Jacobson, Phyllis and Julius Jacobson

JACOBSON, PHYLLIS and JULIUS JACOBSON. Phyllis Jacobson (née Garden) (1922-2010) and Julius Jacobson (1922-2003). They joined the radical movement as teenagers and remained politically active for the rest of their lives. They were second-generation Jewish immigrants from working-class backgrounds who rejected the social democratic and pro-Communist leanings of their extended families in favor of the Trotskyist position. They took part in the 1939-1940 faction fight inside the Socialist Workers Party that led to the formation of the Workers Party (1940-1949) and its successor organization, the Independent Socialist League (1949-1958). After the dissolution of the Shachtmanite project, they decided that the times called for a pluralistic forum for debate and analysis. Consequently, they launched New Politics in 1961 as an “independent journal of socialist thought” with an emphasis on civil rights, labor, political culture, and democratic struggles across the globe. In 2020, the journal continued to appear on a biannual basis.

Phyllis Jacobson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1942. She subsequently worked on assembly lines in factories in and around New York City, and later read scripts and novels for a film studio. Julius Jacobson grew up in the Bronx, served in the Army in World War II, and took part in the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of Paris. He subsequently worked in the WP/ISL print shop and then as a skilled machinist. Their son Michael was born in 1953.

Writing under the pen name of Julius Falk, Julius Jacobson was a regular contributor to the WP/ISL’s newspaper, Labor Action, as well as to the group’s theoretical journal, New International. He served as the managing editor of New International from 1952-1958 and penned major pieces on McCarthyism, civil rights, the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the nature of Stalinism.

Julius Jacobson was the founding editor of the ISL’s youth publication, Anvil, which was launched in 1949 and which was formally renamed Anvil and Student Partisan the following year when it merged with Student Partisan, an independent journal that was published by students at the University of Chicago. Jacobson edited the journal from 1949-1952. Little known in subsequent years, Anvil was arguably the most interesting student publication of the 1950s. It featured essays by Paul Goodman, Michael Harrington, Irving Howe, Conrad Lynn, C. Wright Mills, A.J. Muste, Richard Wright and many others, as well as cartoons by Jesse (“Carlo”) Cohen and Jules Feiffer. Anvil was the first US publication to publish an excerpt from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in English.

New Politics continued to feature a broad mix of contributors, from big name academics to first time authors. With the assistance of an all-volunteer editorial board, Phyllis and Julius published forty-five issues of the journal’s first series (1961-1978) and edited a book, Socialist Perspectives (1983), before launching the journal’s second series in 1986. Julius Jacobson also edited The Negro and the American Labor Movement (1968) and Soviet Communism and the Socialist Vision (1972). As a contributor to New Politics, Phyllis took a special interest in feminism, literary culture, and protest movements, while Julius wrote on war, terrorism, intellectuals, and the impact of Stalinism on the American left.

Coser, Lewis and Irving Howe (with Julius Jacobson). The American Communist Party: A Critical History, 1919-1957. Boston: Beacon, 1957.

Drucker, Peter. Max Shachtman and His Life: A Socialist’s Odyssey Through the ‘American Century’. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1994.

Finger, Barry. “Phyllis Jacobson: An Appreciation.” https://newpol.org/phyllis-jacobson-appreciation/. Posted May 8, 2010.

_____. “Standing Fast: Julius Jacobson, 1922-2003.” New Politics 9.3 (Summer 2003).

Worcester, Kent. “Third Camp Politics: An Interview with Phyllis and Julius Jacobson.” Left History 18.1 (2014): 39-60.

New Politics Website. https://newpol.org