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Harry Magdoff

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Harry Magdoff

Henry Samuel Magdoff (born 21 August 1913), commonly known as Harry Magdoff, is a prominent American socialist commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Marxist publication, Monthly Review. While remaining a prominent figure of the left throughout his career he has been dogged by allegations of being involved in Soviet espionage, a charge which originated in the 1940s but one that would reemerge decades later.

Early years

A child of poor Russian-Jewish immigrants, Magdoff grew up in the Bronx. In 1929, at age 15, Magdoff first started reading Karl Marx when he picked up a copy of The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in a used-book store. "It blew my mind," recalled Magdoff in 2003. "His view of history was a revelation....that got me started reading about economics. We were going into the Depression then and I wanted to figure out what it all meant." His interest in Marx led him to embrace socialism.

Magdoff studied mathematics and physics from 1930 to 1933 at the City College of New York taking engineering, math and physics courses; he was active in the Social Problems Club with many schoolmates who later joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a Comintern organization that fought in the Spanish Civil War. Magdoff attended New York University after 1933, where he studied economics and statistics, receiving a B.S. in Economics in 1935. He was suspended and later expelled from City College for activities related to editing Frontiers (a radical student magazine not sanctioned by the school), including participation in a mock trial of the school's President and its Director.

Government service and post-war employment

In the mid-1930s, Magdoff moved to Philadelphia to take a job with the Works Progress Administration measuring the productivity of various manufacturing industries. David Weintraub assisted him with letters of recommendation to get a job with the government. By1940 Magdoff was working for the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) as its Principal Statistician. During World War II Magdoff worked on the War Production Board, in the Statistical and Tools Divisions.

Magdoff left his employment with the U.S. government, then with the United States Department of Commerce, on December 30, 1946, and went to work for the New Council on American Business in New York, happy to leave government service. Magdoff worked among many business associates until 1948, at which time he began employment with Trubeck Laboratories in New Jersey. He became an economic advisor and speechwriter to former Vice-President and unsuccessful Presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace.

Consequences of Espionage allegations and subsequent career

While Magdoff was never indicted on any charges related to espionage, the accusations damaged his reputation during the following decades See: Conspiracy allegations about Harry Magdoff. Despite this, Magdoff began a career in academia in the 1950s. His first and perhaps most influential book, The Age of Imperialism, was published in 1969. It sold over 100,000 copies and was translated into fifteen languages. Two years later, after the death of Leo Huberman, he began co-editing with Paul Sweezy Monthly Review, the leading independent Marxist journal in the United States, and has continued to edit the magazine to this day. Under Magdoff's direction, the Monthly Review has focused more and more upon imperialism as the key unit of analysis for global development and the forces challenging neocolonialism in the Third World. This perspective put the magazine and its press squarely on the New Left intellectual agenda since the late 1960s. His work has also kept him in the forefront of socialist thought in the U.S. from the 1930s to this day. The Great Depression left a strong impact on Magdoff's perspective on capitalism, as Magdoff recalls a sense of doom felt in the mid-century by pro-capitalists, holding that nothing since 1929 leads him to believe that the economy has become immune to cycles of severe crisis.

Magdoff and the late Paul Sweezy together produced five books. Magdoff's most recent book is Imperialism without Colonies, published when he was 89. Today Magdoff co-edits the Monthly Review with John Bellamy Foster.

Magdoff has two sons. His son, Fred Magdoff, is an expert in plant and soil science. His wife of almost 70 years, Beatrice, died in 2002.

Notes

^1 "The Sage of Imperialism" Susan Green, Seven Days, May 3, 2003.
^2 FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, p. 182 (p. 3 in PDF format).
^3 A Counterintelligence Reader, Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Official History, p. 31: "The following were members of the Victor Perlo group....Harry Magdoff: Statistical Division of WPB and Office of Emergency Management; Bureau of Research and Statistics, WTB; Tools Division, War Production Board; Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Commerce Department."
^4 Venona 629 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 May 1944.
^5 Venona 687 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944.
^6 Wikisource:Fitin to Dimitrov, 29 September 1944.
^7 The Secret World of American Communism, Yale University Press, 1995.
^8 "A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940's" Pozniakov, Vladimir, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Cold War History Project Virtual Archive: "Feklisov, pp. 65-105; M. Vorontsov, Capt. 1st rank, Chief Navy Main Staff, Intelligence Directorate, and Petrov, Military Commissar, NMS, ID to G. Dimitrov, 15 August 1942, No. 49253ss, typewritten original; G. Dimitrov to Pavel M. Fitin, 20 November 1942, No. 663, t/w copy; P. M. Fitin to G. Dimitrov, 14 July 1944, No. 1/3/10987, t/w copy; P. M. Fitin to G. Dimitrov, 29 September 1944, No. 1/3/16895, t/w copy. All these documents are NMS ID and FCD Chiefs' requests for information related to Americans and naturalized American citizens working in various US Government agencies and private corporations, some of whom had been CPUSA members. The last two are related to a certain Donald Wheeler (an OSS official), Charles Floto or Flato (who in 1943 worked for the "...Dept. of Economic Warfare"), and Harry Magdoff (War Production Board)-the request dated 29 Sept. 1944-and to Judith Coplon who according to the FCD information worked for the Dept. of Justice.-RTsKhIDNI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 478, l. 7; d. 484, l. 34; d. 485, l. 10, 14, 17, 31, 44."
^9 "Alexander Vassiliev’s Notes on Anatoly Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo on Compromised American Sources and Networks (Annotated)," John Earl Haynes: "3. "Tan" – Harry Magdoff, former employee of the Commerce Department."
^10 Ibid.
^11 "VENONA: FBI Documents of Historic Interest Re VENONA That Are Referenced In Daniel P. Moynihan's Book, 'Secrecy,'" pgs. 68-71

Publications

Harry Magdoff

  • Imperialism Without Colonies (2003)
  • The Age of Imperialism (1969)
  • Imperialism from the Colonial Age to the Present (1977)

Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy

  • The Irreversible Crisis (1988)
  • Stagnation and the Financial Explosion (1987)
  • The Deepening Crisis of U.S. Capitalism (1980)
  • The End of Prosperity (1977)
  • The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism (1970)

References

Print

  • Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley, New York: Ivy Books, 1988. ISBN 0804101647
  • Alexandre Feklisov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: Memoirs of the KGB Spymaster Who Also Controlled Klaus Fuchs and Helped Resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Enigma, 2001). ISBN 1929631081
  • Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). ISBN 0300077718
  • Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); p. 312 (Document 90) reproduces a copy of the September 29, 1944 Fitin to Dimitrov memo (RTsKhIDNI 495-74-485). ISBN 0300068557
  • Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). ISBN 0300071507
  • Herbert Romerstein, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000). ISBN 0895262754
  • Herbert Romerstein, Stanislav Levchenko, The KGB Against the "Main Enemy": How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates Against the United States (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989). ISBN 0669112283
  • Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999). ISBN 0788164228
  • Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (London: HarperCollins, 1999). ISBN 0006530710

Online

Images of VENONA decrypts pertaining to "KANT" and "TAN"

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