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40-607: At its 1944 convention in New Orleans, the AFL passed a resolution drafted by Jay Lovestone creating the FTUC. Lovestone became its executive secretary. Its mission was to assist trade unions in foreign countries, especially to help them remain independent of Communist influence. Its original funding was one million dollars. The organization backed "free unions founded on collective bargaining in an open marketplace, and opposition to state-run unions on

80-590: A rabbi , but when he emigrated to America he had to settle for a job as shammes (caretaker). Barnet came first, then sent for his family the next year. Lovestone arrived with his mother, Emma, and his siblings, Morris, Esther and Sarah at Ellis Island on September 15, 1907. They originally settled on Hester Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side , but later moved to 2155 Daly Avenue in the Bronx . The family did not know their dates of birth precisely, but they assigned Jacob

120-612: A broad selection of speeches, essays, and documents from the party's history; his recollection of organizing work during the autoworkers' sit-down strike was published in The Great Sit-Down Strike , a work produced by the party-organized Workers Library Publishers in 1937. In 1953, Weinstone and 12 other communist leaders were convicted in Federal District Court in Manhattan under the Smith Act of conspiracy to advocate

160-702: A majority because the American Communist Party until now regarded you as the determined supporters of the Communist International. And it was only because the Party regarded you as friends of the Comintern that you had a majority in the ranks of the American Communist Party". When he returned to the US, Lovestone was forced to pay for his insubordination and was expelled from the party for his support of Bukharin and

200-730: A member of the Socialist Party, he joined its unofficial student wing, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society . He became secretary and then president of the CCNY chapter. He also met William Weinstone and Bertram Wolfe in ISS, who would go on to become his factional allies in the Communist Party. He graduated in June 1918. In February 1919 he had his name legally changed to Jay Lovestone ,

240-530: A new collective leadership called the Secretariat. Although he had aspirations of permanent leadership, Weinstone was ultimately unable to retain the top leadership, which soon fell to Earl Browder , a longtime factional rival. In July 1929, Weinstone ran for Mayor of New York City . Following the campaign, Weinstone was selected by the Communist Party as its representative to the Executive Committee of

280-540: A radicalized American Federation of Labor through a boring from within policy. In 1925 the leader of the Pepper–Ruthenberg faction, John Pepper, returned to Moscow for work in the apparatus of the Communist International , raising Lovestone's status to that of a chief lieutenant in a new Ruthenberg–Lovestone pairing. Foster and Cannon, on the other hand, parted ways, with Alexander Bittelman assuming

320-537: A result of his trip to the Comintern Congress in 1928 where James P. Cannon and Maurice Spector accidentally saw Leon Trotsky 's thesis criticizing the direction of the Comintern, Cannon became a Trotskyist and decided to organize his faction in support of Trotsky's position. Cannon's support for Trotsky became known before he had fully mobilized his supporters. Lovestone led the expulsion of Cannon and his supporters in 1928. When Stalin purged Bukharin from

360-674: A small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL–CIO and various unions within it. Lovestone was born Jacob Liebstein (Яков Либштейн Yakov Libshtein ) into a Lithuanian Jewish family in a shtetl called Moǔchadz in Grodno Governorate (then part of the Russian Empire , now in Grodno Region , Belarus ). His father, Barnet, had been

400-433: Is reported to be 5,700 pages long. William Weinstone William Wolf Weinstone (1897–1985) was an American Communist politician and labor leader. Weinstone served as Executive Secretary of the unified Communist Party of America , the forerunner of today's Communist Party USA , from October 15, 1921, to February 22, 1922, and was an important figure in the party's activities among the auto workers of Detroit during

440-727: The Force Ouvrière in France in opposition to the Communist-controlled labor confederation in 1948. David Dubinsky claimed in his memoirs that the FTUC resisted attempts by the CIA to control its operations, but the CIA's role was substantial. The CIA channeled funds to the FTUC for 20 years, beginning with efforts to influence the Italian elections in 1948. Even in meetings with their CIA counterparts, FTUC officials inflated their budgets to minimize

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480-577: The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936–1937, in which the striking UAW workers occupied several General Motors plants for over forty days – repelling the efforts of the police and National Guard to drive them from the auto plant's premises. A member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party during the same period, Weinstone concurrently worked on the party's cause on behalf of oppressed African Americans in

520-556: The Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University in 1975, where they remained sealed for 20 years. The material was opened to the public in 1995 and was a source for author Ted Morgan , who published the first full-length biography of Lovestone in 1999. An associate, Louise Page Morris , later supplemented the collection with her correspondence—according to other reports, Morris "spent 25 years as Lovestone's lover." Lovestone's Federal Bureau of Investigation file

560-590: The Left Wing National Conference held in New York City , at which he was seated to replace a regular delegate on the last day of the gathering. Weinstone was elected as a delegate to the founding convention of the Communist Party of America, called to order in Chicago on September 1, 1919. During the first years of the 1920s, the Communist Party of America was forced underground by the mass operation of

600-528: The New York Workers School , the Communist Party's ideological training school located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan . He served in that role until 1944. Still publishing material for the communist cause into the twilight of his life, Winestone, together with Theodore Bassett and Philip A. Bart, was also co-editor of Highlights of a Fighting History: 60 Years of the Communist Party, USA ,

640-523: The Right Opposition and for his theory of American exceptionalism , which held that capitalism was more secure in the United States and thus socialists should pursue different, more moderate strategies there than elsewhere in the world. That contradicted Stalin's views and the new Third Period policy of ultra-leftism promoted by the Comintern. Lovestone and his friends had thought that they commanded

680-565: The US Department of Justice remembered as the Palmer Raids . During this interval, Weinstone served as Executive Secretary of the secret party organization from October 15, 1921, to February 22, 1922, under the pseudonym "G. Lewis." In the summer of 1929, following the removal of Jay Lovestone and Benjamin Gitlow from the leadership of the Communist Party, Weinstone was added to the ranks of

720-697: The left wing elements in the Socialist Party in New York began to organize themselves as a separate faction. Lovestone was on the original organizing committee, the Committee of 15, with Wolfe, John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow. That June he attended the National Conference of the Left Wing. He sided with the Fraina/Ruthenberg faction that opted to create a National Left Wing Council that would attempt to take over

760-462: The 1930s. William Weinstone was born December 15, 1897, in Vilnius , then part of the tsarist Russian Empire . Will was the son of Jewish parents who emigrated from Russia to escape that nation's pervasive antisemitism during the late Tsarist period. His original surname was "Weinstein", a name which he Americanized when he was older. In June 1919, Weinstone was elected as an alternate delegate to

800-520: The CIA's relative contribution. Dubinsky had misgivings throughout and the FTUC managed to maintain a certain independence and fought for less CIA control over their activities. Jay Lovestone Jay Lovestone (15 December 1897 – 7 March 1990) was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America , a leader of the Communist Party USA , leader of

840-520: The CIA, who was conducting illegal domestic spying activities, despite being told seven years earlier to terminate this relationship. Meany chose to force Lovestone out by issuing an instruction with which he knew Lovestone would not comply. On March 6, 1974, he informed Lovestone that he wanted to close his New York office, stop publication of Free Trade Union News , and transfer Lovestone and his library and archives to Washington, D.C. When Lovestone argued he could not relocate his library of 6,000 books, he

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880-605: The Communist International in Moscow , a post which he occupied until 1931. On January 15, 1931, William Albertson was to serve as secretary of a "Provisional Anti-War Youth Committee" of New York State to hold a rally for a Liebknecht Memorial and Anti-War Demonstration at the Star Casono at Park Avenue and 117 Street in Manhattan; CPUSA executive Weinstone and YCL leader Gil Green were to attend. Weinstone ran for U.S. Senator from New York in 1932 . As an executive officer of

920-687: The Communist Party in Michigan during a wave of Great Depression union activity during the mid-1930s, Weinstone played a significant role in the founding of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) in May 1935, pressing the unionized workers to make use of the sit-down strike , a tactic first employed by the Industrial Workers of the World union. The union's wave of successful sit-down strikes culminated in

960-522: The Independent Labor League of America, before dissolving in 1941. The party published the periodical Workers' Age (originally The Revolutionary Age ), which was edited by Bertram Wolfe , along with a number of pamphlets. In 1944, David Dubinsky arranged to place Lovestone in the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee , where he worked out of the ILGWU's headquarters. Along with Irving Brown he led

1000-615: The Socialist Party. He stayed with this group after it reversed its stance, and joined the National Organizing Committee in founding the Communist Party of America on September 1, 1919, at a convention in Chicago. In 1921, Lovestone became editor of the Communist Party newspaper, The Communist , and sat on the editorial board of The Liberator , the arts and letters publication of the Workers Party of America . Upon

1040-530: The Soviet Politburo in 1929, Lovestone suffered the consequences. A visiting delegation of the Comintern asked him to step down as party secretary in favor of his rival William Z. Foster . Lovestone refused and departed for the Soviet Union to argue his case. Lovestone insisted that he had the support of the vast majority of the Communist Party and should not have to step aside. Stalin responded that he "had

1080-611: The Soviet model." The leadership of the AFL anticipated that Communists in each European country would have the backing of the Russian state and its propaganda in their efforts to dominate each nation's labor movement. The Americans thought Eastern Europe was probably lost to their movement, but many others needed their assistance, including Greece, Italy, and Turkey. Non-communist but statist regimes like Spain and later Argentina presented opportunities as well. Initially their organizational counterpart

1120-676: The USSR on a long-term basis. Childs persuaded Weinstone to return to the United States, however, and he returned to America on November 1, 1959. Weinstone married Gertrude Haessler, sister of Carl Haessler , who headed the Federated Press . Will Weinstone died on October 26, 1985. Weinstone's papers reside with the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress in Washington . Weinstone

1160-670: The activities of the American Institute for Free Labor Development , an organization sponsored by the AFL which worked internationally, organizing free labor unions in Europe and Latin America which were not Communist-controlled. In connection with that work he cooperated closely with the CIA , feeding information about Communist labor-union activities to James Jesus Angleton , the CIA's counterintelligence chief, in order to undermine Communist influence in

1200-491: The date of December 15, 1897. Young Liebstein was attracted to socialist politics from his teens. While imbibing all the ideological currents in the vibrant New York Yiddish and English radical press, he was particularly attracted to the ideas of Daniel De Leon . Although it is not known whether he ever joined de Leon's Socialist Labor Party , he was one of the 3,000 mourners who attended his funeral on May 11, 1914. Liebstein entered City College of New York in 1915. Already

1240-753: The death of Charles Ruthenberg in 1927 he became the party's national secretary . From about 1923, the CP developed two main factions , the Pepper – Ruthenberg group and the Foster – Cannon group. Lovestone was a close adherent of the Pepper–Ruthenberg tendency, which was to be centered in New York City and to favor united-front political action in a "class Labor Party", as opposed to the Foster–Cannon group, which tended to be centered in Chicago and were most concerned with building

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1280-595: The following of the mass of party members and, once expelled, optimistically named their new party the Communist Party (Majority Group) . When the new group attracted only a few hundred members they changed its name to the Communist Party (Opposition). They were aligned with the International Communist Opposition , which had sections in fifteen countries. The CP(O) later became the Independent Communist Labor League and then, in 1938,

1320-491: The international union movement and provide intelligence to the US government. He remained there until 1963 when he became director of the AFL–CIO 's International Affairs Department (IAD), which quietly sent millions of dollars from the CIA to aid anti-communist activities internationally, particularly in Latin America . In 1973, AFL–CIO president George Meany discovered that Lovestone was still in contact with Angleton of

1360-674: The mantle as Foster's chief factional ally, while Jim Cannon built his power base in the party's legal defense mass organization, the International Labor Defense (ILD). With the Soviet Bolshevik party riven by a succession struggle following Lenin's death in January 1924, the factions in the US eventually corresponded with factions in the Soviet leadership, with Foster's faction being strongly supportive of Joseph Stalin and Lovestone's faction sympathetic to Nikolai Bukharin . As

1400-494: The segregated southern states. Writing for such communist publications as The International Communist , he was a strong champion of the defense of the falsely-accused Scottsboro Boys , whose successful legal defense was organized by the Communist-funded International Labor Defense , as was the famous case of young African American organizer Angelo Herndon . In 1938, Weinstone was named Director of

1440-632: The so-called " Secret Speech " of Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November 1956. In 1959, Weinstone was among the first American communists to visit the Soviet Union again, following a protracted break in direct contacts with the outside world. Weinstone traveled at that time without portfolio and was reported by high-ranking party member and FBI informant Morris Childs to have been considering seeking employment and staying in

1480-556: The surname being a literal translation of Liebstein . (During the early 20th century such name changes were a common practice for Jewish immigrants who encountered widespread antisemitism in American society .) That year he also began studying at NYU Law School , but dropped out to pursue a career as a full-time Communist party member. His first foray into what would become the American Communist movement began in February 1919, when

1520-447: The violent overthrow of the government. His role in the conspiracy was the writing of two newspaper articles, in 1948 and 1950, reviewing the party's educational work and plans to raise membership. He served two years in a Federal prison and was fined $ 4,000. Weinstone remained a loyalist to the Communist Party throughout his entire life, remaining in the organization even after its bitter factional struggle of 1956 to 1958, brought about by

1560-458: Was dismissed, effective July 1. Lovestone's successor, Ernie Lee, maintained a low profile during his tenure from 1974 through 1982 and significantly scaled back the AFL–CIO's aggressive advocacy of a hawkish, anti- détente foreign policy. Lovestone died on March 7, 1990, at the age of 92. Lovestone's massive accumulation of papers, today encompassing more than 865 archival boxes, were acquired by

1600-634: Was the World Federation of Trade Unions , which the AFL's rival, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), joined and which, it later transpired, the Soviets financed. The FTUC helped rebuild the shattered trade union movement in Europe and Japan. It sent food packages to destitute labor activists and union leaders. In addition to relief activities, it financed a trade school in Palermo . The FTUC helped fund

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