August Tyler (1911-2011) was an American socialist activist of the 1930s, a labor union official, author, and newspaper columnist. Tyler is best remembered as a leading American labor intellectual of the post-World War II era and as the author of a history of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Biography Early years August Tyler was born Augustus Tilove to Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York on October 18, 1911. He later changed his surname in honor of Wat Tyler, the leader of the English Peasants' Revolt in 1381. Tyler was the product of a radical upbringing, as he later recalled in a 1988 interview with New York Newsday: As far as my mother was concerned, socialism was what God ordained. You didn't learn it from Marx or anybody; it was just the natural thing. People are people and they shouldn't be rich and they shouldn't be poor. I just thought this was the way you live. You're supposed to be a socialist and ultimately the whole world goes socialist. Tyler attended New York University on a scholarship in the early 1930s, where he became involved in left-wing political activities, including public speaking on street corners on behalf of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), the youth section of the Socialist Party. Upon graduating in 1932, Tyler briefly worked as a writer for the Yiddish-language socialist newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward. He also served as editor of Free Youth, one of the YPSL's short-lived publications of the early 1930s. Tyler rose through the ranks of the YPSL, rising to the top leadership position in the group. This post gave Tyler a seat with top leaders of the adult party, making him a key leader in the bitter factional war that occupied the Socialist Party in that period. Tyler was a supporter of the so-called "Militant faction" of the Socialist Party against the older generation of party regulars known as the Old Guard and was later active in the far-left "Clarity caucus" after the Militants themselves fragmented. Along with many on the American left, Tyler was a vigorous opponent of rearmament for a new World War, authoring a resolution which declared the Socialist Party would support no war except a war for socialism. In making this pronouncement Tyler reasoned that the distinction between democratic-capitalist and fascist countries would be essentially meaningless in the event of war since the militarization of society inherent