Abraham J. Muste

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abraham J. (Johannes) Muste (born January 8, 1885 in Zierikzee , † February 11, 1967 in New York ), also AJ Muste , was a reformed clergyman and socialist activist of the labor and peace movement in the United States.

Life

Youth and education

Born in the Netherlands, Muste moved to the USA as a child and grew up in an Orthodox- Calvinist milieu in western Michigan . Although he had to work in a furniture factory as a child, he managed to study theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City , where he became politicized through contact with the teachings of social gospel and found like-minded people like Norman Thomas .

After a brief activity as pastor of the Reformed Church in America , he was also active in the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), his opposition to the First World War ended his career as a clergyman.

Trade unionist and Trotskyist

Muste was now active in the trade union movement and was one of the strike leaders during the victorious textile workers' strike in Lawrence in 1919. In the following years he succeeded in amalgamating the fragmented textile workers' unions in New England to form the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America (ATWA), and he also founded and directed an important trade union education institution with Brookwood Labor College in Katonah .

Because of his radical positions, Muste was accused of being a communist by the leadership of the American Federation of Labor ; With like-minded trade unionists who were critical of the AFL leadership, he founded the Conference for Progressive Labor Action at the end of the 1920s , which was renamed the American Workers Party (AWP) in the wake of the global economic crisis and developed into Marxist positions. During this time, the AWP and Muste led one of the most militant industrial disputes in the United States of the 1930s with the strike at the Auto-Lite plant in Toledo .

In 1934 the AWP merged with the Trotskyist Communist League of America around James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman to form the Workers Party of the United States , but Muste himself withdrew from the organization after a short time.

Peace activist

From 1936 Muste was again involved in the peace movement, so in the FOR and in the support of conscientious objectors and against nuclear weapons , he was also active in the civil rights organization Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He caused a sensation when, despite his old age and poor health , he climbed the fence of a military base in Omaha during a demonstration in 1959 . In 1956 he was one of the founders of Liberation magazine , which developed into an important forum for the emerging New Left in the United States, and the American Forum for Socialist Education . He took part in the work of the Christian Peace Conference (CFK) and was elected to the advisory committee of its 1st All-Christian Peace Assembly, which took place in Prague in 1961 . Shortly before his death, Muste was one of the best-known spokesmen for the movement against the Vietnam War , in this capacity he took part in trips by peace delegations to both parts of Vietnam in 1966 and 1967 respectively.

Works

  • The Essays of AJ Muste . New York 1967 (edited by Nat Hentoff)

literature

  • Jo Ann O. Robinson: Abraham went out: A Biography of AJ Muste . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981
  • Theodor Ebert: Abraham Johannes Muste - a life with the Sermon on the Mount. In: Nonviolent Action. Quarterly Bulletins for Peace and Justice . 14th year, 3rd and 4th quarter 1982, issue 53/54, pp. 1-7. ISSN  0016-9390
  • Isaac Deutscher: Marxism and Nonviolence. Discussion with AJ Muste and Dave Dellinger. In: Nonviolent Action. Quarterly Bulletins for Peace and Justice . 2nd year, issue 4, 2nd quarter 1970, pp. 2–8. ISSN  0016-9390
  • Leilah Danielson: American Gandhi. AJ Muste and the History of Radicalism in the Twentieth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2014

Web links