Hal Draper
Geltman, Emanuel & Howe, Irving
We are saddened by the news that Hal Draper died this past January in Berkeley, California, at age seventy-five. Though our relations were strained by political differences—or differences in...
...When the ISL won its legal battle to have its name removed from the government's subversive list despite the FBI's dirty campaign to fight the challenge, Hal opposed the ISL's decision to dissolve and enter the Socialist party, and he left the organization...
...Though our relations were strained by political differences—or differences in emphasis— we recall the many years of friendship as participants in the socialist movement going back to the 1930s...
...Though friendships were fractured as they so often are in political polemic (and Hal never gave an inch), the socialist movement is injured by his loss...
...Though we maintained a hit-or-miss friendship, visiting with him and his wife when our travels took us to the San Francisco area, we lost touch and were distressed to learn that he had become reclusive in his last years...
...Settling eventually in Berkeley, he worked as a librarian at the university and with his wife organized a socialist club on campus...
...A Marxist, Hal wrote a number of books that were illuminating, notably Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, published in four volumes by Monthly Review Press (1975-85...
...In later years he put together the rewards of a lifelong "hobby": The Complete Works of Heinrich Heine: A Modern Version, published in 1982 and also highly praised...
...Upon retirement he devoted himself principally to writing...
...In the late forties he edited its weekly, Labor Action, for several years before moving to California...
...Hal never wrote for Dissent...
...in his view we lacked a sufficiently hard political program...
...Hal joined the YPSL (Young Peoples Socialist League) in the 1930s...
...EMANUEL GELTMAN IRVING HOWE 280 • DISSENT...
...Later, he joined with Max Shachtman in forming what became the Independent Socialist League (ISL...
...We mourn Hal's death...
...Though the label of "eminence grise" infuriated him, he gave counsel to such leaders of the student upheaval on that campus as Mario Savio...
...We felt that Hal tended to be rigid, even sectarian, though we never questioned his sharp intelligence, his talent as a writer, or his devotion to democratic socialism...
Vol. 37 • April 1990 • No. 2
