Everything about Louis Waldman totally explained
Louis Waldman (
January 5,
1892 -
September 12,
1982) was a leading figure in the
Socialist Party of America during its first 30 years and a prominent labor lawyer.
Biography
Born in
Yancherudnia,
Ukraine, to one of the few literate men among the
Jews of the village, Waldman migrated to America as a teenager settling in
New York City. After first attending
engineering school and finally
law school, he was elected to the
New York State Assembly as a Socialist in
1917 and again in
1919. That year, all five Socialist members (August Claessens, Samuel Orr, Charles Solomon, and
Sam Dewitt) were expelled in what became a lengthy court fight which was central to the struggle for civil liberties during the
Red Scare.
Waldman was a leader of the Socialist Party's most committedly
anticommunist faction from the beginning. Waldman was probably the major antagonist of
Leon Trotsky while he was living in Manhattan and was active in the party there, as soon as America entered
World War I, he publicly debated Trotsky over the latter's call to carry out armed resistance against the
Wilson Administration.
Waldman became chairman of the Socialist Party of
New York state in
1928 and was their candidate for Governor of New York that year and again in
1932. He quickly became a leader in that period of the party's "old guard", which was opposed to the position of the largely youth based "militant" faction that favored reconciliation and reunification with the
Communist Party USA, in keeping with the
United front policy of the
Comintern. The old guard left the party after the militants effectively took over at the national convention of
1934, whereupon they formed the
Social Democratic Federation (SDF).
Many SDF members became involved in the
American Labor Party when it was formed in
1936, supporting the faction led by
David Dubinsky. Waldman however resigned from the ALP as early as
1940 feeling it had been taken over by its pro-Communist faction led by
Sidney Hillman. It wasn't for another four years until Dubinsky and his supporters reached the same conclusion and bolted to form the
Liberal Party.
After resigning from the ALP, Waldman had virtually no political involvements and devoted himself to his
law practice, becoming the most distinguished labor lawyer in New York and quite possibly the nation. He was also active in the
Bar Association of New York and served over the years on numerous state commissions. Representing unions as varied as the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the
International Longshoremen's Association, Waldman continued his practice right up to his death.
Legacy
In
1944, Louis Waldman published his autobiography,
Labor Lawyer, in which he laid out his defense of the positions he'd taken in his political career. Among other things, Waldman became very critical of the
New Deal, considering it to be overly accommodating to the Communists and exhibiting certain authoritarian tendencies, somewhat echoing the critique of the
old right. He was particularly alarmed by the integration of
trade unions into the state apparatus that began to occur during
World War II.
Labor Lawyer also contains arguably the finest existing history of the events in the Socialist Party in the years following the death of
Eugene Victor Debs, and is especially significant because many of the figures he denounces as dangerous pro-Communists such as
Reinhold Niebuhr and
Andrew Biemiller would become some of the leading anti-Communist
liberals of the postwar years. While Waldman himself was mostly apolitical after the war, this perspective clearly informed figures such as
Ralph de Toledano who moved to the right from the anti-Communist left.
In addition, the law firm he founded, now Vladeck, Waldman, Elias, and Engelhardt, P.C., continues to exist as one of the leading labor law firms in New York.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Louis Waldman'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://louis_waldman.totallyexplained.com">Louis Waldman Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
