Канадалық саяхатшы, редактор және троцкишіл белсенді Маурис Спектор өмірі мен қызметі

Canadian politician, editor and Trotskyist activist

Maurice Spector (March 19, 1898 – August 1, 1968) was a Canadian politician who served as the chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and the editor of its newspaper, The Worker, He graduated from Queen's University and practiced labour law in Toronto when he was not employed in political positions.

Spector was influenced by Trotsky's work The Bolsheviki and World Peace,, which was published in the Toronto Mail and Empire in January 1918 and by Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDP) Dominion Secretary Isaac Bainbridge, who introduced him to Lenin's writings and inspired him to join the SDP. Spector engaged with the left wing of the Canadian SDP and eventually left to form the Communist Party of Canada.

In 1932 he co founded, with Jack MacDonald, the Workers Party of Canada. The new organization represented the first Canadian section of the International Left Opposition.

Spector moved to New York City in 1936 and became a leading member of the Trotskyist movement there. He presented the International Report at the founding convention of the Socialist Workers Party at the end of 1938 but dropped out of the party in 1939. (Contrary to some reports, he did not take part in the 1939 40 debate between James Cannon and Max Shachtman.) He joined the Socialist Party of America shortly after leaving the SWP in 1939 and remained on its executive body until 1958, when he resigned after breaking with Max Shachtman and his proposal to merge Shachtman's Independent Socialist League with the Socialist Party, which Spector anticipated would move the SP to the right. In his later, Spector became editor of a children's magazine published by the Labour Zionist movement.

Canada had revoked Spector's citizenship, and in 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation learned that Spector was in the United States illegally and had him detained. As Canada refused to accept him, the United States began proceedings to deport him to the Soviet Union. The American Civil Liberties Union defended Spector on the grounds that as a Trotskyist, his life would be in danger if he was deported to the Soviet Union. Spector eventually regained his Canadian citizenship and was permitted to remain in New York.

Spector was employed for part of his post Trotskyist career by the American Council for Judaism and was director of the New York trade union division of the National Committee for Labor Israel in his later years. Spector died on August 1, 1968, at the age of 70.