Last year, I wrote to people who knew Loren and his political work and invited them to contribute to a special issue of Insurgent Notes that would be devoted to making sure that his “many contributions are remembered and preserved.” My intention was that contributors would discuss both Loren’s ideas and his methods of thinking.
As things developed, my plans changed and I decided to also include what I considered to be especially valuable writings by Loren that had not received sufficient attention and several articles of appreciation of Loren’s work that had been previously published.
The issue contains:
- a review essay by Dave Ranney of “The Remaking of the American Working Class,” one of Loren’s most influential texts;
- two essays, both significantly edited for this publication, by Loren on the Johnson-Forest Tendency from 2003;
- an extensively edited transcript of a 2007 exchange on Left Communism and Trotskyism where Loren and his long-time comrade, Yves Coleman, engaged in a spirited discussion on the topic;
- a 1989 essay by Loren on “The Universality of Marx”;
- two new essays, prompted by Vanguard of Retrogression, by Ross Wolfe and Dan Lazare, and a short, previously published in 2001, review of that text by Cyril Smith;
- an analysis of Loren’s arguments regarding reactionary anti-imperialism by TPTG (Ta Paidia Tis Galerias); and
- a previously published essay of political argument from the Angry Workers in England published in 2024.
I do not think that this collection in any way represents the last word about Loren and his contributions to revolutionary Marxism and we should anticipate many more friends and comrades writing about him in the future.