Hal Draper (1914-1990) was a
Third CampThe third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to support neither capitalism nor Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....
American socialist activist, Marxist and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
, perhaps best known for his role in the Berkeley, California
Free Speech MovementThe Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
. His "Third Camp" focus differed from that of
Max ShachtmanMax Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. During his lifetime, he evolved from being a Leninist associate of Leon Trotsky to a Cold War social democrat and associate of AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...
in its emphasis on the "grass roots" as the "third" alternative to capitalism and bureaucracy domination. According to Draper's analysis, the grass roots represented the potential for "socialism from below" in opposition to capitalism and socialist bureaucracy, which represented the domination from above.
Hal Draper's first appearance on the political radar was as an active member of the
Young People's Socialist LeagueThe Young People's Socialist League is a democratic socialist youth group originally affiliated with the Socialist Party of America. It is currently the autonomous youth affiliate of the Socialist Party USA, with which it shares a substantial portion of its membership.-History:YPSL began in 1907...
(YPSL) during the depression, then the youth affiliate of the
Socialist Party of AmericaThe Socialist Party of America was a democratic socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization in 1899.In the...
.
Hal Draper (1914-1990) was a
Third CampThe third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to support neither capitalism nor Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....
American socialist activist, Marxist and
authorAn author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created...
, perhaps best known for his role in the Berkeley, California
Free Speech MovementThe Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
. His "Third Camp" focus differed from that of
Max ShachtmanMax Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. During his lifetime, he evolved from being a Leninist associate of Leon Trotsky to a Cold War social democrat and associate of AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...
in its emphasis on the "grass roots" as the "third" alternative to capitalism and bureaucracy domination. According to Draper's analysis, the grass roots represented the potential for "socialism from below" in opposition to capitalism and socialist bureaucracy, which represented the domination from above.
Biography
Hal Draper's first appearance on the political radar was as an active member of the
Young People's Socialist LeagueThe Young People's Socialist League is a democratic socialist youth group originally affiliated with the Socialist Party of America. It is currently the autonomous youth affiliate of the Socialist Party USA, with which it shares a substantial portion of its membership.-History:YPSL began in 1907...
(YPSL) during the depression, then the youth affiliate of the
Socialist Party of AmericaThe Socialist Party of America was a democratic socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization in 1899.In the...
. Draper was an important leader of the Trotskyist "Appeal Tendency" in the YPSL during 1936 and 1937 and was elected the organization's National Secretary at its September 1937 9th Convention, which renounced the social democratic
Second InternationalThe Second International was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
in favor of a new Trotskyist
Fourth InternationalThe Fourth International is an international communist organisation which opposes both capitalism and Stalinism. Consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, it is dedicated to helping the working class bring about socialism....
. The great majority of the YPSL supported this position and either left or was expelled by the Socialist Party in the fall of that year. Along with his YPSL activity, Draper took part in the founding of the
Socialist Workers PartyThe Socialist Workers Party is a communist political party in the United States. The group places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928, and maintains Pathfinder Press, which...
at the end of December 1937.
Draper was an adherent of a faction within the SWP which objected to the internal regime of that party and was developing an analysis of the USSR as a new form of society, neither socialist nor capitalist, in which a new class, the state bureaucracy, held social and state power. In 1940 this faction, led by
Max ShachtmanMax Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. During his lifetime, he evolved from being a Leninist associate of Leon Trotsky to a Cold War social democrat and associate of AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...
,
James BurnhamJames Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941...
, and
Martin AbernMartin Abern was a Marxist politician who was an important leader of the Communist youth movement of the 1920s as well as a founder of the American Trotskyist movement.-Early years:...
, split from the SWP to form the
Workers PartyThe Workers Party was a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. It was founded in April 1940 by members of the Socialist Workers Party who opposed the Soviet invasion of Finland. They included Max Shachtman, who became the new group's leader, Hal Draper, C.L.R. James, Martin Abern,...
.
By 1948 the Workers Party believed that the prospects for revolution were receding and that it must transform itself into a propaganda group. Therefore it became the Independent Socialist League and Hal Draper continued as one of its leading writers and functionaries. Based in his native New York, Draper would often write and edit almost the entire contents of issues of the group's paper.
With a shrinking membership (although its youth work was buoyant) the ISL leadership around Shachtman decided that the time had come to join forces with the Socialist Party of America and in 1958 fused into it. Although Draper personally opposed this decision, he submitted to the majority for lack of an alternative orientation.
In 1962, after an ultimatum from Joel Geier (later a leader of the
International SocialistsThe International Socialists were a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. They were founded as the Independent Socialist Club in 1964 in Berkeley, California by a group of former Independent Socialist League members around Hal Draper, who had opposed its dissolution into the Socialist...
), Draper — now resident in Berkeley, California — formed the Independent Socialist Club (ISC) outside the Socialist Party. In 1964 Draper was heavily involved in the
Free Speech MovementThe Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
, an important precursor of that decade's
New LeftThe New Left were the left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that, unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism, instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S...
, on the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
campus. During this time, he was employed by the University as a microfilm acquisitions librarian
http://www.driftline.org/cgi-bin/archive/archive_msg.cgi?file=spoon-archives/marxism-intro.archive/marxism-intro_1997/97-04-23.102&msgnum=18&start=780&end=889.
In 1968 ISC became the International Socialists as it expanded nationally but in 1971 Draper quit arguing that the group had become a sect. From then onwards he worked as an independent radical scholar, producing a stream of scholarly works on Marxism and the workers' movement.
Hal Draper's brother,
TheodoreTheodore "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Herbert Feis Award for Nonacademically Affiliated Historians in 1990 from the American Historical Association.Draper was born Theodor Dubinsky in 1912...
, was a historian of the American Communist movement, the author of an exhaustive two-volume history in the late 1950s. Unlike Hal, Theodore Draper had been active in the
StalinistStalinism was the political system and ideology of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1928–1953...
youth movement in the 1930s before breaking with the Communist Party and abandoning Marxism to become a liberal
anti-CommunistAnti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism, especially Marxism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the growing popularity of the communist movement, and took on many forms during the 20th century....
.
Hal Draper's sister, Dorothy (Dora) Draper married Jacob Rabkin (1905-2003), one of the intellectual founders of US tax law.
Writings
Draper's most enduring legacy is likely to be his five volume
magnum opus, Karl Marx'sKarl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...
Theory of Revolution, a seminal re-evaluation of the whole of Marx's political theory, based on an exhaustive survey of the writings of both Marx and Engels. He saw their political perspective as summarized by the phrase "socialism from below," which he had introduced in his pamphlet
The Two Souls of SocialismThe Two Souls of Socialism is a socialist pamphlet written by Hal Draper and published in the journal New Politics in 1966. An earlier version of the pamphlet was published by Draper in 1960 in the socialist student magazine Anvil. In his work Draper rejects what he calls "Socialism-from-Above"...
.
Draper was also the editor of a three volume
Marx-Engels Cyclopedia, a reference work detailing the day-to-day activities and writings of the two founders of modern socialism.
In the Introduction to Draper's
Berkeley: The New Student Revolt (1965),
Mario SavioMario Savio was an American political activist and a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially his "put your bodies upon the gears" address given at Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley on December 2, 1964:-Early...
acknowledges his encouragement and friendship, and cites the influence of his earlier pamphlet
The Mind of Clark Kerr (October 1964) on the development of the
Free Speech MovementThe Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
.
Outside his overtly political writings, Draper's most outstanding work is arguably the
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels or books...
Ms Fnd in a Lbry"MS Fnd in a Lbry" is a satirical science fiction short story about the exponential growth of information by Hal Draper written in 1961.-Plot:...
, a
satireSatire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods,...
of the
information ageThe Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Information Era, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously...
, written in 1961.
In 1982, Draper also published an English translation of the complete works of the 19th Century German poet
Heinrich HeineChristian Johann Heinrich Heine was a journalist, essayist, literary critic, and one of the most significant German romantic poets. He is remembered chiefly for selections of his lyric poetry, many of which were set to music in the form of lieder by German composers most notably by Robert Schumann...
, the fruit of three decades of work conducted alongside his better-known political activity.
Hal Draper died of
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory illness of the lung. Frequently, it is described as lung parenchyma/alveolar inflammation and abnormal alveolar filling with fluid ....
on January 26, 1990 at his home in
Berkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
.
During his life, Hal Draper was a member of the following organizations:
- Young People's Socialist League
The Young People's Socialist League is a democratic socialist youth group originally affiliated with the Socialist Party of America. It is currently the autonomous youth affiliate of the Socialist Party USA, with which it shares a substantial portion of its membership.-History:YPSL began in 1907...
- Socialist Workers Party
- Independent Socialist League
- Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a democratic socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization in 1899.In the...
- Berkeley Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
- Independent Socialist Club
The International Socialists were a Third Camp Trotskyist group in the United States. They were founded as the Independent Socialist Club in 1964 in Berkeley, California by a group of former Independent Socialist League members around Hal Draper, who had opposed its dissolution into the Socialist...
External links