John Gates Biography

John ‘Johnny’ Gates was an American Communist journalist and a true believer in the Marxist theory. He is well-known for leading the liberalization movement started by Communist Party of USA in the late 50s. He was born in a humble Polish-Jewish household and faced poverty as a child, which perhaps led him to believe in Marxist theory and think of it as the sole solution for all the financial and social problems in the United States of America. It influenced him so much that he left his studies in the middle to join the YCL as a Party Organizer in the steel industry, in order to come face to face with the realities of life instead of just sitting in the comfort of the classroom and think of new policies to change the situation. He joined the International Brigades, an organization that was attempting to defend the Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War and spent few years of his life in Spain and France. When he came back, he was appointed the head of the Young Communist League in New York State and also became the editor of the Communist Party’s newspaper ‘the Daily Worker’.