Eric Chester

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Eric Thomas Chester (born 6 August 1943) is an author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.

Born in New York City, he is the son of Harry (a UAW economist) and Alice (a psychiatrist née Fried) Chester. Both parents were active socialists from Vienna, opposing the rise of fascism and nazism.

Chester was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, when he opposed the war in Vietnam. He was a member of New American Movement in the 1970s, and has been a member of the Socialist Party USA since 1980. He helped organize the faculty union while teaching at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is currently a member of the National Writers Union (UAW), an active member in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, and the Socialist Party USA, and was the Socialist Party USA’s candidate for Vice President in 1996. He campaigned for the SP's Presidential nomination in 2004 but lost to Walt Brown at the 2003 convention.

Chester taught economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston (1973-1978; 1986) and San Francisco State University (1981). He has published four books, focusing especially on "the hidden secrets of U.S. foreign policy" and "the connections between U.S. foreign policy and social democrats, in this country and abroad". In an interview with Contemporary Authors, he described the resulting difficulties in archival research, "the search for previously undiscovered primary source documents", and often a declassification process that "usually entails extended appeals as provided for under the Freedom of Information Act." Chester is unwilling to rely on the public record, and urges researchers "to probe beneath the surface" and keep in mind that "the goals and actions of decision makers, as well as their envoys, are frequently in marked contrast to their public statements."^[1]

Chester holds the distinction, in 2006, of being Convenor of the International Commission of the Socialist Party USA, and a member of the International Solidarity Committee of the IWW. He advocates supporting and uniting the new radical and revolutionary anti-capitalist movements that are being generated by the conditions of world-wide economic globalization of capitalism, into a mass revolutionary socialist party that is independent of the two capitalist parties, the Democratic and Republican Parties. Following the principles and ideas of Eugene V. Debs and Rosa Luxemburg, he describes himself as a revolutionary democratic socialist.

He currently lives in Montague, Massachusetts, and is the 2006 Socialist candidate for Congress in western Massachusetts's 1st Congressional District.

Preceded by Barbara Garson

Socialist Party Vice Presidential candidate 1996 (lost)

Succeeded by Mary Cal Hollis

[edit] Selected bibliography

• True Mission: Socialists and the Labor Party Question in the U.S., ISBN 0-7453-2215-8, Pluto Press, 2004
• Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966, ISBN 1-58367-032-7, New York University Press, 2001
• Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA, ISBN 1-56324-551-5, M. E. Sharpe, 1995
• Socialists and the Ballot Box, ISBN 0-03-004142-2, Praeger Publishers, 1985
• Article contributions to Public Finance, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Insurgent Sociologist, New Politics, Against the Current, and The Socialist.

[edit] See also

• Massachusetts general election, 2006
• Massachusetts congressional elections, 2006
• United States presidential election, 1996

[edit] Reference

1. ^ Chester, Eric Thomas (1943-), Contemporary Authors, Thomson Gale, 2006.