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Larry Trainor

Larry Trainor was a leading activist of the Socialist Workers Party (US) in Boston and a member of the party's National Committee.

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Jul 20, 2026
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Larry Trainor (April 20, 1905 – July 22, 1975) was a leading activist of the Socialist Workers Party (US) in Boston and a member of the party's National Committee.

Trainor was a noted socialist educator, giving classes on Marxism, the history of the American socialist and Trotskyist movements and especially on Stalinism. He was the author of an extensive oral history 1 of American socialism.

Barry Sheppard wrote: "Larry had no formal higher education, but he knew more about politics and the world than any professor I had ever known...a true worker-intellectual, always reading when he was not explaining something. He had a very strong character."2

Trainor's role in discussions of organizational questions in the SWP in the 1960s is referred to in articles by George Breitman3 and Frank Lovell.4

References

References

  1. "Holt Labor Library Collection Audio Index". www.marxists.org.
  2. Barry Sheppard. 'The Party: A Political Memoir, Vol. I: The Sixties'. Resistance Books, 2005.
  3. "Don't strangle the party". Angelfire. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  4. "The Struggle Inside the Socialist Workers Party". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-05-26.