Julius Jacobson
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Julius Jacobson (1922 - March 8, 2003) was an American Third camp socialist activist, Marxist, Left-Shachtmanite, author, and founder of the independent Left journal New Politics.
Jacobson came from a working-class East European Jewish immigrant family. The family was politically leftist and he was therefore politically active at a very young age, first joining the Communist Party's Young Communist League, but soon leaving that group for the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League.
Drafted into military service during World War II, he saw combat in Europe and participated in the liberation of Paris. While in Europe, he managed to re-establish contact between European and American Trotskyists.
An early ally of Max Shachtman and Hal Draper, he followed them out of the Socialist Workers Party and with them was one of the founding members of the Independent Socialist League, eventually becoming editor of its journal New International.
Like Hal Draper, Jacobson was opposed to the merger of the ISL into the Socialist Party of America and to Shachtman's drift toward the right politically. Unlike Draper, he did not turn his energies toward creating a new socialist group, but rather into the creation of an independent Left journal, New Politics in 1961, along with his wife and longtime collaborator Phyllis Jacobson. He remained active as a writer and editor of New Politics up until his death in 2003.
