The Militant

This article is about the newspaper. For the Trotskyist entryist group, see Militant tendency. For other uses, see Militant (disambiguation).

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Headline: "A Socialist Weekly Published in the Interests of Working People"

The Militant is an international Socialist newsweekly connected to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Pathfinder Press. It is published in the United States and distributed in other countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Sweden, Iceland, and New Zealand.

Publication history

Forerunners

An earlier publication called The Militant was launched in November 1928 by James P. Cannon and other American Trotskyists gathered together in the Communist League of America (CLA). It declared its goal to be a fight "in the interest of the working people" against the capitalist system, imperialist wars, and the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, which according to the Trotskyists had betrayed and corrupted the October Revolution.

The original Militant terminated in 1934 at the time of the merger of the Cannon-led CLA with the American Workers Party headed by A. J. Muste to form the Workers Party of the United States (WPUS). The paper was succeeded by a similar broadsheet that served as the official organ of the WPUS called the New Militant, edited by Cannon. This paper was in turn terminated after about 18 months when the main section of the WPUS joined the Socialist Party of America en masse in 1936 and was replaced by a new publication Socialist Appeal by Trotskyists in the SPA. Albert Goldman edited the Chicago-based publication from 1935, he and other Trotskyists in Chicago had joined the SPA prior to the rest of the WPUS. In 1937, the newspaper was transferred to New York City.

Current publication

The Socialist Workers Party was founded on December 31, 1937, by Trotskyists following the expulsion of the "Socialist Appeal faction" from the Socialist Party of America. The SWP's newspaper continued to be known as Socialist Appeal until 1941 when it was renamed The Militant. This publication has continued without interruption into the decade of the 2010s.

In the summer of 2005, The Militant became a bilingual newspaper, published in both English and Spanish (El Militante), and with lead articles and editorials appearing in both languages. A French edition was inaugurated in 2012 named Le Militant.

The Militant is not officially owned or controlled by the SWP. To protect the party and the paper, The Militant is owned by a private group, although the endorsement the paper gives to the SWP is clear.

Controversy

The Militant became notorious after a photo surfaced showing Lee Harvey Oswald, the sniper who assassinated president John F. Kennedy, holding a copy of the publication along with a rifle.

External links

• Official website
• Archive for all the back issues of The Militant 1928–1941
• Pathfinder Books, the bookstore of the Socialist Workers Party