Maximilian "Max" Cohen was an American socialist politician of the early 20th century. Cohen held a series of important posts during the pivotal year of 1919, including Secretary of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party for Local Greater New York, Secretary of the Left Wing National Council, and business manager for the New York Communist. Cohen was also a founding member of the Communist Party of America in that same year.
Biography
Early years
Maximilian Cohen was born in the United States to Jewish parents. He grew up in New York City and became actively involved in radical politics as a very young man, joining the Socialist Labor Party in 1904 before moving to the Socialist Party of America in 1913. He trained and worked professionally as a dentist.
The early US Communist movement
In 1919, with the emergence of an organized revolutionary socialist Left Wing faction in the Socialist Party, Cohen cast his lot with the insurgents. In January 1919 a joint meeting of representatives of all the SP branches of Local Greater New York was called. The meeting was chaired by Julius Gerber, Executive Secretary of Local Greater New York who did his best to steer the meeting away from the passionate discussion of strategy and tactics which the Left Wing members desired. When delegates from Queens attempted to win the floor at 11:30 pm, only to be ruled out of order, a number of radicals bolted the hall and gathered in a meeting room of their own. A City Committee of 14 was elected, with Max Cohen as Executive Secretary. The group was to compose a manifesto and wage a campaign to win over the rank and file of the party to the ideas of revolutionary socialism. It was this group which wrote the famous Left Wing Manifesto, a document extensively revised by Louis C. Fraina, editor of the weekly newspaper of the Left Wing Section, Local Boston, The Revolutionary Age.
Later in 1919, Left Wing Section, Local New York decided to issue its own weekly newspaper, The New York Communist. Max Cohen was made business manager of the new paper, which was edited by the celebrated journalist and war correspondent John Reed. Cohen's stint in this capacity was brief, as he stepped down effective with the June 14, 1919, issue, with Ben Gitlow taking over the job.
Later in June 1919, the national Left Wing Section held an organizational Left Wing National Conference in New York City. There Cohen was elected Secretary of the governing National Council of this group. Cohen was one of those members of the National Council who sought to avoid a split of the emerging Communist movement by endorsing the convention call issued by the Socialist Party of Michigan and the language federations of the Socialist Party seeking the immediate establishment of a Communist Party of America in Chicago on September 1, 1919. On this matter he came into bitter disagreement with Reed, Gitlow, and other leading members of the Left Wing Section, who sought to fight for control of the Socialist Party at its 1919 Emergency National Convention, slated for August 30 in that same city. This disagreement over tactics led to the formation of two separate organizations — the Communist Party of America (CPA) and the Communist Labor Party of America (CLP), groups which fought each other tooth and nail for the next two years before finally merging their forces permanently in the middle of 1922.
Cohen was elected as a delegate to the founding convention of the CPA in September 1919 and served as a member of the 9 member committee of the convention which wrote the CPA's program. He was also chosen as editor of the organization's official organ, a weekly newspaper published in New York and called The Communist.
Cohen was elected a member of the governing Central Executive Committee of the CPA in 1920 and served on the "Executive Council" of that body which conducted day-to-day operations. He was the organizer for District II for that organization (New York City and environs) from January 1920 onwards as well as continuing to serve as the Editor in Chief for the organization.