Harry M. Wicks
Encyclopedia
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- Not to be confused with Harry WicksHarry WicksHarry Wicks was a British socialist activist.-Biography:Born in Battersea, London, he went to work on the railways and joined the National Union of Railwaymen in 1919. He joined the Labour Party, but after Black Friday moved to the Communist Party of Great Britain . After studying with A. E. E...
(1905-1989) of the Communist Party of Great Britain
- Not to be confused with Harry Wicks
Herbert Moore "Harry" Wicks (1889-1957), best known as "Harry M. Wicks," was an American radical
Political radicalism
The term political radicalism denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary means and changing value systems in fundamental ways...
journalist and politician who was a founding member of the Communist Party of America. He was a plenipotentiary
Plenipotentiary
The word plenipotentiary has two meanings. As a noun, it refers to a person who has "full powers." In particular, the term commonly refers to a diplomat fully authorized to represent his government as a prerogative...
representative of the Communist International to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1930-31 and there directed the reorganization of the structure and leadership of the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
.
Early years
Harry M. Wicks is one of the most enigmatic leaders of the early American communist movement. Wicks was born in Arcola, IllinoisArcola, Illinois
Arcola is a city in Douglas County, Illinois, United States. The population was 2,916 at the 2010 census. The city was founded in 1855, when the Illinois Central Railroad was built through the county...
on December 10, 1889, the son of an electrical engineer. He attended primary school in Arcola and grammar school in Algona
Algona, Iowa
Algona is a city in and the county seat of Kossuth County, Iowa, United States. The population was 5,741 at the 2000 census. Ambrose A. Call State Park is located two miles southwest of the city.-History:...
and Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
. He worked as a journeyman compositor in the printing industry.
Political activism
Harry Wicks was an adherent of the John KeracherJohn Keracher
John Keracher was a Scottish-born American Marxist politician who founded the Proletarian Party of America in 1920.-Early years:...
's Proletarian University tendency in the Socialist Party of Michigan
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency 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...
from 1916.
Wicks was the candidate of the Socialist Party of Oregon
Socialist Party of Oregon
The Socialist Party of Oregon is the name of three closely related organizations — an Oregon state affiliate of the Social Democratic Party of America established in 1897 and continuing into the 1950s, as well as the Oregon state affiliate of the Socialist Party USA from 1992-1999...
for the US House of Representatives in the state's 3rd District in November 1918. Early the next year he was one of 28 candidates who ran for the SPA’s governing National Executive Committee, failing to win election.
Wicks was the organizer and served as the President of the short-lived Council of Workers, Soldiers, and Sailors in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
in 1919. Wicks was also the editor of The Western Socialist in this period. When Wicks was replaced by a member of the local Foundry Workers' Union as President of the Council, he left the group, which expired after approximately 6 months of existence.
Wicks was a delegate to Founding Convention of Communist Party of America and on the 9 member committee which wrote the CPA Program in 1919. The founding convention elected Wicks to the Central Executive Committee of the CPA, which in turn elected him to its governing inner circle, the Executive Council. Wicks was the only member of the Michigan tendency to accept office in the new CPA. He also served as Associate Editor of the party's official organ, The Communist. Wicks was jailed in Nov. 1919 in connection with these activities as part of the Justice Department's crackdown on members of the Communist Party.
In 1920, Wicks rejoined his Michigan comrades when he became a member of the Proletarian Party of America
Proletarian Party of America
The Proletarian Party of America was a small communist political party in the United States, originating in 1920 and terminated in 1971. Originally an offshoot of the Communist Party of America, the group maintained an independent existence for over five decades. It is best remembered for carrying...
, serving on the governing National Executive Committee of that organization. Wicks was the fraternal delegate of the PPA to the founding convention of the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
in Dec. 1921, but he came as a foe rather than a friend, engaging in a bitter criticism of that organization. After the Proletarian Party’s decision to support the legal arm of the Central Caucus faction’s “Communist Party of America” in 1922, Wicks was named as the editor of the organ of this "United Toilers of America," The Workers’ Challenge. This publication was later recalled as home to "the most violent and vituperative polemics in America," provoking one Communist Party wag to refer to their rivals as the "United Toilets."
The bitterness between Wicks' organization and the Communist Party proved short-lived, however. Along with most of his United Toilers comrades, Harry Wicks joined the Workers Party of America following the liquidation of the Central Caucus split in the summer of 1922. The hatchet was quickly buried. Harry Wicks was named to the governing Central Executive Committee of the WPA by the party's December 1922 convention, as well as to the 11 man "Executive Council" which handled day to day operations of the party. He was also named to the editorial board of the party's weekly newspaper The Worker at that time. He also delivered the report on the printing trades to the first annual convention of William Z. Foster's
William Z. Foster
William Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
Trade Union Educational League
Trade Union Educational League
The Trade Union Educational League was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Communist Party of America from 1922...
in August of 1922.
The year 1923 also saw Harry Wicks named National Organizer for the WPA. In the fall of that year he conducted a 5 week East Coast speaking tour on behalf of the party. Wicks was a delegate to the 3rd Convention of the WPA in 1923 and was a consistent backer of the Pepper
John Pepper
John Pepper, also known as József Pogány, born József Schwartz was a Hungarian-Jewish Communist politician, active in the radical movements of both Hungary and the United States. He later served as a functionary in the Communist International in Moscow, before being cashiered in 1929...
-Ruthenberg faction.
In the summer of 1923, Wicks was sent by the governing Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party to Minnesota to attempt to negotiate an alliance with William Mahoney, a newspaper editor and Farmer-Labor Party
Farmer-Labor Party
The first modern Farmer–Labor Party in the United States emerged in Minnesota in 1918. Economic dislocation caused by American entry into World War I put agricultural prices and workers' wages into imbalance with rapidly escalating retail prices during the war years, and farmers and workers sought...
veteran and a number of his colleagues. However, Wicks clashed with local Communists in Minneapolis and it ultimately fell to machinist Clarence Hathaway
Clarence Hathaway
Clarence A. "Charlie" Hathaway was an activist in the Minnesota trade union movement and a prominent leader of the Communist Party of the United States from the 1920s through the early 1940s...
to broker the deal.
In 1923 Wicks was accused of having acted as agent provocateur
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
in 1919, charged with having denounced Communist Labor Party
Communist Labor Party
The Communist Labor Party of America was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA. The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America...
founding member Victor Saulit to immigration authorities while both were members of the Socialist Party of Oregon A WPA inquest commission cleared Wicks of this charge, however.
In the summer of 1924, Wicks was involved as a leader of the Paterson Broad Silk strike, which began on August 12.
In 1924 Wicks was the United States House of Representatives elections, 1924#New York candidate of the Workers Party for U.S. Congress in the New York 23rd District. Two years later he was the party's nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania.
In 1928 Wicks was a delegate to the 6th World Congress of the Comintern.
Wicks returned to Moscow at the end of 1928 as the American Communist Party's representative to the Profintern
Profintern
The Red International of Labor Unions , commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Communist International with the aim of coordinating Communist activities within trade unions...
. As a representative in Moscow, Wicks was expected to take the lead arguing the controversial positions of American party Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
, leader of the faction to which Wicks professed loyalty. However, given Wicks' uneven past in the factional wars, this was, as historian Theodore Draper
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books which he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair...
has noted, "a strange choice in an emergency."
In 1929 the Executive Committee of the Communist International
Executive Committee of the Communist International
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI, was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body...
called the American party leadership onto the carpet over the claim of Lovestone and his top associates that the American party was entitled to follow their own particular path to revolution due to the national exceptionalism of the largest country in the capitalist world. A large delegation was dispatched to Moscow, a group which included the representative to the Profintern, Harry Wicks. Lovestone and his associate Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
refused to accept the admonishment of the Comintern and were subsequently expelled. Wicks chose to accept the Comintern's position, however, and he remained in Moscow. He would subsequently be sent abroad to root out the similar political heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
in Australia.
Comintern representative
In April 1930, Harry M. Wicks, using the pseudonym "Herbert Moore," his given and middle names, arrived in Sydney, Australia as a plenipotentiary representative of the Comintern. Wicks made use of the mechanism of self-criticismSelf-criticism
Self-criticism refers to the pointing out of things critical/important to one's own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behaviour or results; it can form part of private, personal reflection or a group discussion.-Philosophy:...
— ritual public confession of failings by "errant" individuals — as a means of instilling ideological
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
uniformity and party discipline
Party discipline
Party discipline is the ability of a parliamentary group of a political party to get its members to support the policies of their party leadership. In liberal democracies, it usually refers to the control that party leaders have over its legislature...
. Australian party leaders Jack Ryan and Jack Kavanagh
Jack Kavanagh
Jack KavanaghHe moved to Australia in 1925, and was a central leader of the Communist Party of Australia until 1930, when the Stalinist Comintern removed him from the leadership. He was expelled from the party in January 1931, readmitted, and then expelled a second time in 1934 after being accused...
were two who ran afoul of Wicks during the reorganization.
In April 1931 the Australian Communist Party held its 10th Congress and completed the reorganization begun by Wicks in the previous year. Former state branches were reconstituted into 8 numbered districts, each of which was further divided into numbered sub-districts. At every level a committee supervised the work of the subordinate level and all communication was mandated to be made hierarchically, with sideways communication between units of a particular level prohibited. At the top of the new party hierarchy would sit a secretariat of just three members. Criticism of Wicks was publicly voiced at this Congress. Australian Communist Ted Tripp declared to the delegates that he had met American students at the Comintern's Lenin School who considered Wicks a "huge joke" and revealed that Wicks had asked him to feign friendship with Jack Kavanagh in order to root out his factional plans. Tripp was revolted by the suggestion.
Delegate Jack Loughran, one of the most outspoken dissidents in the Australian Communist Party, declared that "the Party is being reduced to a party of gramophones that will only play one record — it must be 'Moore's Melody."
For his part Harry Wicks, who opened the Congress with a keynote speech lasting four hours, congratulated the loyal majority for conducting a discussion which "annihilated" the arguments of the dissidents. "We are going to have one monolithic whole," Wicks confidently predicted.
His reorganizational task finished, Wicks left Australia in July of 1931.
It bears mentioning that Harry Wicks' well documented Comintern mission in Australia may not have been his only task abroad for Moscow. In his 1940 memoir, former member of the Secretariat of the CPUSA Benjamin Gitlow asserted that "H.M. Wicks went on special missions to Germany and Central America." This assertion by Gitlow is unconfirmed.
Return to American politics
Historian Harvey KlehrHarvey Klehr
Harvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
asserts that Harry Wicks was the Communist Party's District Organizer for a district which included Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chattanooga is the fourth-largest city in the US state of Tennessee , with a population of 169,887. It is the seat of Hamilton County...
in the summer of 1931, using the pseudonym "Allen." This matter remains less than certain.
Harry Wicks reemerged in American politics during the middle 1930s. In 1934 Wicks was the CPUSA's candidate for US Senate from Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
.
In 1937, Harry Wicks was expelled from the Communist Party on the basis of charges made by the Chicago Federation of Labor
Chicago Federation of Labor
The Chicago Federation of Labor is an umbrella organization for unions in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It is a subordinate body of the AFL-CIO, and as of 2011 has about 320 affiliated member unions representing half a million union members in Cook County....
that he was a spy. This time the charges stuck and Wicks was expelled. Adding insult to injury, the old accusation which he had dodged in 1923 was revisited and it was declared that Wicks had been a spy ever since joining the party in 1919. Historian Theodore Draper later claimed, on the basis of a review of Wicks' private papers, that there was actually no convincing evidence of the veracity of these charges — which may well have been influenced by the spy-mania of the Great Purges then sweeping the Soviet Union.
Following his expulsion, Harry Wicks moved to Chicago and worked there as a typesetter until his death in 1957. He spoke periodically under the auspices of the Independent Labor League of America
Independent Labor League of America
The Communist Party of the USA , led by former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA Jay Lovestone, was a small oppositionist Communist movement of the 1930s. The organization emerged from a factional fight in the CPUSA in 1929 and unsuccessfully sought to reintegrate with that organization...
, the final incarnation of the Communist oppositional movement headed by Jay Lovestone, teaching a fortnightly "study class" on the subject of "Present Day Capitalism" in early 1939.
Shortly after his death a book by Wicks was published on the history of the Russian Revolution and world communist movement, arguing was it had been "completely negated into an instrument for the degradation and enslavement of those who toil."
Views of Harry M. Wicks by his contemporaries
- Oakley C. JohnsonOakley C. JohnsonOakley C. Johnson was an American socialist political activist and writer. A founding member of both the Communist Party of America and the Proletarian Party of America, Johnson is best remembered as a historian of the radical politics of that era.-Early years:Oakley Calvin Johnson was born on...
, a member of the Socialist Party of Michigan and founding member of the Communist Party of America along with Harry Wicks was a bitter critic of his views and personality traits. In a 1966 memoir, Johnson recalled:
"Another Keracher adherent, but a strange and undependable one, was Harry M. Wicks, for whom I bore a secret dislike. He was a master of profanity and invective, and his speeches and articles were full of both. He had extraordinary intellectual vanity (knew everything, was always right), and very little charm. He was a fattish man, with plump hips, eyes that were round and small, and a red face."
- Benjamin Gitlow, a former member of the Secretariat of the CPUSA who later turned to conservative anti-communismAnti-communismAnti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
emphasized Wick's aggressiveness as a soapbox speakerSoapboxA soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject. The term originates from the days when speakers would elevate themselves by standing on a wooden crate originally used for shipment of soap or other dry goods from a manufacturer to a...
at the Passaic Textile Strike1926 Passaic Textile StrikeThe 1926 Passaic Textile Strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity...
of 1926:
"The [Textile] Committee had sent Mary Heaton VorseMary Heaton VorseMary Heaton Vorse or Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien was an American journalist, labor activist, and novelist. Vorse was outspoken and active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism , socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable...
to Washington to line up Congressional support for a Congressional Investigation of Passaic... Mrs. Vorse also sharply attacked H.M. Wicks for the kind of a speech he made before the strikers, Wicks had the reputation of being the most vitriolic speaker in the party. In the speech she referred to he said: 'Let the American LegionAmerican LegionThe American Legion is a mutual-aid organization of veterans of the United States armed forces chartered by the United States Congress. It was founded to benefit those veterans who served during a wartime period as defined by Congress...
come on... Bring with you your Red Cross ambulances and nurses.'"
Works
- Eclipse of October: How a Revolution that Proclaimed the Emancipation of All Who Toil was Negated into an Instrument of Tyranny. Chicago: Challenge Publishers, 1957.