George Novack

Who was George Novack?

George Novack was an American Communist politician and Marxist theoretician.

He attended Harvard University, earning a B.A. in 1926, and an M.A. in 1927. He was on a successful track in the publishing business, when the beginning of the Great Depression radicalized him. He joined the Trotskyist Communist League of America in 1933 and was a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party from 1940 to 1973.

In 1937-40 Novack served as the secretary of the American Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky. This body initiated the celebrated 1937 Dewey Commission that inquired into the charges made against Trotsky in the Moscow show trials, and found the Moscow trials to have been a complete frame-up.

George Novack was not one of the 18 SWP leaders imprisoned in World War II under the Smith Act, but he played a major role in the defense campaign.