Max Nomad

Max Nomad (1881–1973) is the pseudonym of Austrian author and educator Max(imilian) Nacht.^[1] In his youth he had espoused militant anarchism and in the 1920s he was a follower of the Bolshevik Revolution. From the 1940s he was for many years a politics lecturer in the USA.

Life

Born in 1881, into a wealthy Jewish family from Buczacz, eastern Galicia, Poland,^[2] he was influenced by the thought of anarchist Jan Wacław Machajski. Before World War I, he lived in Austria and attended the University of Vienna. Max, his older brother Siegfried Shlomo Nacht (born in Vienna in 1878; died in 1956) and, sometimes, Senna Hoy in Zürich from 1903 to 1907 edited five volumnes of the militant journal Der Weckruf (The Alarm) Siegfried, later Stephen, Nacht emigrated to the United States of America at the end of 1912, Max followed in 1913.^[3] He wrote pro-soviet articles in the 1920s using the pe-name Max Nomad. He distanced himself from Stalinism in 1929. Writing in Scribner's Magazine in 1934, he coined the phrase capitalism without capitalists regarding the Soviet Union.

A Guggenheim Fellow in 1937, he became a lecturer in politics and history at New York University, the New School for Social Research and the Rand School.

Works of Max Nomad

• Die revolutionäre Bewegung in Rußland. Neues Leben, Berlin 1902
• Arnold Roller (Siegfried Nacht), Max Nacht (eds,.): Rebellen-Lieder 1906
• Rebels and Renegades. New York 1932. 430 pp.
• Apostles of Revolution. Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1939. 467 pp.
• A Skeptic's Political Dictionary and Handbook for the Disenchanted. New York 1953. 171 pp.
• Aspects of Revolt. New York [1959]. 311 pp.
• Political Heretics from Plato to Mao Tse-Tung. Ann Arbor 1963
• Dreamers, Dnamiters and Demagogues: Reminiscences. New York [1964]. 251 pp.
• The Anarchist Tradition and Other Essays. 1967. 398 pp.

Literature

• Werner Portmann: Die wilden Schafe: Max und Siegfried Nacht. Unrast Verlag, Münster (Germany) 2008. ISBN 978-3-89771-455-7

References

1. ^ Max Nacht Papers at International Institute of Social History
2. ^ Guide to the Max Nomad Papers at the Tamiment Library, New York University
3. ^ Siegfried Nacht also used the pen-name Arnold Roller: Der Generalstreik und die soziale Revolution. London 1902 (translated into 17 languages); Der soziale Generalstreik. Berlin 1905; Die direkte Aktion London 1906. Sodatenbrevier, 1906.

Persondata
Name	Nomad, Max
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1881
Place of birth
Date of death	1973
Place of death