Louis Waldman (January 5, 1892 – September 12, 1982) was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s and through the middle 1930s, a founding member of the Social Democratic Federation, and a prominent New York labor lawyer.

[1] Louis Waldman was born on January 5, 1892, in Yancherudnia, Ukraine, not far from Kiev, the son of a Jewish innkeeper who was one of the few literate men of the village.

[4] Barred from the garment industry, Waldman thereafter worked unsuccessfully as a door-to-door peddler of ribbon before taking a job in a cardboard box factory.

Waldman graduated from high school in the spring of 1911 and, owing to a lack of funds for college, enrolled in the Cooper Union to study engineering that fall.

Packed into a tight space and locked away from means of escape, 146 workers from the building's 9th floor died that day in one of the greatest tragedies in New York City's history.

[11] In the fall of 1917, with America embroiled in the European conflict and a section of the American electorate radicalized by the turn towards war by the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Waldman ran for the Assembly again as a Socialist, this time winning election.

The five Socialist Assemblymen were suspended on the first day of the new legislative session by the Republican-dominated body and their expulsion trial before the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly and subsequent court fight became a cause celebre of the Red Scare.

Along with Morris Hillquit, James Oneal, and Algernon Lee, Waldman was recognized as a leader of the SP's "Old Guard" faction, which favored close working relations with the trade unions of the American Federation of Labor and pursuance of gradual ameliorative reforms leading eventually to socialism rather than cataclysmic revolutionary transformation.

The Old Guard organized itself in opposition to a so-called "Militant faction" which emerged in 1930 and 1931, consisting of younger and more radical members who sought a turn towards direct action and a program endorsing revolutionary socialism.

The Old Guard minority issued a formal statement on the matter, calling the Declaration of Principles "inadequate and confused" and a step towards turning the SPA into an "underground organization."

An organizational meeting was held of the new group in early July, at which Waldman sought to endorse Franklin Delano Roosevelt for President of the United States in lieu of the Socialist nominee, Norman Thomas.

After resigning from the ALP, Waldman had virtually no political involvements and devoted himself to his law practice, becoming one of the most distinguished labor lawyers in the nation.

Representing unions as varied as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the International Longshoremen's Association, Waldman continued his practice until retiring due to a stroke in his late 80s.

[16] Like many liberals of his time, Waldman expressed sympathy for the endeavors of civil rights activists but did not agree with their tactic of breaking the law.

I say, such a doctrine is not only illegal and for that reason alone should be abandoned, but that it is also immoral, destructive of the principles of democratic government, and a danger to the very civil rights Dr. King seeks to promote.

Answering Waldman's objections, King often used such a particular argument: the evils being opposed were so serious, so numerous, and so difficult to fight that civil disobedience was a justifiable last resort.

Among other things, Waldman became very critical of the New Deal, considering it to be overly accommodating to the Communists and exhibiting certain authoritarian tendencies, somewhat echoing the critique of the old right.

Labor Lawyer also represents an important primary source for the history of the Socialist Party in the years following the death of Eugene Victor Debs.

It is worthy of note that many of the figures he denounces as dangerous pro-Communists in his book, such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Andrew Biemiller, would later become pillars of anti-Communist liberals of the postwar years.

While Waldman himself was mostly apolitical after the war, this perspective clearly informed younger Old Guard supporters such as Morrie Ryskind and Ralph de Toledano who moved to the right from the anti-Communist left.