March 23, 1933 - July 31, 2000
IT is difficult to imagine a more political person, and at the same time a more passionate and caring person, than our departed comrade Joseph Flexer. Socialist Action has lost more than a central leader, more than a brilliant writer, educator and strategist. Together with the worldwide labour and socialist movements, with his loving family, and with friends too numerous to count, we have lost a powerful voice.
Joe's son Dani told the Toronto Star that Joe "became a communist and a mechanic at about the same time, at about (age) 15". His ideas took him from his native Brooklyn, New York to the Middle East where he joined an Israeli Kibbutz in the 1950s. His principles compelled him to break with Zionism, and to champion the fight for Palestinian self-determination. In the mid-1960s, Joe returned to North America, lived in Winnipeg and briefly in Montreal, and became an important figure in the movement against the war in Vietnam and on the socialist left. Joe settled in Toronto in the early 1970s. He became a provincial organizer for the left-nationalist Waffle movement in the New Democratic Party. I believe that one of his political assignments was to counteract the radical socialist wing of the Waffle in Ontario. Some of its key elements exhibited the growing influence of Marxist and Trotskyist ideas.
But a funny thing happened to Joe between the meeting hall, the library, and the bar. He became convinced that the Canadian nationalist and left-reformist leaders of the Waffle were wrong, and that the young revolutionaries, fresh from the anti-war, student and feminist movements, were much more his political cup of tea. Always an ardent internationalist, this was no great leap for Joe Flexer.
He helped to found the Red Circle, a Marxist group within the Waffle. It was in this period that I met Joe. This was the beginning of a thirty year friendship between us, one that matured into a very close political collaboration and comradeship, one that intensified over the past five years. Joe, as a person, was the biggest single political influence on my life.
The Red Circle helped to found the Revolutionary Marxist Group in 1973, which in turn joined forces with the League for Socialist Action and the GMR, a Quebec Trotskyist group, to launch the Revolutionary Workers' League in 1977. The membership of organizations to which Joe belonged looked to him as a central political leader, a theoretician and a labour movement coordinator. For years Joe led an internal tendency which strove to orient the membership towards the working class movement, to speak the language and to live the struggles of rank and file workers.
Joe left the section of the Fourth International in the Canadian state in the early 80's, as the RWL succumbed to sectarian policies and practices. But his renowned labour activism continued. During the break up of the Soviet Union, Joe joined the Canadian CP for a brief period, hoping to link up with leftward moving militants. He became a member of a split-off group, the Cecil-Ross Society, and he encouraged its archival and publication projects.
In the Fall of 1995 Joe decided it was "party building time". He asked to join Socialist Action, and immediately became a member of the editorial board of Socialist Action newspaper. He took special pleasure in helping to found the NDP Socialist Caucus. He was proud of the leading role he played in the writing of the Manifesto for A Socialist Canada, and in being a federal co-chair of the Socialist Caucus.
Joe Flexer walked on countless picket lines, spoke at countless rallies and demonstrations, and touched countless lives. Everywhere Joe went he fearlessly argued, and patiently polemicized, always keeping to the highest Marxist standard. Everywhere he earned respect - even amongst his most steadfast political opponents.