Jay Lovestone (MSH)

Jay Lovestone (1897-1990) was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and CIA collaborator, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions within it.



Biography
Born Jacob Liebstein to a Jewish family in Lithuania, he emigrated with his parents in 1907 to New York's Lower East Side.

The Communist years (1919-1929)
A student activist at the City College of New York, he became a socialist and was a founding member of the Communist Party of America in 1919, which merged with the Communist Labor Party in 1921 to form what became the Communist Party USA.

In 1921, Lovestone became editor of the Communist Party newspaper, The Communist, and sat on the editorial board of the The Liberator, the arts and letters publication of the Workers Party of America. Upon the death of Charles Ruthenberg in 1927 he became the party's national secretary.