During the 1930s, leftists accused Lawson of lacking ideological and political commitment. New Playwrights Theatre associate Mike Gold attacked him in "The New Masses" on April 10, 1934, describing him as "A Bourgeois Hamlet of Our Time", who wrote adolescent works that lacked moral fiber or clear ideas. Lawson responded a week later in "The New Masses". In the article "'Inner Conflict' and Proletarian Art", he said his middle-class childhood prevented him from fully understanding the working people. He acknowledged that his prosperity and Hollywood connections were suspect in the fight for workers' rights. Due to the criticism, he officially joined the Communist Party in 1934 and began to educate himself about the proletarian cause. He soon traveled throughout the poverty-stricken South to study violent labor conflicts in Alabama and Georgia, where workers were trying to unionize.