In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

| 97 12 The Prophet Karl Marx (c. 1910s) Abraham Shiplacoff A leading activist in the Socialist Party, Abraham Shiplacoff (1877–1934) was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1915 and to the New York City Board of Aldermen in 1920. His opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I led to his indictment under the Espionage Act. The following is the surviving fragment of a speech delivered by Shiplacoff in Yiddish, probably in the 1910s. Marx was a prophet, no less so than Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. With honest conviction and courage he proclaimed the economic liberation of humanity. He appealed to the workers of the world and inspired them with his conviction that they are destined to fulfill the great task of abolishing poverty, thus putting an end to wars between nations and classes, and, in doing so, realize the great thousands-year-old dream of human brotherhood. Basically, Marx’s vision of a social order rooted in justice and equal opportunity for all, and whose blossoms are the joy of fellowship and brotherliness, were no less a holy prophecy than the social prophecy called God’s Kingdom on Earth by the great Jewish Prophets. We who call ourselves students of Marx unfortunately forget quite often the intellectual significance of our movement. Marx never forgot it. True, he strongly underscored the inevitability of the class struggle as a fact of social development and called on the workers of all countries to unite in order to vanquish the ruling class. But his idea was much deeper. He never forgot that the ultimate purpose of victory is not to make the workers into rulers over the class under which they had been subjected. Rather, it was to put an end, once and for all, to class domination by abolishing those circumstances that make possible the division of society into various classes. Only thus can a fellowship of humanity become possible. Marx bitterly attacked economic enslavement and struggled to liberate the world from material poverty, unhappiness, and oppression. But this was 98 | In Struggle only his short-term goal, not his final goal. Marx was too great a man and too deep a thinker to consider material satisfaction and comfort the highest goal in life. He realized that the spiritual life of man was strongly dependent on his physical life and that the highest development of spiritual life is a flower that sprouts from the highest development of material life. He knew full well that the chains that bind the body also bind the soul and that the liberation of the soul can be enriched by breaking the chains that bind the body. Source: A. I. Shiplacoff Papers, box 5, folder 3, Tamiment Library, New York University. Translated by Tony Michels. ...

Share