George Breitman died on April 19. He was seventy years old. Although he was in constant pain in the last period of his life and grew progressively weaker over the past several months, he continued to spend much of his waking time in productive political work, dictating three letters from his hospital bed only two days before his death.
Breitman joined the Spartacus Youth League in 1935, at the age of 19 and later that ycar the Workers Party of the US, a forefunner of the Socialist Workers Party. From that time until his death fifty-one years later he never wavered in his dedication to building the revolutionary socialist movement. He was delegate to the founding convention of the Socialist Workers Party in. 1937, and remained a loyal and dedicated member of that organization until 1984.
In that year the present SWP leaders -who had developed profound political differences with this historical program of the party which Breitman continued to
- shamefully expelled him 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.
During his years in the SWP Breitman
capacities. He was a candidate ten times on the party ticket, for offices ranging from State Assembly in New Jersey to the US Senate. He set such a good personal example with his election paigns that James P Cannon the founder of the American Trotskyist movement suggested jokingly that Breitman regarded as a chronic office secker.
In 1941 he began his first of several terms as the editor of The Militant. Except for the two and a half years he spent in the army as a draftee during World War I, he served continuously on the party National Committee from 1939 to 198l.
Perhaps his greatest strength 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 secing opportunies 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 casy for his audience to understand him.
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.
Vetcrans Administration tried to Kutcher
from the job as a clerk and take away his
veteran's benefits during the witch-hunt
years of the 1950s because of his member-
ship of the SWP, despite the fact that he had
lost both of his legs in Italy as a Gil in World
War II. Breitman, along with others, helped
Kutcher in his political and legal campaign
against the government's attack. Afteralong
battle the case won. Breitman callaborated
with Kutcher in writing his book about this
experience. and the two remained lifelong 28 friends. Kutcher was expelled from the SWP
George Breitman On 19 April this year George Brietman, a leader of the revolutionary movement in the United States over five decades, died. Below we publish an appreciation of his life and work by the editors of the US journal, Bulletin in Defence of Marxism. in 1983, after a terrible slander campaign
In the 1960's Broitman made one of his 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 of Malcolm Y and wrote The Last Year of Maleolm 1. The Evolution of a Revolutionary in 1967. He also edited the whole or in part, many of Malcolm's writings and speeches lor pu-
included the books Malcolm X Speaks and By Any Means Necessary, as well as the pamphlet Malcolm X on Afro-American History: Breitman proposed an extensive project for Pathfinder Press: to collect and publish the writings of Leon Trotsky.
Breitman took primary responsibility lor the project of locating, selecting, translating from many languages, editing and annotatIng the massive amount of Trotsky's writings and shaping it into cohesive form. Ultimately this consisted of fourteen volumes in the serics Writings ofl.con Trotsky, covering the years of Trotsky's last exile (1929-40).
George was bom and grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in Newark, New Jersey. His mother was a maid tor better-off families and his father was an iceman who carried 50 pound blocks of tee up six flights of tenement stairs in the days
before refrigeration. When his father died at theage of 40, George's old sister Celia had to quit school to help support the family. She was by far the most important influence on George as a child. She became a member of the Young Communist League and combined her babysitting responsibilities and her political ones by bringing George to mectings while he was still quite young.
As a youngster, Gicorge read voraciously. Mostly he read junk the hundreds of adventure and pulp novels for boys that were the diet of i generation before tclevision turned reading for pleasure into an obsolete activity. But he also read good novels and short stories. His hangouts were his neighbourhood which later became know to many as "Trotsky Square" because so many of his gang joined the Trotskyist vouth, and the Newark public
At the age of 16, in 1932, Gorge graduated from Central High School during the depths of the Depression and joined the
Cof the unemployed. During the summer of 1933 he was often in a playground near his home playing baseball and
playground's mincographed The whole graduated from high school he spent writing a novel about his neighbourhood which he later destroved. In 1934 George went to Alabama as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Now Deal outfit intended to get unemployed youth off the streets. Here he received some copies of The Militant from a neighbourhood friend.
After returning to Newark in 1935, Broitman joined the Trotskyist movement and turned his attention to mass work in the unemployed, the Workers Alliance of Amcrica. In August 1936 he was the youngest (at age 20) of seven Workers Alliance leaders arrested and charged with inciting to riot. They were organising strikes and closing down government sponsored projects in
Burlington County. Breitman spent a week
in jail on that occasion. The charges were
eventually dropped, the strikers were won
and the strikers got a 5-cent holiday raise.
The unemployed movement of the thirties
was the main opportunity Breitman had to participate in the mass movement and to test
himself and his politics in action. In 1941, cighteen leaders of the Socialst Workers Party, charged under the Smith Act with
advocating the forcible otherthrow of the
US government, were imprisoned on the day
the US entered World War I. The eighteen
included Felix Morrow, editor of The
Militant. Breitman was asked to take over as
editor of the paper, a post he held until he
was drafted in 1943 and sent to France.
On his return to the US he again served as
editor of The Militant tro 1946-47 and
1951-53. In 1954 hemoved to Detroit, where
he worked as a proofreader for the Detroit
Fice Press and became a member of the
International Typographic Union. He spent
13 ycars as an active leader of the Detroit
party branch. 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 compa-
nion of 46 years, Dorothea.
INTENALONAI No. SAuly/fuget 1'280
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