THE INTERNATIONAL revolutionary movement lost one of its most outstanding leaders on journalist, secretary to Leon Trotsky, translator, editor, founder of Intercontinental Press, radical movement, Hansen was, in the literal and best sense of the word, a cosmopolitan, a Hansen came into the Trotskyist movement in 1934 at the outset of a transformation in the quality and activity of the revolutionary Marxist forces, which were everywhere plung ing into the mass movement of the working class. In 1936, Joe and his wife and comrade, Reba, moved to San Francisco, one of the centres of organisation of a maritime strike that paralysed the entire west coast of the Hansen integrated himself into that struggle, helping to edit the Voice of the Federation, organ of the Maritime Federation of the grouped together all the maritime unions.
In September 1937 Joe and Reba moved to Covoacan. become part of the household of Leon trolsky. Incy romanca Bcic woul late 1940, after the murder Trotsky.
Hansen was therefore at Trotsky's side throughout the last great political battle of the Russian revolutionary, against those forces in the American Socialist Workers Party challenged the Fourth International's Soviet state.
When Hansen returned to New York after Trotsky's OCLAIR Committee of the Socialist Workers Party, devoting himself primarily to the party press.
The most historically significa t elements of Hansen's contribution, HOWCYCLE came after the war. moral and political courage of those American revolutionaries who were able to resist the social isolation and even physical threats of McCarthyism needs little elaboration.
were besides the obvious ones of repression and isolation. The entire Trotskyist movement, beginning with Trotsky himself, had expected a revolutionary upsurge after the Second World War which would see the transformation of the small Trotskyist parties into mass organisations leading hundreds of thousands of workers.
This analysis, as we now know, turned out to be incorrect. Trotskyist movement was thrown into intellectual turmoil; it faced wholly. new problems of analysis and action, demanding correct responses as a precondition for the very survival of ne movemene Joe Hansen made contribuon to me elaboranon that analysis. He was one of the first to realise that the Soviet leadership, under the impetus of its occupation of the East European countries and the necessity of defending itself against the onslaught of the indeed effected social overturns in Eastern Europe, establishing a new state form: workers states bureaucratically deformed from their very origin.
The problem was new, and it cannot be said that Hansen's articles anyone else's - answered all the outstanding CLeSBOnE But it was comrades like Joe Hansen who evinced the freshness approach and lack of dogmatism that were to be responsible for the survival of the Trotskyist throughout the hard This period, however, did take its toll on WOre movement. In 1953 the International suffered a split which many comrades consider wa not justified by the existing political differences.
Hansen was to have been the person world citizen.
Pacific, which Mexico, of that had death, he National The other dangers The a decisive Department the role played by Cold War, had make that trip.
cost of retreating completely. STURBO opportunities for growth.
programme ycars of unforeseen by revolutionary Trotskyist ists: the Cuban revolution. Fourth it in one of his party leader, and revolutionary strategist. delegated by the SWP leadership travel to Europe in late 193: explain the party's position on the disputed issues. But he was denied a passport by the McCarthyist State One wonders - particularly given Hansen in the reunification of the Fl nine years later — whether the split could not have been avoided had he been able to It is difficult for revolutionary militants who have come to political activity since 1968 to comprehend the difficulties of the 1950s. Not a few groups managed to preserve their organisational existence only at the into such blind sectarianism that later, when the changed, they were unable to seize upon the new This problem was compounded by the fact that one of the most central events in transforming the conditions of the world class struggle was yet another instance of a development MarxCuba was, as Joe Hansen was to put most important essays, the 'acid test'. The American SWP passed that test in recognising the Cuban revolution for what it was: later the establishment of the first workers 18 January, when Joseph Hansen died in New York at the age of 68. He had devoted forty-five years of his life to the movement - as trade union activist, One of the most conscious and consistent internationalists ever produced by the American state in the Western hemisphere; the first socialist revolution since 1917 to be led by forces that had not come out of the Stalinist movement.
That it did so was due in no small measure to the work of Hansen. He visited Cuba in 1961 and was instrumental in the establishment of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in the US which organised defence of the revolution against US Most important, he produced the most significant articles analysing the import of the Castroist leadership, the Cuban state, and the efforts of the Castroists towards organisation.
The majority of the organisations of the Fourth International from which the SWP had divided in 1953 also passed the test of Cuba. Hansen played a central role in bringing about reunification of the world Trotskyist movement in 1963, effectively leading the political struggle against those forces which opposed it and helping to draft the political documents which provided its basis.
One of the immediate fruits of the reunification was the foundation of World Outlook, the journal that was become Intercontinental Press. Beginning as a mimeographed bulletin produced in Paris by Joe and Reba with the aid of Pierre Frank, it rapidly filled international reportage, analysis, and documentation.
Joseph In 1965 Joe suffered a massive attack of peritonitis, from which he nearly died. Publication of World Outlook was interrupted, and Joe and the Reba returned to the United States. He never fully recovered his health, but he was determined to take up his activity again as soon as possible.
World Outlook was re-launched in New York, with Joe as editor. Its technical panded, and it grew in size as a staff of writers and translators was assembled. In 1968 - that watershed year of world revolutionary politics Intercontinental Press again offered the most thorough and news and analysis published by the revolutionary movement anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Joe himself, along other comrades of the SWP, travelled to France to cover the events there. He was arrested by De Gaulle's police, held overnight, expelled from the country and barred from returning.
From 1969 onwards, activity was centred on the tendency struggle in the Fourth International. Hansen was the author of the first and most penetrating - criticism of good in the legacy, contribution unique.
American quality proressionansi Joe filled tions, pusher. yet perhaps their politics internal seriously.
struggles acrimony.
other vacuum in impossible facilities gradually exfaction struggle.
became _ penetraung in the SWP, with several Hansen's the errors of the resolution on Latin America adopted by the Ninth World Congress of the Fourth International in 1969. Thereafter he produced a portion of the political documents of the minority tendency International, on Latin It may be said without exaggeration that one of the greatest reasons why the tendency and faction struggle o 1969-1977 resulted not in another split but in the eventual dissolution of the major tendencies was that Joe Hansen was a central leader of the minority.
Uppermost in his mind was not only the intrinsic importance of the political issues at stake, but also the unity of the Fourth International, the organisation to which he had devoted his entire conscious life Apart from this manifold political Hanser made which was nearly He introduced into the revolutionary press which has been and lamentably, still is — most rare. It can be summed up in a single word:
had immense respect for journalism and writing, which I DI considered, as he often used to put it, a craft. There was no reason, he felt, why a revolutionary journal should be typographical errors, grammatical blunders, garbled quota.
inaccuracies detail, and other hallmarks of the amateur pen He himself was a master of style He had a subtle sense of humour and irony, which he never lost even at the height of the most intense polemics.
Hansen instructed a generation of American militants in revolutionary politics; but he also taught a smaller, significant, number of waite of kay CHOOS BOWD because I was one of them.
But Joe also had another quality, more rare leaders, to which I would like to pay a personal tribute Trotskyists, as James P. Cannon used to say, 'mean business". They take and therefore thei political struggles All too often, intense politica drift into personal Not because revolut ionaries are necessarily nastier than people but because they consider the ideas for which they ar fighting crucial to the future of human society. They then find it to work with their opponents, let alone delegate any political responsibility to them.
Joe Hansen, as I can personally testify, was entirely free of this defect I was a member of the staff of Intercontinental Press for several years in the early 1970s, including 1973, the year the tendency struggle in the Fourth International reached its initial peak of intensity and became a I was not a member of his tendency or faction at that time, and later supporter international majority, speaking for it occasionally against documents written by Joe.
Despite this, I never had the slightest personal difficulty working with him and was even delegated responsibilities on Ent journal. He showed me, as he showed others, the meaning of revolutionary morality and, what may come to the same thing, simple personal decency in the heat of political struggle.
In some sense, that may be his greatest contribution of all.
Socialist Challenge 1 February 1979 page 13