15 Facts About Max Bedacht

Max Bedacht was the son of a single mother who worked as a domestic servant and was raised Catholic by a maternal aunt and uncle.

Max Bedacht apprenticed and worked as a barber in Germany and Switzerland, working in the towns of Gossau and Herisau.

Max Bedacht organized fellow journeymen barbers into a union during his European years.

In 1907, Max Bedacht was elected president of the Swiss National Barbers' Union and edited the organization's newspaper.

Max Bedacht immigrated to the United States in 1908 and joined the Socialist Party of America during that same year.

Max Bedacht lived and worked in Manhattan from 1910 to 1912, cutting hair by day while spending his evenings as a German-language socialist agitator.

Max Bedacht was long an adherent of the so-called impossibilist wing of the Socialist Party, placing his faith in socialist revolution rather than the ameliorative reform of elected officials.

Max Bedacht was a Left Wing candidate for the SPA's governing National Executive Committee in 1919 and a delegate to the SPA's pivotal 1919 Emergency National Convention.

Max Bedacht was elected at the founding convention to the 5 member National Executive Committee which governed the CLP.

In 1924, Max Bedacht was a delegate of the Workers Party of America to the 5th World Congress of the Communist International.

Max Bedacht lived in Chicago at 3101 North Nordica Avenue, from 1923 to 1928, according to his testimony before HUAC in 1949.

In 1929, Max Bedacht took over as liaison with the Soviet underground after the expulsion of Jay Lovestone from the Party in 1929.

Max Bedacht meant, of course, that I was under the discipline of the party and that, if I did not go into the underground, I would go out of the party.

In November 1948, Max Bedacht was expelled from the national CPUSA.

In November 1949, Max Bedacht appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee.