Alexander "Alex" Bittelman (1890–1982) was a Russian-born Jewish-American communist political activist, Marxist theorist, influential theoretician of the Communist Party USA and writer. A founding member, Bittelman is best remembered as the chief factional lieutenant of William Z. Foster and as a longtime editor of The Communist, its monthly magazine.
Early years
Alexander Bittelman was born in Berdichev (Berdychiv), in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) on January 9, 1890. He was radicalized at an early age, joining the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia (Yiddish: אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין ליטע פוילין און רוסלאַנד, Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland) at just 13 years of age. Arrested by the Tsarist secret police for his revolutionary views, he served two years of political exile in Siberia.
Bittelman emigrated to the United States in 1912, settling in New York City.
First American years
Bittelman was active in the Jewish Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America from 1915. A committed Marxist and revolutionary, Bittelman was an adherent of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party when it emerged early in 1919. In September of that year, he was a founding member of the Communist Party of America (CPA) and editor of the Yiddish-language newspaper, Der Kampf (The Struggle).
At the convention in Chicago that founded the CPA, Bittelman was one of the nine members of the committee that wrote the program for the organization. He was a member of the governing Central Executive Committee of the Jewish Communist Federation from 1919 to 1920 and was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the CPA and its Executive Council in 1920. His most commonly used underground party name during this period was "A. Raphael." Bittelman also variously used the pseudonyms "Gabriel," "Williams," "Percy," "Ralph Barnes," and "Lentrov" in various circumstances.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice in 1948, Bittelman maintained as many as 14 aliases up to that time.
Bittelman remained with the main CPA organization l, when Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg led a group of his supporters out of the organization in April 1920 to join the rival Communist Labor Party in a new United Communist Party (UCP). He saw the way that the internecine struggle between the two organizations was sapping the strength of the revolutionary socialist movement, however, and came to be an advocate of organizational unity between the CPA and the UCP. During the first half of 1921, Bittelman formed a group advocating merger of the competing communist groups in accordance with the directives of the Communist International. That, ironically, made Bittelman persona non grata with both organizations and he was briefly expelled from the CPA. Together with his co-thinker Maximilian Cohen, Bittelman formed a third group critical of the leaderships of both the CPA and the UCP called Communist Unity Committee, in which Bittelman served as secretary. Merger was finally accomplished at a convention held in May 1921, and Bittelman was welcomed back into the newly unified Communist Party of America.
Bittelman was put into the Central Executive of the unified Communist Party of America. In July 1922, he was sent with James P. Cannon to Moscow, as representatives there of the CPA. He returned later that same year to serve on the Executive Council of the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America, the so-called "Legal Political Party" initiated and controlled by the secret CPA.
Bittelman was regularly a delegate to the conventions of the American Communist Party. He was a close factional associate of William Z. Foster and James P. Cannon against the faction headed by John Pepper and including C.E. Ruthenberg and Jay Lovestone, during the bitter faction fights of the 1920s.
Bittelman was editor of The Daily Worker''' Saturday magazine from 1926 to 1927.
Bittelman was a delegate to the 6th World Congress of the Comintern in 1928 and spoke in opposition to American Party leader Jay Lovestone. Summoned to Moscow in an effort to neutralize the factional war, Bittelman was named vicechairman of the Comintern's Far-Eastern Secretariat in 1929.
In 1930, Bittelman was dispatched to India as the Comintern Representative there. He was expelled by the British from the country for his activities, however, and returned to the United States in 1931, putting down roots in Southern California.