New Masses: Collection III

(Edited by Mike Gold, John Sloane, Max Eastman,  1926)

The searing legacy and ambition of the original The Masses — and that of martyred co-founder and legendary radical John Reed — could not be extinguished. Even though its successor, The Liberator, enjoyed great successes and continued carrying the torch for the Leftist and Labor front here in the US, they ultimately ran out of money and were forced to offer up the publication to the CPUSA. 

The New Masses came in 1926, when alumni Mike Gold, Max Eastman, John Sloan, Joseph Freeman, and other former contributors managed to corral a team of writers together in a crusade to continue forging the cultural path for Leftist political commentary and working class ideology in America. 

The New Masses would run for 22 years, having to undergo countless many changes and political adaptations in the ever-modernizing world. And, as the story seemingly always goes, personal in-fighting and ideologically squabbling within the magazine only got worse as political divides were exacerbated by the world marching headlong into WWII. 

Write Brain TV is proud to present this final series of our exploration into the radical periodicals in the first-half of the twentieth century; The New Masses.