this context that the party leadership asked Breitman, who was then Newark branch organizer, to join the Militant staff. Because Felix Morrow, then editor of the paper, was one of the Smith Act defendants, Breitman soon became acting editor. In January 1942 he was named editor. 

He remained editor until 1943 when he was drafted into the army. After the war he resumed the responsibilities of editor from 1949 until 1954.

Breitman's other editorial and writing responsibilities over the years included being assigned to the editorial staff of Pathfinder Press from 1969 until 1983. He was the editor, co-editor, or consulting editor on a number of writing projects. 

Breitman was the main editor of the speeches and statements published by Pathfinder Press of Malcolm X, the Black revolutionary who was assassinated in 1965. This included editing the books Malcolm X Speaks and By Any Means Necessary. He also wrote The Last Year of Malcolm X. 

Breitman was an editor of the series of Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky's 1929-1940 writings. This project included 12 volumes and two supplementary books. He also helped prepare many of the volumes of letters, speeches, and articles of James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the SWP. 

In the 1970s, Breitman wrote an occasional column in the Militant on the publications of Pathfinder Press, as well as reporting on the progress of the Trotsky Writings series. 

Fourth International 

Breitman was also active in building the Fourth International, an organization of Marxist groups around the world, which the SWP played a major role in founding in 1938. 

After being drafted, Breitman was sent to Europe by the army. Like other SWP members stationed abroad during the war, he sought to make contact with Fourth Internationalists. In much of Europe, revolutionary Marxists had gone underground and joined the resistance against Nazi occupation. 

Breitman arrived in France in June 1944 where he was able to participate in meetings of the European Secretariat of the Fourth International. The European Secretariat was an executive committee set up to coordinate work on a Europe-wide scale. Breitman attended the meetings as an observer. (The SWP, after the passage of reactionary legislation in 1940, was forced to disaffiliate from the Fourth International. The party maintained fraternal relations, however, including on a leadership level.) In March 1946 Breitman attended a conference of the Fourth International in Paris as a fraternal delegate representing the SWP. 

Breitman was elected to the new International Executive Committee, the leadership body of the International that was chosen at this conference. 

He was nominated by the SWP for public office in a number of election campaigns. In 1940 he was chosen as the party's candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey. He campaigned nine other times for public office between 1940 and 1954. 

Breitman also was active in many party defense efforts. This included the famous case of James Kutcher, a legless veteran, who was fired in 1948 from a clerical job at the Veterans Administration in Newark because of his socialist beliefs and membership in the SWP. After winning broad public support, Kutcher won his case and was reinstated to his job in 1956. 

In 1981 Breitman was one of the SWP leaders called by the party to testify at the trial of the lawsuit brought by the SWP and the Young Socialist Alliance against government spying, disruption operations, and harassment. 

Breitman remained active in the SWP until January 1984 when he left the SWP as part of a split over political and organizational differences. 

George Breitman will be remembered as a revolutionary who devoted his life to the struggle for socialism and for his many contributions to building the Socialist Workers Party for nearly five decades.

The Militant

May 2, 1986

http://themilitant.com/1986/5017/MIL5017.pdf