Talk:Jay Lovestone

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Oversimplification[edit]

Or worse. The text "Lovestone was tapped by ILGWU and American Federation of Labor leader David Dubinsky to try to destroy the rival Congress of Industrial Organizations and its affiliate the United Auto Workers. He tried to engineer a takeover of the union and removed the Communist Party from its position of influence but he failed." misstates Dubinsky's motives and Lovestone's role. Dubinsky was still loosely associated with the CIO at that time and was not trying to "destoy" it by any means. Lovestone was, on the other hand, actively trying to take over (or, more accurately, keep control over) the UAW – which contradicts the claim that he was sent to destroy it. Of course, his hamhanded sectarianism in support of the incompetent Homer Martin nearly did destroy the union in its infancy, but that does not appear to have been their plan. While Martin eventually bolted, that was only after he was expelled.

As for another claim – "Despite Lovestone's opposition to Stalin, Soviet archives declassified after the fall of the USSR indicate that Lovestone may have engaged in spying on behalf of the Soviet Union, probably in hopes that he would one day be rehabilitated by Moscow and restored to his former position in the Communist Party USA." – can we have some details as to when and what? It's impossible to know where this goes, assuming it is true. --24.126.41.116 10:58, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC) aka Italo Svevo

Quote of Lovestone regarding Browder:

There – there but for an accident of geography stands a corpse.

Nobs01 02:54, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's actually Max Shachtman's line: Browder on All Experts. Carrite (talk) 05:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 16:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


"He held that position until 1974, when he was expelled from the AFL-CIO upon discovery of his longstanding CIA connections." This quote is strongly contradicted by the biography of Lovestone listed at the bottom of the article, which claims that Lovestone's connections to the CIA were known by AFL-CIO leadership from the beginning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.170.125.41 (talk) 08:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I pulled out my copy of Morgan's book and attempted to clarify this. Lovestone was a leader of the AFL-CIO's foreign policy department during the cold war, which worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, but got entangled with illegal domestic intelligence gathering, was instructed to knock it off and didn't, got busted for continuing contact in 1973, and got cashiered by George Meany in 1974 — partly because Lovestone was becoming long in the tooth. Carrite (talk) 05:40, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Executive Secretary info box[edit]

Lovestone was certainly preceded by Ruthenberg as Executive Secretary of the WPA, but was he really followed by Ben Gitlow? I think the reference is to Gitlow's Secretary role with the expelled "Communist Party (Majority Group"... But when Lovestone got thrown out of the Party he was still legally its Executive Secretary. I'm not 100% on who followed him without a book next to me, but I think it was Max Bedacht... In any event, it wasn't Gitlow, who was never the Executive Secretary of CPUSA at any point... Comments before I change it? Carrite (talk) 01:25, 3 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Whoops, my bad. I see from Draper vol. 2, pg. 403 that the 6th Convention of the CP, held early in 1929, replaced Lovestone with a troika consisting of Gitlow (Executive), Bedacht (Agit-Prop), and Foster (Unions). So the info box is more or less correct... Carrite (talk) 19:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Pro forma COI declaration[edit]

I've got a new book out from the Dutch academic publisher Brill that I've listed in the Further Reading section. I mention the connection between my real life identity and my screen name in case anyone is worried about anything. —Tim Davenport /// Carrite (talk) 05:00, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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