Guardian (United States)
Encyclopedia
The Guardian was a radical leftist
independent weekly newspaper
published between 1948 and 1992 in New York City
. The paper was founded by James Aronson
, Cedric Belfrage
and John T. McManus
.
presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace
founded the paper in 1948 as the National Guardian to circumvent the increasingly pro-Cold War
mainstream press. At the outset, the National Guardian formed part of a leftist movement in New York, along with other front groups of the Communist Party USA such as the daily newspaper PM
and the labor left in the CIO
District Council 65. It published early campaign reporting by Norman Mailer
. The paper continued after the campaign as a locus of support for the New Deal
and the New York American Labor Party
(ALP) which had elected Vito Marcantonio to the US Congress from East Harlem with Communist Party support.
When other papers on the left would not or could not publish news sympathetic to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
, the National Guardian did. The reportage was so important to the defense that Aronson was named guardian
to the Rosenbergs' children. The major part of the National Guardian's reporting on the case came from William A. Reuben who later published an expanded version of his original articles as The Atom Spy Hoax (Action Books, 1954).
After the dissolution of the ALP, the National Guardian supported the 1958 Independent-Socialist
campaign of co-founder John McManus for New York
Governor
. The new initiative's vote fell to 35,000 from the ALP's 1950 vote of 208,000 and the left lost its ballot line. The paper remained outside particular party organizations, while continuing to advocate a unified leftist party in the United States.
In the 1960s the paper became known for its independent and investigative journalism
. Joanne Grant wrote groundbreaking articles on the Civil Rights Movement. Mark Lane
wrote a critical account of the John F. Kennedy assassination
in a special issue of the Guardian which appeared on December 13, 1963.
progressed, the Aronson and Old Left leadership disagreed with a more radical staff about the direction of the paper. In 1968, Aronson sold his shares to the staff and the National Guardian became a New Left
publication, shortening its name to Guardian in the process.
In the 1970s the Guardian adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology initially aligned with the Third-worldist and Maoist New Communist Movement
and later oriented toward The Trend
. The paper editorially called for a new Marxist-Leninist party in the United States. It never aligned with any particular group and remained critical of the small New Left party organizations. At the same time, it opened its pages to opposing viewpoints and continued a tradition of investigative journalism.
In the early 1980s the paper established Guardian Clubs for readers and discussed forming a new political party. After a political dispute, Guardian editor Irwin Silber left the Guardian and built a new political formation around the Guardian clubs. This new "party building" formation published the "Frontline" newspaper as a direct competitor to the Guardian and also published a theoretical journal "Line of March" which advocated that American supporters of the New Left reconcile themselves with the Soviet Union. Silber was succeeded as editor by Bill Ryan, who attempted to continue the Guardian's previous non-party New Left posture, with an editorial line that sometimes favored revolutionary movements not in favor with the Soviet Union, such as in Western Sahara and in Eritrea, where the Soviet Union supported the position of the pro-Soviet Ethiopian government. Under Ryan, the Guardian changed its tax status to that of a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and attempted to solicit foundation support to make up for the support lost to the Frontline organization. During this period, the Guardian received direct annual financial support from the UN mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and ran an annual article with complimentary coverage of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
With the rise of the non-Marxist Green Party in Germany and various other countries, some Guardian writers and supporters unsuccessfully attempted to re-fashion the Guardian to support the Green Party ideologically. The Guardian ceased publication in 1992 after years of financial difficulties and declining circulation.
Articles
Books
Publications
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
independent weekly newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published between 1948 and 1992 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The paper was founded by James Aronson
James Aronson
James Aronson was an American journalist. He founded the left-leaning National Guardian. He was a graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.- Work before the Guardian :...
, Cedric Belfrage
Cedric Belfrage
Cedric Henning Belfrage was a socialist, author, journalist, translator and co-founder of the radical US-weekly newspaper the National Guardian...
and John T. McManus
John T. McManus
John Thomas McManus was an American journalist active in progressive politics in the 1950s and 1960s best known as co-founder of the National Guardian, a left-leaning newspaper....
.
Formation
Supporters of the Progressive PartyProgressive Party (United States, 1948)
The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
founded the paper in 1948 as the National Guardian to circumvent the increasingly pro-Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
mainstream press. At the outset, the National Guardian formed part of a leftist movement in New York, along with other front groups of the Communist Party USA such as the daily newspaper PM
PM (newspaper)
PM was a leftist New York City daily newspaper published by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and bankrolled by the eccentric Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III....
and the labor left in the CIO
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
District Council 65. It published early campaign reporting by Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
. The paper continued after the campaign as a locus of support for the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and the New York American Labor Party
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party was a political party in the United States established in 1936 which was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party who had established themselves as the Social Democratic...
(ALP) which had elected Vito Marcantonio to the US Congress from East Harlem with Communist Party support.
When other papers on the left would not or could not publish news sympathetic to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
, the National Guardian did. The reportage was so important to the defense that Aronson was named guardian
Legal guardian
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Usually, a person has the status of guardian because the ward is incapable of caring for his or her own interests due to infancy, incapacity, or disability...
to the Rosenbergs' children. The major part of the National Guardian's reporting on the case came from William A. Reuben who later published an expanded version of his original articles as The Atom Spy Hoax (Action Books, 1954).
After the dissolution of the ALP, the National Guardian supported the 1958 Independent-Socialist
Independent-Socialist
The Independent-Socialist ticket appeared on the ballot in the 1958 New York state election. Led by the candidacy of John T. McManus, one of the founders of the leftist National Guardian newspaper, for Governor of New York, the line hoped to retain the support of the former American Labor Party...
campaign of co-founder John McManus for New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
. The new initiative's vote fell to 35,000 from the ALP's 1950 vote of 208,000 and the left lost its ballot line. The paper remained outside particular party organizations, while continuing to advocate a unified leftist party in the United States.
In the 1960s the paper became known for its independent and investigative journalism
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
. Joanne Grant wrote groundbreaking articles on the Civil Rights Movement. Mark Lane
Mark Lane (author)
Mark Lane is an American lawyer who has written many books, including Rush to Judgment, one of two major books published in the immediate wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination that questioned the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Another book, Plausible Denial, published in 1991, continued...
wrote a critical account of the John F. Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
in a special issue of the Guardian which appeared on December 13, 1963.
The name change and the New Left
The paper changed with the times, but not without internal conflict. As the sixties1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
progressed, the Aronson and Old Left leadership disagreed with a more radical staff about the direction of the paper. In 1968, Aronson sold his shares to the staff and the National Guardian became a New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
publication, shortening its name to Guardian in the process.
In the 1970s the Guardian adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology initially aligned with the Third-worldist and Maoist New Communist Movement
New Communist Movement
The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
and later oriented toward The Trend
The Trend
The Trend was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s in the United States. It consisted of a loose collection of small communist organizations, newspapers, and theoretical groups that staked out a line that was intermediate between the Soviet-aligned Communist...
. The paper editorially called for a new Marxist-Leninist party in the United States. It never aligned with any particular group and remained critical of the small New Left party organizations. At the same time, it opened its pages to opposing viewpoints and continued a tradition of investigative journalism.
In the early 1980s the paper established Guardian Clubs for readers and discussed forming a new political party. After a political dispute, Guardian editor Irwin Silber left the Guardian and built a new political formation around the Guardian clubs. This new "party building" formation published the "Frontline" newspaper as a direct competitor to the Guardian and also published a theoretical journal "Line of March" which advocated that American supporters of the New Left reconcile themselves with the Soviet Union. Silber was succeeded as editor by Bill Ryan, who attempted to continue the Guardian's previous non-party New Left posture, with an editorial line that sometimes favored revolutionary movements not in favor with the Soviet Union, such as in Western Sahara and in Eritrea, where the Soviet Union supported the position of the pro-Soviet Ethiopian government. Under Ryan, the Guardian changed its tax status to that of a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and attempted to solicit foundation support to make up for the support lost to the Frontline organization. During this period, the Guardian received direct annual financial support from the UN mission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and ran an annual article with complimentary coverage of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
With the rise of the non-Marxist Green Party in Germany and various other countries, some Guardian writers and supporters unsuccessfully attempted to re-fashion the Guardian to support the Green Party ideologically. The Guardian ceased publication in 1992 after years of financial difficulties and declining circulation.
See also
- Alternative press (U.S. political left)Alternative press (U.S. political left)Under the broad heading of the alternative press are several subcategories including periodicals published by groups, movements, or individuals affiliated with the U.S. political left...
- Communist Party USACommunist Party USAThe Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
- MuckrakerMuckrakerThe term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
- New Communist MovementNew Communist MovementThe New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
- Progressive PartyProgressive Party (United States, 1948)The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party that ran former Vice President Henry A. Wallace of Iowa for president and U.S. Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice president in 1948.-Foundation:...
- Julius and Ethel RosenbergJulius and Ethel RosenbergEthel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
Further reading
Archives- Cedric Belfrage Papers. Archive #: Tamiment 143. Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
- Sally Belfrage Papers. Archive #: Tamiment 189. Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. New York University.
Articles
- Colhoun, Jack. The Guardian Newsweekly Ceases Publication. Radical Historians Newsletter number 67. November 1992.
- Georgakas, Dan. National Guardian/Guardian. Encyclopedia of the American Left pp 529-532 Oxford University Press Second Edition 1998. ISBN 0-19-512088-4.
- Munk, Michael. The Guardian from Old to New Left. Radical America 2 (March-April 1968).
- Munk, Michael. Perils of a left paper in the US (Review of "Something to Guard") In These TimesIn These TimesIn These Times is a politically progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published by the Institute for Public Affairs in Chicago...
. April 25, 1979. - Rubinstein, Annette. The Independent Socialist Party. Paper presented at Explorations in the History of U.S. Trotskyism conference. New York University, Tamiment Library, 2000.
Books
- Aronson, James and Belfrage, Cedrick.Something to Guard: The Stormy Life of the National Guardian, 1948 - 1967. 362 pages. Columbia University Press. 1978. ISBN 0-231-04510-7.
- Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. 320 pages Publisher: Verso (June, 2002) ISBN 1-85984-617-3.
- Grant, Joanne. Black Protest: 350 Years of History, Documents, and Analyses. Ballantine Books; 2nd edition (September 29, 1996). ISBN 0-449-91223-X.
Publications
- Allen, Robert L. Dialectics of black power. Weekly Guardian Associates, New York. 1968.
- Belfrage, Cedric. Why I am troublesome to the McCarthy mind. Weekly Guardian Associates, New York. 1955.
- League for Proletarian Revolution. Which side are you on? Reply to the opportunists of the Revolutionary Union, October League, and the GUARDIAN newspaper. Red Star Publications, San Francisco. 1974
- Munk, Michael. The New Left: What It Is ... Where It's Going ... What Makes it Move. 22pp. A National Guardian Pamphlet. New York. n.d. [1965]. Stapled softcover. Photos.
- Pritt, Denis Nowell. An appeal for clemency. National Guardian, New York. [1952?].
- Smith, Jack A. Unite the many, defeat the few. China's revolutionary line in foreign affairs. Guardian, New York. 1972.
- Smith, Jack A. The Guardian Goes to War, in Voices from the Underground: Volume I: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, ed. Ken Wachsberger (Tempe, AZ: Mica's, 1993)
- Thomas, Tony. Marxism versus Maoism; a reply to the Guardian. Pathfinder Press, New York. 1974.
- Women in revolution the 1979 Guardian calendar. Guardian Publications, New York. 1978.
Guardian Publications
- Left in Form, Right in Essence A Critique of Contemporary Trotskyism by Carl DavidsonCarl DavidsonCarl Davidson is a former student leader of the new left of the 1960s, serving as a Vice President and National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society. From 1968 to 1976, he worked on the Guardian newsweekly as a writer and news editor. Born in 1943, he graduated with a B.A...
. Second printing Spring 1974. This pamphlet was originally published as a series of 12 articles in early 1973 in the Guardian newsweekly. - Oswald innocent? a lawyer's brief; a Guardian special description of pamphlet of the December 19, 1963 National Guardian
Related links
- Which Way to a New American Radicalism by Harry Braverman. American Socialist, April 1956. An independent marxist article on regroupment, the National Guardian and the CPUSA.
- The James Aronson Award for Social Justice in Journalism
- Joanne Grant obituary in Guardian (UK) January 25, 2005
- History of the Guardian Newsweekly Excerpted from Encyclopedia of the American Left. Includes picture of Editor Bill Ryan and Production Manager Eric Goldhagen taken in 1989.