David North

The Heritage We Defend (30th Anniv. Edition): A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International

$9.99$49.95

The work reviews the political and theoretical disputes inside the Fourth International, the international Marxist movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. It is a devastating reply to former WRP General Secretary Michael Banda’s document “27 Reasons why the International Committee Should be Buried Forthwith and the Fourth International Built.”

Contains a detailed and objective assessment of the political contribution and evolution of James P. Cannon, Trotsky’s most important co-thinker in the US, as well as the evolution of the US Socialist Workers Party.

The 2018 edition of the foundational 1988 work by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, contains a new preface, photo section, and an extensive glossary.

See all publication information ›

Frequently Bought Together

The 2018 edition of the foundational 1988 work by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, contains a new preface, photo section, and an extensive glossary.

The work reviews the political and theoretical disputes inside the Fourth International, the international Marxist movement founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938. It is a devastating reply to former WRP General Secretary Michael Banda’s document “27 Reasons why the International Committee Should be Buried Forthwith and the Fourth International Built.”

Through detailed references to original documents and programmatic statements from the archives of the Trotskyist movement, the central political problems of the revolutionary movement – from the “French Turn” of the 1930s to the proletarian military policy of the Second World War, to the post-war struggle against Pabloism – are elucidated.

Contains a detailed and objective assessment of the political contribution and evolution of James P. Cannon, Trotsky’s most important co-thinker in the US, as well as the evolution of the US Socialist Workers Party.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface to the 2018 edition
Preface to the Turkish edition
1. M. Banda Renounces Trotskyism
2. The Banda School of Falsification
3. The SWP and the 1940 Elections
4. The SWP and American Stalinism
5. Revolutionary Defeatism in World War II
6. Trotsky’s Proletarian Military Policy
7. The Fourth International in World War II
8. The “Three Theses” of the Retrogressionists
9. The Morrow-Goldman Faction
10. Cannon’s “American Theses”
11. The Fourth International After the War
12. The Fourth International and the Yugoslav Revolution
13. The Origins of Pabloism
14. The Metaphysics of Nationalized Property
15. The Nature of Pabloite Opportunism
16. Cannon’s Struggle Against the Cochranites
17. The Split in the Fourth International
18. James P. Cannon’s “Open Letter”
19. After the Split
20. The SWP and McCarthyism
21. The SWP in Retreat
22. Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to the Twentieth Congress
23. The Impact of the Hungarian Revolution
24. The SWP’s “Regroupment” Fiasco
25. The British Trotskyists Oppose Unprincipled Unity
26. The Cuban Revolution
27. Hansen’s Debasement of Marxist Theory
28. The SLL Defends the International Committee
29. The Historic Betrayal in Ceylon
30. Marxism and the “Breakdown” Theory
31. A Petty-Bourgeois Nationalist Unmasked
32. The Wohlforth Incident
33. M. Banda Embraces Stalinism (I)
34. M. Banda Embraces Stalinism (II)
35. M. Banda Embraces Stalinism (III)

 

David North has played a leading role in the international socialist movement for forty-five years, and is presently the chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (US). His many published works include The Heritage We Defend; The Crisis of American Democracy; In Defense of Leon Trotsky; The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century; The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left and A Quarter Century of War.

Books by David North

Weight 2.25 lbs
Author

Publication Type

Publisher