Product Code Database
Corliss Lamont (March 28, 1902 – April 26, 1995) was an American socialist and humanist philosopher and advocate of various left-wing and civil liberties causes. As a part of his political activities, he was the Chairman of National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, starting from the early 1940s.
Lamont began his 30 years as a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1932. In 1934, he was arrested while on a picket line in Jersey City, New Jersey, part of a long battle between labor and civil rights activists and Frank Hague, the city's mayor. Lamont later wrote that he "learned more about the American legal system in one day ... than in one year at Harvard Law School".
In 1936, Lamont helped found and subsidized the magazine Marxist Quarterly. When the Dewey Commission reported in 1937 that the Moscow trials of Leon Trotsky and others were fraudulent, Lamont, along with other left-wing intellectuals, refused to accept the commission's findings. Under the influence of the Popular Front, Lamont and 150 other left-wing writers endorsed Josef Stalin's actions as necessary for "the preservation of progressive democracy". Their letter warned that Dewey's work was itself politically motivated and charged Dewey with supporting reactionary views and "Red-baiting". Lamont wrote an introduction to the anti-Polish pamphlet Behind the Polish-Soviet Break by Alter Brody. Introduction by Corliss Lamont
Lamont remained sympathetic to the Soviet Union well after World War II and the establishment of Eastern bloc in Central and Eastern Europe. He authored a pamphlet entitled The Myth of Soviet Aggression in which he wrote: In 1944 Lamont wrote a preface to a book by Alter Brody that popularized the Soviet falsification of the Katyn massacre in the West.
When called to testify in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, he denied ever having been a communist, but refused to discuss his beliefs or those of others, citing not the Fifth Amendment but the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. The committee cited Lamont for contempt of Congress by a vote of 71 to 3 in August 1954. Some senators questioned McCarthy's authority and wanted a federal court to rule on it. In November, Lamont donated $50,000 to create a $1,000,000 Bill of Rights Fund to support civil rights advocates, citing anti-communist legislation, travel restrictions, and blacklisting in the entertainment industry. The same month, he challenged the subcommittee's authority in court.
The same year, he wrote Why I Am Not a Communist. Despite his allegiance to Marxism, he never joined the Communist Party USA, and supported the Korean War.Murray Rothbard Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal, Ludwig von Mises Institute
In April 1955, Lamont withdrew from his role as a philosophy lecturer at Columbia University pending the outcome of these legal proceedings, and the university said it was Lamont's decision, made "without prior suggestion by any officer of the university". Judge Edward Weinfeld of the U.S. District Court found the indictment against Lamont was faulty, but the government, rather than seek a new indictment, appealed that ruling. A unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals agreed in 1955 and in 1956 the government chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court.
As a director of the ACLU, Lamont had resisted attempts to purge the organization of communists and, in 1954, he resigned his position because he felt the ACLU had not supported him in the face of McCarthy's charges. The complete record of the legal proceedings in Lamont's case against the McCarthy subcommittee was published in 1957.
In 1951 and 1957, Lamont was denied a passport by the State Department, which considered his application incomplete because he refused to answer a question about membership in the Communist Party. He sued the State Department in June 1957 seeking a hearing on its action. He obtained his passport in June 1958 following a Supreme Court decision in another case, Kent v. Dulles, and left the U.S. for a world tour in March 1959.
He ran again for the U.S. Senate from New York in 1958 on the Independent-Socialist ticket. He received more than 49,000 votes out of more than 5,500,000 cast, losing to Republican Kenneth B. Keating.
In 1959, Lamont became an enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba.Lamont, Corliss, A Lifetime of Dissent, New York: Prometheus Books (1988) Day described Lamont in her diary as a "'pinko' millionaire who lived modestly".
It was the first time the Supreme Court invalidated a statute as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Lamont's attorney was Leonard Boudin, who worked on many civil liberties cases. He won a similar lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court the same year.
In the mid-1960s, Lamont became chairman of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, a position he held until his death.
In 1979, Lamont founded Half-Moon Foundation, Inc. Half-Moon Foundation was a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and was incorporated in the state of New York. The foundation was formed "to promote enduring international peace, support for the United Nations, the conservation of our country's natural environment, and to safeguard and extend civil liberties as guaranteed under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."
Lamont was president emeritus of the American Humanist Association and in 1977 was named Humanist of the Year. In 1981, he received the Gandhi Peace Award.
In 1998, Lamont received a posthumous Distinguished Humanist Service Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union and he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
He became a substantial donor to both Harvard and Columbia, endowing the latter's "Corliss Lamont Professor of Civil Liberties."
He was the great-uncle of Ned Lamont, the governor of Connecticut.
In 1935, he published The Illusion of Immortality (originally published in 1932 as Issues of Immortality: A Study in Implications), which was a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. Lamont argued that people can live satisfactory lives without belief in life after death and that human life may be recognized to be more precious if it is realized that it only comes once to each man.Sellars, Roy. (1951). The Illusion of Immortality by Corliss Lamont. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol. 11, No. 3. pp. 444-445.
His most famous work is The Philosophy of Humanism (originally published in 1949 as Humanism as a Philosophy), now in its eighth edition. He also published intimate portraits of John Dewey, John Masefield, and George Santayana.
1960s
In 1964, Lamont sued the Postmaster General for reading and, at times, refusing to deliver his mail under the anti-propaganda mail law of 1962, passed over the objections of the Department of Justice and the Post Office, that allowed the Postmaster General to destroy "communist political propaganda" sent from outside the United States unless the addressee says he wants to receive such mail. The statute did not apply to sealed correspondence, but was aimed at published materials. He lost a 2–1 decision in U.S. District Court, after the Post Office delivered one such item of mail, and appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the single delivery was a subterfuge designed to moot his lawsuit while continuing to interrupt his mail service. On May 24, 1965, the Supreme Court held unanimously in Lamont v. Postmaster General that the law was unconstitutional.
Later life
In 1971, after a congressman called him an "identified member of the Communist Party, U.S.A.", Lamont issued a statement that "although it is no disgrace to belong to the Communist party, I have never even dreamed of joining it." The same year, he financed Dorothy Day's visit to the Soviet Union and several other countries in Eastern Europe.
Personal life and death
In 1928, Lamont married Margaret Hayes Irish. They divorced in the early 1960s. In 1962, he married Helen Boyden Lamb; she died of cancer in 1975. In 1986, Lamont married Beth Keehner; she survived his death. He died from heart failure at home in Ossining, New York, on April 26, 1995.
Legacy
Following the deaths of his parents, Lamont became a philanthropist. He funded the collection and preservation of manuscripts of American philosophers, particularly George Santayana, as well as Rockwell Kent and John Masefield.
Writings
Lamont was a prolific author. He wrote, co-wrote, edited, or co-edited more than two dozen books and dozens of pamphlets, and wrote thousands of letters to newspapers, magazines, and journals on significant social issues during his lifelong campaign for peace and civil rights.
Books authored or co-authored by Corliss Lamont
Books edited or co-edited by Corliss Lamont
Basic Pamphlets series
Aside from books, over the course of more than a half-century, Corliss Lamont authored, co-authored, or edited approximately three dozen pamphlets on a variety of subjects. Prominent among these was the Basic Pamphlets series, privately published by Dr. Lamont and sold directly by him through mail order via a local post office box in New York. There were 29 numbered titles in the Basic Pamphlets series, listed below by pamphlet number.
Other pamphlets
In addition to the Basic Pamphlets series, Corliss Lamont also wrote a number of other pamphlets, a partial list of which appears below.
Sound recordings
Video
See also
Footnotes
External links
Categories: 1902 Births, 1995 Deaths, 20th-century American Biographers, 20th-century American Essayists, 20th-century American Historians, 20th-century American Male Writers, 20th-century American Memoirists, 20th-century American Philanthropists, 20th-century American Philosophers, 20th-century American Educational Theorists, 20th-century American Educators, 20th-century New Jersey Politicians, Academics From New Jersey, Academics From New York, Activists From New Jersey, Civil Rights Activists From New York, Alumni Of New College, Oxford, American Anti-capitalists, American Anti-fascists, American Anti-poverty Advocates, American Anti–vietnam War Activists, American Anti-war Activists, American Bibliophiles, American Book And Manuscript Collectors, American Civil Liberties Union People, American Conservationists, American Democracy Activists, American Educational Theorists, American Educators, American Environmentalists, American Ethicists, American Historians Of Philosophy, American Humanists, American Labor Party Politicians, American Left-wing Activists, 20th-century American Letter Writers, American Male Biographers, American Male Essayists, American Male Non-fiction Writers, American Non-fiction Environmental Writers, American Pacifists, American Pamphleteers, American Philosophy Academics, American Political Philosophers, American Skeptics, American Social Reformers, American Social Sciences Writers, American Travel Writers, American Anthologists, Columbia University Alumni, Columbia University Faculty, American Critics Of Religions, Environmental Philosophers, American Free Speech Activists, Freethought Writers, Harvard University Alumni, Historians From New Jersey, Historians From New York, Independent-socialist Party Politicians, New Jersey Socialists, The New School Alumni, American Nonviolence Advocates, People From Ossining, New York, Philanthropists From New Jersey, Philanthropists From New York, Phillips Exeter Academy Alumni, Philosophers From New Jersey, Philosophers From New York, American Philosophers Of Culture, American Philosophers Of Education, Philosophers Of History, American Philosophers Of Social Science, Theorists On Western Civilization, Writers About Activism And Social Change, Writers About Communism, Writers About Globalization, Writers About Religion And Science, Writers From Englewood, New Jersey, Writers From New York, American Lecturers, Deaths From Congestive Heart Failure In New York, 20th-century American Sociologists
|
|
