The Albert & Vera Weisbord Archives

This is the internet archives of Albert & Vera Weisbord, Leading Communist Radicals of the 1930's. Organizers of 1926 Passaic Textile Strike, 1929 Gastonia Textile Strike, leaders of the Communist League of Struggle 1931-37.

Albert Weisbord was born in New York City on December 9, 1900 of poor Russian Jewish parents. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the College of the City of New York in 1921. Upon graduation from CCNY he applied for the Harvard Law School ("not so much to study law, but to examine at close hand how law was the resultant of the action of social forces.") graduating with honors.

Albert joined the Brooklyn Branch of the Socialist Party, by 1920 he became an active organizer. In 1921 he was elected National Secretary of the Young Peoples Socialist League and later a member of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party. In 1924 he was a delegate to the Convention of the Conference for Progressive Political Action. Soon he would resign from the Socialist Party to join the Workers (Communist) Party. He moved to Paterson N.J. where he formed the United Front Committee of Textile Workers, and involved himself in a strike of Silk Mill Workers in West New York, N.J. From there he was on to Passaic where he organized a strike of over 16,000 workers. In Passaic he met Vera Buch.

Vera Buch was born August 19, 1895 in Forestville, Connecticut. As a child, she survived poverty in the tenements of New York. Vera attended Hunter High School (Valedictorian) and Hunter College where she won three First Prizes in French competition among colleges in the USA and Canada.

In a tuberculosis sanatorium Vera first became interested in the class struggle. In 1919 she joined the left wing of the Socialist Party, beginning a long period of work as a labor activist. She soon joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and then the Communist Party when it first formed in 1920. In 1922 she joined the Workers (Communist) Party. In 1926 she was sent to Passaic to help in the strike, there she met Albert Weisbord, who like Vera was a committed revolutionist.

After Passaic Albert and Vera were involved with the miners in the coal fields of Penn. (United Mine Workers) and in 1929 the Gastonia Textile Strike, where Vera was arrested for murder. In 1930 Albert and Vera separated from the Communist party and were briefly associated with The Left Opposition that was led by James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman (Communist League of America). At one point Albert was a Trotskyist but by 1931 he had moved outside of The Left Opposition towards a policy and program of his own.

In 1931 "The Communist League of Struggle" was formed with its official organ "Class Struggle". During the entire publication of Class Struggle (1931-1937) Albert was the main contributor. In 1932 Albert visited with Leon Trotsky for three weeks in Turkey. Latter he traveled to Germany and Spain, of these visits articles can be found in the collections of Class Struggle.

In 1937 Albert's book, "The Conquest of Power" was published, in 1964 his book "Latin American Actuality" was published. Vera's book "A Radical Life" was published in 1977 by Indiana University Press.

Albert Weisbord died in 1977.

Vera Buch Weisbord died in 1989.

ARTICLES:

Passaic Textile Strike of 1926:
Passaic
Passaic Reviewed
Strike Bulletins Part 1
Strike Bulletins Part 2
Strike Bulletins Part 3

Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929:
Strike at the Loray Mill

The Spanish Revolution:
The Spanish Revolution
The Spanish Revolution at the Crossroads
Long Live The Spanish Socialist Republic
The Underground Railway To Spain
Two Visits to Barcelona
Outcast Spain
The Huesca Front in Aragon
The Provocations of Bourgeois Democracy in Spain
Barricades in Barcelona
Perspectives of the Spanish Revolution
Collectivization in Catalonia
The Fight Within the Spanish Left
The P.O.U.M. in Spain
An Analysis of the Barcelona May Days
Unique Problems of the Spanish Revolution
Covering the Evacuation of the Refugees

Studies in the 1958 Depression, Business and Labor:
I The Program of Big Labor
II The Program of Big Business
III The Program of Little Business

Philosophy:
Scientific Materialism
State-Nation
The Laws of Movement of Capitalism
Offshoots of Liberalism - Feminism
Offshoots of Liberalism - Pacifism

Afro-American Committee:
Afro-American Manifesto
Afro-American Program of Action
Afro-American Guerilla Warfare (Draft)

La Parola del Popolo:
What About Russia
Bolshevism - Fraudulent Practice Of Democratic Centralism
The Masks and Ignorance of Bolshevism
A Lesson from Chile to Socialists
The Devil - A God Was He!
Review Of   "Haymarket Revisited"
Professor Bruno Bettelheim's Foreword to "Auschwitz"
Feminism and Family Names
Notes on a Recent Trip
Perspective for the Portuguese Revolution
Whats Going On In Cuba
Does Mexico Need A Fidel Castro?
Mobilization Against Cuba in Latin America
Perspectives of the Cuban Revolution
Chronic Crisis in Latin America
Castroism - Deadly Danger to the Cuban Revolution
Moscow's Betrayal of the Cuban Revolution
Viva Cristo Rey!
Theses on the Communist Parties in the West
The Comming Dissolution of NATO
Bologna: Rose Colored and Red
On Busing and of The Bakke Case
Italian Strikers in Lodi, N.J. 1926
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti
A Women Writes About Rape, A Book Review

Miscellaneous:
The Strategy of the Fourth International
Critique of the Draft Program of the C.P.S.U.
Stalinism -- Before and During World War II
The "-ism" in Marxism
Correspondence With Liborio Justo
Correspondence With Theodore Draper
The Party Record of James P. Cannon
A Brief Explaination of Taxation for Workers
Recipe For The Defeat Of Nazism

The Militant: (Communist League of America)
Problems of the Revolutionary Movement
A Concrete Program for the Unemployed

Communist League of Struggle:
Communism and the Social Order
Theses of the Communist League of Struggle
The Struggle of the Unemployed
The Struggle for Negro Emancipation
For A New Communist International

The Class Struggle:
Volume 1 Number 1, May 1931
Volume 1 Number 2, June 1931
Volume 1 Number 3, August/September 1931
Volume 1 Number 4, October/November 1931
Volume 1 Number 5, December 1931
Volume 1 Number 6, December 1931
Volume 2 Number 1, January 1932
Volume 2 Number 2, February 1932
Volume 2 Number 3, March 1932
Volume 2 Number 4, April 1932
Volume 2 Number 5, May 1932
Volume 2 Number 6, July 1932
Volume 2 Number 7, August 1932
Volume 2 Number 8, September 1932
Volume 2 Number 9, October 1932
Volume 2 Number 10-11, November/December 1932
Volume 3 Number 1, January 1933
Volume 3 Number 2, February 1933
Volume 3 Number 3-4, March 1933
Volume 3 Number 5, May 1933
Volume 3 Number 6, June 1933
Volume 3 Number 7, August 1933
Volume 3 Number 8, August 1933
Volume 3 Number 9, September 1933
Volume 3 Number 10, November 1933
Volume 4 Number 1, January 1934
Volume 4 Number 2, February 1934
Volume 4 Number 3, March 1934
Volume 4 Number 4-5, April-May 1934
Volume 4 Number 6-7, June-July 1934
Volume 4 Number 8, August 1934
Volume 4 Number 9-10, October 1934
Volume 4 Number 11, November 1934
Volume 5 Number 1, January 1935
Volume 5 Number 2, February 1935
Volume 5 Number 3, March 1935
Volume 5 Number 4, April 1935
Volume 5 Number 5, May 1935
Volume 5 Number 6, June 1935
Volume 5 Number 7-8, August 1935
Volume 5 Number 9-10, October 1935
Volume 5 Number 11, November 1935
Volume 5 Number 12, December 1935
Volume 6 Number 1, January 1936
Volume 6 Number 2, February 1936
Volume 6 Number 3-4, August 1936
Volume 6 Number 5, September 1936
Volume 6 Number 6, October 1936
Volume 6 Number 7, November 1936
Volume 6 Number 8, December 1936
Volume 7 Number 1-2, February 1937
Volume 7 Number 3, March 1937
Volume 7 Number 4-5, April/May 1937

The Conquest of Power:
Book Reviews of "The Conquest of Power"
Preface & Introduction to "The Conquest of Power"
Contents of Volume One
Book One Liberalism
I. Liberalism's Road to Power
1. The English Civil Wars
2. The American Revolution
3. The French Revolution
II. Liberalism's Comming of Age
4. Utilitarianism, Laissez-Faire and Individualism
5. Continental Liberalism
III The Wane of Liberalism
6. Welfare-Liberalism
7. The Dissolution of Liberalism
Book Two Anarchism
I. Liberal-Anarchism
8. Libertarianism
9. Mutualism
10. American Liberal-Anarchism
II. Communist-Anarchism
11. Collectivist-Anarchism
12. Communist-Anarchism
Book Three Syndicalism
I. Trade Union Reformism
13 Trade Unionism
II. Trade Union Revolutionism
14 French Syndicalism
15. American Revolutionary Industrial Unionism
BOOK IV. Socialism
I. Foundations of Socialism
16. The Background
17. Scientific Socialism
18. Early Socialists
19. The First International
II. The Second International
20. Revisionism
21. Sectarianism
III. Counter-Revolution
22. Socialism and The War
23. Socialism and The Proletarian Revolution
Contents of Volume Two
Book Five Fascism
I. Foundations of Fascism
24. Chronic Crisis
25. The Age of Violence
26. Fascist Prototypes
II. Fascism Arrives
27. The End of Reform
28. Italy
29. German National Socialism
30. National Socialism (continued)
31. The Spread of Fascism
32. Fascist Trends In The United States
33. The Future Physiognomy of American Fascism
Book Four Communism
I. The Zig-Zag Character of The Proletarian Revolution
34. Early Communist Uprisings
35. The Paris Commune
36. Bolshevism
37. The Russian Revolution of 1905
38. The Russian Revolution of 1917
39. The Russian Revolution (continued)
II. The Third International Under Lenin
40. The Post-War Revolutionary Wave
41. The First Four Congresses
III. Stalinism
42. The Swing To The Right
43. The Chinese Revolution
44. Socialism In One Country
45. Isolation and Collapse
46. Isolation and Collapse (continued)
47. Communism in The United States
IV. The Fourth International
48. The Strategy of the Fourth International
49. Communism and America

More documents will be added as they become transcribed.

If you have any comments or suggestions please e-mail at:

weisbord@igc.org

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The Albert & Vera Weisbord Foundation
Chicago, Illinois

Last Update, October 1, 2004
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