Julius Jacobson
Julius Jacobson
Independent Socialist League
Prominent members of the Independent Socialist League included Hal Draper and Ann Draper, Julius Jacobson and Phyllis Jacobson, Max Shachtman, Al Glotzer, Herman Benson, Gordon Haskell, Ernest Rice McKinney, Saul Mendelson, Deborah Meier, Don Chenoweth, Sam Bottone, Joe Friedman (Carter), Paul Bernick, Jack Rader, Carl Shier, Lewis Coser, Ernest Erber, Stanley Plastrik, Irving Howe, B.J. Widick.[1]
Socialist industry school
Tim Wohlforth became a socialist in 1953, right at the height of McCarthyism and at the lowest ebb that the American socialist movement had ever experienced. He was a sophomore at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.
- I was won to socialism by the Shachtmanites, a group that made up in intellectual vitality for what they clearly lacked in members.
- We were graced with two socialists — Scott Arden and Bogdan Denitch — from the newly formed Young Socialist League. Neither I nor anyone else at Oberlin College had ever heard of the group.
- Bogdan Denitch painted a colorful and somewhat exaggerated picture of the YSL. He gave a most astounding interview to the college newspaper. He stated that the YSL’s membership was “under 30,000” and went into great detail about a “training school” the YSL ran to turn out machinists to invade industry and form socialist cells to challenge the conservative union bureaucracy. The newspaper painted the organization as if it were a big Red plot.
- I found out the truth a couple of years later when I turned up in New York City and needed a job. Two older comrades, Herman Benson and Julius Jacobson, had a small machine shop. If you pleaded with them enough they would give you a fifteen-minute lesson in running an automatic screw machine. Their instruction was rather inadequate; luckily I never had to work in industry.
About a dozen students met with Arden and Denitch and decided to organize their own socialist club on campus, which they called the Eugene V. Debs Club, naming it after the famous early leader of American socialism…[2].
New Politics
Julius Jacobson was founding editor of of New Politics, magazine almost completely staffed and run by members of Democratic Socialists of America[3].
Opposing loans to Chile
In 1987, Joanne Landy, Thomas Harrison and Gail Daneker, Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy/East and West, New York, circulated a statement Against Loans to Chile calling upon the Reagan Administration to oppose all loans to Chile.
It has been signed by leading "peace, labor, human rights, religious and cultural figures from the United States, Western Europe and Latin America." They were "joined by a large number of activists and writers from the USSR and Eastern Europe, many of whom have been persecuted in their own countries for work in independent peace and human rights movements."
Julius Jacobson endorsed the call.
The majority of signatories were affiliated with Democratic Socialists of America.[4]
Socialist Scholars Conference 1990
The Socialist Scholars Conference 1990, held September 6-8, at the Hotel Commodore, New York, included panels such as:[5]
Intellectuals and the Revolution in East Europe
- Sponsor: New Politics
- Moderator: Julius Jacobson, Co-Editor, New Politics
- Daniel Singer, European Editor, The Nation
- Lawrence Weschler, Staff writer for the New Yorker
- Joanne Landy, Dir., Campaign for Peace and Democracy
- Patrick Flaherty, Expert on the Soviet Union
References
- ↑ TYR, April/May 2013]
- ↑ [Tim Wohlforth’s 1994 political memoir, The Prophet’s Children — Travels on the American Left (Humanities Press)]
- ↑ http://ww3.wpunj.edu/newpol/whoweare.htm#eds
- ↑ New York review of books, Vol 34, Number 10, June 11, 1987
- ↑ Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference program.