Out of the Fraina and Into the Fire

Abstract

ALTHOUGH ITALIAN AMERICAN IMMIGRANT LOUIS FRAINA WAS PIVOTAL to formation of American revolutionary left, to this day he remains enigmatic. Early in 1917, prior to Soviet revolution, Fraina (pronounced Fry-eena) became a prominent, effective champion of Bolshevik cause. He urged American socialists to emulate Russian example, and James P. Cannon, himself a pioneer of American Communism, called him the single person most responsible for founding of American Communist Party.' Early in 1920s, however, Fraina virtually disappeared, first to Russia, then to Mexico. Finally he dropped away from Communist movement altogether and led a quiet, obscure life as a proofreader in New York City before resurfacing in 1930s as an important independent Marxist economist under assumed name of Lewis Corey. For decades, anyone seeking more detailed information on Corey has had to stitch it together from three sources: best published account, Theodore Draper's The Roots of American Communism (1957), a 1963 essay in Labor History by his widow Esther Corey, and, for industrious few (this writer confessedly not among them) who managed to obtain it, Paul Buhle's 1968 University of Connecticut master's thesis.2 A quarter of a century later, publication of Buhle's graduate work, revised by author, as part of extremely useful Revolutionary Studies series from