As a young boy in
America, he was captivated by the image of Abraham Lincoln. This initial interest inspired him to explore
the life of this illustrious American president, and was deeply moved and
influenced by what he had learned. His
family was conservative in politics and orthodox in religion. Although his parents were devoutly religious,
Muste was never exposed to hellfire preaching growing up in the church. In spite of the fact that his father was not
particularly happy with his son’s avowed political beliefs, Muste eventually
persuaded his father to accept the idea of pacifism.
For half of a
century, Muste was a radical activist with an untiring devotion to the causes
of peace and social justice. He was, in
fact, one of the pioneers of non-violent resistance as a technique for social
action. He was so dedicated to
non-violence that he was referred to as the “American Gandhi”; Gandhi was an
inspiration to him. Muste was so
influential and charismatic that his followers were called, “Musteites.” During his long personal history of social
action, he went through a number of stages during the maturation of his
personal philosophy.
As a young man,
Muste entered Hope College in Holland, Michigan and ultimately pursued a career
in the ministry, training at the Graduate Theological Seminary of the Reformed
Church in America in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the Union Theological
Seminary in New York City. In 1909, he
was ordained minister of the Reformed Church.
During his sojourn as minister, World War I broke
out in Europe. Despite intense pressure
from his contemporaries, Muste stubbornly held on to his pacifist beliefs. Ultimately, his convictions led to his
ejection from the ministry; he was forced to resign from his church in
Newtonville, Massachusetts. The fact
that the church sided with the government in this regard and abandoned what
Muste believed were fundamental Christian principles left him considerably
disheartened.
Muste ultimately
drifted away from religion and began to embrace political action in the area of
social justice. He became involved in
the struggles of labor during the tumultuous era when workers were attempting
to organize into labor unions as a way of forcing changes in the abysmal nature
of labor conditions at that time. This
was also the era that saw the rise of interest in such politically diverse
worldviews as embraced by communism and anarchism. He became General Secretary of the Amalgamate
Textile Workers. He held this position
from 1921 through 1933.
During this period,
he became the Director of the Brookwood Labor College – an institution
dedicated to the training of militant and progressive labor leaders. In the course of his work he was attracted to
Trotskyist-Marxist ideas in regards to the plight of workers and the need to
organize labor. At that time, the
communists were very much involved in the early formation of labor unions. He became involved in numerous strikes,
including the Toledo Auto-Lite, GM and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber strikes.
Ultimately, Muste
became disenchanted with communism; he found the tactics that the party
employed were disingenuous and heavy-handed.
He came to see Trotsky as yet another dictator not unlike Lenin or
Stalin. In 1936, he rejected
Marxist-Leninism and rejoined the non-violence movement.
In 1940, he became
Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the United
States. He held this position until 1953. Muste became convinced that in order to
achieve a just society, major social dislocation is necessary. In 1962, he wrote, “We are now in an age when
men will have to choose deliberately to exchange the values, the concepts of
security, and much else which characterizes contemporary society, and seek
another way of life. If that is so, the
peace movement has to act on that assumption, and this means that the whole
picture of our condition and the radical choice must be placed before people –
not a diluted gospel, a program geared so that they are ready to “buy
now.”
Seeing the
inevitability of the American entrance into what would be referred to as World
War II, Muste refuted the argument that
governments are sometimes called upon to resort to war to oppose an “aggressor”
nation. In his book entitled, Non-violence in an Aggressive World
(1940), he claimed that “The line-up in the world is read in terms of “peace-loving”
versus “persistently aggressive” nations. That is superficial and misleading.
It is the same reading that brought us disaster twenty years ago. The real
line-up is between satiated powers, determined to hang on to the 85 percent of
the earth’s vital resources which they control, even if that means plunging the
world into another war, and another set of powers equally determined to change
the imperialist status even if that
means plunging the world into another war.”
He went on to caution that as soon as a nation finds itself on the path
of war preparation, it strengthens the forces on the right and moves the
society towards fascism.
In regards to war
preparations prior to World War II, A. J. Muste further stated, “The United
States is not ready for disarmament and war-renunciation. What then shall we
propose? A little war-preparation,
purely defensive preparation, refined economic warfare which can be safely
waged at a distance against supposedly sinful nations? Surely they are no alternatives at all (such
as moderate war-preparations in this day!), or they are alternatives which lead
straight to disaster.” As a result of
these strong convictions, he advocated total draft refusal. This was a remarkably courageous stand in
terms of the powerful national sentiment that was skewed towards war and that
accepted the inevitability of conflict.
Following the ‘Great
War,” Muste became deeply concerned over what he perceived as a drift towards a
nuclear holocaust. He became the Chairman
of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, a member of the executive committee on
the War Resister’s League and a participant in Omaha Action, a group dedicated
to nonviolent action against nuclear policy.
As a member of the latter group, he was arrested in 1959 for climbing
over a barbed-wire fence at the Atlas missile base near Omaha, Nebraska. He became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam
War, and editor of Liberation Magazine.
In his life, Muste
underwent a number of personal transformations, but maintained a tenacious
adherence to the causes of peace and social justice that resided within the
core of his being. As a person of deep
moral commitment, he was unafraid to openly express his viewpoint, take what he
considered to be appropriate action and freely admit to his own personal errors
in judgment.
A.J. Muste died on
February 11, 1967. One of Muste’s
cohorts in the pursuit of peace through nonviolent action made the following
comment, “A.J. is the spiritual chairman of every major pacifist demonstration
in the country and often is the actual chairman. He’s the number one peacemaker in
America.”
