Paul Joseph Le Blanc (born 1947) is an American historian at La Roche University in Pittsburgh, as well as a labor and socialist activist. He has written and edited more than 30 books on topics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg.
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Background
Le Blanc was born in 1947 in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania and spent his childhood in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. His parents, Gaston Le Blanc and Shirley Harris, were labor activists; he has two sisters.
Le Blanc studied at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on history and receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971, a Master of Arts degree in 1980, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989.
Career
In 1965, Le Blanc joined the “New Left” group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1966, as a conscientious objector, he worked for the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee in Pittsburgh and Baltimore. In the early 1970s, he served on the board of the Pittsburgh Peace and Freedom Center and the coordinating committee of the National Peace Action Coalition (1971–1974). He opposed the Vietnam War and supported anti-racist activity – most prominently as part of the Pittsburgh Black Construction Coalition of 1969 – pro-feminist activities, defense of Latin American political prisoners, and Central America solidarity work.
In the 1990s, he became active in the Thomas Merton Center (Pittsburgh). He has been a member of the Socialist Workers Party (USA), the Fourth Internationalist Tendency, Solidarity (United States), and the International Socialist Organization (until it terminated in 2019). He was active in efforts to create a Labor Party. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Since 2000, Le Blanc has supported the Green Party. He has opposed war and militarism, including US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also collaborated closely with South African poet and global justice activist Dennis Brutus in building Pittsburgh participation in World Social Forums taking place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2003 and Mumbai, India, in 2004.
In 2000, Le Blanc joined the faculty of La Roche College (renamed La Roche University in March 2019) as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences (2003–2009) and as a professor of history.
He has lectured for the International Institute for Research and Education and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and writes for the Center for Economic Research and Social Change's International Socialist Review.
Personal life
Le Blanc married and had two sons.
Le Blanc is currently a member of:
Pittsburghers for Public Transit
Thomas Merton Center (Pittsburgh)
He has been a member of:
American Association of University Professors
American Historical Association
International Socialist Organization
Organization of American Historians
Influences
Le Blanc's influences include: David Montgomery, Philip S. Foner, Frank Lovell, Richard N. Hunt, Paul Sweezy, George Breitman, Ernest Mandel, and Michael Löwy.
Works
Magazines and journals to which he contributes include:
Dialectical Anthropology
Green Left Weekly
International Socialism
International Socialist Review
International Viewpoint
Russian Review
Jacobin
Monthly Review
New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory and Politics
Socialist Worker
WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society
Publications include:
1984:
Permanent Revolution in Nicaragua
In Defense of Revolutionary Continuity
1988: "Reflections on the Fourth Internationalist Tendency"
1990: Lenin and the Revolutionary Party
1992: In Defense of American Trotskyism: Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy
1994: C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism
1996:
Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations (with George Breitman and Alan M. Wald)