Paul Montauk

Paul Montauk (1922–1998) was an American communist and lifelong member of the Socialist Workers Party.

Paul Montauk was born in Staten Island, New York, in 1922. His father was a jeweler and watch repairman, whose small business collapsed under the impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s. After his mother remarried following his father's death, Montauk was raised by an aunt in the Bronx. Montauk was 16 years old when his impoverished aunt threw him on the street. He soon quit school and tried to find full-time work.

Montauk joined the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party's Brooklyn branch in 1939, when he was 17 years old. It was at the outbreak of the Second World War. Faced with the draft, Montauk enlisted in the Navy after discussing his options with party leaders. The Socialist Workers Party’s official stance was to oppose the "imperialist war" and party members who were drafted actively spread socialist propaganda to the other soldiers.

In the early 1950s, Montauk moved to Detroit to build the SWP branch there. The SWP faced the state of Michigan's 1952 "Trucks Law", which made membership in organizations deemed "subversive" by the government a crime. The SWP waged a successful fight to have the law declared unconstitutional. Prevented by the employers' blacklist from working in the auto industry and being active as a socialist in the United Auto Workers union, Montauk worked as a chef — a job he would hold off and on for the rest of his life. He participated in socialist election campaigns, and joined with others in the SWP to raise funds to donate cars for use by Black civil rights fighters in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott. The party campaigned nationally for cars and donations, and for solidarity with the fighters in Montgomery. Montauk often spoke at public political forums and lectures despite open police and FBI intimidation.

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