Our comrade Loren Goldner passed away on April 12. His death represents the loss of a great militant and brings a great sadness for those who knew him.
Loren’s political life began with his arrest as a student at Berkeley amidst the sit-ins and anti-war riots of the sixties. In this context Loren was radicalized and turned to Marxism in search for a critique of Maoism, Stalinism and the New-Left that dominated the scene. For a while he joined the Independent Socialist Club, which eventually would become the Trotskyist organization International Socialists (IS). But before that happened, Loren left Berkeley and the ISC behind and began traveling regularly to Europe attracted by the traditions of the Ultra-Left.
In Europe, he became familiar with Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Situationist International, Invariance, Jean Barrot, Le Prolétaire and other elements of the Italian Left in exile. Important for his political formation was an encounter with Henri Simon who represented for Loren a definitive break with any idea of the Soviet Union being a “degenerated worker state” and a historical link to the internationalist orientation that he was to embrace.
By the seventies, Loren had settled in New York City. Here, he lived out his self-proclaimed political isolation—working part-time jobs, talking to people in leftist bookstores and reading Marx. It was here that he published his first important work, The Remaking of the American Working Class.
In the eighties, Loren moved to Cambridge where he took up a position as librarian at Harvard. He continued to interact with others who identified with the Communist Left and became an important reference point for many. Although Loren was active in many political circles, he never associated with any organization, preferring instead to “write against the grain”. He strongly believed in the need for non-sectarian discussion. He loved to bring people from different political backgrounds together, both in person and later online. He initiated several online discussion-lists, such as the “Meltdown” list which he moderated for years until his health deteriorated.
Loren’s first and foremost concern was tracking the cycles of proletarian struggles. In the nineties, he became interested in Asia. He traveled to India, China, Japan and South Korea following the shop-floor struggles of the world proletariat while developing his analysis of the economic crisis and fictitious capital. Between 2005 and 2009, he lived in South Korea teaching English (and of course learning Korean and producing an important text on the Korean working class).
Back in NYC, Loren participated in founding Insurgent Notes and continued to track working class movement, develop his analysis of capitalism, facilitate Marx reading groups and learn Chinese. In 2017, Loren made his last trip to China.
Loren had many qualities. He was a formidable linguist, he had an awe-inspiring intellect accompanied by a disarming humility; he was passionately curious about everything and anybody who he met, for whom he always had many questions. Loren’s unquenched thirst for knowledge and dedication to working class struggles shaped his militancy and pushed him far and wide around the globe. He traveled to Turkey, he lived in Egypt to learn Arabic, in the south of Spain to live with a Roma community, in Italy he became known for introducing Bordiga to the greater Anglophone world… Loren left an impression wherever he went.
He will be remembered as a caring friend to many, an affectionate person and a spirited contributor to what he, as many others, hoped would be a world-revolution, a fight for communism and the breaking of their haughty power.
To IP he was a friend and a comrade. He will be missed.
April 18, 2024