Norman Mattoon Thomas (20 de noviembre de 1884 – 19 de diciembre de 1968) fue un ministro presbiteriano y activista político estadounidense. Alcanzó fama como socialista y pacifista , y fue candidato a la presidencia por el Partido Socialista de Estados Unidos en seis elecciones consecutivas entre 1928 y 1948 .
Thomas era el mayor de seis hijos, nacido el 20 de noviembre de 1884 en Marion, Ohio , de Emma Williams (née Mattoon) y Weddington Evans Thomas, un ministro presbiteriano. Thomas tuvo una infancia y adolescencia sin incidentes en el Medio Oeste, ayudando a pagar sus estudios en la Marion High School como repartidor de periódicos para el Marion Daily Star de Warren G. Harding . [1] Al igual que otros repartidores de periódicos, reportaba directamente a Florence Kling Harding . "Nunca se le escapó un centavo", dijo Thomas. El verano después de graduarse de la escuela secundaria, su padre aceptó un pastorado en Lewisburg, Pensilvania , lo que le permitió a Norman asistir a la Universidad de Bucknell . Dejó Bucknell después de un año para asistir a la Universidad de Princeton , beneficiaria de la generosidad de un tío rico por matrimonio. [2] Thomas se graduó magna cum laude de la Universidad de Princeton en 1905. [3]
Después de trabajar en una casa de acogida y de viajar alrededor del mundo, Thomas decidió seguir los pasos de su padre y se matriculó en el Seminario Teológico de la Unión . Se graduó en el seminario y fue ordenado ministro presbiteriano en 1911. [4] Después de ayudar al reverendo Henry Van Dyke en la elegante Iglesia Presbiteriana Brick en la Quinta Avenida de Manhattan , Thomas fue nombrado pastor de la Iglesia Presbiteriana East Harlem, donde atendía a los protestantes italoamericanos. [5] El Seminario Teológico de la Unión había sido en ese momento un centro del movimiento del Evangelio Social y de la política liberal, y como ministro, Thomas predicó contra la participación estadounidense en la Primera Guerra Mundial. Esta postura pacifista hizo que muchos de sus compañeros de Princeton lo rechazaran y algunos de los líderes de la Iglesia Presbiteriana de Nueva York se opusieran a él. Cuando se detuvo la financiación de los programas sociales de la Parroquia Americana por parte de la iglesia, Thomas renunció a su pastorado. [6] A pesar de su renuncia, Thomas no abandonó formalmente el ministerio hasta 1931, después de la muerte de su madre. [6]
Fue su posición como objetor de conciencia lo que lo atrajo al Partido Socialista de Estados Unidos (SPA), una organización firmemente antimilitarista . Cuando el líder del SPA, Morris Hillquit, hizo su campaña para alcalde de Nueva York en 1917 con una plataforma contra la guerra, Thomas le escribió expresándole sus buenos deseos. Para su sorpresa, Hillquit le respondió, animando al joven ministro a trabajar en su campaña, cosa que Thomas hizo con energía. [7] Poco después, él mismo se unió al Partido Socialista. [8] Thomas era un socialista cristiano . [9]
Thomas era el secretario (en aquel entonces un puesto no remunerado) de la pacifista Fellowship of Reconciliation incluso antes de la guerra. Cuando la organización inició una revista llamada The World Tomorrow en enero de 1918, Thomas fue contratado como su editor remunerado. Junto con Devere Allen , Thomas ayudó a hacer de The World Tomorrow la voz líder del activismo social cristiano liberal de su época. [9] En 1921, Thomas pasó al periodismo secular cuando fue empleado como editor asociado de la revista The Nation . En 1922 se convirtió en codirector de la League for Industrial Democracy . Más tarde, fue uno de los fundadores de la Oficina Nacional de Libertades Civiles , precursora de la Unión Estadounidense por las Libertades Civiles . [ cita requerida ]
Thomas se postuló para un cargo cinco veces en rápida sucesión en la lista socialista: para gobernador de Nueva York en 1924 , para alcalde de Nueva York en 1925 , para Senado del Estado de Nueva York en 1926, para concejal en 1927 y para alcalde de Nueva York nuevamente en 1929. En 1934 , se postuló para el Senado de los EE. UU. en Nueva York y obtuvo casi 200.000 votos, entonces el segundo mejor resultado para un candidato socialista en las elecciones estatales de Nueva York; solo Charles P. Steinmetz obtuvo más votos, casi 300.000 en 1922 cuando se postuló para Ingeniero Estatal . [9]
La actividad política de Thomas también incluyó intentos de llegar a la presidencia de Estados Unidos. Tras la muerte de Eugene Debs en 1926, hubo un vacío de liderazgo en el Partido Socialista. Ninguno de los dos principales líderes políticos del partido, Victor L. Berger y Hillquit, era elegible para postularse a la presidencia debido a su nacimiento en el extranjero. La tercera figura principal, Daniel Hoan , ocupaba el cargo de alcalde de Milwaukee, Wisconsin . [9] Con aproximadamente 8.000 miembros que pagaban cuotas, las opciones del Partido Socialista eran limitadas, y el poco conocido ministro de Nueva York con habilidades oratorias y un pedigrí en el movimiento se convirtió en la elección de la Convención Nacional del Partido Socialista de 1928.
The 1928 campaign was the first of Thomas's six consecutive campaigns as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party. As an articulate and engaging spokesman for democratic socialism, Thomas had considerably greater influence than the typical perennial candidate. Although most upper- and middle-class Americans found socialism unsavory, the well-educated Thomas—who often wore three-piece suits and looked and talked like a president—gained grudging admiration.
Thomas frequently spoke on the difference between socialism, the movement he represented, and communism and revolutionary Marxism. His early admiration for the Russian Revolution had turned into energetic anti-Stalinism. (Some revolutionaries thought him no better; Leon Trotsky criticized Thomas on more than one occasion.)[10]
He wrote several books, among them his passionate defense of World War I conscientious objectors, Is Conscience a Crime?, and his statement of the 1960s social democratic consensus, Socialism Re-examined.
At the 1932 Milwaukee convention, Thomas and his radical pacifist allies in the party joined forces with constructive socialists from Wisconsin and a faction of young Marxist intellectuals called the "Militants" in backing a challenger to National Chairman Morris Hillquit. While Hillquit and his cohort retained control of the organization at this time, this action earned the lasting enmity of Hillquit's New York-based allies of the so-called "Old Guard". The diplomatic party peacemaker Hillquit died of tuberculosis the following year, lessening the stability of his faction.
At the 1934 National Convention of the Socialist Party, Thomas's connection with the Militants deepened when he backed a radical Declaration of Principles authored by his longtime associate from the radical pacifist journal The World Tomorrow, Devere Allen. The Militants swept to majority control of the party's governing National Executive Committee at this gathering, and the Old Guard retreated to their New York fortress and formalized their factional organization as the Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party, complete with a shadow Provisional Executive Committee and an office in New York City.
Thomas favored work to establish a broad Farmer–Labor Party upon the model of the Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Federation,[11] but remained supportive of the Militants and their vision of an "all-inclusive party", which welcomed members of dissident communist organizations (including Lovestoneites and Trotskyists) and worked together with the Communist Party USA in joint Popular Front activities. The party descended into a maelstrom of factionalism in the interval, with the New York Old Guard leaving to establish themselves as the Social Democratic Federation of America, taking with them control of party property, such as the Yiddish-language The Jewish Daily Forward, the English-language New Leader, the Rand School of Social Science, and the party's summer camp in Pennsylvania.
In 1937, Thomas returned from Europe determined to restore order in the Socialist Party. He and his followers in the party teamed up with the Clarity majority of the National Executive Committee and gave the green light to the New York Right Wing to expel the Appeal faction from the organization. These expulsions led to the departure of virtually the whole of the party's youth section, who affiliated to the new Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. Demoralization set in and the Socialist Party withered, its membership level below that of 1928.
In April 1938, Thomas was the center of national controversy when he came to Jersey City, New Jersey to defend labor organizers' free speech and challenge the political machine of Mayor Frank Hague. Hague was a close ally of Franklin Roosevelt and controlled federal patronage in the state. Though denied a permit for political reasons, Thomas came anyway to speak at an outdoor rally. The police arrested him as soon as he got out of his car. As the officers prepared to expel him from the city, Thomas quipped, "So this is Jersey justice". People across the political spectrum, including the 1932 and 1936 Republican presidential nominees, Herbert Hoover and Alfred M. Landon, criticized Hague for his suppression of free speech and Roosevelt for his silence about the incident. Thomas and Landon became good friends as a result of the incident.[12]
Thomas was initially as outspoken in opposing the Second World War as he had been with regard to the First World War. Upon returning from a European tour in 1937, he formed the Keep America Out of War Congress, and spoke against war, thereby sharing a platform with the non-interventionist America First Committee.[13] In the 1940 presidential campaign he said Republican Wendell Willkie was the candidate of "the Wall Street war machine" and that he "would take us to war about as fast and about on the same terms as Mr. Roosevelt".[14]
In testimony to Congress in January 1941 he opposed the proposed Lend Lease program of sending military supplies to Great Britain, calling it "a bill to authorize undeclared war in the name of peace, and dictatorship in the name of defending democracy". He said that the survival of the British Empire was not vital to the security of the United States, but added that he favored helping Britain to defend herself against aggression.[15]
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a bitter split took place in the Socialist Party regarding support for the war; Thomas reluctantly supported it, though he thought it could have been honorably avoided. His brother and many others continued their pacifist opposition to all wars.[16] Thomas later wrote self-critically that he had "overemphasized both the sense in which it was a continuance of World War I and the capacity of nonfascist Europe to resist the Nazis".[17]
Thomas was one of the few public figures to oppose President Roosevelt's incarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when the organization supported the forced mass removal and incarceration.[18][19] Thomas also campaigned against racial segregation, environmental depletion, and anti-labor laws and practices, and in favor of opening the United States to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s.
Thomas was an early proponent of birth control. The birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger recruited him to write "Some Objections to Birth Control Considered" in Religious and Ethical Aspects of Birth Control, edited and published by Sanger in 1926. Thomas accused the Catholic Church of hypocritical opinions on sex, such as requiring priests to be celibate and maintaining that laypeople should have sex only to reproduce. "This doctrine of unrestricted procreation is strangely inconsistent on the lips of men who practice celibacy and preach continence."[20]
Thomas also deplored the secular objection to birth control because it originated from "racial and national" group-think. "The white race, we are told, our own nation—whatever that nation may be—is endangered by practicing birth control. Birth control is something like disarmament—a good thing if effected by international agreement, but otherwise dangerous to us in both a military and economic sense. If we are not to be overwhelmed by the 'rising tide of color' we must breed against the world. If our nation is to survive, it must have more cannon and more babies as prospective food for the cannon."[21]
Thomas was also very critical of Zionism and of Israel's policies toward the Arabs in the postwar years (especially after the Suez Crisis) and often collaborated with the American Council for Judaism.
After 1945, Thomas sought to make the anti-Stalinist left the leader of social reform, in collaboration with labor leaders like Walter Reuther. In 1961, he released an album, The Minority Party in America: Featuring an Interview with Norman Thomas, on Folkways Records, which focused on the role of the third party.[22]
Thomas actively campaigned for Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. He was critical of Johnson's foreign policy, but praised his work on civil rights and poverty. Thomas called Johnson's opponent Barry Goldwater a "personable man with good stands on domestic issues" but also described him as "the greatest evil" due to his views on foreign policy.[23][24]
Thomas's 80th birthday in 1964 was marked by a well-publicized gala at the Hotel Astor in Manhattan. At the event Thomas called for a cease-fire in Vietnam and read birthday telegrams from Hubert Humphrey, Earl Warren, and Martin Luther King Jr. He also received a check for $17,500 (equivalent to $171,900 in 2023) in donations from supporters. "It won't last long," he said of the check, "because every organization I'm connected with is going bankrupt."[25]
In 1966, the conservative journalist and writer William F. Buckley, Jr chose Thomas to be the third guest on Buckley's new television interview show, Firing Line. In 1968, Thomas signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.[26]
Also in 1966, Thomas traveled to the Dominican Republic along with future Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein to observe that country's general election. The two were leaders of the "Committee on free elections in the Dominican Republic", an organization based in the U.S. that monitored the election, in which Juan Bosch of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, affiliated with the Socialist International, was beaten closely but decisively by the conservative ex-president Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer continued to govern the country on and off for the next 30 years.[27] In the autumn of that year, Thomas received the second Eugene V. Debs Award for his work in promoting world peace.[28]
In 1910,[29] Thomas married Frances Violet Stewart (1881–1947),[30][31] the granddaughter of John Aikman Stewart, financial adviser to Presidents Lincoln and Cleveland, and a trustee of Princeton for many years.[32] Together, they had three daughters and two sons:[30]
Thomas died at the age of 84 on December 19, 1968, at a nursing home in Huntington, New York.[40] Pursuant to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered on Long Island.
The Norman Thomas High School (formerly known as Central Commercial High School) in Manhattan and the Norman Thomas '05 Library at Princeton University's Forbes College are named after him, as is the assembly hall at the Three Arrows Cooperative Society, where he was a frequent visitor. He is also the grandfather of Newsweek columnist Evan Thomas and the great-grandfather of writer Louisa Thomas.[41]
A plaque in the Norman Thomas '05 Library reads: Norman M. Thomas, class of 1905. "I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won."[citation needed]
The drawing-room socialist, Thomas, is [...] only a bourgeois with a socialist 'ideal'. [...] His personal life, interests, ties, moral criteria exist outside the party. With hostile astonishment he looks down upon the Bolshevik to whom the party is a weapon for the revolutionary reconstruction of society, including also its morality." [...] "This righteous man expelled the American 'Trotskyists' from his party precisely as the GPU shot down their co-thinkers in the U.S.S.R. and in Spain.
