George Novack was born Yasef Mendel Novograbelsky in Boston in 1905. His father was a professional gambler and Turkish bathhouse operator, who anglicized the family's surname. Novack attended Harvard University, receiving a B.A. in 1926 and an M.A. in 1927 before beginning a career in publishing and public relations. He worked for a New York publicity bureau in 1928, Doubleday and Company in 1929, and was advertising manager for E.P. Dutton & Co. from 1930 to 1934. During this period he was also a contributor to the New Republic and the Nation.
By the early 1930s Novack had studied Marx and became associated with the “Menorah Circle,” a group of Jewish intellectuals in New York that included Herbert Solow, Clifton Fadiman, Sidney Hook, and Diana and Lionel Trilling. During the decade he became increasingly involved in radical politics, and in 1933 Novack joined the Communist League of America, the predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party with which he remained associated until his death. From 1940 until 1972 Novack served as a member of the SWP National Committee. Novack's best known contributions to the party, however, were as a Marxist historian and theoretician. His primary contribution was his writing (much done under the pseudonym William F. Warde) on American history and Marxist philosophy. Novack published some fifteen volumes of history and philosophy (most notably Introduction to the Logic of Marxism [1942], Moscow Versus Peking [1963], The Origins of Materialism [1965], Democracy and Revolution [1971], and Pragmatism versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey's Philosophy [1975]), as well as numerous articles and policy papers.
During over six decades of political activity Novack was associated with numerous left-wing defense committees. He served as national chairman of the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky and was part of the welcoming delegation that met the Russian revolutionary in Mexico in 1937. During World War II Novack served as national chairman of the Civil Rights Defense Committee which mobilized opposition to the imprisonment of the SWP leadership. In later years Novack was a plaintiff and architect of that suit which revealed the FBI harassment of the party.
Through at least the mid-1950s Novack continued to work in publicity, sales promotion, and editing, holding the positions of vice president and account executive of Hudson Advertising Co., 1935-1937; head of promotion and publicity for Harold R. Peat Bureau, 1938-1941; vice president and sales manager of Optics Inc., 1942-1947; vice president in charge of sales for Whitehill Systems, Inc., 1948-1952; general manager of Automatic Packaging Co., 1953-1954; and executive editor for Trade Publishers, 1954-1956.
In the 1960s Novack served as a research associate of the Fund for the Republic and he collaborated on editing and research projects with Isaac Deutscher, C. Wright Mills, and Ernest Mandel.
Before 1953, Novack was conspicuous in the political leadership of the SWP but in that year Novack briefly sided with Michael Raptis (“Pablo”) in a major dispute within the Fourth International. After failing to convince James Cannon and other party leaders of the validity of Raptis' arguments, Novack moved to Los Angeles and experienced a severe bout of depression before eventually rejoining the party.
Novack and his first wife, Elinor Rice, were divorced in 1942. Shortly thereafter Novack married artist Evelyn Reed (nee Evelyn Horwit) whom he met while she was working in Trotsky's household. Equally committed to revolutionary politics, Reed was well known in her own right as a feminist and Marxist anthropologist. She died in 1979. Novack died in New York City on July 30, 1992 after a brief illness.
