Maximilian Cohen

When delegates from Queens attempted to win the floor at 11:30 pm, only to be ruled out of order, a number of radicals bolted the hall and gathered in a meeting room of their own.

The group was to compose a manifesto and wage a campaign to win over the rank and file of the party to the ideas of revolutionary socialism.

Cohen was made business manager of the new paper, which was edited by the celebrated journalist and war correspondent John Reed.

On this matter he came into bitter disagreement with Reed, Gitlow, and other leading members of the Left Wing Section, who sought to fight for control of the Socialist Party at its 1919 Emergency National Convention, slated for August 30 in that same city.

At the end of 1920, Cohen – an extremely loyal supporter of the Communist International – ran afoul of a majority group in the CPA that sought to delay merger with the successor to the CLP to maximize their factional advantage in a united organization.

The expelled loyalist Cohen was rewarded by the Comintern when its three-man American Agency, given the task by Moscow of forging a unified Communist Party in the USA and developing sister organizations in Mexico and South America, sent Cohen to Argentina to organize the framework of a Communist trade union movement in that country.