form of society - "bureaucratic collectivism - distinct from both capitalism and socialism? In Ireland, the new party split. Mattie and the party chairman, Bob Armstrong, supported the buresucratic Action, Toronto departed comrade joseph Flexer. He was 67. Education. Board member. Fourth International Barry Weisieder, editor, Socialist Over 400 people, some travelling hundreds of miles on a hot Joe passed away on July 31 at Toronto General Hospital when his new heart falled him, six years after recerving a transplant.
The meeting to celebrate his life was held on August 5, nearly filing the main auditorium of the Ontario Institute for Studies in The gathering was organised by Joe's family and friends and by Socialist Action, of which Joe was a central leader and Editorial For decades loe was a dedicared activist in the Canadan Auto Workers" Union, a leader in his plant and in CAW Local 112. He was a respected national figure in the CAW, at the Toronto and York Region Labour Counci, and across the workers movement which he so loved, from leina to North America. hic was al onder andled. eral Co-Chair of the NDP Joe's son Dani told the Toronto Star that Joe "became a com15". His ideas took him from his native Brooklyn, New York to the Middle East where he joined an Israeli Kibbutz in the 1950s.
His principles compelled him to break with Zionism, and to champion the fight for Palestinian self-determination. In Israel. Joe was, unhappily a soldier, and most happily, a labour militant In the mid- 1960s, Joe returned to North America, lived in Winnipeg and briefly in Montreal, and became an important fig ure in the movement against the war in Vietnam and on the socialist left. Joe sectled in Toronto in the earty 1970s.
Joe was among those who helped to found the Revolutionary arkn wroup m zee wokh er curt omu Torces vu ti League for Socialst Action and the GMR, a Quebec Trotskyist oup, to launch the Revolutionary Workers' League in 1977.
lut he left the section of the Fourth International in the early 1980s, as the RVL succumbed to sectarian policies and practices.
In the Fall of 1995 just a year after his heart transplant in 1994, Socialst Action, and immedately became a member of the editomost of it politically. He took special pleasure in helping to found the NDP Socialist Caucus. He was proud of the leading role he puyed in the wran of the mantesto tortA socialst Canada, and -chair of the Socialist Caucus.
At the recent ONDP Convention in Hamilton, Joe ran for party ice-president as part of an SC slate of candidates, and he got ver 21% of the votes - a good start in an ongoing struggle to save the only mass labour-based party in North America from Joe Flexer walked on countless picket lines, spoke at countless revolutionary communist to the core, an unparalleled internatonalist and a remarkable worker miltant and trade unionist. He was the epitome ol Aritono Gramsas loca of the organic intelencompass the global interests of the workers and oppressed. By building a united struggle against exploitation and oppression we alm to ensure the survival of the human race If you think this is worth fighting for, and you like what you read in Socialist Outlook. why not join us? Drop a line to us at PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU, and well be