Early history , Socialist Party of America candidate for President, 1904 In 1901, the Socialist Party was formed by a merger between the
Social Democratic Party of America (headquartered in
Chicago, IL) and dissident
Lassallean members of the
Socialist Labor Party of America, who had also adopted the name Social Democratic Party of America (headquartered in
Springfield, MA). The new party chose "socialist" over "social democratic" because the latter lost its meaning when translated from
German to
English. From 1901 to the onset of
World War I, the Socialist Party had numerous elected officials throughout the United States. The Mapping Social Movements Project has identified more than 1,000 elected Party members in 353 cities and towns. There were two Socialist members of Congress,
Meyer London of New York City and
Victor Berger of
Milwaukee (a part of the
sewer socialism movement, a major front in socialism, Milwaukee being the first major city to elect a socialist mayor, which it did four times between
1910 and 1956);
over 70 mayors; and many
state legislators and city councilors. The party was able to successfully run candidates in smaller municipalities as well as big cities, winning the mayoralty of
Butte, Montana, with Lewis Duncan and that of
Schenectady, New York, with
George R. Lunn. Its voting strength was greatest among recent Jewish, Finnish and German immigrants, coal miners and former populist farmers in the Midwest. According to
Jimmy Weinstein, its electoral base was strongest west of the
Mississippi River, "in the states where mining, lumbering, and tenant farming prevailed". It was also able to attract support from railroad workers. Its vote shares were highest in
Oklahoma,
Nevada,
Montana,
Washington,
California,
Idaho,
Florida,
Arizona and
Wisconsin, and it also attracted support in
Texas,
Arkansas and
Kansas. Approaches to agriculture and farmers' interests were subject to significant debate in the party. While members in most parts of the country advocated
collective farming, the Texas and Oklahoma state parties supported populist policies based on small-scale farm ownership, which socialists elsewhere considered economically backward. The populist position was backed by
Algie Martin Simons, who argued that small farmers were not being eradicated under capitalist pressure as many socialists believed, but that they were "a permanent factor in the agricultural life in America" and that socialist and labor movements needed to attract their support to advance working-class interests. After disappointing performances in the
1908 elections when it ran on an under-developed agrarian platform based on land collectivization, in 1912 the party adopted a program of reforms including state-backed
agricultural cooperatives, socialization of transport, storage and processing facilities, progressive land taxes, and government-supported land leases for small farmers. While the resolution enshrined a commitment to opposing racism, sections of the party continued to argue against that. For example, Victor Berger drew on
scientific racism to claim that blacks and
mulattoes "constitute[d] a lower race". They were opposed by others who defended the spirit of the resolution, most notably Debs. This spread of opinion was reflected in the drawing up of constitutions by state parties in the
South. The
Socialist Party of Louisiana initially adopted a "Negro clause" that opposed
disenfranchisement of blacks, but it supported segregation. The clause was supported by some Southern socialists and opposed by others, although this was not because of its accommodation of racism as such, but because it officially enshrined this accommodation. The party's National Committee persuaded the Louisiana party to withdraw the clause, but when the state party subsequently established segregated branches, the wider party did not object. That number doubled during the Debs campaign of 1912, reaching a peak paid membership of 113,371. Membership declined to 82,313 in 1916 but stayed at almost that level through World War I. The party reported 77,647 members in 1919, just before the Communist split. Supporting this growth was a vast network of Socialist newspapers serving more than 100 cities and towns and publishing in 18 languages. Some were short-lived and managed only small circulations, but others were successful enterprises with national circulations. Most famous were the
Appeal to Reason, which at one point claimed more than 700,000 subscribers;
National Rip-Saw (150,000); and
Jewish Daily Forward (140,000).
Syndicalism vs. Socialism The party had a tense and complicated relationship with the
American Federation of Labor (AFL). AFL leadership, headed by
Samuel Gompers, strongly opposed the Socialist Party, but many rank-and-file unionists in the early 20th century saw the Socialists as reliable political allies. Many moderate Socialists, such as Berger and
International Typographical Union President
Max S. Hayes, urged close cooperation with the AFL and its member unions. Others in the Socialist Party dismissed the AFL and its
craft unions as antiquated and irrelevant, instead favoring the much more radical IWW and the "syndicalist" path to socialism. In 1911, IWW leader
Bill Haywood was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, on which AFL partisan Morris Hillquit also served. The syndicalist and the electoral socialist squared off in a lively public debate in New York City's
Cooper Union on January 11, 1912, with Haywood declaring that Hillquit and the Socialists ought to try "a little sabotage in the right place at the proper time" and attacking Hillquit for having abandoned the class struggle by helping the New York garment workers negotiate an industrial agreement with their employers. Hillquit replied that he had no new message other than to reiterate a belief in a two-sided workers' movement, with separate and equal political and trade union arms. "A mere change of structural forms would not revolutionize the American labor movement as claimed by our extreme industrialists", he declared. The issue of "syndicalism vs. socialism" was bitterly fought over the next two years, consummated by Haywood's recall from the Socialist Party's National Executive Committee (NEC) and the departure of a broad section of the left wing from the organization. The memory of this split made the intraparty battles of 1919–1921 all the more bitter. The party's opposition to World War I caused a sharp decline in membership. It suffered from the
Postmaster General's decision to refuse to allow the delivery of party newspapers and periodicals via the U.S. mail, severely disrupting the party's activity, particularly in rural areas. It gained new votes in ethnic strongholds such as Milwaukee and New York from conservative German Americans who also opposed the war. From 1912 to 1938, the party ran more candidates for seats in the
United States House of Representatives than any other minor party, with its height being 358 candidates in the
1912 elections. Sixteen Socialist candidates in the 1912 House elections received over 20% of the popular vote and five of those received over 30%. In June 1918, Debs made an anti-draft speech, calling for
draft resistance. Urging young men to ignore the draft law was a crime under the
Sedition Act of 1918 and Debs was convicted and sentenced to serve ten years in prison. President
Warren G. Harding commuted his and two dozen others' sentences at Christmastime 1921.
Victor Berger in Milwaukee According to historian Sally Miller,
Victor Berger: :built the most successful socialist machine ever to dominate an American city....[He] concentrated on national politics...to become one of the most powerful voices in the reformist wing of the national Socialist party. His commitment to democratic values and the non-violent socialization of the American system led the party away from revolutionary Marxist dogma. He shaped the party into force which, while struggling against its own left wing, symbolize participation in the political order to attain social reforms. ... In the party schism of 1919, Berger opposed allegiance to the emergent Soviet system. His shrunken party echoed his preference for peaceful, democratic, and gradual transformation to socialism.
Split of the Left Wing Section In January 1919,
Vladimir Lenin invited the IWW and the radical wing of the Socialist Party to join in the founding of the Communist Third International, the
Comintern. The
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party emerged as an organized faction early that year, building its organization around a lengthy
Left Wing Manifesto by
Louis C. Fraina. This effort to organize in order to "win the Socialist Party for the Left Wing" was staunchly resisted by the "Regulars", who controlled a big majority of the seats of the Socialist Party's governing NEC. When it seemed certain that the 1919 party elections for a new NEC had been dominated by the Left Wing, the sitting NEC, citing voting irregularities, refused to tally the votes, declared the entire election invalid and in May 1919 suspended the party's Russian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Polish, South Slavic and Hungarian
language federations, in addition to Michigan's entire state organization. In future weeks, Massachusetts's and Ohio's state organizations were similarly disfranchised and "reorganized" by the NEC, while in New York and Pennsylvania the "Regular" State Executive Committees undertook reorganization of Left Wing branches and locals on a case-by-case basis. was one of top five Socialist of America leaders prosecuted by the Department of Justice in 1919. In June 1919, the Left Wing Section held a conference in New York City to discuss its organizational plans. The group found itself deeply divided, with one section, led by NEC members
Alfred Wagenknecht and
L. E. Katterfeld and including famed radical journalist
John Reed favoring a continued effort to gain control of the SPA at its forthcoming Emergency National Convention in Chicago, to be held at the end of August, while another section, headed by the
Russian Socialist Federation of
Alexander Stoklitsky and
Nicholas Hourwich and the Socialist Party of Michigan seeking to wash its hands of the Socialist Party and immediately move to establish a new
Communist Party of America. Eventually, this latter Federation-dominated group was joined by important Left Wingers
C. E. Ruthenberg and Louis Fraina, a depletion of Left Wing forces that made the result of the 1919 Socialist Convention a foregone conclusion. , top leader of the 1919
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party Regardless, Wagenknecht's and Reed's plans to fight it out at the
1919 Emergency National Convention continued apace. With the most radical state organizations effectively purged by the Regulars (Massachusetts, Minnesota) or unable to participate (Ohio, Michigan) and the Left Wing language federations suspended, a big majority of the hastily elected delegates to the gathering were controlled by the Executive Secretary
Adolph Germer and the Regulars. A group of Left Wingers without delegate credentials, including Reed and his sidekick
Benjamin Gitlow, made an effort to occupy chairs on the convention floor before the gathering was called into order. The incumbents were unable to block the Left Wingers at the door, but soon called to their aid the already present police, who obligingly expelled the boisterous radicals from the hall. With the Credentials Committee firmly in the hands of the Regulars from the outset, the gathering's outcome was no longer in doubt and most of the remaining Left Wing delegates departed, to meet with other co-thinkers downstairs in a previously reserved room in a parallel convention. It was this gathering that established itself as the
Communist Labor Party on August 31, 1919. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Chicago, the Federations and Michiganders and their supporters established the Communist Party of America at a convention gaveled to order on September 1, 1919. Unity between these two communist organizations was a lengthy and complicated process, formally taking place at a secret convention held at the
Overlook Mountain House hotel near
Woodstock, New York, in May 1921 with the establishment of a new unified Communist Party of America. A Left Wing loyal to the Communist International remained in the Socialist Party through 1921, continuing the fight to bring the Socialist Party into the ranks of the Comintern. This group, which opposed the underground secret organizations the Communist Parties had become, included noted party journalist
J. Louis Engdahl and
William Kruse, head of the party's youth affiliate, the
Young People's Socialist League, as well as a significant segment of the Socialist Party's Chicago organization. These left-wing dissidents continued to make themselves heard until their departure from the party after the 1921 convention.
Expulsion of Socialists from the New York Assembly On January 7, 1920, less than a week after the
Palmer Raids had swept and stunned the country, the
New York Assembly was called to order. The majority Republicans easily elected their candidate for the Speaker,
Thaddeus C. Sweet and after opening day formalities the body took a brief recess. Back in session, Sweet declared: "The Chair directs the Sergeant-at-Arms to present before the
bar of the House
Samuel A. DeWitt,
Samuel Orr,
Louis Waldman,
Charles Solomon, and
August Claessens", the Assembly's five Socialist members. Sweet attacked the five, declaring they had been "elected on a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the state of New York and the United States". The Socialist Party, Sweet said, was "not truly a political party", but rather "a membership organization admitting within its ranks aliens, enemy aliens, and minors". The party had denounced America's participation in the European war and had lent aid and comfort to
Ludwig Martens, the "self-styled Soviet Ambassador and alien, who entered this country as a German in 1916". It had supported the revolutionaries in
Germany, Austria and
Hungary, Sweet continued; and consorted with international Socialist parties close to the
Communist International. Sweet concluded: It is every citizen's right to his day in court. If this house should adopt a resolution declaring your seat herein vacant, pending a hearing before a tribunal of this house, you will be given an opportunity to appear before such tribunal to prove your right to a seat in this legislative body, and upon the result of such hearing and the findings of the Assembly tribunal, your right to participate in the actions of this body will be determined. The Assembly suspended the quintet by a vote of 140 to 6, with one Democrat supporting the Socialists. Civil libertarians and concerned citizens raised their voices to aid the suspended Socialists and protest percolated throughout the press. The principal argument was that the expulsion of elected members of minority parties by majority parties from their councils set a dangerous precedent in a democracy. The battle culminated in a highly publicized trial in the Assembly, which dominated the body's activity from its opening on January 20, 1920, until its conclusion on March 11. Socialist Party leader and former 1917 New York City mayoral candidate
Morris Hillquit served as chief counsel for the suspended Socialists, aided by party founder and future Socialist vice-presidential candidate
Seymour Stedman. At the trial, Hillquit charged that Sweet had made a "specific, concrete, definite, affirmative declaration of guilt" of the five Assemblymen before they were ever charged with any offense. It was also Sweet who appointed the members of the Judiciary Committee to which the matter was referred. "Thus the accuser selects his own judges", Hillquit declared. Hillquit sought to remove for reasons of bias any members of the Judiciary Committee who had taken part in the activities of the
Lusk Committee, the New York State Senate's anti-radicalism committee. He particularly challenged the presence of Assemblyman
Louis A. Cuvillier, who had stated on the floor of the house the previous night words to the effect that "if the five accused Assemblymen are found guilty, they ought not to be expelled, but taken out and shot". The Assembly voted overwhelmingly for expulsion on April 1, 1920. On September 16, 1920, a special election was held to fill the five seats vacated by the Assembly, with each of the five expelled Socialists running for reelection against a "fusion" candidate representing the combined Republican and Democratic parties. All five Socialists were returned to office. Three of the five, Waldman, Claessens and Solomon, were again denied their seats after a contentious debate by votes of 90 to 45 on September 21, 1920. Orr and DeWitt, deemed less culpable than their peers by the earlier findings of the Judiciary Committee, were seated by votes of 87 to 48. In solidarity with their ousted colleagues, the pair refused to take their seats. After the five seats were again vacated, Hillquit expressed his disappointment at the Assembly's "unconstitutional action". But, he continued, "it will draw the issues clearer between the united Republican and Democratic parties representing arbitrary lawlessness, and the Socialist Party, which stood and stands for democratic and representative government".
Quest for a mass Farmer–Labor Party , Chairman of the Socialist Party of America from the death of Berger until he himself died in 1933 In the first half of 1919, the Socialist Party had over 77,000 dues-paying members, and by the second half of 1921 it had been shattered. Fewer than 14,000 members remained in party ranks, with the departure of the large, well-funded
Finnish Socialist Federation adding to the malaise. Membership numbers soon fell below 10,000 and remained there until 1932. In September 1921, the NEC determined that the time had come to end the party's historic aversion to fusion with other political organizations and issue an appeal declaring that the "forces of every progressive, liberal, and radical organization of the workers must be mobilized" to repel conservative assaults and "advance the industrial and political power of the working class". This desire for common action seems to have been shared by various unions, as late in 1921 a call was issued in the name of the country's 16 major railway labor unions seeking a
Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA). The CPPA was originally intended to be an umbrella organization bringing together various elements of the farmer and labor movement together in a common program. Invitations to the group's founding conference were issued to members of a wide variety of "progressive" organizations of widely varied perspectives. As a result, from its inception the heterogeneous body was unable to agree on a program or a declaration of principles, let alone congeal into a new political party. The Socialist Party was an enthusiastic supporter of the CPPA and the group dominated its thinking from the start of 1922 through the first quarter of 1925. In this period of organizational weakness, the party sought to forge lasting ties with the existing trade union movement, leading in short order to a mass labor party in the United States on the British model. A first National Conference of the CPPA was held in Chicago in February 1922, attended by 124 delegates representing a broad spectrum of labor, farmer and political organizations. The gathering passed an "Address to the American People" stating its criticism of existing conditions and formally proposing an amorphous plan of action validating the status quo ante: the labor unions on the group's right wing to endorse labor-friendly candidates of the Democratic Party, the Socialists and Farmer-Labor Party adherents on the group's left wing to conduct their own independent campaigns. From the Socialist Party's perspective, perhaps the most important thing the CPPA did at its first National Conference was agree to meet again. The party leadership understood the process of building an independent
third party that could count on the allegiance of the country's trade union leadership would be a protracted process and the mere fact of "agreement to disagree" but nevertheless meeting again was regarded as a step forward. The communist movement also sought to pursue the strategy of bursting from its isolation by forming a mass Farmer-Labor Party. Finally emerged from its underground existence in 1922, the Communists, through their "legal political party", the
Workers Party of America, sent four delegates to the CPPA's December 1922 gathering. But after protracted debate, the Credentials Committee strongly objected to the participation of Communist representatives in its proceedings and issued a recommendation that Workers Party's representatives and youth organization not be seated. The Socialist Party's delegates strongly supported excluding the Communists and acted accordingly, even though the two organizations shared a vision of a party akin to the
British Labour Party in which constituent political groups jointly participated while retaining their independent existence. The fissure between the organizations thus widened. As with the first conference, the 2nd Conference of the CPPA split over the all-important issue of an independent political party, with a proposal by five delegates of the Farmer-Labor Party calling for "independent political action by the agricultural and industrial workers through a party of their own" defeated by a vote of 52 to 64. A majority report declaring against an independent political party was instead adopted. This defeat of the bid for an independent political party cost the CPPA one its major component organizations, with the Farmer-Labor Party delegation announcing that its group would no longer affiliate with the CPPA after the convention. Although the Socialists did not realize it at the time, the chances that the organization would ever be transformed into an authentic mass Farmer-Labor party like British Labour were greatly lessened by the FLP's departure. The Socialists remained optimistic, and the May 1923 National Convention of the Socialist Party voted after lengthy debate to retain its affiliation with the CPPA and to continue its work for an independent political party from within that group. The May 20 vote in favor of maintaining affiliation with the CPPA was 38–12. Failing a mass farmer-labor party from the CPPA, the Socialists sought at least a powerful presidential nominee to run in opposition to the old parties. A 3rd National Conference of the CPPA was held in
St. Louis, Missouri, on February 11 and 12, 1924, a gathering that punted on the issue of committing itself to the 1924 presidential campaign, deciding instead to "immediately issue a call for a convention of workers, farmers, and progressives for the purpose of taking action on nomination of candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States, and on other questions that may come before the convention". The decisive moment finally came on July 4, 1924, a date that was not selected accidentally. The 1st National Convention of the CPPA was assembled in Cleveland at the city auditorium, which was packed with close to 600 delegates representing international unions, state federations of labor, branches of cooperative societies, state branches and national officers of the Socialist, Farmer-Labor and Progressive Parties as well as the
Committee of 48, state and national affiliates of the Women's Committee on Political Action and sundry individuals. Very few farmers were in attendance. It was around this time that the Socialists began actively participating in discussions about democratic principles as much as
Marxist ones. By 1924, they supported the
Progressive Party ticket, which pushed for the reform of the
Democratic Party. Ten years after that, the American Socialists adopted a "clearly undemocratic, quasi-Leninist platform" that lobbied for the removal of the current "bogus democracy of capitalist parliamentarianism". Wanting the government to be replaced by a "genuine worker's democracy", This was seen as an attempt to propose a political reform that would ultimately result in a better social and economic reform consistent with their beliefs. (left) attempted to build a broad labor alliance during the 1924 campaign and here meets with
Samuel Gompers of the
American Federation of Labor. The National Committee had previously requested that Wisconsin Senator
Robert M. La Follette run for president. The Cleveland Convention was addressed by La Follette's son,
Robert M. La Follette Jr., who read a message from his father accepting the call and declaring that the time had come "for a militant political movement independent of the two old party organizations". But La Follette declined to lead a third party, seeking to protect those progressives elected nominally as Republicans and Democrats. He said that the primary issue of the 1924 campaign was breaking the "combined power of the private monopoly system over the political and economic life of the American people". After the November election a new party might well be established, La Follette said, that might unite all progressives. The Socialist Party enthusiastically supported La Follette's independent candidacy, declining to run its own candidate in 1924. Although La Follette garnered five million votes, his campaign failed to seriously challenge the old parties' hegemony and was regarded by the unions as a disappointing failure. After the election, the governing National Committee of the CPPA met in Washington, D.C. While the body had a mandate from the July convention to issue a call for a convention to organize a new political party, the representatives of the critical railway unions, with the exception of William H. Johnston of the Machinists, were united in opposition to the idea. The railroad unions instead proposed a motion not to hold the 1925 organizational convention. This proposal was defeated by a vote of 30 to 13. After their defeat on this question, the railroaders on National Committee members withdrew from the meeting, announcing that they would await further instructions from their respective organizations with regard to future participation. The loss of the very unions that had brought about the CPPA spelled its demise. The National Committee nonetheless scheduled a convention to decide on the formation of a new political party for February 21, 1925, to be held in Chicago.
Labor, the official organ of the railway unions, did nothing to promote this 2nd Convention of the CPPA, stating that since the executives of the various unions had taken no stance on the matter, it would be up to subordinate sections to consider sending delegates themselves. The trade unions it coveted gone, the farmers nonexistent, the Socialist Party exited the convention and abandoned the strategy of establishing a new mass party through the CPPA. The remaining liberals formed a Progressive Party that survived for a short time in a limited number of states throughout the 1920s.
Left turn and split of the Old Guard ,
Morris Hillquit,
James Oneal,
Norman Thomas,
James H. Maurer,
Lilith Martin Wilson,
William H. Henry,
George E. Roewer. In 1928, the Socialist Party returned as an independent electoral entity under the leadership of
Norman Thomas, a radical Protestant minister from New York City. This reentry into the electoral fray behind Thomas fueled major growth of the party during the first years of
Great Depression, primarily among youth. A skilled orator and advocate of step-by-step solution of social problems, Thomas had excellent access to churches, colleges and civic institutions. He also had, as New York social democrat Louis Waldman later noted, "those qualities of mind and character which appealed to the intelligent and educated young people of the country and which drew them into the ranks of the party in unprecedented numbers". The 1928 convention voted to reduce membership dues to just $1 per year, with only half that sum going to the use of the National Office and the balance retained by state and local organizations. This level of funding proved insufficient for anything beyond the bare minimum of operations by the National Office in Chicago—no official party publication was made available to the members of the organization, with several privately held socialist newspapers fulfilling the function as fonts of party information. The dues rate cut did prove helpful in reducing the party's membership slide. After nearly a decade of steady decline, the Socialist Party again began to grow, advancing from a low of under 8,000 dues payers in 1928 to a membership of almost 17,000 by 1932. But this growth came at a price, as deep factional divisions developed between the youthful newcomers (radicalized and drawn to militant Marxism by the world economic crisis) and the "Old Guard" headed by Morris Hillquit, James Oneal and Waldman. The generational battle first erupted at the May 1932 Milwaukee Convention. Participant Anna Bercowitz noted four primary factions at this gathering, i.e. an Old Guard defending the current course of the party and the position of Hillquit, practical Socialists of the Milwaukee type, the young Marxist
Militants and liberal pacifist Thomasites such as
Devere Allen who followed Thomas's lead. The groups which represented the so-called 'New Blood' at the convention, the Militants and the Liberals and which at this convention merged for the sole purpose of deposing the present leadership [of the party] had little in common. Many members of the most aggressive, although numerically weakest of these groups, the Militants, had little in common with the so-called Thomasites. ... And as for the so-called Mid-western group, although they cast their vote with the opposition, on fundamentals they too are opposed to much of the liberalizing tendencies manifest in the party in recent years. Yet they voted, contrary to their usual procedure in their respective communities, with the opposition. That trades had been made there can be no doubt, and that some groups had been used as innocent dupes can also hardly be doubted...Fundamentally there is much more in common between the Militants and the so-called 'Old Guard' than between the Militants and the [religious pacifist] Thomasites and surely than between the frank practical 'mid-western' type of Socialists, yet when it was a question of vote on the Russian resolution, on the TU [Trade Union] resolution and on the question of the National Chairman and the Executive Committee votes were not cast on the basis of principles but apparently on the basis of 'trades'. The real difference between the Militants and the 'Old Guard' seems to be based on lack of sufficient activity and on tempo rather than on principle. Hillquit was challenged at the 1932 convention by
Daniel Hoan of Milwaukee, with the Militants and the Thomas group voting for Hoan with the Midwesterners. Hillquit was reelected National Chairman by a vote of 105–86, representing paid memberships of 7526 to 6984. Six members of the newly elected NEC were adherents of the Hillquit-Old Guard faction. It is clear that to some large extent the controversy between the young newcomers of the Militant faction and that of the so-called Old Guard can be reduced to this struggle for practical control of the party apparatus. Historian Frank Warren notes that "one cannot understand the Old Guard's actions unless one recognizes its intense desire to maintain its place in the party hierarchy; the drives of the young were a threat to the power of the New York Old Guard." He also adds that "clearly one would falsely idealize the Militants if one failed to recognize that their ambitions were not always selfless". In addition to the raw struggle for control of the party apparatus, there was also a divergence of visions about the role of the Socialist Party in the then-current crisis of capitalism, with mass unemployment at home and the growth of
fascism and
militarism abroad. The alternative vision of the Militants would be expressed at the subsequent convention of the party held in Detroit in June 1934, at which it was Thomas and his tactical allies of the Militant faction who emerged triumphant. It was this gathering that adopted a new
Declaration of Principles that inflamed the Old Guard faction on a number of different levels. , a top leader of the
Old Guard The ideological differences between the radical pacifist Thomas and his allies of the Militant faction on the one hand and the Old Guard faction on the other have been succinctly summarized as follows: The Old Guard was convinced that the 1934 Declaration of Principles was an open declaration in favor of armed insurrection; Thomas believed it was a necessary statement to indicate that Socialists would not lie down in the face of fascism. The Old Guard believed that the anti-war sections of the Declaration of Principles placed the party under the threat of legal prosecution for advocating unlawful actions to oppose war; again Thomas believed that a strong statement was necessary to put capitalism on warning that if it engaged in imperialist war there would be opposition. The Old Guard believed that a
united front with the Communists was immoral and would be disastrous for the Socialists, that even limited united action on specific causes should be banned, and even that exploratory discussions about a united front were going too far. Thomas opposed a united front on a general level, including any joint actions in political contests, but he thought that carefully planned united action on specific cases could, and should, take place. And he believed that it was worth while to conduct exploratory talks, even though he felt they would likely lead to nothing. The Old Guard felt that the Socialists' invitation to unaffiliated radicals and the Party's acceptance of former Communists,
Lovestoneites, and
Trotskyists was turning the party away from democratic socialism and to Communism. Thomas, though he disagreed with the ideology of these anti-Stalinist Communists, was willing to try to work with a party that included them, if they were willing to accept party discipline and not try to take over the Party. The Old Guard considered the
Revolutionary Policy Committee, a far-left group within the Socialist Party, a Communist and
anarchist group that had no place in a democratic socialist party. Thomas disagreed with the 'romantic revolutionists' in the Revolutionary Policy Committee (as he disagreed with the 'romantic parliamentarians' of the Old Guard), but still felt it was useful to try to salvage some of the enthusiasm and dedication that went into the Revolutionary Policy Committee by permitting its members to remain in the Party if, again, they followed party policy and party discipline. In addition to the generational and ideological differences between the young Militant faction and the Old Guard and their divergence over tempo of activity and party personnel was great disagreement about matters of symbolism and style. Many of the young radicals dressed and acted in marked contrast to their staid, buttoned-down elders, as New York Old Guard leader Louis Waldman recounted in a 1944 memoir: Symptoms of a new and dangerous spirit among the Socialist youth began to become manifest on all sides. The youngsters appeared at meetings of the party in blue shirts and red ties. At first this attracted no special attention, for oddity in dress is no novelty among radicals. But gradually their number increased and we now could see that this was a uniform. The Socialist youth of America, like the fascist youth in Europe, had succumbed to the shirt mania.The shirt tendency was followed by the salute mania. In Europe, the Nazi salute was the outstretched arm; here in America the United Front was symbolized by the adoption of the Communist clenched fist salute. This greeting, a raised arm at a slightly different angle from the Nazi or Communist salute, now became routine at all our meetings. [...] Some of the older members of the party were truly horrified at this totalitarian tendency, but others couldn't resist the trend and fell into line. Among these, I painfully record, was Norman Thomas.Along with the blue shirts, the red ties, the clenched fists, the raised arm salute, came the banners, the slogans, the demonstrations; all the trappings that make for totalitarian, unthinking mass fervor. These now became regular features at party gatherings. I can still recall the howl of triumph that rose from these young people at one of our meetings when for the first time Norman Thomas returned the clenched fist salute to them. As I stood at his side, my arms deliberately folded to indicate that I would have no part of this, their cheers for Thomas rose to almost uncontrollable frenzy. After its loss on the floor of the Detroit Convention, the Old Guard took its case to the rank and file of the party, who had been called upon to either approve or defeat the new Declaration of Principles in a referendum. A Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party was established and an agitational pamphlet published. New York State Assemblyman Charles Solomon was the author of the group's first polemical piece,
Detroit and the Party, urging defeat of the 1934 Declaration of Principles by the membership at referendum
. In this pamphlet, he decried the Detroit Declaration of Principles as "reckless", observing pointedly that "furious phrases cannot take the place of organized mass power". Solomon noted that over "the past three or four years" there had arisen "certain definite groups" in the ranks of the Socialist Party. He continued: The Declaration does not stand by itself, in a vacuum, as it were. Important as it is, it does not alone account for the vital struggle that is now being waged in the party. It represents the culminating point of a deep-seated antagonism. It is like the straw that breaks or threatens to break the camel's back. The Declaration of Principles has brought to the surface divergences which are deep, antagonisms which make of our party not a coherent political organization working harmoniously for a common objective but a battle ground of internecine strife. , chief theoretician of the
Militant faction Solomon charged that the "so-called 'left was "making its position clear" with the Declaration of Principles. "There was no mistaking the flag it had unfurled", he declared; "[i]t was the banner of thinly veiled communism". While he declared that "the Declaration of Principles must be decisively rejected in the referendum", he nevertheless strongly hinted that a factional split was in the offing. Merely defeating the proposed Declaration of Principles was "not enough"; he concluded that the "Socialist Party must be made safe for Socialism, for social democracy".
American Socialist Quarterly editor
Haim Kantorovitch made the case for the Militant faction in a pamphlet urging approval of the Declaration of Principles at referendum: The declaration of principles does not call for insurrection or violence. It simply states that if capitalism should collapse, the Socialist Party will not shrink from the responsibility of taking power. In case of a collapse of capitalism, if the socialists refuse to take power, the fascists will. To say beforehand that in time of a general collapse of capitalism...the socialists will not dare take power before they have a clear mandate from the majority through a democratic vote, is the same as saying that in case of a general collapse of capitalism the Socialist Party will voluntarily, in the name of democracy, turn over the power to the fascists or other reactionary elements, and continue their democratic propaganda from concentration camps. The membership of the Socialist Party approved the 1934 Declaration of Principles in its referendum, a victory that moved the Old Guard toward the exits—although factional fighting continued into 1936. In 1936, the leaders of the Old Guard formed a new rival organization to the Socialist Party, the
Social Democratic Federation, and somewhat reluctantly endorsed
Franklin D. Roosevelt for president in that year's election. They also worked to establish the
American Labor Party (ALP), a labor-oriented umbrella organization that included both socialist and non-socialist elements, both putting forward its own candidates and endorsing those of the
Democratic and
Republican parties.
End Poverty in California movement The novelist
Upton Sinclair had long been associated with the
Socialist Party in California. He was twice its candidate for Congress and its nominee for governor in
1926 and
1930, but won barely 50,000 votes out of a million cast. In
1934, Sinclair ran in the Democratic primary for governor on a platform of radical semi-socialist economic reforms he dubbed
End Poverty in California (EPIC). In a major upset, he defeated former
CPI chairman
George Creel (backed by the powerful
McAdoo machine) in a landslide, leading Republicans and conservative elements to rally against him. He won 879,537 votes, doubling his primary total, but that was only 38% of the record-breaking turnout, as Republican
Frank Merriam won with 49%, while
Raymond L. Haight, running under the Progressive Party banner, collected 13%. State Socialist Party chair Milen Dempster mounted a feeble effort to hold back the enthusiasm for Sinclair, gaining less than 3,000 votes. Before and after Sinclair's primary victory, the Socialist Party in California suffered numerous defections, even from high-profile members like former
Berkeley mayor J. Stitt Wilson and incumbent National Executive Committeeman
John C. Packard. Those who remained but supported Sinclair were expelled, as the SPA refused to allow its members to be active in any other party. The defections and expulsions destroyed the Socialist Party in California. More importantly, Sinclair's campaign encouraged many radicals in other states to turn away from the Socialist Party. Membership, which had climbed back above 19,000 in 1934, declined to less than 6,000 in 1937 and barely 2,000 in 1940.
Demise of the all-inclusive party , six-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America Norman Thomas, his radical pacifist co-thinkers, and their young Marxist allies of the Militant faction sought to build a mass political movement by transforming the Socialist Party into what they called an "all-inclusive party". Not only was an appeal made to the radical intellectuals and trade unionists who were the historic core of the organization, but an effort was made to work closely with the Communist Party in joint actions and to infuse the Socialist Party with the leading personnel of small radical oppositional organizations, including in particular the anti-Stalinist communist groupings headed by
Jay Lovestone (the so-called "Lovestoneites") and
James P. Cannon (the so-called "Trotskyists"). An array of left-wing intellectuals came into the Socialist orbit as a result of this venture, including (from the Lovestoneites)
Bertram D. Wolfe,
Herbert Zam and
Benjamin Gitlow, as well as (from the Trotskyists)
Max Shachtman,
James Burnham,
Martin Abern and
Hal Draper. A broad array of radicals from other tendencies also contributed to the pages of the party's official theoretical journal, including from the Communist Party orbit
Joseph P. Lash of the
American Student Union, the radical novelist
James T. Farrell, public intellectual
Sidney Hook, leading American Marxist of the 1910s
Louis B. Boudin and Canadian Trotskyist
Maurice Spector. A bid was made to unite the factional and marginalized
American Left in a common cause, and great hope was held for success in the enterprise. After the Nazis rose in Germany and Austria by 1934, no longer did the Communist Party engage in its
Third Period epithets against the Socialists as so-called "
social fascists".
Lillian Symes wrote in the Socialist Party's theoretical magazine in February 1937 of the "incredible change" taking place in the Communist Party in its seeming abandonment of
sectarianism and move toward a broad "people's front" against fascism. At the same time, other radical organizations sought to alter their tactics so as to rapidly build an aggressive left-wing organization to oppose nascent fascism. Since 1934, the French Trotskyist organization had entered the French Socialist Party in an effort to build its strength and win support for its ideas. Pressure to follow this policy of the "French Turn" was building among the American Trotskyist group. For a brief period in 1935 and 1936, the vision of the Socialist Party as an "all-inclusive party" that aggregated radical oppositionists and possibly even worked with the Communist Party in common cause seemed achievable. In January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard, a factional battle was being won in the Trotskyist
Workers Party of the United States to join the Socialist Party when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. Negotiations began between the Workers Party and Socialist leaderships, with the decision ultimately made to allow admissions only on the basis of individual applications for membership, rather than en masse admission of the entire group. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper,
The New Militant, published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party". About half of the Workers Party heeded the call and entered the Socialist Party. Although party leader Jim Cannon later hinted that the Trotskyists' entry into the Socialist Party had been a contrived tactic aimed at stealing "confused young Left Socialists" for his own organization, it seems that at its inception, the entryist tactic was made in good faith. Historian Constance Myers notes that "initial prognoses for the union of Trotskyists and Socialists were favorable" and it was only later that "constant and protracted contact caused differences to surface". The Trotskyists retained a common orientation with the radicalized Socialist Party in their opposition to the European war, their preference for
industrial unionism and the
Congress of Industrial Organizations over the trade unionism of the
American Federation of Labor, a commitment to trade union activism, the defense of the Soviet Union as the first workers' state while at the same time maintaining an antipathy toward Stalin's regime and in their general aims in the 1936 election. Norman Thomas attracted nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in historic strongholds of the party. Moreover, the party's membership had begun to decline. The organization was deeply factionalized, with the Militant faction split into right ("Altmanite"), center ("Clarity"), and left ("Appeal") factions, in addition to the radical pacifists led by Thomas and the midwestern "constructive" socialists led by Dan Hoan. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to set the party's future policy, initially intended as an unprecedented "secret" gathering.
Split with the Trotskyists Before the March convention, the Trotskyist
Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own, meeting in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. Two delegates from the Clarity caucus were in attendance. James Burnham vigorously attacked the
Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged, and tension rose along these lines among the Trotskyists. United action between the Clarity and Appeal groups was not forthcoming and an emergency meeting of
Vincent R. Dunne and Cannon was held in New York with leaders of the various factions, including Thomas,
Jack Altman, and
Gus Tyler of Clarity. At this meeting Thomas pledged that the upcoming convention would make no effort to terminate the various factions' newspapers. No action was taken at the 1937 convention to expel the Trotskyist "Appeal faction", but pressure continued to build along these lines, fueled by the Communist Party's increasingly hysterical denunciations of Trotsky and his followers as wreckers and agents of international fascism. The convention passed a ban on future branch resolutions on controversial matters, an effort to rein in the factions' activities at the local level. It also banned factional newspapers, a move directly targeting
The Socialist Appeal, and formally established
The Socialist Call as the party's national organ. Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move toward a break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the Thomas group, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to capture it for their own purposes. On June 24–25, 1937, a meeting of the Appeal faction's National Action Committee voted to ratchet up the rhetoric against
American Labor Party and
Republican nominee for mayor of New York
Fiorello LaGuardia, a favorite son of many in Socialist ranks, and to reestablish its newspaper,
The Socialist Appeal. This was met with expulsions from the party beginning August 9 with a rump meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, which expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by a vote of 48 to 2, with 18 abstentions, and ordered 70 more to be brought up on charges. Editor Gus Tyler of
The Socialist Call echoed Altman's sentiments, emphasizing that "the Trotskyites have, during the last week, [...] abandoned the usual means of inner party controversy—debate and appeals through party channels—and, like the Old Guard, have carried their argument into the public, into the capitalist press".
The Socialist Calls editor saw the Trotskyist faction's issuance of a statement to
The New York Times and the relaunch of its newspaper,
The Socialist Appeal, as particularly galling. Thomas pulled no punches about the regime in the Soviet Union: There are still in both the eastern and western hemispheres many examples of rather crude and primitive military dictatorships. [...] They preach a nationalism whose benefits, spiritual or material, to some degree are for all the people. They profess a positive and paternal concern for the masses. If they rule them sternly that is for their own good. [...]In the USSR the dictatorship has been the dictatorship of the Communist Party, but all of its professions and all of its performance has been in the name of the entire working class, and the Communist Party still gives lip-service to a final withering away of all dictatorship, even the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thomas further noted the Communist Party monopoly on the press, radio, schools, army and government and recalled his own recent visit to Moscow, writing: The old keenness of political discussion in the party has almost died, at least in so far as policy is concerned. (Criticism of administration is still allowed). A quotation from Stalin is a final answer to all argument. He receives the same sort of exaggerated veneration in public appearances, in the display of his picture, and in written references to him that is accorded to a Mussolini or a Hitler. Any thought of common-cause with the Communists was now dismissed by Thomas, who indicated that the Communists' fairly recent change of line from fighting the existing trade unions and damning of all political opponents as "social fascists" to attempting to build a "popular front" was merely tactical, related to the perceived needs of Soviet foreign policy to build coalitions with capitalist countries to forestall fascist invasion. The factional havoc of the move to the "all-inclusive party" paralyzed activity while the Old Guard's new group, the Social Democratic Federation, controlled the bulk of the Socialist Party's former property and the allegiance of those best able to fund the organization. The expulsions of the Trotskyists and disintegration of the party's youth section left the organization greatly weakened, its membership at a new low.
Opposition to the New Deal and discrimination in the armed services in 1942 By 1940, only a small committed core remained in the Socialist Party, including a considerable number of militant pacifists. The Socialist Party continued to oppose Roosevelt's
New Deal as a capitalist palliative, arguing for fundamental change through socialist ownership. In 1940, Thomas was the only presidential candidate who did not support rearmament of Great Britain and China. He also served as an active spokesman for the isolationist
America First Committee during 1941. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the declaration of war, the United States' self-defense and war against fascism was supported by most of the remaining Militants and all of the Old Guard. But the Socialist Party adopted a compromise position that did not openly oppose American participation in the war. Its failure to support the war created a rift with many leaders, like the
Reuther Brothers of the
United Auto Workers. The party's pacifist wing did not advocate any systematic antiwar activities, such as the general strike endorsed by the 1934 Declaration of Principles. Socialist
A. Philip Randolph emerged as one of the most visible spokesmen for African American civil rights. In 1941, Randolph,
Bayard Rustin and
A. J. Muste proposed a
march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to propose the desegregation of the American armed forces. The march was canceled after Roosevelt issued
Executive Order 8802, the
Fair Employment Act. Roosevelt's order applied to banning discrimination in only the war industries, not the armed forces, but the Fair Employment Act is generally perceived as a success for African American labor rights. In 1942, an estimated 18,000 blacks gathered at
Madison Square Garden to hear Randolph kick off a campaign against discrimination in the military, war industries, government agencies and labor unions. Following the act, during the
Philadelphia transit strike of 1944 the government backed African American workers' striking to gain positions formerly limited to white employees. In 1947, Randolph and colleague
Grant Reynolds renewed efforts to end discrimination in the armed services, forming the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service, later renamed the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience. On July 26, 1948, President
Harry S. Truman abolished racial segregation in the armed forces through
Executive Order 9981. Thomas led his last presidential campaign in 1948, after which he became a critical supporter of the postwar liberal consensus. The party retained some pockets of local success in cities such as
Milwaukee,
Bridgeport, Connecticut, and
Reading, Pennsylvania. In New York City, it often ran candidates on the
Liberal Party line.
Reunification (left) and
Darlington Hoopes shake hands at the 1957 SP-SDF Unity Convention Reunification with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was long a goal of Norman Thomas and his associates remaining in the Socialist Party. As early as 1938, Thomas had acknowledged that a number of issues had been involved in the split which led to the formation of the rival Social Democratic Federation, including "organizational policy, the effort to make the party inclusive of all socialist elements not bound by communist discipline; a feeling of dissatisfaction with social democratic tactics which had failed in Germany" as well as "the socialist estimate of Russia; and the possibility of cooperation with communists on certain specific matters". Still, he held that "those of us who believe that an inclusive socialist party is desirable, and ought to be possible, hope that the growing friendliness of socialist groups will bring about not only joint action but ultimately a satisfactory reunion on the basis of sufficient agreement for harmonious support of a socialist program". The Socialist Party and the SDF merged to form the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SP-SDF) in 1957. A small group of holdouts refused to reunify, establishing a new organization called the
Democratic Socialist Federation. When the Soviet Union led an invasion of Hungary in 1956, half of the members of Communist Parties around the world quit—in the United States alone half did and many joined the Socialist Party.
Realignment, civil rights movement and the war on poverty In 1958, the party admitted to its ranks the members of the recently dissolved
Independent Socialist League, which had been led by
Max Shachtman. Shachtman had developed a Marxist critique of Soviet Communism as "bureaucratic collectivism", a new form of class society that was more oppressive than any form of capitalism. Shachtman's theory was similar to that of many dissidents and refugees from communism, such as the theory of the "
new class" proposed by Yugoslavian dissident
Milovan Đilas (Djilas). Shachtman was an extraordinary public speaker and formidable in debate and his intelligent analysis attracted young socialists like
Irving Howe and
Michael Harrington. Shachtman's denunciations of the Soviet 1956 invasion of Hungary attracted younger activists like
Tom Kahn and Rachelle Horowitz. Shachtman's youthful followers were able to bring new vigor into the party and Shachtman encouraged them to take positions of responsibility and leadership. As a young leader, Harrington sent Kahn and Horowitz to help
Bayard Rustin with the
civil rights movement. Rustin had helped to spread
pacificism and
non-violence to leaders of the civil rights movement like
Martin Luther King Jr. while Kahn and Horowitz quickly became close assistants of Rustin. The civil rights movement benefited from intelligence and analysis of Shachtman and increasingly of Kahn. Rustin and his young aides, dubbed the Bayard Rustin Marching and Chowder Society by Harrington, organized many protest activities. The young socialists helped Rustin and
A. Philip Randolph organize the
1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "
I Have a Dream" speech. Harrington soon became the most visible socialist in the United States when his
The Other America became a best seller, following a long and laudatory
New Yorker review by
Dwight Macdonald. Harrington and other socialists were called to Washington, D.C., to assist the
Kennedy administration and then the
Johnson administration's
war on poverty and
Great Society. The young socialists' role in the civil rights movement made the Socialist Party more attractive. Harrington, Kahn and Horowitz were officers and staff-persons of the
League for Industrial Democracy (LID), which helped to start the
New Left Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The three LID officers clashed with the less experienced activists of SDS, like
Tom Hayden, when the latter's
Port Huron Statement criticized socialist and liberal opposition to communism and criticized the labor movement while promoting students as agents of social change. LID and SDS split in 1965, when SDS voted to remove from its constitution the "exclusion clause" that prohibited membership by communists. The SDS exclusion clause had barred "advocates of or apologists for totalitarianism". The clause's removal effectively invited "disciplined cadre" to attempt to "take over or paralyze" SDS as had occurred to mass organizations in the thirties. The experience of the civil rights movement and the coalition of labor unions and other progressive forces suggested that the United States was changing and that a mass movement of the democratic left was possible. In terms of electoral politics, Shachtman, Harrington and Kahn argued that it was a waste of effort to run electoral campaigns as Socialist Party candidates against Democratic Party candidates. They instead advocated a political strategy called "realignment" that prioritized strengthening labor unions and other progressive organizations that were already active in the Democratic Party. Contributing to the day-to-day struggles of the civil rights movement and labor unions had gained socialists credibility and influence and had helped to push politicians in the Democratic Party toward social-democratic positions on civil rights and the war on poverty.
From the Socialist Party to Social Democrats, USA The Socialist Party's 1972 convention had two co-chairmen,
Bayard Rustin and
Charles S. Zimmerman of the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU); and a First National Vice Chairman, James S. Glaser, who were reelected by
acclamation. Renaming the party SDUSA was meant to be "realistic".
The New York Times observed that the Socialist Party had last sponsored a
candidate for President in
1956, who received only 2,121 votes cast in only six states. Because the party no longer sponsored candidates in presidential elections, the name "Party" had been "misleading" as "Party" had hindered the recruiting of activists who participated in the Democratic Party, according to the majority report. The name "Socialist" was replaced by "
Social Democrats" because many Americans associated the word "
socialism" with
Soviet Communism. The Unity Caucus had a
supermajority of votes and its position carried on every issue by a ratio of two to one. The convention elected a national committee of 33 members, with 22 seats for the majority caucus, eight seats for Harrington's "Coalition Caucus", two for the "Debs Caucus" and one for the independent
Samuel H. Friedman. Friedman and the minority caucuses had opposed the name change. Although little remarked upon at the time despite Harrington's status as "possibly the most widely known of the Socialist leaders since the death of Norman Thomas", it soon became clear that this was the precursor of a decisive split in the organization. Its high-profile members included Congressman
Ron Dellums and
William Winpisinger, President of the
International Association of Machinists. In 1982, DSOC established the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) upon merging with the
New American Movement, an organization of democratic socialists mostly from the New Left. The
Union for Democratic Socialism was another organization formed by former members of the Socialist Party.
David McReynolds, who had resigned from the Socialist Party between 1970 and 1971, along with many from the Debs Caucus, were the core members. In 1973, the UDS declared itself the
Socialist Party USA. ==National Conventions==