Rawick was involved in leftist politics from his earliest days at Oberlin College, staking out a career as an anti-Stalinist socialist in the United States. He participated in a number of left organizations including the Communist Party, Correspondence Publishing Committee, Independent Socialist League, and Facing Reality. He was associated with the ideas of C. L. R. James and was co-author of a Facing Reality pamphlet, with C. L. R. James, Martin Glaberman, and William Gorman. He also wrote for the journal Radical America, which published his important essay, "Working Class Self Activity," in 1969. Political affiliations Rawick became more politically active during his teen years. In either 1944 or 1945, he joined the American Youth for Democracy, which was directly associated with the Communist Party. His dive into Communist politics could be attributed to World War II, as his Jewish family stopped receiving letters from relatives in countries that were under Nazi control. While attending Oberlin College, Rawick pursued civil rights activism. He joined a branch of the Communist Party in Lorain, Ohio. This city influenced Rawick's political ideology as it had a large Black working class. In 1948, Rawick heavily contributed to the Communist Party's support of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign. He was enthralled by the campaign's antiracist accomplishments and its eventual defeat. He then worked briefly for Vito Marcantonio in Washington, D.C., a congressman that was supported by the Communist Party for his Left inter-racialism political views. Rawick was later kicked out of the Communist Party for allegedly supporting male chauvinism and Jim Crow. The accusations stem from Rawick declining to dance with an African American woman at a Communist Party meeting in Cleveland. Rawick explained that he declined to dance because he did not know how to, which ultimately was not enough to overturn the decision. In the early 1950s, Rawick joined the Independent Socialist League. It was a small collection of radicals led by Max Shachtman. Rawick was able to use the Independent Socialist League as a platform to learn Marxist theory, journalistic writing, and to improve his public speaking skills. He then began to contribute to the youth and cultural magazine Anvil, ultimately becoming an editor of it. As the years went on, Rawick grew increasingly unhappy with the organization as he did not like the direction it was heading. The organization's leftist ideology no longer coincided with his own personal leftist views.