Few figures in the history of the American Left can claim a more significant and yet contradictory legacy as Jay Lovestone.
Lovestone and his comrades briefly controlled, and then were dramatically expelled from, the Communist Party of America. The so-called “Lovestoneites” struck out on their own, forming a new Communist political organization with a unique analysis of American conditions and the international political situation—different in content, but similar in its development, to the Trotskyist “Left Opposition.” This book, the first in a six volume series examining the ideology of dissident Marxist movements in America, provides fundamental documents illuminating the political and foreign policy ideas of Lovestone’s “Communist Party Opposition,” which included within its ranks at various times such prominent activists as Benjamin Gitlow, Bertram D. Wolfe, Will Herberg, Charles S. Zimmerman, Louis C. Fraina (Lewis Corey), and Ellen Dawson.
By assembling this collection and providing commentary on these little known documents and articles from the Lovestone group, Le Blanc and Davenport have rendered an invaluable service to historians and activists looking to better understand the political landscape of twentieth-century radicalism.
