George Breitman (1916-1986)
OBITUARY
Finally, the PCI's attitude toward the Soviet Union is now analogous to that of the social democratic parties that stress initiatives for disarmament and detente, or for a relaunching of a policy the Soviet Union toward
More than half a century of like Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the early 1970s.
The relatively favorable assessments revolutionary dedication made of Gorbachev's course do not from the involve any turn away
"falling out" that followed General
AFTER ALMOST thirty years of unremitting illness, George Breit-
Jaruzelski's military coup in Poland.
man died on April 19. He was seventy years old. Although he was in
On the one hand, the analyses in the constant pain in the last period of his life and grew progressively theses are similar to those made by weaker over the past several months, he continued to spend much of many social democrats or bourgeois specialists. On the other, they reflect his waking time in productive political work, dictating three letters the general philosophy of the leaders from his hospital bed only two days before his death.
of the PCI, who cannot contemplate in the
Soviet any change - even except in a reformist and
Statement by the Editorial Board of the
Union gradualist context.
All this confirms unambiguously that the PCI is not qualitatively different from the social democratic from the standpoint of its ideological conceptions, its strategic perspectives or its current political practice.
It would be absurd in characterizing this party to refer to what it was in the 1930s or 1940s. This past is outweighed by 40 years of inte gration into the framework of bourgeois democracy.
At the Florence congress, almost half the delegates were between 30 and 40 years old, and 20 per cent were between 40 and 49. A third of the delegates joined the party between
1969 and 1974. That means that the political experience of all those cadres who make up the skeletal structure of the party is marked not only by activity conducted systematically and without any interruption in the framework of bourgeois democracy but also by the party's evolution in relation to Stalinism and the Soviet
Union since 1956.
It would be wrong in our opinion completion of to think that the of the the social-democratization
PCI that we are seeing now is ingoing to lead to a major evitably crisis in the PCI. Given the relationship workers' of forces in the Italian movement and the loss of credibility that the Italian Socialist Party is suffering because of its practice in government, the PCI can try to play the role of a credible reformist alternative for some time yet.
From this standpoint, it can reasonably hope to hold its influence and temporarily reconsolidate the even unity of its ranks. It is only with a deepening of the social and political crisis that its contradictions - which are the contradictions of reformism - can explode and create new conditions for the recomposition of the workers' movement.
22
Bulletin in Defense of Marxism
Breitman joined the Spartacus Youth League in 1935, at the of 19, and later that year the Workers Party of the US, a forerunner of the Socialist Workers fifty-one years later he never wavered in socialist movement. He was a delegate the founding convention of the and remained a loyal and dedicated member of that organization until that year the present SWP leaders - who had developed profound political differences with the historical program of the party which continued to shamefully expelled him and dozens of his comrades on trumped up charges of "disloyalty." After his expulsion from the SWP Breitman immediately set out to organize the expellees and to try to save the party and its program. He helped to found the Fourth Internationalist Tendency an editor of its journal, the Bulletin in Defense of Marxism.
During his years in the SWP Breitcapacities. He from State Assembly in New Jersey to the US Senate. He set such a good personal example with his election the founder of the American Trotskyist movement, referred jokingly to his "perennial" candidacies and suggested was going to regarded as a chronic office seeker.
In 1941 he several terms as editor of The Militant. Except for the two and a half years he spent in the army as a draftee during World War II, he served continuously party National Committee from 1939 to 1981, and was several times a member of its Political Committee. He took on the tasks of organizer, branch secretary, financial director, recruiter, educator, campaign manager and writer, along with many others. George Breitman during World War II was his ability to explain difficult ideas so that they could be understood by people who were unfamiliar or uncomfortable with movement terminology or jargon. He had a knack for seeing opportunities to apply the party's program to the day to day life of working people. And he had an informal, unpretentious style in writing and speaking that made it easy for his audience to understand him. These qualities made him an outstanding candidate for office in the party's election campaigns and a particularly effective speaker and educator.
Breitman also helped in many efforts of the party to defend itself or its members from victimization by the government. The most famous of these was the "case of the legless veteran," James Kutcher. The Veterans Administration tried to fire Kutcher from his job as a clerk and
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
his during battle after a
In the 1960s Breitman made one best-known contributions to revolutionary Marxism when he helped develop an analysis of the profound revolutionary implications of Black nationalism in the US. In particular, he became an authority on Malcolm
The Last Year of
Malcolm X, The Evolution of a Revolutionary, a book put out by Merit
Publishers in 1967. He also edited, in whole or in part, many of Malcolm's writings and speeches for publication.
X Speaks and By Any Means Necessary, as well as the pamphlet Malcolm
X on Afro-American History.
Young sai recruits
Breitman an of the reasons.
could radicals for the revolutionary mov today.
Breitman took primary responsibility for the project of locating, selecting, translating from many languages, editing and annotating the massive
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986 of Trotsky's writings and shaping it into cohesive form. Ultim- of fourteen consisted of
Leon Trotsky last exile in the series Writings of
covering the of Trotsky's At the same time, he oversaw the work leading to the publication of several volumes of Trotsky's writings specific countries and political themes - the Spanish revolution war of the thirties, the rise of fascism in Germany, the French popular front, "Trotsky Square"
George was born and grew up in neighborhood in His mother was a maid for better-off families, and his father was an iceman who carried 50-pound blocks of ice up six flights he to 1927. good and jane the ran of the unemploy.
ed. During the summer of 1933 he was often in a playground near his home playing baseball and editing the playground's mimeographed newspaper. The whole year after he graduated from high school he spent writing a novel about his neighborhood,
Alliance in 1936.
strikes were won many eighteen of the
Workers Party, the overthrow
23
OBITUARY pants. The conference continued in a French jail, but Breitman was released in a few hours and shipped home.
On his return to the US he again served as editor of The Militant from 1946-47 and 1951-53. In 1954 he moved to Detroit, where he worked as a proofreader for the Detroit Free Press and became a member of
Union. He spent 13 years as an active leader of the Detroit party branch, where he founded the Friday Night Socialist Forum, which ran continuously from 1954 until 1967. When he left Detroit George returned to New York City where he remained for the rest of his life. He is survived by his wife, comrade, and companion of 46 years, Dorothea.