Paul Le Blanc | |
|---|---|
| Born | Paul Joseph Le Blanc 1947 |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Title | Professor of History |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Pittsburgh |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Modern History |
| Sub-discipline | Marxism,Leninism,Trotskyism |
| Institutions | La Roche University |
| Website | laroche.edu |
Paul Le Blanc (born 1947) is an American historian at La Roche University in Pittsburgh,as well as a labor and socialist activist. He has written and edited more than 30 books on topics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg. [1] [2]
Paul Joseph Le Blanc was born in 1947 in Huntingdon,Pennsylvania and spent his childhood in Clearfield,Pennsylvania. [1] His parents,Gaston Le Blanc and Shirley Harris,were labor activists;he has two sisters. [3]
Le Blanc studied at the University of Pittsburgh,focusing on history and receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971,a Master of Arts degree in 1980,and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989. [1]
In 1965,Le Blanc joined the “New Left”group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). [4] In 1966,as a conscientious objector,he worked for the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee in Pittsburgh and Baltimore. In the early 1970s,he served on the board of the Pittsburgh Peace and Freedom Center and the coordinating committee of the National Peace Action Coalition (1971-1974). He opposed the Vietnam War and supported anti-racist activity –most prominently as part of the Pittsburgh Black Construction Coalition of 1969 –pro-feminist activities,defense of Latin American political prisoners,and Central America solidarity work. [5]
In the 1990s,he became active in the Thomas Merton Center (Pittsburgh). [6] He has been a member of the Socialist Workers Party (USA),the Fourth Internationalist Tendency,Solidarity (United States),and the International Socialist Organization (until it terminated in 2019 [7] ). He was active in efforts to create a Labor Party.[ citation needed ] He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. [8]
Since 2000,Le Blanc has supported the Green Party. He has opposed war and militarism,including US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also collaborated closely with South African poet and global justice activist Dennis Brutus in building Pittsburgh participation in World Social Forums taking place in Porto Alegre,Brazil,in 2003 and Mumbai,India,in 2004. [9]
In 2000,Le Blanc joined the faculty of La Roche College (renamed La Roche University in March 2019) [1] as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences (2003-2009) and as a professor of history. [10]
He has lectured for the International Institute for Research and Education [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation [16] [17] and writes for the Center for Economic Research and Social Change's International Socialist Review . [18]
Le Blanc married and had two sons.
Le Blanc is currently a member of:
He has been a member of:
Le Blanc's influences include:David Montgomery,Philip S. Foner,Frank Lovell,Richard N. Hunt,Paul Sweezy,George Breitman,Ernest Mandel,and Michael Löwy.[ citation needed ]
Magazines and journals to which he contributes include:
Publications include:
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party,imperialism,the state,and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist,a revolutionary Marxist,and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx,Frederick Engels,Vladimir Lenin,Karl Liebknecht,and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However,on balance,scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E.H. Carr,Isaac Deutscher,Moshe Lewin,Ronald Suny,Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin’s desired “heir”would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted ".
Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist,orthodox Marxist,and anti-War activist during the First World War. She became a key figure of the revolutionary socialist movements of Poland and Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century,particularly the Spartacist uprising.
National question is a term used for a variety of issues related to nationalism. It is seen especially often in socialist thought and doctrine.
Raya Dunayevskaya,later Rae Spiegel,also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest,was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary,she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism analyzes and critiques the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic,economic,social and political change. It frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation and analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development –materialist in the sense that the politics and ideas of an epoch are determined by the way in which material production is carried on.
Internationalist and defencist were the broad opposing camps in the international socialist movement during and shortly after the First World War. Prior to 1914,anti-militarism had been a key principle among most European socialist parties. Leaders of the Second International had even suggested that socialist workers might foil a declaration of war by means of a general strike.
Left communism,or the communist left,is a position held by the left wing of communism,which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement is a political pamphlet written by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in 1901 and published in 1902,a development of a "skeleton plan" laid out in an article first published in early 1901. Its title is taken from the 1863 novel of the same name by the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
A workers' council,also called labor council,is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of political and economic organization,the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Furthermore,the workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Antonie Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system. A variation is a soldiers' council,where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction. Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees,such as the Congress of Soviets.
Livio Maitan was an Italian Trotskyist,a leader of Associazione Bandiera Rossa and of the Fourth International. He was born in Venice.
Cyril Lionel Robert James,who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson,was a Trinidadian historian,journalist,Trotskyist activist and Marxist writer. His works are influential in various theoretical,social,and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of Marxism,and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. A tireless political activist,James is the author of the 1937 work World Revolution outlining the history of the Communist International,which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles,and in 1938 he wrote on the Haitian Revolution,The Black Jacobins.
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy,doctrine,and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically,it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection;it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.
Tony Cliff was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in Ottoman Palestine,he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen name of Tony Cliff. A founding member of the Socialist Review Group,which became the International Socialists and then the Socialist Workers Party,in 1977. Cliff was effectively the leader of all three.
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the deaths of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century,expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades,and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914,whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify,codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with Instrumental Marxism.
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-Austrian philosopher,journalist,and Marxist theorist. A leading theorist of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Second International,Kautsky advocated orthodox Marxism,which emphasized the scientific,materialist,and determinist character of Karl Marx's work. This interpretation dominated European Marxism for two decades,from the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin,Stalinism,Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism,such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition. In Western historiography,Stalin is considered one of the worst and most notorious figures in modern history.
Proletarian internationalism,sometimes referred to as international socialism,is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
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