Max Shachtman - Trotskyist Leader

Trotskyist Leader

Shachtman, Cannon and Abern were expelled from the Communist Party in October 1928 as Joseph Stalin took control of the Comintern. These three and a handful of others formed a group around a newspaper called The Militant. Winning new support, including an important group of trade unionists in Minneapolis, the group shortly thereafter formed the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA). As Tim Wohlforth notes, Shachtman was already noted as a talented journalist and intellectual: The Militant listed Shachtman as its managing editor. Shachtman took up a series of positions as a journalist which allowed him the time and resources to bring the American Trotskyists into contact with their co-thinkers. The CLA often gave him responsibility for contact and correspondence with Trotskyists in other countries. While holidaying in Europe during 1930, he became the first American to visit Trotsky in exile, on an island called Prinkipo in Russian, one of the Princes' Islands near Istanbul, Turkey. He attended the first European conference of the International Left Opposition in April 1930 and represented the CLA on the International Bureau of the ILO.

Shachtman's working relationship with Abern was strengthened in 1929 and 1930. They invited Albert Glotzer, already an old friend and political colleague of Shachtman from their days as leaders of the Communist youth organization, to work with them.

Shachtman's journalistic and linguistic skills allowed him to become a successful popularizer and translator of Trotsky's work and to help found and run the Trotskyists' publishing house, Pioneer Press. He was known for the liberal use of humor and sarcasm in his polemical speeches. A division of labor developed within the CLA in which Cannon led the organization while Shachtman directed its literature and international relations.