Bert Cochran, born Alexander Goldfarb (December 25, 1913 – June 6, 1984) was an American

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

politician and writer. A

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

, he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Biography

Cochran was born in Poland in 1913 and moved to the US at an early age. In the 1930s, Cochran attended the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

where he was recruited to the

movement by Max Shachtman. In 1938 when a group of American Trotskyists under the leadership of James P. Cannon formed the Socialist Workers Party, Bert Cochran was one of them. For a number of years, Cochran was part of the ''National Committee'', the leading body of the SWP and became the party's main leader in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

. Under the pen-name E.R. Frank he was a regular contributor to the magazine of the

Fourth International The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...

, which the SWP supported. In the 1930s and 1940s, Cochran was a district organizer for the Mechanics Educational Society of America (MESA), a radical independent union which drew the ire of the federal government for refusing to not strike during World War II. Cochran also organized with the United Autoworkers (UAW). In the beginning of the 1950s, Bert Cochran became the leader of a faction inside the Socialist Workers Party that opposed the leadership of Cannon and instead favoured the approach of

Michel Pablo Michel Pablo (; ; 24 August 1911, Alexandria, Khedivate of Egypt, Egypt – 17 February 1996, Athens) was the pseudonym of Michalis N. Raptis (), a Trotskyist leader of Greek origin. Education Pablo studied at the National Technical Univers ...

, a leader of the

. The faction, known to their opponents as the ''Cochranites'', argued that the SWP was abstaining in a sectarian manner from the opportunity to intervene into the radical layers around the Communist Party. The SWP's leadership interpreted this as meaning that the current around Cochran no longer believed a revolution in the United States was possible, and that they had recoiled from revolutionary activity under the dual pressures of relative post-World War II capitalist prosperity and the accompanying McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunt. Cochran was also criticised for proposing to remove the image of

Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

from the masthead of the SWP's newspaper, '' The Militant''. Eventually, Bert Cochran and the Cochranites were expelled from the SWP in 1954, which meant that the party lost a great deal of its members in Detroit and the

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

area. James P. Cannon sent Ed Shaw to lead the reconstruction of the party's branch in Detroit. Bert Cochran, with

Harry Braverman Harry Braverman (December 9, 1920 – August 2, 1976) Agitating during the Red Scare After serving in the shipbuilding industry during World War II, Braverman began to deepen his commitment to revolutionary struggle, joining the first Trotskyis ...

and about one hundred of his supporters founded the Socialist Union of America, which existed from 1954 to approx. 1959. After a short period out of regular political activity, he became a sponsor of the Third Camp journal, '' New Politics (magazine)'', and remained so until the journal's demise in 1976. Cochran taught labor relations at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...

and

Empire State College Empire State University (SUNY Empire) is a public university headquartered in Saratoga Springs, New York. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. Empire State University is a multi-site institution offering associate degre ...

and was a senior fellow at the Research Institute on International Change at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. He wrote six books, one of which, ''Labor and Communism: The Conflict that Shaped American Unions'' (1977), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He died from

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

the summer of 1984 before the re-launch of ''New Politics'' in the mid-1980s.

References

Notable works

''Prospects of American radicalism''
New York, N.Y. : American Socialist Publications, 1954
''American Labor in Midpassage''
Monthly Review Press, 1959 (editor and contributor). * ''The Cross of the Moment'', Macmillan, 1961. * ''The War System: An Analysis of the Necessity for Political Reason'', Macmillan, 1965. * ''Adlai Stevenson, Patrician Among the Politicians'', Funk & Wagnalls, 1969. * ''Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency'', Funk & Wagnalls, 1973, . * ''Labor and Communism: The Conflict that Shaped American Unions'', Princeton University Press, 1977, . * ''Welfare Capitalism — and After'', Schocken Books, 1984, .

Times Two Publishing, 2005, . (A collection of book reviews, published posthumously.)

External links

Bert Cochran (E.R. Frank) Internet Archive

The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet
provides a biographical sketch and a selective bibliography on Bert Cochran

The Bert Cochran Legacy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cochran, Bert 1913 births 1984 deaths American communists American Marxists American male writers Polish emigrants to the United States Members of the Socialist Union of America Socialist Workers Party (United States) politicians from Michigan 20th-century American writers Trade unionists from Michigan The New School faculty Empire State University faculty