forwarded message from David McReynolds:
I found out this morning that Julius Jacobson died on Saturday. There should be some note in the NY Times - not sure who is handling that.
Julie, whom I knew from the late 1950's when I moved to New York City, had been a close associate of Max Shachtman and was the editor the theoretical journal of the trotskyist Independent Socialist League (I am fairly sure the name was "The New Internationalist" - but not positive). [It was "The New International" -- tc]
After Shachtman entered the Socialist Party in 1958 (approximate date) and began to shift to the far right, Julie and his wife, Phyllis, along with a number of others -- Hal Draper, Sam Bottone, etc. - left the Socialist Party (they had joined with Max) and pursued left politics in independent ways. For many years Julie and Phyllis have managed to put out New Politics, a solid independent socialist journal. Julie had been hampered in recent years by the illness of Phyllis, who had suffered a stroke. The magazine, which tried to be a quarterly (often failing, limited by finances), was genuinely independent and left - something of a rarity at a time when Dissent had long since drifted into academic respectability. [It has since shifted to twice a year, but huge issues. - tc]
I had not known he had been ill this past year and don't have information at this time on plans for the Memorial - though I will relay it as soon as I have it.
Once, some years ago when I had been on the Editorial Board of New Politics, and after the death of Shachtman, I said New Politics couldn't ignore his death and needed to try in some way to publish some "accounting", and that this wasn't a task for me, since I'd never been in the ISL, but that Julie should try it.
He surprised me with a wonderful obituary titled "the two deaths of Max Shachtman" which summed up his best years and his most important contributions, then documented his "first death" as he drifted toward support of Washington. And, of course, the "second death". It was in the best of the Trotskyist tradition from which Julie had come - objective, free of bitterness.
In the death of Julie Jacobson, the Left has lost a solid rock.
Fraternally, David McReynolds
Tom Condit tomcondit at igc.org
<http://www.peaceandfreedom.org>