How a Stealth Communist Wrote the New Deal National Labor Relations Act, and Hid His True Beliefs
22nd July 2013
Ron Radosh takes a look behind the scenes.
You may not have heard of Leon Keyserling, but he was one of the bright young men who rushed to our nation’s capitol to work for FDR after he was elected President, and who helped to fashion a great deal of the New Deal legislation. As his obituary in The New York Times pointed out, “as an aide of Senator [Robert F.]Wagner, a Democrat, [N.Y.] Mr. Keyserling helped draft such measures as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the Social Security Act of 1935 and the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act.” Later, as his Wikipedia entry shows, he went on to work for President Harry S. Truman and continued to advise him on major domestic programs.
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Mary Keyserling became enthusiastic about communism after she visited the Soviet Union in 1932, and wrote that she became “sympathetic to Communist not only as a Russian idea but as a feasible program when altered for many other countries.” She wrote home that “many of us have come round to an acceptance of the major elements of Communism- altho I think we or I shall work thru the Socialist Party for a while.”
As for Leon, Storrs notes that he became converted to the doctrines of Marx while studying at Columbia University. “Economically,” he wrote to his father from college, “socialism is probably sound…the rich and the poor should not be ‘equal’ before the law. The law should help the weaker party.” In 1932 he supported Communist candidate William Z. Foster for President, and hoped that he would get two million votes that “will mark in the future the definite turn toward socialism in this country.”