Socialist Labor Party of America
Encyclopedia
The Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party, is the oldest socialist political party
in the United States
and the second oldest socialist party in the world. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 and has operated continuously since that date, although its current existence is tenuous. The party advocates the ideology
of "socialist industrial unionism" — belief in a fundamental transformation of society through the combined political and industrial action of the working class
organized in industrial unions.
The SLP closed its national office on September 1, 2008. The SLP, while completely inactive, carries on, mainly as a type of paper organization
amongst the remaining members.
parties of the world moved its headquarters to New York City
. The organization had been deeply divided over tactics, with one side, headed by Karl Marx
, believing in the efficacy of the ballot and trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and the other, headed by Mikhail Bakunin
, advocating the immediate revolution
ary overthrow of organized government. Bitterly disagreeing with the violent tactics advocated by their opponents, the so-called International Socialist faction felt the Anarchists
must be expelled from the international federation at any cost, while at the same time the number of Anarchists were rising in the organization. As a last ditch effort to stop Bakunin and his allies, the 1872 Congress
was called for The Hague
, a city chosen so as to exclude Bakunin, who could not get there from his safe haven in Switzerland
without crossing through countries in which he would be arrested. This decision gave the Marxist faction control of the congress, which they used to further entrench their position by moving the headquarters of the International from London
to America.
Later in 1872, a socialist congress was held in New York City bringing together American adherents of the International from 22 sections. This was followed up in 1874 with another gathering, a convention in Philadelphia at which was formed the ephemeral Social-Democratic Workingman's Party of North America, the first Marxist
political party in the United States.
The socialist movement in America remained deeply divided from the onset over tactics, and not just between Anarchists and Social Democrats. Newcomers from Germany often sought to follow the same parliamentary-driven approach being employed by the Ferdinand Lassalle
and fledgling Social Democratic Party of Germany
, while longer term residents of America often tended to support a trade union
orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented "Lassalleans. The gathering agreed to issue a call for a Unity Congress to be held in July to establish a new political party.
On Saturday, July 15, 1876, delegates from the remaining American sections of the First International gathered in Philadelphia and disbanded that organization. The following Wednesday, July 19, the planned Unity Congress was convened, attended by seven delegates claiming to represent a membership of 3,000 in four organizations: the trade union-oriented Marxists
of the now-disbanded International, and three Lassallean groups — the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati, and the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America. The organization formed by this Unity Convention was known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States
(WPUS), and the native English-speaking Philip Van Patten was elected as the party's first "Corresponding Secretary," the official in charge of the day-to-day operations of the party.
A number of socialist newspapers also emerged around this time, all privately owned, including Paul Grottkau's Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, Joseph Brucker's Milwaukee Socialist, and an English-language weekly also published in Milwaukee called The Emancipator. German émigrés dominated the organization, although in Chicago
Albert Parsons
and G.A. Schilling maintained an active English-speaking section.
In 1877 the Workingmen's Party met at Newark, New Jersey
in a convention which changed the name of the organization to the Socialist Labor Party (generally rendered in English throughout the 1880s as "Socialistic Labor Party," a more stilted rendition of the German name of the group, Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Partei). The organization made an electoral alliance with the Greenback Labor Party, the forerunner of the People's Party
, but no great electoral triumphs were scored.
There was an upsurge of support for the new organization, reflected in the proliferation of the socialist press. Between 1876 and 1877, no fewer than 24 newspapers were established which either directly or indirectly supported the SLP. Eight of these were English-language publications, including one daily, while 14 were in German, including seven dailies. Two more papers were published in Czech and Swedish, respectively.
Just two years later, in the wake of an economic crisis, not one of the privately owned English newspapers still survived. The party established its own English-language paper, The National Socialist, in May 1878 but managed to keep the publication alive only one year. The year 1878 saw the establishment of another paper was established which proved to have considerably more longevity, the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung
(New York People's News). The Volkszeitung included material by the best and the brightest of the German-American socialist movement, including Alexander Jonas, Adolph Douai, and Sergei Schewitsch, and Herman Schlüter and quickly emerged as the leading voice of the SLP during the last decades of the 19th Century.
About this same time, the American anarchist movement began to gain strength, fueled by the economic crisis
and strike wave
of 1877. As socialist Frederic Heath
recounted in 1900:
The SLP suffered its first split in 1878. Members who were displeased with the exclusively political actionist turn of the party who wanted the group to focus more on organizing workers formed the International Labor Union
. Members were not barred from belonging to both, but there was still some animosity between the two organizations.
Amidst economic crisis and factional squabbling, membership in the SLP plummeted. As the 1870s drew to a close, the Socialistic Labor Party could count about 2,600 members — with at least one estimate substantially lower. The party was on the ropes.
of 1878. This influx of new German members, coming during a time of low ebb of the English-speaking membership, extended Germanic influence in the SLP. Excluded from the voting booth by their lack of citizenship status, many of the newcomers had little use for electoral politics. The anarchist
movement expanded rapidly with the debate over tactics between the electorally-oriented socialists and the direct action
-oriented anarchists becoming ever more bitter.
The 1881 SLP Convention in New York saw some of the party's anarchist members and one New York section split from the party to form a new party called the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party
, as part of an International Workingman's Association. The official organ of this short-lived splinter group was a newspaper called The Anarchist.
In 1882, Johann Most
, a former German Social Democrat turned Anarchist firebrand, came to America, further fueling the growth and militancy of the American anarchist movement. The SLP further shattered the next year when Marxist Paul Grottkau was forced by the anarchists to resign as editor of the Chicago daily, the Arbeiter Zeitung. In his place August Spies
was installed, a man later executed as part of the anti-anarchist repression which followed the Haymarket affair
of May 1886.
After a brief honeymoon period in the late 1870s had run its course, the SLP saw the departure of most of its English-speaking members. The party's English-language organ, Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement, appeared monthly from Detroit in the shadow of the powerful Chicago German-language radical press until it was finally discontinued altogether at the end of 1883. The party was so thoroughly German that it published the stenographic proceedings of its 1884 and 1885 National Conventions only in that language. From 1885 the official organ of the party was a German-language weekly, Der Sozialist. No English language SLP organ existed the demise of the Bulletin in 1883 to the establishment of the Workingmen's Advocate in 1886.
The party's membership situation was so dismal that the English-speaking Corresponding Secretary of the organization, Philip Van Patten, left a suicide note in April 1883 and mysteriously disappeared. He later surfaced as a government employee, a socialist oppositionist no more. Membership in the organization atrophied to just 1,500 by 1883. What growth there was among the American radical movement was experienced by the rival anarchist organization, the International Working People's Association
(IWPA), also sometimes referred to as the International Workingmen's Association.
A split between the electorally oriented SLP and the revolution-minded IWPA, which took with it a good portion of the SLP's left wing, including such prominent leaders as the English-speaking orator Albert Parsons
and the German-speaking newspaper editor August Spies
, began to develop early in the 1880s, with the split formalized by 1883, a year in which the SLP and the IWPA held competing conventions, in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. At its December 1883 Baltimore convention, the SLP made a vain effort at reestablishing organizational unity with the IWPA, adopting a particularly radical "proclamation" in the name of the party and eliminating the position of National Secretary, to allow the form of decentralization favored by the anarchists.
The issue of violence proved an insurmountable barrier to unity between the SLP and the anarchist movement, however, and as Paul Grottkau, Alexander Jonas, and their co-thinkers began to again forcefully espouse the Marxist point of view in 1884, the SLP began to rebound. In March 1884, the SLP consisted of 30 sections. Two years later, it had doubled. Three new privately owned English-language newspapers were briefly established, although none could achieve the critical mass of subscribers and advertising revenue necessary for survival.
The SLP attempted to again make a foray into American electoral politics despite its still heavily German composition, taking an active part in the 1886 New York City
mayoral campaign of Single Tax advocate Henry George
. The party remained almost completely separated from the English-speaking workers movement, however, and longing for leaders who could traverse the seemingly insurmountable language barrier which limited the organization to a sort of Teutonic ghetto.
Throughout the decade of the 1880s, the SLP was based upon local "Sections" coordinated by a loose National Executive Committee based in New York City. It was not until 1889 that any move was made to establish intermediate state levels of organization.
, the leading national union of the day. A decade later, the SLP retained a faith in the established trade union organizations to conduct their own affairs along a generally socialist course. In each issue of The People during 1891 the weekly affairs of the New York Central Labor Federation, the New York Central Labor Union, the Brooklyn Central Labor Federation, the Brooklyn Central Labor Union, the Hudson County, New Jersey
(Jersey City
) Central Labor Federation were covered in detail under the recurring headline "Parliaments of Labor." The doings of individual unions in the New York area and around the world were similarly covered in short summary.
Despite its active role as cheerleader and publicist, the SLP was unable to exert any sort of real influence in the Knights of Labor until it was already in steep decline, toward the start of the 1890s, when it won effective control of the New York District Assembly of the K of L in 1893. In that same year, socialist delegates to the governing General Assembly of the K of L were largely responsible for the defeat of Terence Powderly and his replacement by J.R. Sovereign as Grand Master Workman, the chief executive officer
of the organization.
So great was the SLP's influence that the newly elected Sovereign promised to appoint a member of the party as editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor. When he recanted on this pledge, a bitter feud erupted, ending with the December 1895 General Assembly refusing to seat de facto SLP party leader Daniel DeLeon as a delegate from District Assembly 49, resulting in an outright break of the two organizations and withdrawal of the greater part of the New York district from the organization, thereby hastening the Knights of Labor's demise.
, had been resident in the United States for 18 years before he began to play a leading role in the American socialist movement. DeLeon attended a Gymnasium
in Hildesheim, Germany, in the 1860s, before studying at the University of Leyden, from which he graduated in 1872 at the age of 20. DeLeon was a brilliant student — well versed in history, philosophy, and mathematics. He was also a linguist with few peers, possessing fluency in Spanish, German, Dutch, Latin, French, English, and ancient Greek, and a reading knowledge of Portuguese, Italian, and modern Greek.
Upon graduation, DeLeon immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City
. There he made the acquaintance of a group of Cuba
ns who sought the liberation of their native land and edited their Spanish-language newspaper. DeLeon paid the bills with a job teaching Latin, Greek, and math at a school in Westchester, New York. This teaching job enabled DeLeon to finance his further education at Columbia Law School
, from which he graduated with honors in 1878. Thereafter, DeLeon moved to Texas
, where he practiced law
for a time, before returning to Columbia University in 1883 to take a position as a lecturer on Latin America
n diplomacy.
DeLeon seems to have been further politicized by the 1886 workers' campaign for the Eight-Hour Day
, and the brutal excesses of the police which came with it. DeLeon was on the committee which nominated Henry George ran for Mayor in that same year, and he spoke in public several times on George's behalf during the course of the campaign. DeLeon participated in the first Nationalist Club in New York City, a group dedicated to advancing the socialist ideas expressed by Edward Bellamy
in his extremely popular novel of the day, Looking Backward
. DeLeon was also deeply influenced by The Co-operative Commonwealth by Laurence Gronlund
.
The failings of the Nationalist Club movement to develop a viable program or strategy for winning political power left DeLeon searching for an alternative. This he found in the ostensible scientific determinism
underlying the writings of Karl Marx
. In the fall of 1890, DeLeon abandoned his academic career to devote himself full time to the SLP. He was engaged in the spring of 1891 as the party's "National Lecturer," traveling the entire country from coast to coast to speak on the SLP's behalf. He was also named the SLP's candidate for Governor of New York
in the fall of that same year, gathering a respectable 14,651 votes.
As the historian Bernard Johnpoll notes, the SLP which Daniel DeLeon joined in 1890 differed little from the organization which had been born at the end of the 1870s — it was largely a German-language organization located in an English-speaking country. Just 17 of the party's 77 branches used English as their basic language, while only two members of the party's governing National Executive Committee spoke English fluently. The arrival of erudite, well-read, multilingual university lecturer with English fluency was seen as a great triumph for the SLP organization.
In the spring of 1891, DeLeon was set to work as the National Organizer for the SLP. He pioneered for an English-speaking organization on a cross-country 6-week tour to the West Coast and back in April and May.
In 1892, DeLeon was elected editor of The Weekly People, the SLP's English-language official organ. He retained this important position without interruption for the rest of his life. DeLeon never assumed the formal role of head of the organization, National Secretary, but was always recognized — by supporters and detractors alike — as the leader of the SLP through his tight editorial control of the official party press.
While increasing the exposure and popularity of the organization among the American-born during his editorial tenure, Daniel DeLeon proved to be a polarizing figure among the Socialist Labor Party's membership during his editorial tenure, as historian Howard Quint notes:
The SLP ran candidates under its own name for the first time in the New York elections of 1886, in which it put forward a full ticket headed by J. Edward Hall as its gubernatorial nominee and Alexander Jonas as its candidate for Mayor of New York. Fewer than 3,000 votes were cast for this ticket throughout the entire state of New York, a result so disheartening that the German language party paper the New Yorker Volkszeitung
and some prominent party leaders advocated abandonment of electoral campaigns for the time being. The National Convention of 1889 upheld the policy of political action, however, and the SLP was again active in the New York elections of 1890.
In 1891, the party's electoral effort was led by the candidacy of Daniel DeLeon for Governor of New York
. DeLeon polled a respectable 14,651 votes in the losing effort.
The party nominated its first candidate for President of the United States
in 1892, a decision made in September of that year at a national conference of the organization held at party headquarters in New York City
, despite the fact that the SLP's platform called for the abolition of the offices of President and Vice President. The party's ticket, featuring Boston camera manufacturer Simon Wing
and New York electrician Charles H. Matchett, appeared on the ballot in just six states and drew a total of 21,512 votes.
A central axiom
of Marxism
is that the liberation of the working class must come at the hands of the working class itself. That this premise has been advanced by an unending string of middle-class intellectuals ranging from the professor-without-portfolio Dr. Karl Marx to the college-educated lawyer V.I. Lenin to lawyer and university lecturer Daniel DeLeon may be characterized as either inevitable, ironic, or a major contradiction, depending on one's personal perspective. Be that as it may, Marxists have universally assumed that only conscious and concerted effort by the working class itself can lead to cause the revolutionary transformation of economy and society. The devil lies in the details — how best to motivate this state of understanding and drive to action among those who sell their labor-power to others, how best to achieve the transformation of state and society.
The early Socialist Labor Party, influenced by the father of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
, Ferdinand Lassalle
, argued that the wage gains and improvements of conditions achievable by trade unions were insignificant and ephemeral. Only the capture of the state through the ballot box would enable a restructuring of the economy and society in anything resembling a permanent manner. So long as capitalism existed, wage gains here would be offset by the pressure of wage cuts there and incomes would be driven down to a subsistence minimum through the inexorable pressure of the market. Thus the political campaign for the capture of the state — winning office for the sake of winning power to enact change — was considered paramount.
For the Marxists who had come to dominate the Socialist Labor Party by the 1890s, this idea was exactly backwards. So long as fundamental economic relations between workers and employers remained unchanged, any alteration of the personnel of the state apparatus would be short-lived and would fall to nothing due to the wealth of the employers and their desire to preserve the existing economic order. The employing class controlled press and school and pulpit, the Marxists believed, their ideas of the "natural" order of things stuffed the heads of their willing political servitors. Only through collective action, trade union
activities, could the working class begin to achieve consciousness of itself, the nature of the world, and its purported historic mission.
But what sort of trade unions would instill in the working class the ideas and drive to action that would lead to a revolutionary restructuring of the economic order? This was the central question, over which the SLP ultimately divided. On the one hand there were those who advocated the policy of "boring from within" the already-existing unions, attempting to win their memberships over to the idea of socialist reorganization of society through the force of propaganda and practical example. Ultimately, it was believed, enough individual unions could be won over that the entire trade union movement could be moved in a socialist direction.
Others rejected the existing network of craft unions as hopelessly reactionary bureaucracies, sometimes outright criminal in their administration but never able to see beyond their own narrow and isolated concerns of wages, hours, recognition, and jurisdiction. A completely new, explicitly socialist industrial union structure was required, these individuals believed, an organization established on a broad basis uniting workers of different crafts in common cause. This new organization would gain the support of the working class when average workers at the bench witnessed the superiority of its form of organization and ideas in actual practice.
At the SLP's national convention of 1896, this issue came to a head with the formation of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance
, a party-sponsored industrial union federation founded to compete directly with the unions of the emerging American Federation of Labor
and the declining Knights of Labor.
ists led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit
), left the SLP in 1899. They later merged with the Social Democratic Party, headed by Victor L. Berger
and Eugene V. Debs
to form the Socialist Party of America
.
and of the Socialist Party's "reformism
", has been isolated from the majority of the American Left
, and that isolation became ever-increasing. The party had always advocated what they consider purist socialism in its program, arguing that other parties have actually abandoned Marxism and become either fan clubs of dictators or merely a radical wing of the Democratic party.
Eric Hass
became influential in the SLP in the early 1950s. Hass, the nominee for President in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1964, played a major role in rebuilding the SLP. He authored the booklet "Socialism: A Home Study Course". Hass increased the party's nationwide totals and recruited many local candidates. His vote for President increased from 30,250 in 1952 to 47,522 in 1960 (a 50% increase). Although his total slipped to 45,187 in 1964, Hass outpolled all other third party candidates - the only time this happened to the SLP. Aggregate nationwide totals for U.S. Senate nominees increased throughout the late 1960s, hitting 112,990 in 1972.
The increased interest in the SLP in the late 1960s was not a permanent growth spurt. New recruits subscribed to the anti-authoritarian
views of the time and wanted their voices to have an equal status with the old-time party workers. Newcomers felt that the party was too controlled by a small clique, resulting in widespread discontent. In 1976, the SLP nominated its last Presidential candidate and has run few campaigns since then. In 1980, members of the SLP in Minnesota
, claiming that the party had become bureaucratic and authoritarian in its internal party structure, split from the party and formed the New Union Party
.
The SLP began having trouble funding their newspaper The People, so frequency was changed from monthly to bi-monthly in 2004. That did not save the paper from collapse, however, and it was suspended as of 31 March 2008. The SLP closed its national office on 1 September 2008. As of 2011, the SLP is moribund and carries on no activities, but has not been formally dissolved.
in 1905. Before too long, however they had a falling out with the element that they termed 'the bummery,'
and left to form their own rival union, also called the Industrial Workers of the World, based in Detroit. De Leon died in 1914, and with his passing this organization lost its central focus. This body was renamed the Workers International Industrial Union (WIIU) and declined into little more than SLP members. The WIIU was wound up in 1924.
Famed author Jack London
was an early member of the Socialist Labor Party, joining in 1896. He left in 1901 but remained a Socialist.
The science fiction
writer Mack Reynolds
, who wrote one of the first Star Trek novels, was an active member of the SLP and his fiction often deals with socialist reform and revolution as well as socialist Utopian thought.
All election results taken from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and Vote for presidential and vice presidential candidates of the Socialist Labor Party
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Links relating to the historic SLP
Contemporary SLP links
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the second oldest socialist party in the world. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 and has operated continuously since that date, although its current existence is tenuous. The party advocates the ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
of "socialist industrial unionism" — belief in a fundamental transformation of society through the combined political and industrial action of the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
organized in industrial unions.
The SLP closed its national office on September 1, 2008. The SLP, while completely inactive, carries on, mainly as a type of paper organization
Paper organization
A paper organization is any group which exists more in theory than reality. The term "paper organization" is used in two different contexts, that of the military and that of the labor movement.-Military:...
amongst the remaining members.
Forerunners and origins
In 1872, the International uniting the socialistSocialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
parties of the world moved its headquarters to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The organization had been deeply divided over tactics, with one side, headed by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, believing in the efficacy of the ballot and trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and the other, headed by Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
, advocating the immediate revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
ary overthrow of organized government. Bitterly disagreeing with the violent tactics advocated by their opponents, the so-called International Socialist faction felt the Anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
must be expelled from the international federation at any cost, while at the same time the number of Anarchists were rising in the organization. As a last ditch effort to stop Bakunin and his allies, the 1872 Congress
Hague Congress (1872)
The Hague Congress was the Fifth congress of the International Workingmen's Association held in in The Hague, Holland, which anarchists consider as null and void....
was called for The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
, a city chosen so as to exclude Bakunin, who could not get there from his safe haven in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
without crossing through countries in which he would be arrested. This decision gave the Marxist faction control of the congress, which they used to further entrench their position by moving the headquarters of the International from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to America.
Later in 1872, a socialist congress was held in New York City bringing together American adherents of the International from 22 sections. This was followed up in 1874 with another gathering, a convention in Philadelphia at which was formed the ephemeral Social-Democratic Workingman's Party of North America, the first Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
political party in the United States.
The socialist movement in America remained deeply divided from the onset over tactics, and not just between Anarchists and Social Democrats. Newcomers from Germany often sought to follow the same parliamentary-driven approach being employed by the Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...
and fledgling Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, while longer term residents of America often tended to support a trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented "Lassalleans. The gathering agreed to issue a call for a Unity Congress to be held in July to establish a new political party.
On Saturday, July 15, 1876, delegates from the remaining American sections of the First International gathered in Philadelphia and disbanded that organization. The following Wednesday, July 19, the planned Unity Congress was convened, attended by seven delegates claiming to represent a membership of 3,000 in four organizations: the trade union-oriented Marxists
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
of the now-disbanded International, and three Lassallean groups — the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati, and the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America. The organization formed by this Unity Convention was known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States
Workingmen's Party of the United States
The Workingmen's Party of the United States , established in 1876, was one of the first Marxist-influenced political parties in the United States...
(WPUS), and the native English-speaking Philip Van Patten was elected as the party's first "Corresponding Secretary," the official in charge of the day-to-day operations of the party.
A number of socialist newspapers also emerged around this time, all privately owned, including Paul Grottkau's Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, Joseph Brucker's Milwaukee Socialist, and an English-language weekly also published in Milwaukee called The Emancipator. German émigrés dominated the organization, although in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
Albert Parsons
Albert Parsons
Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneer American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist...
and G.A. Schilling maintained an active English-speaking section.
In 1877 the Workingmen's Party met at Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
in a convention which changed the name of the organization to the Socialist Labor Party (generally rendered in English throughout the 1880s as "Socialistic Labor Party," a more stilted rendition of the German name of the group, Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Partei). The organization made an electoral alliance with the Greenback Labor Party, the forerunner of the People's Party
Populist Party (United States)
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away...
, but no great electoral triumphs were scored.
There was an upsurge of support for the new organization, reflected in the proliferation of the socialist press. Between 1876 and 1877, no fewer than 24 newspapers were established which either directly or indirectly supported the SLP. Eight of these were English-language publications, including one daily, while 14 were in German, including seven dailies. Two more papers were published in Czech and Swedish, respectively.
Just two years later, in the wake of an economic crisis, not one of the privately owned English newspapers still survived. The party established its own English-language paper, The National Socialist, in May 1878 but managed to keep the publication alive only one year. The year 1878 saw the establishment of another paper was established which proved to have considerably more longevity, the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkzeitung was a German language labor daily newspaper which suspended publishing during the Great Depression, in October 1932. At the time it was the only German language daily in the United States and one of the oldest radical left newspapers in the nation...
(New York People's News). The Volkszeitung included material by the best and the brightest of the German-American socialist movement, including Alexander Jonas, Adolph Douai, and Sergei Schewitsch, and Herman Schlüter and quickly emerged as the leading voice of the SLP during the last decades of the 19th Century.
About this same time, the American anarchist movement began to gain strength, fueled by the economic crisis
Depression (economics)
In economics, a depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies. It is a more severe downturn than a recession, which is seen by some economists as part of the modern business cycle....
and strike wave
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
of 1877. As socialist Frederic Heath
Frederic Heath
Frederic Faries "Fred" Heath was an American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897 and the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He was an elected official in Wisconsin for nearly half a century.-Early years:Frederic F. Heath...
recounted in 1900:
"The line between Anarchism and Socialism was not at this time sharply drawn in the Socialist organizations, in spite of the fact of their being opposites. Both being critics and denouncers of the present system, however, they were able to work together.
"As a result of the brutalities of the militiaMilitiaThe term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
and regulars in the railway strikes of 1877Great railroad strike of 1877The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States and ended some 45 days later after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops.-Economic conditions in the 1870s:...
, a new plan was devised by the Chicago agitators. This found expression in the Lehr und Wehr VereinLehr und Wehr VereinThe Lehr und Wehr Verein was a Chicago-based socialist military formation founded in 1875.The Lehr und Wehr Verein was registered with the Illinois state authorities on 19 April 1875 with about 30 Bohemian and German members. The organization used to train and drill in anticipation of an...
(teaching and defense society), an armed and drilled body of workmen pledged to protect the workers against the militia in a strike.... The arms-bearing tactics were opposed by the Executive Committee of the SLP, the Secretary of which was Philip van Patten. A fight ensued between the Verbote, which was the weekly edition of the Arbeiter Zeitung, of Chicago, and the Labor Bulletin, the official party organ which Patten edited."
The SLP suffered its first split in 1878. Members who were displeased with the exclusively political actionist turn of the party who wanted the group to focus more on organizing workers formed the International Labor Union
International Labor Union
The International Labor Union was a trade union in the northeastern United States from 1878-1887.The ILU was founded by members of the Workingmen's Party of the United States who were upset with the parties turn toward political action after the Newark convention of December, 1877...
. Members were not barred from belonging to both, but there was still some animosity between the two organizations.
Amidst economic crisis and factional squabbling, membership in the SLP plummeted. As the 1870s drew to a close, the Socialistic Labor Party could count about 2,600 members — with at least one estimate substantially lower. The party was on the ropes.
The SLP in the 1880s
The years 1880 and 1881 saw a new influx of political refugees from Germany, activists in the socialist movement who had been forced to flee during the crackdown on radicalism launched with the Anti-Socialist LawsAnti-Socialist Laws
The Anti-Socialist Laws or Socialist Laws were a series of acts, the first of which was passed on October 19, 1878 by the German Reichstag lasting till March 31, 1881, and extended 4 times...
of 1878. This influx of new German members, coming during a time of low ebb of the English-speaking membership, extended Germanic influence in the SLP. Excluded from the voting booth by their lack of citizenship status, many of the newcomers had little use for electoral politics. The anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
movement expanded rapidly with the debate over tactics between the electorally-oriented socialists and the direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
-oriented anarchists becoming ever more bitter.
The 1881 SLP Convention in New York saw some of the party's anarchist members and one New York section split from the party to form a new party called the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party
Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party
Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party, a radical split from the Socialist Labor Party in the United States. RSLP was formed in 1881 by anarchist-oriented elements of the SLP that had rallied around 'Revolutionary Clubs'....
, as part of an International Workingman's Association. The official organ of this short-lived splinter group was a newspaper called The Anarchist.
In 1882, Johann Most
Johann Most
Johann Joseph Most was a German-American politician, newspaper editor, and orator. He is credited with popularizing the concept of "Propaganda of the deed". His grandson was Boston Celtics radio play-by-play man Johnny Most...
, a former German Social Democrat turned Anarchist firebrand, came to America, further fueling the growth and militancy of the American anarchist movement. The SLP further shattered the next year when Marxist Paul Grottkau was forced by the anarchists to resign as editor of the Chicago daily, the Arbeiter Zeitung. In his place August Spies
August Spies
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an anarchist labor activist who was found guilty of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket affair.-Background:...
was installed, a man later executed as part of the anti-anarchist repression which followed the Haymarket affair
Haymarket affair
The Haymarket affair was a demonstration and unrest that took place on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of striking workers. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting...
of May 1886.
After a brief honeymoon period in the late 1870s had run its course, the SLP saw the departure of most of its English-speaking members. The party's English-language organ, Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement, appeared monthly from Detroit in the shadow of the powerful Chicago German-language radical press until it was finally discontinued altogether at the end of 1883. The party was so thoroughly German that it published the stenographic proceedings of its 1884 and 1885 National Conventions only in that language. From 1885 the official organ of the party was a German-language weekly, Der Sozialist. No English language SLP organ existed the demise of the Bulletin in 1883 to the establishment of the Workingmen's Advocate in 1886.
The party's membership situation was so dismal that the English-speaking Corresponding Secretary of the organization, Philip Van Patten, left a suicide note in April 1883 and mysteriously disappeared. He later surfaced as a government employee, a socialist oppositionist no more. Membership in the organization atrophied to just 1,500 by 1883. What growth there was among the American radical movement was experienced by the rival anarchist organization, the International Working People's Association
International Working People's Association
The International Working People's Association , sometimes known as the "Black International," was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England...
(IWPA), also sometimes referred to as the International Workingmen's Association.
A split between the electorally oriented SLP and the revolution-minded IWPA, which took with it a good portion of the SLP's left wing, including such prominent leaders as the English-speaking orator Albert Parsons
Albert Parsons
Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneer American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist...
and the German-speaking newspaper editor August Spies
August Spies
August Vincent Theodore Spies was an anarchist labor activist who was found guilty of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police at the Haymarket affair.-Background:...
, began to develop early in the 1880s, with the split formalized by 1883, a year in which the SLP and the IWPA held competing conventions, in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. At its December 1883 Baltimore convention, the SLP made a vain effort at reestablishing organizational unity with the IWPA, adopting a particularly radical "proclamation" in the name of the party and eliminating the position of National Secretary, to allow the form of decentralization favored by the anarchists.
The issue of violence proved an insurmountable barrier to unity between the SLP and the anarchist movement, however, and as Paul Grottkau, Alexander Jonas, and their co-thinkers began to again forcefully espouse the Marxist point of view in 1884, the SLP began to rebound. In March 1884, the SLP consisted of 30 sections. Two years later, it had doubled. Three new privately owned English-language newspapers were briefly established, although none could achieve the critical mass of subscribers and advertising revenue necessary for survival.
The SLP attempted to again make a foray into American electoral politics despite its still heavily German composition, taking an active part in the 1886 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
mayoral campaign of Single Tax advocate Henry George
Henry George
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land...
. The party remained almost completely separated from the English-speaking workers movement, however, and longing for leaders who could traverse the seemingly insurmountable language barrier which limited the organization to a sort of Teutonic ghetto.
Throughout the decade of the 1880s, the SLP was based upon local "Sections" coordinated by a loose National Executive Committee based in New York City. It was not until 1889 that any move was made to establish intermediate state levels of organization.
The SLP and the labor movement
The SLP did attempt to play an influence in the existing labor movement during the decade of the 1880s. As early as 1881, National Secretary Philip Van Patten joined the Order of the Knights of LaborKnights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence Powderly...
, the leading national union of the day. A decade later, the SLP retained a faith in the established trade union organizations to conduct their own affairs along a generally socialist course. In each issue of The People during 1891 the weekly affairs of the New York Central Labor Federation, the New York Central Labor Union, the Brooklyn Central Labor Federation, the Brooklyn Central Labor Union, the Hudson County, New Jersey
Hudson County, New Jersey
Hudson County is the smallest county in New Jersey and one of the most densely populated in United States. It takes its name from the Hudson River, which creates part of its eastern border. Part of the New York metropolitan area, its county seat and largest city is Jersey City.- Municipalities...
(Jersey City
Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...
) Central Labor Federation were covered in detail under the recurring headline "Parliaments of Labor." The doings of individual unions in the New York area and around the world were similarly covered in short summary.
Despite its active role as cheerleader and publicist, the SLP was unable to exert any sort of real influence in the Knights of Labor until it was already in steep decline, toward the start of the 1890s, when it won effective control of the New York District Assembly of the K of L in 1893. In that same year, socialist delegates to the governing General Assembly of the K of L were largely responsible for the defeat of Terence Powderly and his replacement by J.R. Sovereign as Grand Master Workman, the chief executive officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
of the organization.
So great was the SLP's influence that the newly elected Sovereign promised to appoint a member of the party as editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor. When he recanted on this pledge, a bitter feud erupted, ending with the December 1895 General Assembly refusing to seat de facto SLP party leader Daniel DeLeon as a delegate from District Assembly 49, resulting in an outright break of the two organizations and withdrawal of the greater part of the New York district from the organization, thereby hastening the Knights of Labor's demise.
The coming of DeLeon
The year 1890 has long been regarded as a watershed by the Socialist Labor Party, as it marked the date when the organization came under the influence of Daniel DeLeon. DeLeon, a native of the South American island of CuraçaoCuraçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, had been resident in the United States for 18 years before he began to play a leading role in the American socialist movement. DeLeon attended a Gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in Hildesheim, Germany, in the 1860s, before studying at the University of Leyden, from which he graduated in 1872 at the age of 20. DeLeon was a brilliant student — well versed in history, philosophy, and mathematics. He was also a linguist with few peers, possessing fluency in Spanish, German, Dutch, Latin, French, English, and ancient Greek, and a reading knowledge of Portuguese, Italian, and modern Greek.
Upon graduation, DeLeon immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. There he made the acquaintance of a group of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
ns who sought the liberation of their native land and edited their Spanish-language newspaper. DeLeon paid the bills with a job teaching Latin, Greek, and math at a school in Westchester, New York. This teaching job enabled DeLeon to finance his further education at Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...
, from which he graduated with honors in 1878. Thereafter, DeLeon moved to Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, where he practiced law
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
for a time, before returning to Columbia University in 1883 to take a position as a lecturer on Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n diplomacy.
DeLeon seems to have been further politicized by the 1886 workers' campaign for the Eight-Hour Day
Eight-hour day
The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the short-time movement, had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories transformed working life and imposed long hours and poor working conditions. With working conditions...
, and the brutal excesses of the police which came with it. DeLeon was on the committee which nominated Henry George ran for Mayor in that same year, and he spoke in public several times on George's behalf during the course of the campaign. DeLeon participated in the first Nationalist Club in New York City, a group dedicated to advancing the socialist ideas expressed by Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.-Early life:...
in his extremely popular novel of the day, Looking Backward
Looking Backward
Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from western Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887...
. DeLeon was also deeply influenced by The Co-operative Commonwealth by Laurence Gronlund
Laurence Gronlund
Laurence Gronlund was an American lawyer and socialist.-Biography:Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Law in 1865, and moved to the United States in 1867...
.
The failings of the Nationalist Club movement to develop a viable program or strategy for winning political power left DeLeon searching for an alternative. This he found in the ostensible scientific determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
underlying the writings of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. In the fall of 1890, DeLeon abandoned his academic career to devote himself full time to the SLP. He was engaged in the spring of 1891 as the party's "National Lecturer," traveling the entire country from coast to coast to speak on the SLP's behalf. He was also named the SLP's candidate for Governor of New York
Governor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
in the fall of that same year, gathering a respectable 14,651 votes.
As the historian Bernard Johnpoll notes, the SLP which Daniel DeLeon joined in 1890 differed little from the organization which had been born at the end of the 1870s — it was largely a German-language organization located in an English-speaking country. Just 17 of the party's 77 branches used English as their basic language, while only two members of the party's governing National Executive Committee spoke English fluently. The arrival of erudite, well-read, multilingual university lecturer with English fluency was seen as a great triumph for the SLP organization.
In the spring of 1891, DeLeon was set to work as the National Organizer for the SLP. He pioneered for an English-speaking organization on a cross-country 6-week tour to the West Coast and back in April and May.
In 1892, DeLeon was elected editor of The Weekly People, the SLP's English-language official organ. He retained this important position without interruption for the rest of his life. DeLeon never assumed the formal role of head of the organization, National Secretary, but was always recognized — by supporters and detractors alike — as the leader of the SLP through his tight editorial control of the official party press.
While increasing the exposure and popularity of the organization among the American-born during his editorial tenure, Daniel DeLeon proved to be a polarizing figure among the Socialist Labor Party's membership during his editorial tenure, as historian Howard Quint notes:
"Even DeLeon's opponents were usually willing to concede that he possessed a tremendous intellectual grasp of Marxism. Those who had suffered under his editorial lashings looked on him as an unmitigated scoundrel who took fiendish delight in character assassinationCharacter assassinationCharacter assassination is an attempt to tarnish a person's reputation. It may involve exaggeration, misleading half-truths, or manipulation of facts to present an untrue picture of the targeted person...
, vituperation, and scurrility. But most of DeLeon's contemporaries, and especially his critics, misunderstood him, just as he himself lacked understanding of people. He was not a petty tyrant who desired power for power's sake. Rather, he was a dogmatic idealist, devoted brain and soul to a cause, a zealot who could not tolerate heresy or backsliding, a doctrinaire who would make no compromise with principles. For this strong-willed man, this late nineteenth-century Grand Inquisitioner of American socialism, there was no middle ground. You were either a disciplined and undeviating Marxist or no socialist at all. You were either with the mischief-making, scatterbrained reformersReformismReformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
and 'labor fakirs' or you were against them. You either agreed on the necessity of uncompromising revolutionary tactics or you did not, and those falling into the latter category were automatically expendable as far as the Socialist Labor Party was concerned."
Early electoral politics
The Socialist Labor Party advocated a two-pronged attack against capitalism, including both economic and political components — trade unions and electoral campaigns.The SLP ran candidates under its own name for the first time in the New York elections of 1886, in which it put forward a full ticket headed by J. Edward Hall as its gubernatorial nominee and Alexander Jonas as its candidate for Mayor of New York. Fewer than 3,000 votes were cast for this ticket throughout the entire state of New York, a result so disheartening that the German language party paper the New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkzeitung was a German language labor daily newspaper which suspended publishing during the Great Depression, in October 1932. At the time it was the only German language daily in the United States and one of the oldest radical left newspapers in the nation...
and some prominent party leaders advocated abandonment of electoral campaigns for the time being. The National Convention of 1889 upheld the policy of political action, however, and the SLP was again active in the New York elections of 1890.
In 1891, the party's electoral effort was led by the candidacy of Daniel DeLeon for Governor of New York
Governor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
. DeLeon polled a respectable 14,651 votes in the losing effort.
The party nominated its first candidate for President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
in 1892, a decision made in September of that year at a national conference of the organization held at party headquarters in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, despite the fact that the SLP's platform called for the abolition of the offices of President and Vice President. The party's ticket, featuring Boston camera manufacturer Simon Wing
Simon Wing
Simon Wing was a daguerrotypist and camera inventor and socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for President of the United States, running for that office in 1892.-Early years:...
and New York electrician Charles H. Matchett, appeared on the ballot in just six states and drew a total of 21,512 votes.
The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance
To make sense of the further development of the Socialist Labor Party, we must understand the main ideological principle of the organization — Revolutionary Industrial Unionism (also known as "Socialist Industrial Unionism.")A central axiom
Axiom
In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proven or demonstrated but considered either to be self-evident or to define and delimit the realm of analysis. In other words, an axiom is a logical statement that is assumed to be true...
of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
is that the liberation of the working class must come at the hands of the working class itself. That this premise has been advanced by an unending string of middle-class intellectuals ranging from the professor-without-portfolio Dr. Karl Marx to the college-educated lawyer V.I. Lenin to lawyer and university lecturer Daniel DeLeon may be characterized as either inevitable, ironic, or a major contradiction, depending on one's personal perspective. Be that as it may, Marxists have universally assumed that only conscious and concerted effort by the working class itself can lead to cause the revolutionary transformation of economy and society. The devil lies in the details — how best to motivate this state of understanding and drive to action among those who sell their labor-power to others, how best to achieve the transformation of state and society.
The early Socialist Labor Party, influenced by the father of the Social Democratic Party of Germany
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
, Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...
, argued that the wage gains and improvements of conditions achievable by trade unions were insignificant and ephemeral. Only the capture of the state through the ballot box would enable a restructuring of the economy and society in anything resembling a permanent manner. So long as capitalism existed, wage gains here would be offset by the pressure of wage cuts there and incomes would be driven down to a subsistence minimum through the inexorable pressure of the market. Thus the political campaign for the capture of the state — winning office for the sake of winning power to enact change — was considered paramount.
For the Marxists who had come to dominate the Socialist Labor Party by the 1890s, this idea was exactly backwards. So long as fundamental economic relations between workers and employers remained unchanged, any alteration of the personnel of the state apparatus would be short-lived and would fall to nothing due to the wealth of the employers and their desire to preserve the existing economic order. The employing class controlled press and school and pulpit, the Marxists believed, their ideas of the "natural" order of things stuffed the heads of their willing political servitors. Only through collective action, trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
activities, could the working class begin to achieve consciousness of itself, the nature of the world, and its purported historic mission.
But what sort of trade unions would instill in the working class the ideas and drive to action that would lead to a revolutionary restructuring of the economic order? This was the central question, over which the SLP ultimately divided. On the one hand there were those who advocated the policy of "boring from within" the already-existing unions, attempting to win their memberships over to the idea of socialist reorganization of society through the force of propaganda and practical example. Ultimately, it was believed, enough individual unions could be won over that the entire trade union movement could be moved in a socialist direction.
Others rejected the existing network of craft unions as hopelessly reactionary bureaucracies, sometimes outright criminal in their administration but never able to see beyond their own narrow and isolated concerns of wages, hours, recognition, and jurisdiction. A completely new, explicitly socialist industrial union structure was required, these individuals believed, an organization established on a broad basis uniting workers of different crafts in common cause. This new organization would gain the support of the working class when average workers at the bench witnessed the superiority of its form of organization and ideas in actual practice.
At the SLP's national convention of 1896, this issue came to a head with the formation of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance
The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance - commonly abbreviated STLA or ST&LA - was a revolutionary socialist labor union in the United States closely linked to the Socialist Labor Party , which existed from 1895 until becoming a part of the Industrial Workers of the World at its founding in 1905.The...
, a party-sponsored industrial union federation founded to compete directly with the unions of the emerging American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
and the declining Knights of Labor.
The party split of 1899
De Leon's opponents, (primarily German-Americans, Jewish immigrants of various origins, and trade unionTrade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ists led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...
), left the SLP in 1899. They later merged with the Social Democratic Party, headed by Victor L. Berger
Victor L. Berger
Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...
and Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
to form the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
.
Early 20th Century
With the death of De Leon, the SLP, always critical of both the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and of the Socialist Party's "reformism
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
", has been isolated from the majority of the American Left
American Left
The American Left consists of individuals and groups, including socialists, communists and anarchists, that have sought fundamental change in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Although left-wing ideologies came to the United States in the 19th century, there...
, and that isolation became ever-increasing. The party had always advocated what they consider purist socialism in its program, arguing that other parties have actually abandoned Marxism and become either fan clubs of dictators or merely a radical wing of the Democratic party.
Late 20th Century/Early 21st
The party experienced two growth spurts in the twentieth century. The first occurred in the late 1940s. The presidential ticket, which had been receiving 15,000 to 30,000 votes, increased to 45,226 in 1944. Meanwhile, the aggregate nationwide totals for U.S. Senate nominees increased during this same period from an average in the 40,000 range to 96,139 in 1946 and 100,072 in 1948. The party's fortunes began to sag during the early 1950s, and by 1954 the aggregate nationwide totals for U.S. Senate nominees was down to 30,577.Eric Hass
Eric Hass
Eric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S...
became influential in the SLP in the early 1950s. Hass, the nominee for President in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1964, played a major role in rebuilding the SLP. He authored the booklet "Socialism: A Home Study Course". Hass increased the party's nationwide totals and recruited many local candidates. His vote for President increased from 30,250 in 1952 to 47,522 in 1960 (a 50% increase). Although his total slipped to 45,187 in 1964, Hass outpolled all other third party candidates - the only time this happened to the SLP. Aggregate nationwide totals for U.S. Senate nominees increased throughout the late 1960s, hitting 112,990 in 1972.
The increased interest in the SLP in the late 1960s was not a permanent growth spurt. New recruits subscribed to the anti-authoritarian
Anti-authoritarian
Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism, which is defined as a "political doctrine advocating the principle of absolute rule: absolutism, autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, totalitarianism." Anti-authoritarians usually believe in full equality before the law and strong civil...
views of the time and wanted their voices to have an equal status with the old-time party workers. Newcomers felt that the party was too controlled by a small clique, resulting in widespread discontent. In 1976, the SLP nominated its last Presidential candidate and has run few campaigns since then. In 1980, members of the SLP in Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, claiming that the party had become bureaucratic and authoritarian in its internal party structure, split from the party and formed the New Union Party
New Union Party
The New Union Party is a small political party in the United States. It was originally formed in 1974 as the New Unionists, several of whom had been members of Section Minneapolis of Socialist Labor Party of America . As with many such departures since the 1920s, they claimed SLP had become...
.
The SLP began having trouble funding their newspaper The People, so frequency was changed from monthly to bi-monthly in 2004. That did not save the paper from collapse, however, and it was suspended as of 31 March 2008. The SLP closed its national office on 1 September 2008. As of 2011, the SLP is moribund and carries on no activities, but has not been formally dissolved.
Legacy
Perhaps the greatest impact of De Leon and the SLP was their help in founding the Industrial Workers of the WorldIndustrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
in 1905. Before too long, however they had a falling out with the element that they termed 'the bummery,'
Industrial Workers of the World organizational evolution
The Industrial Workers of the World is a union of wage workers which was formed in Chicago in 1905. The IWW experienced a number of divisions and splits during its early history....
and left to form their own rival union, also called the Industrial Workers of the World, based in Detroit. De Leon died in 1914, and with his passing this organization lost its central focus. This body was renamed the Workers International Industrial Union (WIIU) and declined into little more than SLP members. The WIIU was wound up in 1924.
Famed author Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
was an early member of the Socialist Labor Party, joining in 1896. He left in 1901 but remained a Socialist.
The science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer Mack Reynolds
Mack Reynolds
Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Clark Collins, Mark Mallory, Guy McCord, Dallas Ross and Maxine Reynolds. Many of his stories were published in Galaxy Magazine and Worlds of If Magazine...
, who wrote one of the first Star Trek novels, was an active member of the SLP and his fiction often deals with socialist reform and revolution as well as socialist Utopian thought.
Conventions
| Convention | Location | Date | Notes and references |
|---|---|---|---|
| Union Congress | Philadelphia, PA | July 19–22, 1876 | 1. Original edition of the proceedings. 2. The 1976 centennial edition edited and annotated by Philip S. Foner |
| National Congress | Newark, NJ | Dec. 26-31, 1877 | Name changed to Socialistic Labor Party; Documents & Proceedings |
| 2nd National Convention | Allegheny, PA | Dec. 26, 1879-Jan 1, 1880 | Documents & Condensed Proceedings |
| 3rd National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
Dec. 26-29, 1881 | Proceedings, in German German language German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union.... , from the New Yorker Volkszeitung New Yorker Volkszeitung New Yorker Volkzeitung was a German language labor daily newspaper which suspended publishing during the Great Depression, in October 1932. At the time it was the only German language daily in the United States and one of the oldest radical left newspapers in the nation... |
| 4th National Convention | Baltimore, MD | Dec. 26-28, 1883 | Proceedings, in German, some pages blacked out |
| 5th National Convention | Cincinnati, OH | Oct. 5-8, 1885 | Proceedings, in German |
| 6th National Convention | Buffalo, NY | Sept. 17-20, 1887 | Proceedings |
| 7th Nat. Conv. [regular] | Chicago, IL | Oct. 12-17, 1889 | Upholds political action. Account of Proceedings in Workmens Advocate |
| 7th Nat. Conv. [dissident] | Chicago, IL | Sept. 28- Oct. 2, 1889 | Proceedings |
| 8th National Convention | Chicago, IL | 2–5 July 1893 | Proceedings as reported in The People |
| 9th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
July 4–10, 1896 | Establishes ST&LA. Proceedings |
| 10th Nat. Conv. [regular] | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
June 2–8, 1900 | Reviews 1899 party split. Proceedings |
| 10th Nat. Conv. [dissident] | Rochester, NY | Jan. 27-Feb. 2, 1900 | No stenographic record published. |
| 11th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
July 1904 | Microfilm of the typescript is available from the Wisconsin Historical Society Wisconsin Historical Society The Wisconsin Historical Society is simultaneously a private membership and a state-funded organization whose purpose is to maintain, promote and spread knowledge relating to the history of North America, with an emphasis on the state of Wisconsin and the trans-Allegheny West... . |
| 12th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
July 1908 | No stenographic record published. |
| 13th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 1912 | No stenographic record published. |
| 14th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 29-May 3, 1916 | No stenographic record published. Platform. |
| 15th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 5–10, 1920 | Proceedings |
| 16th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 10–13, 1924 | Proceedings |
| 17th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 12–14, 1928 | Proceedings |
| 18th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 30-May 2, 1932 | Proceedings p. 1, Proceedings p. 2 |
| 19th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 25–28, 1936 | Proceedings p. 1, Proceedings p. 2 |
| 20th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 27–30, 1940 | Proceedings p. 1, Proceedings p. 2 |
| 21st National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
April 29-May 2, 1944 | Proceedings |
| 22nd National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 1–3, 1948 | Proceedings |
| 23rd National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 3–5, 1952 | Proceedings |
| 24th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 5–7, 1956 | Platform |
| 25th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 7–9, 1960 | Proceedings |
| 26th National Convention | New York City New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and... |
May 2–4, 1964 | Proceedings |
| 27th National Convention | Brooklyn, NY | May 4–7, 1968 | Proceedings |
| 28th National Convention | Detroit, MI | April 8–11, 1972 | Platform |
| 29th National Convention | Southfield, MI | February 7–11, 1976 | Proceedings |
| 30th National Convention | Chicago, IL | May 28-June 1, 1977 | Proceedings |
| 31st National Convention | Philadelphia, PA | May 26–31, 1978 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 32nd National Convention | Milwaukee, WI | July 1979 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 33rd National Convention | Milwaukee, WI | June 27-July 1, 1980 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 34th National Convention | Milwaukee, WI | July 1981 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 35th National Convention | Milwaukee, WI | August 1982 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 36th National Convention | Akron, OH | July 18–23, 1983 | Proceedings; no pdf available. Platform. |
| 37th National Convention | Akron, OH | July 1985 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 38th National Convention | Akron, OH | July 27–31, 1987 | Proceedings; no pdf available. |
| 39th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | April 29-May 3, 1989 | Proceedings |
| 40th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | April 28–30, 1991 | Proceedings |
| 41st National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | May 1–4, 1993 | Proceedings |
| 42nd National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | July 15–18, 1995 | Proceedings |
| 43rd National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | May 2–5, 1997 | Proceedings |
| 44th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | April 9–12, 1999 | Proceedings |
| 45th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | June 1–4, 2001 | Proceedings |
| 46th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | July 9–11, 2005 | Proceedings |
| 47th National Convention | Santa Clara, CA | July 14–16, 2007 | Proceedings |
Secretaries of the SLP
| Name | Tenure | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Philip Van Patten | July 1876 - April 1883 | Corresponding Secretary |
| Schneider | April–October 1883 | Corresponding Secretary |
| Hugo Vogt | October–December 1883 | Corresponding Secretary |
| None. | December 1883-March 1884 | (Executive position abolished) |
| Wilhelm Rosenberg Wilhelm Rosenberg Wilhelm Ludwig "William" Rosenberg was a German-American teacher, poet, playwright, journalist, and socialist political activist. He is best remembered as the head of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1884 to 1889.-Early years:... |
March 1884-October 1889 | Corresponding and Financial Secretary |
| Benjamin J. Gretsch | October 1889-October 1891 | National Secretary |
| Henry Kuhn | 1891–1906 | National Secretary |
| Frank Bohn Frank Bohn (socialist) Frank Bohn was an advocate of industrial unionism who was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. From 1906 to 1908 he was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America, before leaving to join forces with the rival Socialist Party of America... |
1906–1908 | National Secretary |
| Henry Kuhn | 1908 (pro tem) | National Secretary |
| Paul Augustine | 1908–1914 | National Secretary |
| Arnold Petersen Arnold Petersen Arnold Petersen was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1914 to 1969. Petersen played a major role as spokesmen for that party and as a promoter of the De Leonist version of Marxist theory in the 20th century.-Biography:Arnold Petersen was born in Odense, Denmark,... |
1914–1969 | National Secretary |
| Nathan Karp | 1969–1980 | National Secretary |
| Robert Bills | 1980-date | National Secretary |
Presidential tickets
| Election | Presidential Nominee | Vice-Presidential Nominee | Votes | # of states on ballot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1888 | Slate of independent electors | Slate of independent electors | 2,068 | 1 (NY) |
| 1892 | Simon Wing Simon Wing Simon Wing was a daguerrotypist and camera inventor and socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for President of the United States, running for that office in 1892.-Early years:... |
Charles Matchett Charles Matchett Charles Horatio Matchett was an American socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for Vice President of the United States in the election of 1892 and as the party's candidate for President in the election of 1896.-Early... |
21,173 | 5 |
| 1896 | Charles Matchett Charles Matchett Charles Horatio Matchett was an American socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for Vice President of the United States in the election of 1892 and as the party's candidate for President in the election of 1896.-Early... |
Matthew Maguire | 36,359 | 20 |
| 1900 | Joseph F. Maloney Joseph F. Maloney Joseph Francis Maloney was a machinist from Massachusetts who was nominated for President of the United States by the Socialist Labor Party, or SLP, in 1900.... |
Valentine Remmel Valentine Remmel Valentine Remmel was a member of the Socialist Labor Party or SLP from Pittsburgh who was nominated for Vice President of the United States on the SLP ticket in 1900. Before that, he had been a candidate for the Presidential nomination, but was defeated by his later running mate, Joseph Malloney... |
40,943 | 22 |
| 1904 | Charles H. Corregan | William Wesley Cox William Wesley Cox William Wesley Cox was a Presidential, Vice Presidential, and perennial U.S. Senate candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America .... |
33,454 | 19 |
| 1908 | August Gillhaus August Gillhaus August Gillhaus was the Socialist Labor candidate for U.S. President in 1908 and for U.S. Vice President in 1912 and 1920.-Life:In 1908, Gillhaus was substituted for the original nominee, “Morrie” Preston, a miner who was arrested on murder charges during a citywide strike in Goldfield, Nevada, in... |
Donald L. Munro | 14,031 | 15 |
| 1912 | Arthur E. Reimer Arthur E. Reimer Arthur Elmer Reimer was an American socialist political activist and politician. He is best remembered as a two-time Presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-Early years:... |
August Gillhaus August Gillhaus August Gillhaus was the Socialist Labor candidate for U.S. President in 1908 and for U.S. Vice President in 1912 and 1920.-Life:In 1908, Gillhaus was substituted for the original nominee, “Morrie” Preston, a miner who was arrested on murder charges during a citywide strike in Goldfield, Nevada, in... |
29,324 | 20 |
| 1916 | Arthur E. Reimer Arthur E. Reimer Arthur Elmer Reimer was an American socialist political activist and politician. He is best remembered as a two-time Presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-Early years:... |
Caleb Harrison | 15,295 | 17 |
| 1920 | William Wesley Cox William Wesley Cox William Wesley Cox was a Presidential, Vice Presidential, and perennial U.S. Senate candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America .... |
August Gillhaus August Gillhaus August Gillhaus was the Socialist Labor candidate for U.S. President in 1908 and for U.S. Vice President in 1912 and 1920.-Life:In 1908, Gillhaus was substituted for the original nominee, “Morrie” Preston, a miner who was arrested on murder charges during a citywide strike in Goldfield, Nevada, in... |
31,084 | 14 |
| 1924 | Frank T. Johns | Verne L. Reynolds | 28,633 | 19 |
| 1928 | Verne L. Reynolds | Jeremiah D. Crowley | 21,590 | 19 |
| 1932 | Verne L. Reynolds | John W. Aiken | 34,038 | 19 |
| 1936 | John W. Aiken | Emil F. Teichert | 12,799 | 18 |
| 1940 | John W. Aiken | Aaron M. Orange | 14,883 | 14 |
| 1944 | Edward A. Teichert | Arla A. Albaugh | 45,188 | 15 |
| 1948 | Edward A. Teichert | Stephen Emery | 29,244 | 22 |
| 1952 | Eric Hass Eric Hass Eric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S... |
Stephen Emery | 30,406 | 23 |
| 1956 | Eric Hass Eric Hass Eric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S... |
Georgia Cozzini Georgia Cozzini Georgia Cozzini was an American socialist politician. She is best remembered as the first woman to run for Governor of Wisconsin and for two consecutive runs as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America, appearing on the ballot in 1956 and 1960.-Early years:Georgia... |
44,300 | 14 |
| 1960 | Eric Hass Eric Hass Eric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S... |
Georgia Cozzini Georgia Cozzini Georgia Cozzini was an American socialist politician. She is best remembered as the first woman to run for Governor of Wisconsin and for two consecutive runs as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America, appearing on the ballot in 1956 and 1960.-Early years:Georgia... |
47,522 | 15 |
| 1964 | Eric Hass Eric Hass Eric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S... |
Henning A. Blomen Henning A. Blomen Henning A. Blomen was a candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1968 and for Vice President of the United States in 1964. Blomen was also an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts 14 times... |
45,189 | 16 |
| 1968 | Henning A. Blomen Henning A. Blomen Henning A. Blomen was a candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1968 and for Vice President of the United States in 1964. Blomen was also an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts 14 times... |
George Sam Taylor | 52,589 | 13 |
| 1972 | Louis Fisher Louis Fisher Louis Fisher was the Socialist Labor Party of America candidate for United States President in the 1972 Presidential election and he was "the party's top vote-getting presidential candidate." His Vice Presidential candidate was Genevieve Gundersen.Fischer also ran for Governor of Illinois twice... |
Genevieve Gundersen | 53,814 | 12 |
| 1976 | Jules Levin Jules Levin Julius "Jules" Levin was the Socialist Labor Party of America candidate for United States President in the 1976 Presidential election; his running mate was Constance Blomen. Levin also ran for Governor of New Jersey five times unsuccessfully; the party had run candidates for governor starting in... |
Constance Blomen | 9,566 | 10 |
All election results taken from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and Vote for presidential and vice presidential candidates of the Socialist Labor Party
Notable members
- John J. BallamJohn J. BallamJohn J. "Johnny" Ballam was an American Marxist political activist and trade union organizer. He is best remembered as a founding member and one of the pioneer leaders of the Communist Party of America and as a leader of the Trade Union Unity League in the textile industry during the...
- J. Mahlon BarnesJ. Mahlon BarnesJohn Mahlon Barnes was an American trade union functionary and socialist political activist. Barnes is best remembered as the Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America from 1905 to 1911, during which time he originated the idea of the party's 1908 "Red Special" campaign train on behalf...
- Barney Berlyn
- Robert Bills
- Ella Reeve BloorElla Reeve BloorElla Reeve "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements.-Early years:...
- Frank BohnFrank Bohn (socialist)Frank Bohn was an advocate of industrial unionism who was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. From 1906 to 1908 he was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America, before leaving to join forces with the rival Socialist Party of America...
- George BoomerGeorge BoomerGeorge Ellsworth Boomer was an American socialist journalist, newspaper editor, and political activist. Boomer is best remembered as a key participant in the formation of the Socialist Party of Washington and as its candidate for the Governor of Washington in 1908.-Early years:George Ellsworth...
- Louis B. BoudinLouis B. BoudinLouis B. Boudin was a Russian-born American Marxist theoretician, writer, politician, and lawyer. He is best remembered as the author of a two volume history of the Supreme Court's influence on American government, first published in 1932....
- Abraham CahanAbraham CahanAbraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.-Early years:...
- Adolf S. Carm
- Maximilian CohenMaximilian CohenMaximilian "Max" Cohen was an American socialist politician of the early 20th Century. Cohen held a series of important posts during the pivotal year of 1919, including Secretary of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party for Local Greater New York, Secretary of the Left Wing National Council,...
- James ConnollyJames ConnollyJames Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...
- Georgia CozziniGeorgia CozziniGeorgia Cozzini was an American socialist politician. She is best remembered as the first woman to run for Governor of Wisconsin and for two consecutive runs as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America, appearing on the ballot in 1956 and 1960.-Early years:Georgia...
- Daniel DeLeonDaniel De LeonDaniel DeLeon was an American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer. He is regarded as the forefather of the idea of revolutionary industrial unionism and was the leading figure in the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1890 until the time of...
- Solon DeLeon
- Adolph DouaiCarl Adolph DouaiKarl Daniel Adolph Douai , known to his peers as "Adolph," was a German Texan teacher as well as a socialist and abolitionist newspaper editor...
- Benjamin Feigenbaum
- Louis C. FrainaLouis C. FrainaLouis C. Fraina was a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1919. After running afoul of the Communist International in 1921 over the alleged misappropriation of funds, Fraina left the organized radical movement, emerging in 1930 as a left wing public intellectual by the name of Lewis...
- Paul Grottkau
- Julius GerberJulius GerberJulius Gerber was a leading Socialist Party of America party official and politician during the first two decades of the 20th century. Gerber headed the important Socialist Party unit for New York City and its environs from 1911 through 1922...
- Margaret HaileMargaret HaileMargaret Haile was a Canadian socialist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a teacher and journalist by profession. She was active in the socialist movements in both Canada and the United States. Frederic Heath's "Socialism in America," published in January 1900 in the Social...
- J. Edward HallJ. Edward HallJames Edward Hall was a socialist trade union organizer and politician. He is best remembered as one of the organizers of the New York Central Labor Union and one of the first American socialists nominated for high political office, heading the New York state ticket of the Socialist Labor Party of...
- Julius Hammer
- Benjamin HanfordBenjamin HanfordBenjamin Hanford was an American politician during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He made two unsuccessful runs for the post of Vice President of the United States, as Eugene Debs' running mate as a candidate of the Social Democratic Party, in 1904 and 1908.-Early life:Benjamin Hanford...
- Job HarrimanJob HarrimanJob Harriman was an ordained minister who later became an agnostic and a socialist. In 1900 he ran for Vice President of the United States along with Eugene Debs on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America. He later twice ran for mayor of Los Angeles, drawing considerable attention and support...
- Caleb Harrison
- Eric HassEric HassEric Hass was a four-time candidate for United States President of the Socialist Labor Party of America.-State elections:In 1942, he ran for New York State Attorney General.In 1944, he ran for U.S...
- Max S. HayesMax S. HayesMaximillian Sebastian "Max" Hayes was a newspaper editor, trade union activist, and socialist politician. He is best remembered as the long-time editor of the Cleveland Citizen and as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party ticket in 1920.-Early years:Max Hayes was born in...
- Morris HillquitMorris HillquitMorris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...
- G.A. "Gus" Hoehn
- Isaac Hourwich
- Frank JohnsFrank JohnsFrank Tetes Johns was a carpenter and American socialist political activist and politician. He is best remembered for having been twice nominated for President of the United States by the Socialist Labor Party of America.-Early life:...
- Olive M. Johnson
- Alexander Jonas
- Nathan Karp
- Antoinette KonikowAntoinette KonikowAntoinette F. Buchholz Konikow was an American physician, feminist, and radical political activist. Konikow is best remembered as one of the pioneers of the American birth control movement and as a founding member of the Communist Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party, USA...
- Henry Kuhn
- Algernon LeeAlgernon LeeAlgernon H. Lee was an American socialist politician and educator, best known as the Director of Education at the Rand School of Social Science for 35 years.-Early years:...
- Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
- Meyer LondonMeyer LondonMeyer London was an American politician from New York City. He was one of only two members of the Socialist Party of America elected to the United States Congress.-Early years:...
- William D. Mahoney
- William MaillyWilliam MaillyWilliam "Will" Mailly was an American socialist political functionary, journalist, and trade union activist. He is best remembered as an early National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America and as the first managing editor of the socialist daily newspaper, the New York Call.-Early...
- Charles MatchettCharles MatchettCharles Horatio Matchett was an American socialist politician. He is best remembered as the first candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America for Vice President of the United States in the election of 1892 and as the party's candidate for President in the election of 1896.-Early...
- James H. MaurerJames H. MaurerJames Hudson "Jim" Maurer was a prominent American trade unionist who twice ran for the office of Vice President of the United States on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
- Thomas J. MorganThomas J. MorganThomas J. "Tommy" Morgan, Jr. was an English-born American labor leader and socialist political activist. Morgan is best remembered as one of the pioneer English-speaking Socialists in the city of Chicago and a frequent candidate for public office of the Socialist Party of America...
- Kate Richards O'HareKate Richards O'HareKate Richards O'Hare was an American Socialist Party activist, editor, and orator best known for her controversial imprisonment during World War I.-Biography:...
- Albert ParsonsAlbert ParsonsAlbert Richard Parsons was a pioneer American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist...
- Arnold PetersenArnold PetersenArnold Petersen was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1914 to 1969. Petersen played a major role as spokesmen for that party and as a promoter of the De Leonist version of Marxist theory in the 20th century.-Biography:Arnold Petersen was born in Odense, Denmark,...
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Party-owned
- Vorbote (The Warning) (1874–1924) —Chicago weekly. Predated the SLP, party organ 1876-1878. Broke with SLP for anarchism in the early 1880s.
- Arbeiter Stimme (Worker's Voice) (1876–1878) —New York City weekly. Predated the SLP under the title Sozial-Demokrat. NYPL holds master negative film.
- The Labor Standard (April 1876–December 1881) —New York City. Originally organ of the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America under title The Socialist. NYPL holds master negative film.
- The Social Democrat (c. 1877) —New York daily.
- The National Socialist (1878–1879)
- Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement (1879–1883) —Published in Detroit and New York City.
- Der Sozialist (1885–1892) —German-language; published in New York City.
- Vorwärts (Forward) (1892–1932) —Published in New York City. Broke with SLP in 1899; became privately owned publication.
- The Workmen's Advocate (1885–1891) —Originally published by the New Haven (CT) Trades Council. Official organ of SLP from November 21, 1886. Subscription list taken over by The People in 1891.
- The People (1891–2008) —Published in New York City by New Yorker Volkszeitung on behalf of the SLP. Party-owned from 1899. Later moved to Palo Alto, CA.
- Pittsburgher Volkszeitung (c. 1891) —German-language; Pittsburgh weekly.
English
- Advance (1896–1902) —San Francisco weekly. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film.
- The Echo (c. 1877) —Boston weekly.
- Emancipator (c. 1877) —Cincinnati and Milwaukee weekly.
- Emancipator (1894) —Cleveland weekly.
- The Evening Telegram (c. 1884) —New Haven weekly.
- Lawrence Labor (1896) —Lawrence, MA weekly.
- The Liberator (1896–1897)
- Manchester Labor (1896) —Manchester, NH weekly.
- Ohio Labor (1895–1896) —Toledo weekly.
- Philadelphia Labor (1893–1894) —Philadelphia weekly.
- Quincy Labor (1895) —Quincy, IL weekly.
- Rochester Labor (1896) —Rochester, NY weekly.
- St. Louis Labor (1893–1928) —St. Louis daily. Broke with SLP circa 1897.
- San Antonio Labor (1894–1896) —San Antonio weekly.
- San Francisco Truth (c. 1884) —San Francisco weekly.
- Savannah Labor (1895) —Savannah, GA weekly.
- The Socialist (c. 1877) —Detroit weekly.
- The Star (c. 1877) —St. Louis daily.
- The Times (c. 1877) —Indianapolis weekly.
- The Voice of the People (c. 1884) —New York City weekly.
- Worcester Labor (1896) —Worcester, MA weekly.
- Workingmen's Ballot (c. 1877) —Boston weekly.
German
- Arbeiter von Ohio (Ohio Worker) (c. 1877) —Cincinnati weekly.
- Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung (Chicago Workers' News) (1876–1924) —Chicago daily paper, which published Vorbote.
- Chicagoer Sozialist (Chicago Socialist) (c. 1877) —Chicago daily.
- Chicagoer Volkszeitung (Chicago People's News) (c. 1877) —Chicago daily.
- Freiheitsbanner (Freedom Flag) (c. 1877) —Cincinnati weekly.
- Illinois Volkszeitung (c. 1884)
- Milwaukee Sozialist (Milwaukee Socialist) (c. 1877) —Milwaukee daily; predated the SLP.
- Die Neue Zeit (The New Era) (c. 1877) —Louisville and Chicago daily.
- New Yorker VolkszeitungNew Yorker VolkszeitungNew Yorker Volkzeitung was a German language labor daily newspaper which suspended publishing during the Great Depression, in October 1932. At the time it was the only German language daily in the United States and one of the oldest radical left newspapers in the nation...
(New York People's News) (1878–1932) —New York City daily; broke with SLP in 1899, continued publication until 1932. - Ohio Volkszeitung (Ohio People's News) (c. 1877) —Cincinnati daily.
- Philadelphia Tageblatt (Philadelphia Daily Paper) (1877–1942) —Philadelphia daily. Broke with SLP at some point.
- Pittsburgher Arbeiter Zietung (c. 1890) —Pittsburgh weekly.
- Vorwärts! (Forward!) (1877–1878) —Milwaukee weekly. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film.
- Vorwärts! (1893–1932) —Milwaukee daily; Victor Berger, editor. Broke with SLP in 1897. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film.
- Vorwärts (Forward) (c. 1877) —Newark daily.
- Volksstimme des Westens (Voice of the People of the West) (c. 1877) —St. Louis daily.
Other languages
Bulgarian- Rabotnicheska Prosveta (Workers' Enlightenment) (1911–1969) —Published in Granite City, IL and Detroit. Weekly.
Croatian
- Radnicka Borba (Workers' Struggle) (1907–1970) —Published in New York, Cleveland, and Detroit. Weekly, later semi-monthly.
Czech
- Delnicke Listy (Voice of Labor) (c. 1877) —Cleveland weekly; predated SLP.
Hungarian
- A Munkás (The Worker) (1910–1961) —New York City weekly. New York Public Library holds master negative film.
Latvian
- Proletareets (The Proletarian) (1902–1911)
Norwegian
- Den Nye Tid (The New Time) (c. 1877) —Chicago weekly.
Swedish
- Arbetaren (The Worker) (1895–1928) —New York City weekly.
Ukrainian
- Robitinychyi Holos (Workers' Voice) (1922-?) —New York City weekly.
Yiddish
- Der Emes (The Truth) (1895–1896) —Boston weekly.
- Sources: Proceedings of the National Congress, 1877, pp. 16-17; Hillquit (1903), pp. 225, 242; American Labor Press Directory (1925), pp. 22-23; Library of Congress "Chronicling America" database.
Further reading
- Frank Girard and Ben Perry, Socialist Labor Party, 1876-1991: A Short History. Philadelphia: Livra Books, 1991.
- Howard Quint, The Forging of American Socialism: Origins of the Modern Movement: The Impact of Socialism on American Thought and Action, 1886-1901. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1953.
- L. Glen Seratan, Daniel Deleon: The Odyssey of an American Marxist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
External links
Primary documents- Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement, Vol 1, No. 14 (Dec. 1880-Jan. 1881). Full issue of rare official organ. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- "1891 Report of the NEC of the SLP." December 18, 1891.
- SLP Documents Downloads, Early American Marxism website. Index for assorted SLP documents in pdf format. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- Report of the Proceedings of the National Convention of the Socialistic Labor Party. Index for pdfs of proceedings of SLP, 1878-1887. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- Daniel DeLeon Online, Socialist Labor Party. Extensive collection of editorials and writings by Daniel DeLeon in pdf format. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
Links relating to the historic SLP
- SLP Publications, Early American Marxism website. Partial but lengthy list of official publications of the SLP. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- Early American Marxism website. Includes extensive party history. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- "DeLeon — A Sketch of His Socialist Career", Socialist Labor Party. Official party history of the SLP's most notable leader. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- Papers of the Socialist Labor Party of America: Records of the Socialist Labor Party of America; guide to a microfilm edition. User guide to the microfilm collection filmed by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
Contemporary SLP links
- Socialist Labor Party of America, official party website. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
- The People, index of issues available in pdf, 1999-2008. Retrieved September 29, 2009.
See also
- Arm and Hammer
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