The Militant

For the British newspaper, see Militant tendency. For other uses see Militant (disambiguation)

Headline

Trotsky reading the Militant in 1931

The Militant is an international Socialist newsweekly connected to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Pathfinder Tendency. 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.

Current publication

A publication called The Militant was reborn in 1940 at the time of a split in the Socialist Workers Party, when its previous official organ, Labor Action, was retained by the departing Workers Party headed by Max Shachtman and James Burnham. 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.

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^{[citation needed]}, although the endorsement the paper gives to the SWP is clear.

External links

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