David North is the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and current National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US). He has been active in the international Trotskyist movement for over 50 years, he joined the Workers League in 1971 and began working for the Bulletin—a predecessor of the WSWS—the following year. He was elected as Workers League national secretary in 1976.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s North played a leading role in numerous strikes s, most notably the 1973-1974 unionization drive of miners in Harlan County, the 1974 and 1977-78 national coal miners’ strike, the PATCO strike of 1981, and the 1983-1986 Phelps Dodge miners strike.
He also played a leading role in the International Committee’s investigation into the assassination of Leon Trotsky by GPU agents and the infiltration of Trotskyist movement by Soviet secret police and FBI agents. The findings of the investigation were later detailed in Security and the Fourth International, which included numerous articles written by North.
North played a leading role in the defense of Trotskyist principles during the 1985-86 split between the International Committee and the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), then the British section of the IC. The WRP, which had previously fought against attempts by the Pabloites to liquidate the Fourth International, from the 1970s had increasingly adopted a Pabloite line towards Stalinist and Arab bourgeois movements. In 1985 the WRP was thrown into crisis, which resulting in a discussion throughout the IC of documents written by North that had been suppressed by the WRP leadership.
In 1986 North co-authored an analysis of the split, “How the Workers Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism,” with Keerthi Balasuriya, the national secretary of the Sri Lankan section of the ICFI. In 1986-87 North wrote The Heritage We Defend, which placed the split with the WRP in the context of the history of the Fourth International, and, in particular, the Trotskyist movement’s opposition to opportunism
In 1997, North led the discussion on the transition from printed papers to an international website, resulting in the launching of the WSWS on February 14, 1998.
The origins of this work lie in the political struggle waged by the ICFI and the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party (US), from 1982-1986, to defend Trotskyism against the nationalist opportunism of the ICFI’s former British section. It establishes the continuity of orthodox Trotskyism in the political struggles inside the Fourth International in the 20th century.
One hundred years after the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution, none of the problems of the 20th century—devastating wars, economic crises, social inequality, and the threat of dictatorship—have been solved. In fact, they are posed even more sharply today.
In this book, North defends Trotsky’s legacy against the campaign of historical falsification begun by Stalin and continuing to this day. While Stalin assassinated Trotsky in 1940, he was unable to silence the Fourth International, founded to embody the revolutionary heritage of 1917.
The polemical essays in this volume examine the complex interaction between history, philosophy and politics. The author defends historical materialism against contemporary anti-Marxist philosophical tendencies related to the Frankfurt School and postmodernism.
Beginning with the first Persian Gulf conflict of 1990–91, the United States has been at war continuously for a quarter century. While using propaganda catchphrases, such as “defense of human rights” and “War on Terror,” to conceal the real aims of its interventions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, as well as its confrontation with Russia and China, the United States has been engaged in a struggle for global hegemony.
This work was written from October- to December, 1982, on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Tom Henehan, a member of the political committee of the Workers League, the forerunner of the SEP (United States). It reviews the historical and political foundations of the Trotskyist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Gerry Healy (1913-1989) was a longtime leader of the Fourth International, whose struggle in the British and international Trotskyist movement spanned five decades, until his break with the International Committee in 1985. This book contains a critical Marxist assessment of the life of Healy and its relationship to the historical development of the Fourth International.
This volume, written between March and May of 1989, contained a comprehensive analysis of the program and actions of the regime of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union as it moved to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.
A single reading of The Revolution Betrayed will still yield more knowledge of the structure and dynamics of Soviet society than would be acquired from a systematic review of the countless thousands of volumes which bourgeois “Sovietology” has inflicted on the public over the last few decades.
On February 12, 1996, the Workers League announced its decision to found a new political party, the Socialist Equality Party. This report by National Secretary David North to a meeting of the Workers League membership elaborates the political and theoretical foundations for the transition to the SEP.
This discussion with David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, focused on his two most recent books, Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War and The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide.
On Saturday, October 19, David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, spoke to over 100 attendees of the Frankfurt Book Fair at the Gallus House on the topic “Back to the Future: Fascism, War and Class Struggle in the 21st Century.”
This speech was given by David North on the island of Büyükada (Prinkipo), Turkey, on August 25, 2024. The event, titled, “Analyzing a World in Chaos from an Island of Tranquility,” was the second international commemoration of the work of Leon Trotsky during his time on Büyükada, where he stayed during the first period of his exile from the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1933.
This lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, March 12, 2024.
This lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany on December 14, 2023.
This lecture relates the foundational principles of the International Committee of the Fourth International to the present struggle against the imperialist-Zionist genocide in Gaza.
This lecture by David North provides a political and historical analysis of the genocidal war now being conducted by the Zionist regime in Israel against the Palestinians.
This is the speech by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North given on Sunday, August 20, honoring the life and political legacy of Leon Trotsky.
The following is the text of the opening report delivered by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, to the International May Day Online Rally 2023, held Sunday, April 30.
On Saturday, May 4, 2019, the ICFI held its sixth annual online May Day Rally. It heard speeches on different aspects of the world crisis of capitalism and the struggles of the international working class from 12 leading members of the world party and its sections and sympathizing organizations around the world
North spoke at a lecture series organized by the IYSSE in the United States, “The threat of fascism and how to fight it.” The meetings were addressed by Christoph Vandreier, the assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party of Germany. “If you agree with our analysis,” North said, “you've got to decide what you're going to do.”
“There is no element of exaggeration in the assertion that in the realm of philosophy, economic science, historiography, social theory and politics, Marx is the most significant figure of the modern era,” North said.
“In opposition to the capitalist solution, the necessary and unavoidable response of the working class in all the imperialist countries was world socialist revolution.”
“Far from being an end of history,” North said, “what we are witnessing today is the repetition on a higher scale of the very conflicts which produced the catastrophes of the 20th century.”
The assassination of Leon Trotsky ranks among the most politically consequential crimes of the twentieth century, with far-reaching implications for the international working class and the world socialist movement.
We publish here the preface to A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony, 1990-2016 by David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site. The book is available for preorder today at Mehring Books.
This letter was sent by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North to a friend who requested North’s opinion on a recent online discussion held at a US college on the Russia-Ukraine war.
The following lecture was delivered September 17, 2013 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US).
Among the most striking features of the US-NATO onslaught against Libya has been the widespread support that this “war of choice” has evoked among left-liberal parties and the affluent middle-class milieu that comprise an important part of their constituency.
The following is the introduction to the recently translated Turkish edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky, written by the book’s author, David North, chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site. The book was originally published in 2013.
On October 7, David North, International Editorial Board chairman of the World Socialist Web Site, delivered the following lecture to a well-attended public meeting in Colombo, organised by the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka).
The founding of the Fourth International on September 3, 1938, was an event of great historical significance and contemporary relevance.
This tribute was written by David North and originally posted on the WSWS in December 2007 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the death of Keerthi Balasuriya.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the Russian city of Simbirsk on April 22, 1870. Known in history under the name of Lenin, he was the founder of the Bolshevik Party, leader of the 1917 October Revolution and, undoubtedly, a towering figure in the political and intellectual history of the twentieth century.
David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and of the Socialist Equality Party (US), delivered this lecture at the University of Leipzig on March 16.
The commemoration of the centenary of the October Revolution reflected the political interests and outlooks of different class forces.
This lecture by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North was delivered in German on October 22 at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. North spoke at the invitation of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.
This 2012 report by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North provides the critical theoretical and historical background to the events in Greece, where the pseudo-left Syriza has risen to state power and rapidly capitulated to the European banks.
Following a presentation of the new German edition of The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left, North was interviewed by the newspaper Schattenblick on the theoretical and political issues addressed in his book.
The polemical essays in this volume examine the complex interaction between history, philosophy and politics. It is vital reading for those who wish to deepen their knowledge of classical Marxism.
On December 11, the international socialist movement marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of the “father of Russian Marxism,” Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov.
This lecture was delivered by World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Chairman David North at the Socialist Equality Party/WSWS summer school held August 14 to August 20, 2005 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
This lecture was delivered by World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Chairman David North at the Socialist Equality Party/ WSWS summer school held August 14 to August 20, 2005 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The year 2018—the bicentenary of Marx’s birth—will be characterized, above all, by an immense intensification of social tensions and an escalation of class conflict around the world.
In October 2017, David North delivered a lecture on the centenary of the October Revolution at St. Andrews College in Scotland. Prior to the lecture, he was interviewed by Adam Stromme, the editor in chief of the St Andrews Economist, the official publication of the St Andrews Economics Society.
