User:Julius177/AustinLewis

Austin Lewis (1865 – 1944) was an English-born lawyer, author, and socialist active in the U.S. state of California in the early twentieth century. He is known mostly for his political writings, as well as his English translations of others' works (such as Friedrich Engels' Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy); his role in the founding of the California Writers Club; his candidacy in the 1906 California gubernatorial election, where he won over five percent of votes cast; and his involvement in the battle to win pardons for Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings, who had been wrongfully convicted of the Preparedness Day Bombing.

Biography
Lewis was born in England in 1865 and studied law at the University of London before immigrating to the United States in 1890 with his family. Once in California, he began to practice law in Oakland and San Francisco, and settled in Berkeley in 1898. Lewis quickly became well-known in local left-wing circles and was acknowledged as a radical and a Marxist. Within a few years he would undertake English translations of some works by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky. By 1900, Lewis was living at 2531 Ridge Road with his wife, Ethel, and their three children.

Around this time, Lewis met Jack London and George Sterling, with whom he would found the California Writers Club. He also became well-known locally as a socialist and by 1906, he was running on a Socialist Party of America ticket as a candidate to become the Governor of California. He came fourth in the election with a twentieth of the vote, losing to James Gillett (Republican) and with a smaller share of the vote than Theodore Arlington Bell (Democrat) and William Langdon (Independence League), but coming ahead of James H. Blanchard (Prohibition Party).

While he had been well-known as a political speaker and writer, Lewis began to write a series of works putting forward his thoughts on capitalism, the class system, and religion. The Church and Socialism (1906) was followed by development of Lewis' position on the class system and class composition in works such as The Militant Proletariat (1911) and Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912), published by Charles H. Kerr and the Industrial Workers of the World Publishing Bureau respectively. Drawing on his past, Lewis spoke against the Socialist Party of America and denounced it as merely representative of craftsmen and skilled workers rather than the whole of the working-class. Instead, he argued that workers' power must be built upon industrial unionism and direct action, on which other political activity would rely, outlining a "militant nucleus" around which unorganized elements would gather.