David North

His maternal grandfather, Ignatz Waghalter, was a noted Polish-German composer and principal conductor at the Deutsches Opernhaus (now known as the Deutsche Oper) between 1912 and 1923.

Fleeing Europe in 1937, Waghalter, after arriving in the United States, founded the American Negro Orchestra, the first classical orchestras of African-American musicians.

North has defended the view that Trotsky represented a Marxist alternative to Stalinism, and therefore states that the collapse of the USSR does not mean that Marxism is a failed project.

Summarizing these views as described in North's book The Unfinished Twentieth Century, sociologist Charles Thorpe writes that North "makes a powerful case that, to paraphrase Faulkner, these debates and experiences are not dead; they're not even past".

North has argued that contrary to modern academic traditions, Marxism is not defined by academics, but instead by Marxist organizations and Marxist struggle.

He writes that this tradition is represented above all by the Trotskyist opposition to Stalinism and its contemporary continuity in the Socialist Equality Party.

David North (born 1950) is an American Marxist, who has been active in the international Trotskyist movement since 1971.

He is currently the National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States (SEP), formerly the Workers League.

North was born in 1950 in New York to refugees from Nazi Germany.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, North covered and participated actively in numerous labor strikes, most notably the 1973-1974 unionization drive of miners in Harlan County, the 1974 and 1977-78 national coal miners’ strike, the PATCO strike of 1981, and the 1983-1986 Phelps Dodge miners strike.

Jorge O’Leary, the leader of the Phelps Dodge miners struggle, stated in a 2021 interview: "“The Bulletin, through Dave North, gave us a lot of information for our benefit. Not for the benefit of the governor or the company. He was honest, and we trust him… his political views are different from mine, but essentially we are for the working class.” "North helped lead the investigation initiated by the International Committee into the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940 and the extensive infiltration of the Fourth International by agents of both the Soviet secret police and the US FBI.

North is the author of many of the articles on the findings of the investigation, published under the title Security and the Fourth International.

North became a member of the Workers League in 1971 while a student at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, following an internship with Democratic Senator Vance Hartke.

He was asked to join the staff of the Bulletin, the publication of the Workers League, in January 1972.

In May 1972, North wrote “Where Wallace Really Stands,” a detailed exposure of the racist Alabama governor who was seeking the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

In 1973, North was elected to the political committee of the Workers League.

He emerged as a central leader of the Workers League in the aftermath of the removal of Tim Wohlforth from the post of national secretary because of the latter’s serious violations of the Workers League’s security.

North was elected to the post of national secretary in January 1976.

In 1982, North informed the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), the British section of the ICFI and close collaborator of the Workers League, of his differences with the theoretical methods and politics of the organization.

The WRP leadership rejected North's criticisms and opposed a broader discussion of them in the ICFI.

North's 1982 and 1984 documents were distributed throughout the ICFI and to the WRP membership during the crisis that erupted in the WRP in August 1985.

North expanded upon his criticisms of the WRP in February 1984, but the WRP again opposed their distribution.

While a majority of the ICFI accepted North's criticisms, as well as a section of the WRP membership, the WRP rejected the political authority of the ICFI over its national organization and broke from the International Committee in February 1986.

In May 1986 North co-authored an analysis of the split, “How the Workers Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism,” with Keerthi Balasuriya, the national secretary of the Sri Lankan section of the ICFI.

In 1986-87 North wrote The Heritage We Defend, which placed the split with the WRP in the context of the history of the Fourth International, and, in particular, the Trotskyist movement’s opposition to opportunism.

North opposed the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and called on the Trotskyist movement to “answer the lie that Stalinism is Marxism… by exposing the far-reaching political significance of the crimes that Stalinism carried out.”

In 1988, North argued that the rapid globalization of the world economy was “shattering the entire national state system and, with it, any possibility for the progressive development of the working class within the framework of a national policy.”

In 1995, North called for the national sections of the ICFI to transform themselves from leagues into parties, anticipating a “new and protracted era of international capitalist disequilibrium.” North also led discussions in 1997 to transition from a written newspaper to the web-based World Socialist Web Site, which was launched on February 14, 1998.

He served as the National Secretary of the SEP until the party's congress in 2008.

North is the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, the publication of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The author of several books and articles on the history of the Socialist movement, North lectures in politics and the history of Marxism both in the United States and internationally.

At the founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held in August 2008, North was elected as the national chairman of the party.

Speaking about the 2016 United States presidential election, North told Neues Deutschland that Donald Trump "embodies a cross between all the criminal and immoral features and machinations of the real estate, finance, gambling and entertainment industries".

North has opposed every US military intervention during his career, writing in his 2016 book, A Quarter Century of War, “The last quarter century of US-instigated wars must be studied as a chain of interconnected events.

In 2017, North alleged in an open letter that changes to Google's ranking system and search engine (their project known as Project Owl) demoted left-wing outlets such as the WSWS, which describes itself as an "online newspaper of the international Trotskyist movement".

Google would not comment to The New York Times about the WSWS.

Contacted by the same source, North said: "I’m against censorship in any form. It’s up to people what they want to read."

Interviewed by journalist Chris Hedges in 2018, North stated that while middle class groups promoted identity politics as a response to social tensions and poverty, American workers were not racist and "have a deep belief in democratic rights".

North stated that the 20th century problems of war and fascism remained real threats in the 21st century.

In 2019, in a review of the century-long history of the Trotskyist movement, North argued that the Fourth International anticipated the development of a “revolutionary struggle of the working class [that] will develop as an interconnected and unified world movement.” The ICFI, he stated, would “counterpose to the capitalist politics of imperialist war the class-based strategy of world socialist revolution.” In January 2020, he co-authored a statement with SEP (US) national secretary Joseph Kishore that argued that the 2020’s would be a “decade of intensifying class struggle and world socialist revolution.”