Bryan D. Palmer – författare

Bryan D. Palmer's award-winning study of James P. Cannon's early years (1890-1928) details how the life of a Wobbly hobo agitator gave way to leadership in the emerging communist underground of the 1919 era. This historical drama unfolds alongside the life experiences of a native son of United States radicalism, the narrative moving from Rosedale, Kansas to Chicago, New York, and Moscow. Written with panache, Palmer's richly detailed book situates American communism's formative decade of the 1920s in the dynamics of a specific political and economic context. Our understanding of the indigenous currents of the American revolutionary left is widened, just as appreciation of the complex nature of its interaction with international forces is deepened.

Bryan D. Palmer's award-winning study of James P. Cannon's early years (1890-1928) details how the life of a Wobbly hobo agitator gave way to leadership in the emerging communist underground of the 1919 era. This historical drama unfolds alongside the life experiences of a native son of United States radicalism, the narrative moving from Rosedale, Kansas to Chicago, New York, and Moscow. Written with panache, Palmer's richly detailed book situates American communism's formative decade of the 1920s in the dynamics of a specific political and economic context. Our understanding of the indigenous currents of the American revolutionary left is widened, just as appreciation of the complex nature of its interaction with international forces is deepened.

As Canada's most industrialised province, Ontario served as the regional centre of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, an organisation which embodied a late nineteenth-century working-class vision of an alternative to the developing industrial-capitalist society. The Order opposed the exploitation of labor, and cultivated working-class unity by providing an institutional and cultural rallying point for North American workers. By 1886 thousands of industrial workers had enrolled within the ranks of Ontario's local and district assemblies. This book examines the rise and fall of the Order, providing case studies of its experience in Toronto and Hamilton and chronicling its impact across the province.

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965 Part I: Emergence is the first of a documentary trilogy on a revolutionary socialist split-off from the U.S. Communist Party, reflecting Leon Trotsky's confrontation with Stalinism in the global communist movement. Spanning 1928 to 1940, this volume surveys important U.S. labor struggles in the 1930s, early efforts to comprehend the so-called "Negro Question," and substantial contributions to the study of history and the development of Marxist theory. Also covered are confrontations and convergences with other currents on the left, internal debates and splits among Trotskyists themselves, and US government attempts to suppress their activities. Scholars and activists will find much of interest in these primary sources.

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965 Part II: Endurance is the second volume in a documentary trilogy on a revolutionary socialist split-off from the U.S. Communist Party, reflecting Leon Trotsky's confrontation with Stalinism in the global communist movement. Spanning 1941 to 1956, this volume surveys the Second World War (internationally and on the "homefront"), the momentous post-war strike wave, ongoing efforts to comprehend and struggle against racism, as well as the early years of the Cold War and anti-communist repression in the United States. Also covered are internal debates and splits among Trotskyists themselves, including a far-reaching split in the international Trotskyist movement (the Fourth International) in the face of a persistent and expanding Stalinism. Scholars and activists will find much of interest in these primary sources.

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965 Part III: Resurgence is the third volume in a documentary trilogy on a revolutionary socialist split-off from the U.S. Communist Party, reflecting Leon Trotsky's confrontation with Stalinism in the global communist movement. Spanning 1954 to 1965, this volume surveys the Cold War era, the civil rights and Black liberation movements, the "third wave" of feminism, and other social and cultural developments of the 1950s and 1960s. Documenting responses to a variety of anti-colonial and revolutionary insurgencies, the content of this volume is also shaped by the crisis and decline of Stalinism. Attention is given to internal debates and splits, but also to the partial reunification of the international Trotskyist movement (the Fourth International), as well as substantial contributions to the study of history and the development of Marxist theory. Scholars and activists will find much of interest in these primary sources.

Bryan D. Palmer reinterprets the history of labour and the left in the United States during the 1930s through a discussion of the emergence of Trotskyism in the most advanced capitalist country in the world. Focussing on James P. Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, Palmer builds on his previously published and award-winning book, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, with a deeply-researched and elegantly-written study of Cannon and the Trotskyist movement in the United States from 1928-38.Situating this dissident communist movement within the history of class struggle, both national and international, Palmer examines how Cannon and others fought to revive a combative trade unionism, thwart fascism and the drift to war, refuse Stalinism's many degenerations, and build a new Party and a new International—both of which would be dedicated to reviving and realizing the possibilities of revolutionary socialism. The result is a peerless study that provides a definitive account of the largest and most influential Trotskyist movement in the world in the 1930s, an effort whose results recasts established understandings of the more extensively-studied experience of United States working-class militancy and the place of the Comintern-affiliated Communist Party within it.

A celebration of the life of one of the most celebrated writers of the Left across the world. Mike Davis and the Writing of Political Opposition will serve both as a crucial introduction to new readers of Mike Davis and a key text to help those already familiar with his life and work deepen their understanding of his political and intellectual life. Taking readers from his time in California organizing with the Teamsters Union as a trucker, his solidarity activities with the Black Panthers to working as an editor at the New Left Review in London, this book brings Mike's incredible story to life.Weaving stories of Mike's political formation seamlessly with his intellectual development, the book provides close examinations of his key texts, as well as his editorial legacy with Verso's Haymarket series.

Edward Thompson, perhaps the greatest post-war historian in the English-speaking world, died in 1993. In this readable and unabashedly appreciative survey of Thompson's histories and politics, Byran D. Palmer reviews include a passionate biographical account of the late-nineteenth-century Romantic William Morris, the hugely acclaimed The Making of the English Working Class, and a series of eighteenth-century studies that reach from customary culture to the antinomian poetics of William Blake.In reviewing the politics which gave shape to his historical work, Palmer assesses the role of Thompson's family background in India, his youth in the Communist Party, his decisive break with Stalinism in 1956, and his subsequent work campaigning for the causes of the left and nuclear disarmament. Thompson was never comfortable in an academic milieu, and eventually left formal teaching in the 1970s to devote his time to research and writing. His pen was always ready to bend against the powers of the state, and against a left he too often saw as abandoning the cause of social transformation.For readers who know Thompson's work, Palmer's discussion of hitherto unstudied aspects of his life will be novel and illuminating; those less familiar with his prodigious achievement will find these pages a useful introduction.

U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part I: Emergence -- Left Opposition in the United States is the first of a documentary trilogy on a revolutionary socialist split-off from the U.S. Communist Party, reflecting Leon Trotsky’s confrontation with Stalinism in the global Communist movement. Spanning 1928 to 1940, this volume surveys important U.S. labor struggles in the 1930s, early efforts to comprehend the so-called “Negro Question,” and substantial contributions to the study history and the development of Marxist theory. Also covered are confrontations and convergences with other currents on the Left, internal debates and splits among Trotskyists themselves, and repressive efforts by the U.S. government in the first Smith Act Trial. Scholars and activists will find much of interest in these primary sources.

The two volumes of Marxism and Historical Practice bring together essays written by one of the major Marxist historians of the last fifty years. The pieces collected in Volume I, Interpretive Essays on Class Formation and Class Struggle, offer a stimulating, empirically grounded survey of North American collective behaviour, popular mobilizations, and social struggles, ranging from a rich discussion of ritualistic protest like the charivari through the rise of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s to campaigns against neoliberal labour reform in British Columbia in the early 1980s. What emerges is Palmer's sustained reflection on long-standing interpretive historical problems of class formation, the dynamics of social change, and how popular social movements arise and relate to law, the state, and existing cultural contexts.