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Student Activism in the 1930s
New York City Being a revolutionary has become so much a matter of straight thinking with me that my impulse in tracing my development is to look for significant incidents in my intellectual development. I remember very vividly learning how to count from my aunt and for some reason this seems to have a special significance in terms of the person I have become; or perhaps it is because I have become the sort of person that I am that I attach special significance to this particular memory—but I don't want to write a piece on the writing of history. My father and mother were grocers in the neighborhood of Columbia. The latter accident exercised a great influence on my life. It early influenced me toward wanting to be a professor. Waiting on Teachers College students in the store I heard a type of English spoken quite different form the ordinary New Yorkese. My father died when I was nine and my mother then had to devote herself to keeping us alive so I have never had any sort of home life which is probably the reason why I have such a passion for domesticity—gentleness, books, slippers and a pipe. Because I grew up in the neighborhood of Columbia, I sort of acquired academic aspirations by shear contact. I also was a member of the gang—took part in block fights, played at dice, swam in the Hudson, went to burlesque shows, played center on a bad football team, lost money at pool, etc. This has always given me an essential toughness which I can display when necessary. Once when I was playing in the park a teacher from nearby tried out an intelligence test on me and I made a remarkable score. I was hauled up before 500 teachers at Horace Mann and took another test and made at the age of nine the intelligent quotient of a college freshman. The fellows then called me "professor" all of which inspired me to try to excel at school work. When I was 15 I can remember making a soapbox speech for Al Smith and being broken hearted over his defeat. I remember nothin about my first 3 years at high school save having a viotent contempt for the school Socialist and very laboriously explaining to him his stupidity. When I became a senior I happened to read Chris Morley and became a develoted reader of essays and good literature through Morley's enthusiasm. When I graduated from De Witt Clinton I went to work at Macmillan's in the packing dept. People had their eye on me, however, and I was soon to be transferred to the editorial dept. when I got into a fight with the lady in charge of our dept. because she was driving the girls too hard. The inside office came in and asked me to apologize. I refused and was fired. That was the summer Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. I remember being tremendously moved by articles in The Nation on the execution and almost imperceptibly moved into the columns of the radicals with no particular desire, however, to join a political movement. In 1927 I entered City College wanting to be a writer like Pater, devoted to ideas and music. The first ROTC fight was still simmering. When two fellows were suspended for criticizing Robinson, I joined the fight not because of any developed social convictions but because of a sense of justice and right. Gerson who was leading the fight for reinstatement and was a Communist worked on me mightily at the time but could not get me to commit myself beyond helping on the general basis of civil liberties. I was more interested probably in the college paper to whose staff I was appointed. I did some interviews with Prof. Morris R. Cohen and Upton Sinclair. When I quoted to the latter Cohen's contemptuous opinion of Shaw's ideas, I thought less of Sinclair because he considered Shaw a more important thinker than Cohen. It was Prof. Cohen at CCNY who more than any other person impressed me with my abysmal ignorance and inflamed me with a love for philosophy. He taught me how to examine every idea critically and honestly. My college days were among the happiest in my life. I belonged to a group of people who all of them took ideas seriously and all of whom could think capably—most of them are now teaching philosophy. We used to meet every other Sunday night at Morris Cohen's house and read books like Krutch's Modern Temper, Plato's dialogues, etc. We went on Sunday hikes, canoe trips to the Adirondacks, and every fall had a week conference on topics such as The State, Ethics and Revolution, etc. At college I quickly achieved a position of intellectual eminence despite my mediocre marks. I was given a column in the college paper which I filled three times a week with pale imitations of Pater. I was considered Morris Cohen's plenipotentiary in the student body. About this time I joined the Socialist Party but was not very active. I was impressed with the victory of the British Labor Party in the 1929 elections and thought socialism would soon arrive. Our group also was turning to what we considered appropriate forms of political activity. We organized an Industrial Research Group. This Group would take up subjects like "The Young Worker in Industry," find out what was unknown about the subject and then raise significant questions, list a bibliography. We would then send these outlines to hundreds of college economics and history professors who used them to help students in picking term topics and masters thesis subjects. Our outlines were of course animated and the subjects were chosen on the basis of our socialist convictions. I left CCNY and went to Columbia to take a PhD in English literature. I got my masters and was doing a damn interesting thesis on the way new language introduced by technological and material changes in society becomes domesticated in poetry. I was induced into going on the Harlan expedition. What I saw would not let me rest. When I returned I quickly became active in the Socialist movement. I put out a magazine for the LID, fought on picket lines, went to conventions, began to formulate policy, went abroad to a socialist student congress. My history from this time on becomes the history of the student movement. I took part in the bonus march, helped in the 1932 Socialist campaign, and reluctantly came to the conclusion that I would not become a professor and began to equip myself toward becoming a professional revolutionist. Because of my background in ideas and among people who were intellectually honest, I generally approached all problems with an essential honesty. After Hitler's triumph I became convinced of the need for unity and fought for it within the Socialist movement straight down the line and left it when I became convinced that the Socialist Party had worked itself into a position where its whole being was one of fighting the CP. This has involved a breach with people for whom I have deep respect and love. To have done otherwise, however, would have been to repudiate myself and my confidence in my own integrity and ability to think for myself. Working in the student movement, watching it grow, seeing what it can develop into has been a very satisfying experience. While I recognize the primacy of the labor movement, my personal preference is for the kind of work I have been doing. I have collected a decent library, good furniture, especially a wonderful maple desk of huge size. Personal difficulties, however, have persuaded me that I shall not achieve the domesticity I have been searching for. I sometimes live in momentary terror that I will have to sell my few personal belongings which represent the kind of person I would like to be. Basically, however, I am a revolutionist and devoted to the movement. So long as I can believe in that, life will be O.K. If I had more time I would develop my ideas of socialism and the good life. Home | Historical Essay | Documents | Credits |
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