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Walt Carmon
Walt Carmon (1894–1968) was a magazine editor and writer best known for his years as managing editor of the Communist magazine the ''New Masses'' from 1929 to 1932. He also worked for a number of other magazines in smaller roles, which contributed to his becoming something of a frontman for the Midwestern radicals. Biography Early Years Walt Carmon was born in New Jersey, played professional baseball in the midwest, and “spent time in Mexico with 'New Masses'' founder and editorMike Gold during World War I” prior to entering the magazine world. He “worked for the ''Labor Defender'' (the publication of the Party-led International Labor Defense) and also assisted as circulation manager of the ''Daily Worker'',” on which limited credentials (and a reputation as a midwestern radical) he was hired as managing editor at the ''New Masses'' and made the move from ''Chicago'' to ''New York''. ''New Masses'' Years Walt Carmon became managing editor for the Communist Party USA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daughter Of Earth
''Daughter of Earth'' (1929) is an autobiographical novel by the American author and journalist Agnes Smedley. The novel chronicles the years of Marie Rogers's tumultuous childhood, struggles in relationships with men (both physical and emotional), time working with the Socialist Party, and involvement in the Indian independence movement. Composition The fictional character of Marie Rogers lives a life similar to Agnes Smedley's. While the novel is fiction, the content is predominantly autobiographical. In the 1987 republication, Alice Walker states in her foreword “... it is the true story (give or take a few minor changes, deletions, or embellishments) of one woman’s life. Marie Rogers of ''Daughter of Earth'' is Agnes Smedley” (2). In his 1973 afterword, Paul Lauter discusses Smedley's life, full of struggle and hardship, as it led up to the writing of ''Daughter of Earth'' as a therapeutic exercise. “Psychoanalysis...was for her not a fad but a last remedy” (411). The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1968 Deaths
The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – " Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * January 10 – John Gorton is sworn in as 19th Prime Minister of Australia, taking over from John McEwen after being elected leader of the Liberal Party the previous day, following the disappearance of Harold Holt. Gorton becomes the only Senator to become Prime Minister, though he immediately transfers to the House of Representatives through the 1968 Higgins by-election in Holt's vacant seat. * January 15 – The 1968 Belice earthquake in Sicily kills 380 and injures around 1,000. * January 21 ** Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh – One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8. ** 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash: A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs. * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1894 Births
Events January–March * January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire. * January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United States. * January 9 – New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard, in Lexington, Massachusetts Lexington is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is 10 miles (16 km) from Downtown Boston. The population was 34,454 as of the 2020 census. The area was originally inhabited by Native Americans, and was firs .... * February 12 ** French anarchist Émile Henry (anarchist), Émile Henry sets off a bomb in a Paris café, killing one person and wounding twenty. ** The barque ''Elisabeth Rickmers'' of Bremerhaven is wrecked at Haurvig, Denmark, but all crew and passengers are saved. * February 15 ** In Korea, peasant unrest erupts in the Donghak Peasant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Union Of Soviet Writers
The Union of Soviet Writers, USSR Union of Writers, or Soviet Union of Writers (russian: Союз писателей СССР, translit=Soyuz Sovetstikh Pisatelei) was a creative union of professional writers in the Soviet Union. It was founded in 1934 on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (1932) after disbanding a number of other writers' organizations, including Proletkult and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. The aim of the Union was to achieve party and state control in the field of literature. For professional writers, membership of the Union became effectively obligatory, and non-members had much more limited opportunities for publication. The result was that exclusion from the Union meant a virtual ban on publication. However, the history of the Union of Writers also saw cases of voluntary self-exclusion from its cadre. Thus, Vasily Aksenov, Semyon Lipkin, and Inna Lisnyanskaya left the Union of Writers in a show of solidarity aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moscow News
''The Moscow News'', which began publication in 1930, was Russia's oldest English-language newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the Russian language ''Moskovskiye Novosti.'' History Soviet Union In 1930 ''The Moscow News'' was founded by American socialist Anna Louise Strong, who was one of the leaders of the Seattle General Strike in 1919. It was approved by the Communist leadership—at that time already dominated by Joseph Stalin—in 1930 as an international newspaper with the purpose of spreading the ideas of socialism to international audience. The paper was soon published in many languages, including major world languages, such as French language, French, German language, German, Spanish language, Spanish, Italian language, Italian, Greek language, Greek, Hungarian language, Hungarian, and Arabic language, Arabic, as well as languages of neighboring countries, such as Finnish language, Finnish. The first foreign editor of the ''Moscow News ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for ''Time'' magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir ''Witness''. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at ''National Review'' (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984. Background Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent his infancy in Brooklyn. His family moved to Lynbrook, Long Island, New York State, in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Reed Clubs
The John Reed Clubs (1929–1935), often referred to as John Reed Club (JRC), were an American federation of local organizations targeted towards Marxist writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist and activist John Reed. Established in the fall of 1929, the John Reed Clubs were a mass organization of the Communist Party USA which sought to expand its influence among radical and liberal intellectuals. The organization was terminated in 1935. History 1929 In October 1929, the John Reed Club was founded by eight staff members of the ''New Masses'' magazine to support leftist and Marxist artists and writers. They included: Mike Gold, Walt Carmon, William Gropper, Keene Wallis, Hugo Gellert, Morris Pass, and Joseph Pass. According to Alan M. Wald, The John Reed Clubs were not founded by the Communist Party. ''New Masses'' managing editor Walt Carmon became frustrated with a group of young writers who were hanging out in the office and getting in hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Clare Foley
Barbara Foley (born March 29, 1948) is an American writer and the Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark. She focuses her research and teaching on U.S. literary radicalism, African American literature, and Marxist criticism. The author of six books and over seventy scholarly articles, review essays, and book chapters, she has published on literary theory, academic politics, US proletarian literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the writers Ralph Ellison and Jean Toomer. Throughout her career, her work has emphasized the centrality of antiracism and Marxist class analysis to both literary study and social movements. Life Born in New York City, Foley attended Radcliffe College from 1965 to 1969, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude; she earned her Ph.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago in 1976. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the antiwar, antiracist, and feminist movements, she began what became an extended involvement with left- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist, writer, and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Colorado, she dramatized the formation of her feminist and socialist consciousness in the autobiographical novel ''Daughter of Earth'' (1929). As a college student during World War I, she organized support for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany. After the war she went to Germany, where she met and worked with Indian nationalists. Between 1928 and 1941, she lived and worked in China, mainly as a journalist. During the first phase of the Chinese Civil War, she was based in Shanghai and published widely in support of the communist cause; later, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, she traveled with the Eighth Route Army and lived for a time in the communist base in Yan'a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Masses
''New Masses'' (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. It succeeded both ''The Masses'' (1912–1917) and ''The Liberator''. ''New Masses'' was later merged into '' Masses & Mainstream'' (1948–1963). With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929 America became more receptive to ideas from the political Left and ''New Masses'' became highly influential in intellectual circles. The magazine has been called “the principal organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onwards." History Early years ''New Masses'' was launched in New York City in 1926 as part of the Workers (Communist) Party of America's publishing stable, produced by a communist leadership but making use of the work of an array of independent writers and artists.Paul Buhle, ''Marxism in the USA: From 1870 to the Present Day'' (London: Verson, 1987), p. 172. The magazine was established to fill a void caused by the gradual transition of ''The Workers Mon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Not Without Laughter
''Not Without Laughter'' is the debut novel by Langston Hughes published in 1930. Plot introduction ''Not Without Laughter'' portrays African-American life in Kansas in the 1910s, focusing on the effects of class and religion on the community. The main storyline focuses on Sandy's "awakening to the sad and the beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ... town." Characters *James "Sandy" Rodgers *Jimboy Rodgers – Sandy's father, Annjee's husband *Annjelica "Annjee" Rodgers – Sandy's mother, wife of Jimboy *Aunt Hager Williams – Annjee's mother and Sandy's grandmother *Tempy Siles/Williams – Annjee's sister *Mr. Siles – Tempy's husband *Harriett Williams – sister of Annjee *Maudel Smothers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
