Obituary

BERTA LANGSTON (1922-2010), a founder and member of Solidarity, died of lung cancer at age 84 in Norwalk, Connecticut on June 23. Born Berta Green on the Lower East Side of New York City, she was one of four sisters. She joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the mid-1940s and throughout nearly four decades of activity she was widely esteemed on the Left as one of the party’s most devoted and capable militants, a person who could work with sundry individuals to develop coalitions and political defense committees of national and international import. From time to time she used the party name “Berta Graham,” and she received a Marxist education at the “Trotsky School” at Mountain Spring Camp in New Jersey. During the mid-1960s she served briefly on the SWP National Committee. - read article...

On Friday 28 May 2010, in the late afternoon, Denise died suddenly following a heart attack in a Brussels street as she walked to the railway station to catch a train back to Liège after participating in a Forum on the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo. During this activity in support of the Congolese people, she had again been outstanding for her impassioned speeches and infectious good humour. - read article...

Roland Lew, China specialist and long-time collaborator of the Fourth International, has died. - read article...

The Marxist historian Pierre Broué died on July 26th after a long battle with cancer. What marked him out was that he wrote history, the history of the workers’ movement and of revolutions, as a Marxist educated in the Trotskyist tradition. - read article...

Hugo Gonzalez Moscoso, historic figure of the Fourth International in Bolivia, died in January. We publish this short notice now and will come back to a longer appreciation at a later date. - read article...

We have learned with immense sadness of the death of our comrade Denise Comanne, last Friday May 28, following a mild heart attack, just after she had participated in a solidarity activity with the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. - read article...

The Belgian section of the Fourth International LCR/SAP pays tribute to a long standing member, Jos Geudens. A tribute is being organised in Antwerp on Saturday the 3rd of April. - read article...

Michael Löwy pays tribute to the historic Bolivian Trotskyist leader Hugo Gonzales Moscoso, who died in January 2010. - read article...

Daniel left us today, Tuesday the 12th of January 2010. Born in 1946 he gave his life to the cause of defending revolutionary Marxist ideas right to the end. - read article...

The French radical philosopher and political leader, Daniel Bensaïd, died Tuesday morning after fighting a painful cancer for several months at the end of close to 15 years of living with AIDS. - read article...

On Tuesday January 12, 2010 our friend Daniel Bensaid, “Bensa” died. Those familiar with Daniel knew he was incurably ill, and had regretfully expected for some weeks news which, though we knew it to be inevitable, we always fought to believe would not come. - read article...

We have lost our four most brilliant comrades Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar and Wahid Baloch in a road accident on 13th December 2009 near Ormara, Baloachistan. They were in the coastal region, one of the most deprived areas of the country, to organize the home based women workers (HBWW) on one platform. - read article...

Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 67. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades. - read article...

Tribute to a stalwart of German revolutionary marxism - read article...

Peter Gowan, Professor at London Metropolitan University, a member of the New Left Review editorial board and a former leader of the International Marxist Group (IMG), died on 12 June. He was probably the leading Marxist expert on international relations writing in English, and wrote and spoke with an astonishing grasp of the inter-relationship between economic, political and military power in the modern world. His ability to knit together theory with a vast range of factual knowledge held his audiences spellbound. - read article...

BILL BANTA, A member of the Chicago branch and founding member of Solidarity, died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospice on August 20th. He was 67. Bill was a revolutionary socialist his entire adult life. Born on February 6, 1941 in Portland, Indiana, he joined the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) as an undergraduate at Indiana University. - read article...

Peter Camejo, one of the most prominent left leaders to emerge from the Sixties radicalization in the USA, lost a second bout with lymphoma Saturday, September 13. He was 68. - read article...

Italian revolutionary socialist and long time leading member of the Fourth International, Livio Maitan has died. - read article...

Livio Maitan was a man of different times, but not for reasons of age. Rather, he was a man of different times because he was an organic intellectual - a rare breed that, while not entirely extinct, has precious few surviving members. - read article...

Raffaello Renzacci, an Italian trade union militant and supporter of the Fourth International, died of a cerebral aneurism on November 18, 2003 at the age of 47. Raffaello was a member of the national leadership of the CGIL trade union federation, a founder of the co-ordination of the ‘cassintegrati’ at Fiat, and a member of the Fourth International, Democrazia Proletaria (DP) and Rifondazione Comunista (PRC). - read article...

On December 30, 2002, the Chinese Trotskyist leader Wang Fanxi died of heart failure in Leeds, Britain, aged 95. Born in Xiashi near Hangzhou in 1907, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1925, abandoning his literature studies at Beijing University for the revolution. In 1931, he was expelled from the CCP and helped set up the Left Opposition led by Chen Duxiu, the CCP’s founder and a giant of modern Chinese thought and letters. - read article...

Necdet Sara has died due to heart failure at the age of 44. He had joined the Turkish section of the Fourth International just before the coup of 1980. - read article...

Tony Southall, a life-long socialist and peace campaigner, has died in Glasgow on 27th May 2002, aged 59. - read article...

Ross Dowson, who died on February 17, 2002 was the major personality in the Canadian Trotskyist movement from the early 1940s to 1974, when he left with a few collaborators to set up a group almost entirely devoted to working within the social-democratic New Democratic Party. - read article...

THE death of Leonora Lloyd on January 23 at the young age of 61 has deprived the movement of a dedicated fighter for socialism, for feminism and above all for a woman’s right to control her own fertility. - read article...

ON January 5, 2001 over 150 people spent an afternoon in Conway Hall, London celebrating the life of Charlie van Gelderen who died last October after over 60 years in the Fourth International. - read article...

Charlie van Gelderen was the last survivor of those who attended the 1938 Founding Conference of the Fourth International in Paris. He attended as an observer on behalf of South African Trotskyists, though he was already living in Britain by that time. He died peacefully at home in Cambridge on October 26 after a short illness at the age of 88, still a fully paid up and until very recently an active member of the International Socialist Group (British section of the Fourth International). - read article...

On Sunday January 28th 2001, Argentine revolutionary José Lungarzo, known to us as comrade Juan, died following a heart attack. He had spent his life in defence of the socialist perspective on humanity and the principles of Marxism and the Fourth International. - read article...

Lucía González Alonso, a long time militant in the workers’ movement in the Spanish state and the Fourth International, has just died after a long illness. Born in Madrid in 1947, she became involved in the struggle against the dictatorship when she was a student. - read article...

Jesús Albarracín has died at the age of 57 following a long illness. He began his militant activity in the early 1970s, joining the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria (LCR - section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state), of which he was for many years one of the leaders. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...