Marcy was born in the
Russian Empire to
Jewish parents. During the
Russian Civil War, his family was a target of anti-Jewish
pogroms by the
White movement and received protection from the communist forces. They resettled in
Brooklyn, where Marcy became an activist for the
Communist Party USA. He studied law at
St. Johns University and provided legal advice to labor unions in New York. Marcy grew discontented as a member of the Communist Party, viewing the
Third International as increasingly detached from working class interests and instead a mouthpiece for
Joseph Stalin, whose oppressive bureaucracy he despised. He joined the Trotskyist movement in the 1940s, building a branch of the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in
Buffalo. Marcy,
Vince Copeland, and other SWP members developed a theory of "global
class war", according to which Marxists had a duty to defend the existence of the USSR and its satellites in spite of their bureaucracy. The theory not only guided the formation of the
Workers World Party but has more recently made inroads into academic Marxist debates in the U.S. Over several years Marcy clashed with the SWP leadership on several questions, including their approach to Communist China and North Korea, whether the SWP should endorse
Henry A. Wallace, and the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956. On the last question, Marcy's faction supported the Soviet military intervention, arguing that the initial worker uprising had attracted class elements that sought to restore capitalism. In 1959 the "global class war" faction set up a new organization, the Workers World Party, characterized by outspoken defense of all Communist governments in the world. Marcy's writings included extensive works on socialism, the Cold War era and the rise of the powerful
military-industrial complex. He also wrote about the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the
anti-war movement during the Vietnam War, the economic forces behind capitalist downsizing and the impact of
high technology. Selections of his works have been translated into many languages, including
Persian, Spanish,
Turkish, Korean, French and German. His writings show a strong support for
Mao Zedong and the
Chinese Cultural Revolution, and he defended the leadership of the
People’s Republic of China until the reforms of
Deng Xiaoping. Marcy defended both China and the Soviet Union against charges of imperialism despite disagreeing with some policies and practices of the Communist Party leadership of both countries. In addition to his writings, Marcy and Copeland were some of the organizers of the first demonstration in the United States against the Vietnam War. The demonstration, by WWP affiliate group Youth Against War and Fascism, occurred in August 1962 and was subsequently noted by
Ho Chi Minh in an interview with the
National Guardian newspaper. Marcy died at
Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan on February 1, 1998, at age 86. == References ==