[2][3] He “worked for the Labor Defender (the publication of the Party-led International Labor Defense) and also assisted as circulation manager of the Daily Worker,” on which limited credentials (and a reputation as a midwestern radical) he was hired as managing editor at the New Masses and made the move from Chicago to New York.
[1] Founder and (since 1928) sole editor Mike Gold's name remained on the masthead as “editor,” but Carmon was effectively running the magazine, albeit “haphazard[ly].”[4] Gold would show up to the office with less frequency as the Carmon years progressed, but Carmon's desk contained a drawer filled with “the scented love letters that poured in for Mike Gold.”[5] Carmon seems to have held a similar view to Mike Gold in regards to the ideal writer for the New Masses; both wanted the proletarian concern to be the primary and sole issue addressed by writers, and both encouraged worker-writer contributors.
[6][7][8] Carmon commented in an article about Langston Hughes’s Not Without Laughter that “under its black skin, real proletarian blood” ran through it.
[9] A similar sentiment was voiced towards Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth; while he praised her in 1929 for being “a proletarian to the marrow,” he wrote in 1930 that her work was “‘marred…’ because it derived ‘its bias from the bitterness of a woman.’”[10] Carmon’s suggestion that “class is essence” while race and gender (among other factors) are “mere epiphenomenon” has been critiqued by Barbara Foley as problematic for readers and contributors whose concern for the proletarian movement was held together with concerns for other aspects of societal oppression.
[15][16] His relaxed, sometimes chaotic style did not help his case with the board any more than his affair with New Masses business manager Frances Strauss or his alcoholism, but ultimately the decision was made due to his not having “a big enough name” and the desire to shift towards a more explicitly political angle (which Carmon felt “was the province of the Daily Worker”); Carmon's emphasis on proletarian art and literature was seen as conflicting with the Communist Party's goals.