Jack MacDonald (nicknamed "Moscow Jack"; born 2 February 1888, in

Falkirk, Scotland Falkirk ( gd, An Eaglais Bhreac, sco, Fawkirk) is a large town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow. Falkirk had ...

) was a founding member of the Communist Party of Canada and one of its leaders. He was party Chairman from 1921 to 1923, and National Secretary from 1923 to 1929. MacDonald received a scholarship to attend high school, but economic necessity forced him into pattern making, the same occupation as his father. His imagination was "fired by the revolutionary events of 1905 in Russia," and would become involved, and later president (1910–1912) of the Falkirk Pattern Makers Association, a member of the British Socialist Party, and a member of the Scottish Social Democratic Federation. He immigrated to Toronto in 1912, where he became involved with the local left.Louise Jordan, "In Memory of Our Fighting Leader," Labor Challenge, 1941. MacDonald supported the expulsion of

Maurice Spector 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'', for much of the 1920s. He was an early follower of Leon Tro ...

for

Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

in 1928. Subsequently, he tried to play a balancing role between the

Tim Buck Timothy Buck (January 6, 1891 – March 11, 1973) was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada (known as the Labor-Progressive Party from 1943 to 1959) from 1929 until 1962. Together with Ernst Thälmann of Germany, Maurice T ...

's Stalinist faction and the party majority headed by Finnish, Ukrainian and Jewish groups of which J.B. Salsberg was a notable figure. Macdonald failed and was expelled from the party in 1931 being accused of being a

Lovestoneite The Lovestoneites, led by former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jay Lovestone, were a small American oppositionist communist movement of the 1930s. The organization emerged from a factional fight in the CPUSA in 1929 and unsu ...

(that is a supporter of Nikolai Bukharin's

Right Opposition The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain me ...

). MacDonald, however, maintained that he was attempting to play an independent role. Accusations of "Lovestoneism" are further undermined by the fact that MacDonald went on to reconcile with Spector and joined the Toronto branch of the International Left Opposition (Trotskyist) Canada in 1932. MacDonald and Spector sided with

Martin Abern Martin may refer to: Places * Martin City (disambiguation) * Martin County (disambiguation) * Martin Township (disambiguation) Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Austr ...

and

Max Shachtman Max Shachtman (; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany. Beginnings S ...

in a dispute within the Communist League of America that threatened to split the Trotskyist movement in North America in the early 1930s. The split emerged in the late 1930s, this time over the question of the class nature of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

with MacDonald siding with Shachtman in his split from the International in 1940. Macdonald died of a sudden heart attack on 7 November 1941 as he was recovering from an earlier, unspecified operation. His short obituary was published in the short-lived Trotskyist paper ''Labor Challenge'' in 1941.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macdonald, Jack British Socialist Party members Scottish Trotskyists Canadian Trotskyists Scottish emigrants to Canada Leaders of the Communist Party of Canada Right Opposition People from Falkirk Social Democratic Federation members 1881 births 1941 deaths