Max Weiss (activist)

Last updated
Max Weiss
OccupationEducational director, editor of Political Affairs
Employer CPUSA
Movement Communism

Max Weiss served as "Educational Director" and/or "Secretary of the National Education Commission" of the Communist Party USA, was a member of the Party's National Committee, edited Political Affairs (magazine) , and wrote often for the Party's The Communist magazine during the 1930s and 1940s. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Career

Weiss served as general secretary of the Young Communist League. [2] [4] In 1926, he wrote for the "Spartacist Group" of Illinois in Young Comrade: Paper for Workers' and Farmers' Children. [5]

Weiss served as Educational Director [1] and/or Secretary of the "National Education Commission" of the Communist Party USA and was a member of the Party's National Committee. He also edited Political Affairs . [2]

In February 1944, Weiss's fellow members of a sub-committee of the National Committee included: William Z. Foster (chairman), Robert Minor (secretary), James W. Ford, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Israel Amter, Rose Wortis, Ray Hansbrough, Steve Nelson, Louis Todd, Sam Don, Alexander Trachtenberg, A. Landy, John Williamson, Mother Bloor (Ella Reeve Bloor), Anita Whitney, Charles Krumbein, Rob Hall, Pettis Perry, Alfred Wagenknecht, and V. J. Jerome. [6]

In 1951, during HUAC hearings on Communist infiltration in Hollywood, "Max Weiss" received mention during discussion of Irving Henschel. Roy M. Brewer, a IATSE leader, described Henschel as "lead of the Communist faction in 1944" and "member of the Rank and File Committee which attempted to set up a revolt in our organization during the 1945 strike in Hollywood." When Henschel contacted CPUSA official Max Weiss in Ohio, Weiss reported Henschel's conduct to Roy Hudson in New York. The witness mentions "Weiss was at that time a Communist Party functionary in Ohio." [7]

Works

Related Research Articles

William Z. Foster American politician

William Z. Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Communist politician, whose career included serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1945 to 1957. He was previously a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, leading the drive to organize the packinghouse industry during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.

Earl Browder American Communist political activist

Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.

Yugoslav Partisans Communist-led Yugoslav resistance against the Axis in WWII

The Yugoslav Partisans, or the National Liberation Army, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn American labor leader, activist and feminist (1890-1964)

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in the Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.

Hilde Coppi

Betti Gertrud Käthe Hilda Rake was a German communist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. She was a member of the anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Nazi period.

Bella Dodd was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s, and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949.

James W. Ford American politician

James W. “Jim” Ford was an activist, a politician, and the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in the years 1932, 1936, and 1940. Ford was born in Alabama and later worked as a party organizer for the CPUSA in New York City. He was also the first African American to run on a U.S. presidential ticket (1932) in the 20th century.

Robert Minor American cartoonist

Robert Berkeley "Bob" Minor, alternatively known as "Fighting Bob," was a political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and, beginning in 1920, a leading member of the American Communist Party.

League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia

League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, commonly known in English as the Young Communist League of Yugoslavia, or simply Communist Youth, was the youth wing of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from 1919 to 1948. Although it was banned just two years after its establishment and at times ruthlessly prosecuted, it continued to work clandestinely and was an influential organization among revolutionary youth in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and consequently became a major organizer of Partisan resistance to Axis occupation and local Quisling forces. After World War II, SKOJ became a part of a wider organization of Yugoslav youth, the People's Youth of Yugoslavia, which later became the League of Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia.

The League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1935. The group included Communist Party members, and so-called "fellow travelers" who closely followed the Communist Party's political line without being formal party members, as well as individuals sympathetic to specific policies being advocated by the organization.

Frederick Vanderbilt Field was an American leftist political activist, political writer and a great-great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, disinherited by his wealthy relatives for his radical political views. Field became a specialist on Asia and was a prime staff member and supporter of the Institute of Pacific Relations. He also supported Henry Wallace's Progressive Party and so many openly Communist organizations that he was accused of being a member of the Communist Party. He was a top target of the American government during the peak of 1950s McCarthyism. Field denied ever having been a party member but admitted in his memoirs, "I suppose I was what the Party called a 'member at large.'"

Israel Amter American classical composer

Israel Amter (1881–1954) was a Marxist politician and founding member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Amter is best remembered as one of the Communist Party leaders jailed in conjunction with the International Unemployment Day riot of 1930 and as a frequent candidate for public office, including three runs for Governor of New York.

Gil Green was a leading figure in the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1991. He is best remembered as the leader of the party's youth section, the Young Communist League, during the tumultuous decade of the 1930s.

English-language press of the Communist Party USA Press

During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.

The Workers Party (WP) was a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. It was founded in April 1940 by members of the Socialist Workers Party who opposed the Soviet invasion of Finland and Leon Trotsky's belief that the USSR under Joseph Stalin was still innately proletarian, a "degenerated workers' state." They included Max Shachtman, who became the new group's leader, Hal Draper, C. L. R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Martin Abern, Joseph Carter, Julius Jacobson, Phyllis Jacobson, Albert Glotzer, Stan Weir, B. J. Widick, James Robertson, and Irving Howe. The party's politics are often referred to as "Shachtmanite."

Samuel Adams Darcy

Samuel Adams Darcy was an American political activist who was a prominent Communist leader in both New York and California. While active in the organization of New York City's unemployment march in 1930, he was perhaps most famous for his role in the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike and support for Harry Bridges.

Anti-fascism Opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals

Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.

Zagreb in World War II Aspects of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia during World War II

When World War II started, Zagreb was the capital of the newly formed autonomous Banovina of Croatia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which remained neutral in the first years of the war. After the Invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy on 6 April 1941, German troops entered Zagreb on 10 April. On the same day, Slavko Kvaternik, a prominent member of the Ustaše movement, proclaimed the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), an Axis puppet state, with Zagreb as its capital. Ante Pavelić was proclaimed Poglavnik of the NDH and Zagreb became the center of the Main Ustaša Headquarters, the Government of the NDH, and other political and military institutions, as well as the police and intelligence services.

Abraham Markoff CPUSA leader and co-founder of Workers Schools

Abraham Markoff (1887–1939), AKA "A. Markoff" and "Professor A. Markoff" in Marxist publications, was a Russian-born American and CPUSA member who founded and served as first director of the New York Workers School.

Roy Hudson, also known as Roy B. Hudson, served on the national executive board of the Communist Party USA and national trade union director.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Weiss, Max (1956). The Meaning of the XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. New Century. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Weiss, Max (April 1947). A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: The Party is over, 1946-1992. New Century Publishers. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  3. Starobin, Joseph Robert (1975). American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957. University of California Press. pp. 134 (editor), 149 (article), 242 (1956). ISBN   9780520027961 . Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  4. Gates, John (1958). The Story of an American Communist. Nelson. pp. 18, 80, 164. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  5. Weiss, Max (June 1926). "Child Labor Evil Must Be Fought By Children" (PDF). Young Comrade: Paper for Workers' and Farmers' Children. Young Communist League. p. 1. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  6. "Decision of the National Committee of the Communist Party" (PDF). The Communist. 23 (2): 108. February 1944. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  7. Communist Activities Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eighty-second Congress, First-second Sessions. US GPO. 1951. pp. 482–483 (Ohio), 519 (report), 525 (mention). Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  8. Weiss, Max (August 1932). "American Imperialism's Growing Parasitic Bureaucracy" (PDF). The Communist. 11 (8). Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  9. Weiss, Max (January 1941). "Lenin and Proletarian Internationalism" (PDF). The Communist. 20 (1): 18–34. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  10. Weiss, Max (June 1941). "Who Are the Friends of the Youth?" (PDF). The Communist. 20 (6): 546–556. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  11. Weiss, Max (August 1941). "For a National Anti-Fascist Youth Front!" (PDF). The Communist. 20 (8). Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  12. Weiss, Max (November 1941). "Earl Browder – Champion of U. S.–Soviet Collaboration" (PDF). The Communist. 20 (11): 977–987. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  13. Weiss, Max (July 1942). "On the Occasion of Dimitroff's Sixtieth Birthday" (PDF). The Communist. 21 (7): 534–547. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  14. Speed the Second Front. Workers Library Publisher. October 1942. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  15. Weiss, Max (February 1943). "The Nation and the Armed Forces" (PDF). The Communist. 22 (2): 146–156. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  16. Weiss, Max (April 1943). "Youth in the Fight for Victory" (PDF). The Communist. 22 (4): 316–331. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  17. Weiss, Max (August 1943). "Fifth-Column Diversion in Detroit" (PDF). The Communist. 22 (8): 698–710. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  18. Weiss, Max (September 1943). "Toward a New Anti-Fascist Youth Organization" (PDF). The Communist. 22 (9): 792–805. Retrieved 14 July 2020.
  19. Weiss, Max (May 1948). "A Comment on State Capitalism". The Communist. xxvii (5). Retrieved 14 July 2020.