How the Intercollegiate Socialist Society led to the Bolshevik takeover of Education in America

Today parents are considered by the FBI as “domestic terrorists” if they dare to question what their children are being taught in public schools. The same holds true for our colleges and universities. Opposition to colleges and universities teaching students to hate America is considered “white supremacism.”

When and where did this Marxist takeover of our educational institutions K-20 begin?

It began in the afternoon of September 12th, 1905 at Peck’s Restaurant in downtown New York. That is the date that our current “cultural war” began.

In an article titled “Antonio Gramsci: the Godfather of Cultural Marxism” Bradley Thomas wrote:

There’s little debate that modern-day American universities, public education, mainstream media, Hollywood, and political advocacy groups are dominated by leftists. This is no accident, but part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for communist revolution developed more than eight decades ago by an Italian political theorist named Antonio Gramsci. [Emphasis added]

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS)

The ISS was established to,

“throw light [in America] on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism.”

MarxistHistory.org reported:

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) was a national non-party group dedicated to the organization of current and former collegians for the socialist cause and the spreading of socialist ideas on campus.

There were at least two isolated cases of socialist organization on campus prior to the establishment of the ISS in September 1905. From about 1901 there was a college socialist club organized at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In its first year the club had 11 student members and one professor and was limited to confirmed socialists. The membership restriction was loosened in 1904, however, and the club grew, coming to hold weekly discussions on the exploitation of child labor, workplace safety, and other matters of general concern.

The second collegiate socialist club was organized at the University of California at Berkeley. Called the “Social Progress Club,” the group sprung into existence following a lecture by Jack London early in 1905. [fn. Max Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 1905-1921: Origins of the Modern Student Movement. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 18-19.] [Emphasis added]

The ISS proper was a product of the brain of Upton Sinclair. In December 1904, Sinclair drafted a call for the formation of a group which he called “the Intercollegiate Socialist Society,” which he circulated among leading socialist intellectuals for endorsement. The document was ultimately signed by nine others in addition to Sinclair, including Leonard Abbott, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Graham Phelps Stokes, and William English Walling, among others. This call was published in various socialist publications in the spring of 1905 and a topic of discussion throughout that summer.

Organizational Meeting — New York, NY — September 12, 1905.

The ISS was formally launched at a meeting held in the afternoon of Sept. 12, 1905 at Peck’s Restaurant in downtown New York. More than 50 men and women were in attendance to give birth to the new organization, including such luminaries as Leonard Abbott, Mary Beard, Crystal Eastman, W.J. Ghent, and Gaylord Wilshire, in addition to a young Junior from Weslyan University named Harry Laidler. Upton Sinclair called the meeting to order.

The gathering decided to accept the name “Intercollegiate Socialist Society” and to open membership to college students, teachers, or graduates.

Students were to be organized into college chapters on each campus and the central organization was to be funded by these local groups remitting a percentage of the dues collected to the national society.

The first slate of officers elected at the Sept. 1905 organizational meeting included the following:

President: Jack London; First Vice President: Upton Sinclair; Second Vice President: Graham Phelps Stokes; Secretary: M.R. Holbrook; Treasurer: Rev. Owen Lovejoy; Executive Committee: Rev. George Willis Cooke, Morris Hillquit, Robert Hunter, Harry Laidler, Katherine M. Meserole, George H. Strobell. Of this group of socialist worthies, only Harry Laidler was actually a current college student. [fn. Max Horn, The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 1905-1921, pp. 1, 9-10.]

Organization proceeded slowly, with the group banned from many campuses by conservative administrators, who generally held veto power over the formation of student organizations in this period. Chapters were often small and their names frequently did not emphasize their connection to the national society or even with the socialist cause, as was the case, for example, with the Wesleyan Social Study Club headed by Harry Laidler, one of the first organized and affiliated with the ISS. A second chapter was formed at Columbia University in New York City, with a student named Walter Lippmann playing the leading role. Over the course of the first three years, affiliated socialist clubs were organized at Harvard, Princeton, Barnard, New York University Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to meeting to discuss problems of the day, these groups distributed socialist propaganda and arranged lectures on their respective campuses in an attempt to extend support for the socialist cause.

In May 1907, Jack London resigned as President of the ISS and Graham Phelps Stokes assumed the post.

In the fall of 1907, the ISS Executive Committee decided to hire an organizer on a temporary basis, and a young socialist named Fred H. Merrick went to work in January 1908. From 1907 through 1910, the ISS maintained its office at the Rand School of Social Science in New York City.

In May 1907, Jack London resigned as President of the ISS and Graham Phelps Stokes assumed the post.

Big government is now the “opiate of the people”

Marxists in our public schools, colleges, universities and even trade schools are pushing big government.

So how could socialists begin selling big government and its redistribution of wealth ideology?

First they had to gain unfettered control of production. 

On February 3, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Congress grabbed control of production via the federal income tax. America taxed its productivity by tapping every American’s wages. With the millions, then billions, and now trillions of dollars that Congress collected, they could entice or even force the strongest American to take the big government drug.

Then on April 8, 1913 Congress passed and the states ratified the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution which transferred U.S. Senator Selection from each state’s legislature to popular election by the people of each state. These two events made it much easier to collect and distribute big government as now Senators were no longer loyal to their state legislatures or primarily concerned with state sovereignty. Now U.S. Senators, along with U.S. Representatives, saw the value of spreading  the big government drug amongst the people in return for votes.

During the Great Depression Congress created the first “opiate for the masses” and named it Social Security. It was to be a social insurance program run by government, in other words guaranteed government largesse for life. The Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935 by President Franklin Roosevelt. He and Congress said this new drug would keep those unemployed, retirees and the poor financially secure. He called it the New Deal. All we needed to do was just pay in and all would be well.

In 1937 the United States Supreme Court in U.S. vs. Butler validated the Social Security Act and stated that, “Congress could, in its future discretion, spend that money [collected from the income tax] for whatever Congress then judged to be the general welfare of the country. The Court held that Congress has no constitutional power to earmark or segregate certain kinds of tax proceeds for certain purposes, whether the purposes be farm-price supports, foreign aid or social security payments.” All taxes went into the general fund.

Testifying before the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives in 1952, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration said—“The present trust fund is not quite large enough to pay off the benefits of existing beneficiaries”—those already on the receiving end, in other words. In 1955 chief actuary believed that it would take $35 billion just to pay the people “now receiving benefits.”

Bottom Line

Cultural Marxism’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.” The Democratic Party’s goal is “production for use, not for profit.”

Below is a list of ten policies promoted by the Democratic Party that prove they are the party of cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists in the Democratic Party support:

1. Green New Deal – read about the Green New Deal
2. Global Warming/Climate Change – read about the environmentalist movement.
3. Censorship – read about censorship.
4. Voter Fraud – read about voter fraud here.
5. Illegal Aliens – read about illegal aliens.
6. Sodomy – read about LGBT issues.
7. The Followers of Mohammed – read about Islamic supremacy.
8. Infanticide – read about abortion.
9. Taxing the Rich – read about taxation.
10. Government Free Stuff – read about government largess.

The Democrats want to buy votes by promising things that they know will, and are, bankrupting America. By bankrupting America the cultural Marxist can then, in the name of saving America, enslave Americans.

Who stood in the way of cultural Marxists? One man, President Donald J. Trump. Now we have Biden and his Build Back Better agenda that leads inextricably toward a Communist state.

On November 20th, 2021 The Daily Caller’s Chrissy Clark reported:

Fitchburg State University’s Diversity Center sent the email following the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial announcing that the school would offer race-based safe spaces for students and faculty. The email claimed that Rittenhouse “shot and killed two people protesting the wrongful death of Jacob Blake in 2020.”

“Kyle was acquitted of all charges in the case after driving to Wisconsin with an automatic rifle,” the email read. It went on to say that the verdict “will undoubtedly impact many in our community,” so the university created safe spaces for students to discuss their “thoughts, emotions, and reflections.”

Fitchburg State University is offering a space to “process the not guilty verdict”
In their announcement, they divide the students of color and white students: pic.twitter.com/oKYa5KCozS

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 20, 2021

If this isn’t cultural Marxism then I don’t know what is.

Gird your loins. There’s more cultural Marxism to come, and it will come.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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