News

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Talks Justice, Civic Engagement at Radcliffe Day

News

Church Says It Did Not Authorize ‘People’s Commencement’ Protest After Harvard Graduation Walkout

News

‘Welcome to the Battlefield’: Maria Ressa Talks Tech, Fascism in Harvard Commencement Address

Multimedia

In Photos: Harvard’s 373rd Commencement Exercises

News

Rabbi Zarchi Confronted Maria Ressa, Walked Off Stage Over Her Harvard Commencement Speech

Lecture by Eisler Overflows Hall; No Jokes This Time

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Almost 500- students elbowed into Emerson D and crowded outside its windows Monday night to hear German Communist Gerhart Eisler lecture on Marxism at a meeting conspicuously devoid of the heckling and jokes that accompanied Eisler's appearance here last April.

Police estimated another 200 were turned away at the doors of the over-crowded session, which was sponsored by the newly created John Reed Club.

Speaking on "The Marxist Theory of Social Change," Eisler delivered an hour-long lecture on the history of scientific socialism, ending his talk with a prediction that "the twentieth century will see the ultimate victory of socialism in the world." Afterwards he answered questions from his audience for another hour.

After mentioning briefly other common theories of history, he outlined the main tenets of dialectic materialism, assorting that under Marxist methods of scientific inquiry, "man's eventual complete understanding of nature is assured."

Eisler declared that until scientific socialism becomes world-wide, men will not be free from "the main, inescapable defect of capitalism, the crises of over-production," which, he said, have been responsible for great depressions in this country.

Eisler, who is being held by the government pending settlement of deportation proceedings against him, has been appointed a professor of political science at the University of Leipzig.

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

Tags