From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sun May 07 2006 - 22:04:37 EDT
As there are a number of listmembers who knew Harry -- and would, no doubt, have liked to attend (including Samir, Paul Burkett, and Mike L) -- I thought a short report for their benefit is in order. About two hundred and twenty-five (225) relatives, friends, and comrades of Harry Magdoff came together this afternoon for his memorial meeting in the New York Society for Ethical Culture building overlooking Central Park in Manhattan. *Fred Magdoff*, Harry's son, spoke first. He described what it was like growing-up in the Magdoff household. He -- and many other speakers -- also talked about Beadie Magdoff, his mother. Harry's brother Sam, who died shortly before him, was also fondly remembered. One memorable story which he related was how, when Fred was a student at Oberlin College, Harry visited him. Shortly beforehand, during the 1950's Inquisition (what Annette Rubenstein called the "so-called MacCarthy period"), Harry had been subpoenaed by a congressional committee and told that he must hand-over all files from the Fund for Social Analysis to the government. That fund had given out grants for the publishing of works of Marxian analysis. Rather than hand-over the files which contained all of the correspondence with the progressive scholars, Harry and Fred decided jointly to *burn* the files in Fred's Oberlin apartment. Fred described the experience of violating the law with your father as a wonderfully "bonding" experience. (laughter.) Fred related how his father had been asked if there was anything about death that he was afraid of. He answered that what he regretted the most about the prospect of dying was that he "wanted so much to see how it all turned out". He was referring, of course, to history and class struggle. Fred reported that in his last years he was tremendously excited by developments in Venezuela and enjoyed receiving messages from Mike L. He remarked repeatedly: "If I were eighty years old I'd be in Venezuela now!". (that also got a lot of laughs.) *Robert Engler* emphasized Harry's abilities as a scholar and a teacher and his contribution to the understanding of imperialism. *Kira Brunner* had been a young assistant at Monthly Review (MR) and she fondly recalled the personal interest, respect, and friendship she received from Harry and Beadie. She recalled also how much Harry had taught her: she learned from him that "politics was the meaning of everyday life". *John Bellamy Foster* spoke about Harry's concept of *family*. For Harry, J.B. and all those who worked with MR -- and others he was comrades with -- were part of his extended family. Someone (I can't recall if it was J.B.) described that the relationship between Harry and Paul Sweezy was a "marriage". J.B. emphasized how "intellectually youthful" Harry had been and how he was always "looking to the future". He said that Harry was "the most youthful of all of us" and, therefore, how he "couldn't understand why someone so young could have died". *Annette Rubenstein* and Harry had known each other for a long time -- over 47 years. They used to swim together during lazy summer afternoons on Long Island. She emphasized how wide his intellectual interests were and how he was enormously interested in discussing literature with her. She admired his courage and integrity in standing up to right-wing persecution during the "so-called MacCarthy period". As many other speakers did, she recalled how friendly and social and caring he was: he was, she said, "the most social socialist". *Bernadine Dohrn*, 1960's leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), said that Harry "exemplified intellectual depth and daring" and that he "educated generations of New Leftists". She described how SDS had appealed to MR for help in educating their members and how Harry gladly rose to the task and spoke at many SDS meetings on college campuses. Indeed, she said that those speeches were instrumental in the making of _The Age of Imperialism_. Harry, she claimed, was a "true New Leftist" (?) who nonetheless appreciated the need for concrete empirical analysis -- perhaps reflecting the influence of the years in which he had worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). *Percy and Gladys Brazil*, long-time friends, were with him and some of his family at the end. The day of his death he listened to the music of J.S. Bach. It was his favorite music: "Bach is divine", he had said. Harry was lucid and talking about socialism right up until the end. He said, shortly before his death, that there was one more article he would like to write and it was on "The Future of Socialism". The last section of that paper was to be on "the soul of socialism". Only two days before his death he had discussed the challenges for socialism in the future. According to Percy, after remarking that there weren't enough resources in the world to maintain the world's population at the current US standard of living he concluded "people will have to change". (What he said was more nuanced than that -- I'm condensing.) Yet, Percy said that for Harry "market socialism is an oxymoron". A 4-minute *video clip* of Harry talking in April, 2003 came next. "On Becoming a Socialist" described how 3 events had in his youth pushed him towards socialism: his uncle (his mother's brother) had been drafted in WWI and sent to the front; seeing celebrations in New York of Russian émigrés following the fall of the Czar; and attending a lecture on "The Struggle to Free India". From these events, he learned to oppose war and colonialism and admire and respect revolutions. Taken together, these events pushed him on the path of a lifetime of activism as a socialist. And so the book now is closed on the life of Harry Magdoff. Gone, but certainly not forgotten. He had the satisfaction of knowing before his death that (in his words) "The MR flag is flying again!". Long may it fly! In solidarity, Jerry
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