Jay Lovestone

President
 Political party

**Jay Lovestone,** born **Jacob Liebstein**, was an East American politician of Jewish immigrants origin, the current Vice-President of the Socialist Republic of America and Chairman of the CEC of the Socialist Party of America.

## Left-Wing Troika

With a natural penchant for organisational and conspiratorial works, Lovestone quickly rose through the rank of the Socialist Party of America, especially come its left-wing section under C. E. Ruthenberg and Jack Reed during the bitter factional struggle years after the first Great European War and the French Proletarian Revolution. With the health of Ruthenberg worsen and finally his death in 1927, Lovestone replaced him entirely as the new right-hand man of faction leader Jack Reed. The unease truce of the interwar between the SPA factions for the elections was maintained via a strict restraint on the Left-Wing Section and the fear of the collapse of the Party for the Old Guard as for the SPA Congress of 1930, 104/305 deputies have sided with the Left-Wing Section and forced the appointment of the 8 left-wing leaders to the Central Executive Committee.

### 1937 Emergency Congress

Disagreement on electoral practices, the campaign of Huey Long broke down the party once again on which direction it should take, Lovestone was fundamental organiser of the events of March 1937, starting with the insubordination of several mid-west and east coast offices in accepting the centrist propaganda line and the united front discussions conducted without CEC knowledge in Washington between deputies of the Old Guard and the Minesota Senator Olson. Finally, in an event usually described as a coup, an emergency congress was called in short notice, with an unpreprared and disorganised opposition, Jay Lovestone make the case of the unprincipled factionalism on the floor leading to a replacement vote of the CEC, replaced entirely with a new Left-Wing majority and called for a national referendum on the new Declaration of Principles, bitter fightings in press organs, on the streets and in the party offices led to the vote a few months later with a complete landslide for the new leftist-CEC, the strong protest from the Committee for the Perservation of Unity of the old guards now turned into its own destruction as on the policy committee meeting later that year, Jay Lovestone conducted a secret trial on their unprincipled factionalism, insubordination and reckless political behaviours that threaten the party and an order of expulsion on its entire membership, with careful preparation in transferring Old Guards properties to Left-wing sympathisers or opportunists before hand as well as Lovestone's party agents ransacked many Old Guards apartments for documents and silence their newspaper's distribution. Among the expelled was a wide range of personalities that unfortunately joined along like Norman Thomas, Upton Sinclair, Louis Waldman, etc.

In New York, these personalities would regroup as the Social Democratic Party of America, on what the CEC and Lovestone failed to transfer away, along with half of all East Coast branches.

### Lovestone at the political front

Following the disastrous 1937 election and seeing both parties in major recessions, talks were forced to be rekindled by the younger reformists based around Norman Thomas who themselves are in control of the SDPA after bitter factional struggles. The political peace treaty between the two was among the greater scheme in uniting the American left, a pragmatist change in direction by Reed as advised to him by the 8th Congress of the International. Within the American Labor Front (amongst which the Fosterites AFL forced an exit of its right-wing faction and joined on conditions of its political independence), the SPDA briefly united with the SPA for the 1941 election. Jay Lovestone was appointed Secretary of the Interior, his latter bitter enemy William Foster as Secretary of Labor, who for many years have successfully warded off Lovestone's attempt to form a loyal pro-SPA faction within the AFL to secure a footing for the SPA to no longer need to rely on the unreliable and independent Fosterites Trade Union Educational League that have dug itself within the AFL extensively over the decades.

## The War and the RSB

Lovestone by a stroke of luck or a safety precaution by President Reed was in Chicago leading a meeting of the Policy Committee of the SPA when the news of the pustch in Washington arrived, during the first 20 hours where the safety of Reed and cabinet was uncertain, Lovestone proclaimed a state of emergency in the US and responded with the mobilisation of national guards under all Socialist-controlled states as well as the armoury to the raising of able-bodied men to the defense of laws and order in America, a decision decided within the SPA CEC to militarise the General Defense Committees and the Socialist Action Committee as state and national militias. It was Lovestone who was at the leadership of the Constitutional Government of the United States during the first actions of the American Civil War while Reed and Cabinet was still being transported in a secret convoy taking detours to avoid MacArthurites forces and unreliable state governors. The successful coordinated action to seize control of the entire Red Belt from state polices and unreliable national guards elements as well as stopping the invasion of the 1st Marine on Illinois tremendously shaped the feeling of Lovestone regarding organisational works, especially as the fighting turned into complete chaos elsewhere where spontaneous GDC and their mobs of protesters and union men routed under machine gun fires and socialist controlled state governments overthrown in the first year of the conflict that is escalating into open warfare. The home front was plagued with GDCs organised spontaneously everywhere, of every single parties and tendencies, enacting their own little governments, little revolutionary towns, making fights with the local population and conduct kangaroo courts before plushed out by a battalion of police. With the arrival of General Butler and his staff of the first Marine and the reestablishment of the Joint Chief of Staffs in Chicago, the armed forces of the Constitutional Front was reorganised into a proper fighting forces, under that pretext, as Secretary of the Interior, Lovestone ordered the federalisation of all GDCs to be organised into the national military command.

In a secret meeting of the SPA CEC in May 1942, Lovestone convinced Reed and Foster of the needs of an "iron hands" in the time of civil war, the SPA-SDP CEC accepted the proposal to form the Revolutionary Security Bureau that year, a party organ with the purposes of replacing the all GDCs outside of federal control in the homefront and the liquidation of the police forces, chaired by Lovestone's former party agent Jacob Stachel. During the its existence, the RSB functionally secured the Red Belt under laws and orders, but on the frontline areas and further beyond, its capacity was limited and to much of Lovestone's anger, he would attribute much of the late-war crises and incidents about looting, massacres and industrial sabotages to this failure to establish the RSB firmly as a national agency.

## 1949 Unity Pact

The death of Jack Reed in 1949 concluded an era in American political history. As with traditions and legal requirements, Norman Thomas would succeed him as President, but this never would be consented by the SPA majority nor the IWW and Fosterites, the delay in appointing a new president put the entire government in paralysis especially as the war stagnant, within the SPA CEC, Lovestone easily secured his election as the new Chairman. The relationship between the SPA and SPD have been of great hostility after the SDP declared their break a second time to oppose the 1947 Constitution that was passed "without consent of the people, of the political parties that form the government but merely the SPA's CEC...". Negotiation was conducted secretly at one the SPA's summer resorts in Minnesota, the Unity Agreement was revealed to the press many weeks later, for the first time in American history of such arrangements. The SPA's represented by the Lovestone, conceded the presidency as well as the SDP, to let it falls to a union leader independent of both parties (in theory) in the form of William Z. Foster that guarantee the backing of the IWW and AFL. Congress was reshuffled to fully accompany a given percentage of seats distributed among the political factions.