Young People's Socialist League (1907)
Encyclopedia
The Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), founded in 1907, was the official youth arm of the Socialist Party of America
. Its political activities tend to concentrate on increasing the voter turnout of young democratic socialists
and affecting the issues impacting that demographic group.
(SPA) had its roots in non-coordinated groups established at the local level by party members interested in conducting special activities to attract young people to the socialist movement. These groups have diverse names, including the "Athenian Literary Society," "Young People's Alliance," and "Social Science Study Club."
The Young People's Socialist League (YPSL, pronounced "YIP-sell") was founded on May 17, 1907, in Chicago, Illinois, with the group containing about 30 members at the time of its formation. Key individuals in the formation of the group included Charles Schuler, A.W. Mance, Merle B. Haver, and Rube Burrows. Schuler remained as the Secretary of the organization all the way through 1913. Participants sought their own headquarters and held a series of money-raising entertainments and social events to that end, successful enough for the group to open an office on the third floor of the Chicago Daily Socialist Building in November 1907.
Simultaneously in New York City
, several already existing socialist youth groups united themselves in 1907 to form a "Young People's Socialist Federation." In connection with this growing New York socialist youth movement, in 1908 the publishing association responsible for producing the New Yorker Volkszeitung
began to issue The Little Socialist Magazine for Boys and Girls — a publication which was renamed The Young Socialists' Magazine in June 1911 and which eventually became the official organ of the national YPSL movement.
The 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party took note of a need to better coordinate the Socialist youth movement, placing it under the Women's Department of the National Office. This move proved to be merely cosmetic and there was still no national organization binding the numerous largely autonomous local organizations together until 1913. It was at this time the SPA's National Committee was pushed into action by the efforts of the party's California State Secretary, a vociferous supporter of the socialist youth movement. While there remained support among some for the formation of a semi-autonomous organization which elected its own National Secretary and Executive Committee, in the end the National Committee of the SPA decided to form a "Young People's Department," directly attached and fully subordinate to the National Office of the adult SPA.
In 1915 a unified national YPSL was formally launched when various local Circles adopted a constitution by a referendum vote. Two years later, YPSL National Secretary William "Bill" Kruse
reported the group had a membership of about 5,000, spread in Circles in 147 cities. The official organ of the YPSL was The Young Socialists' Magazine, with a circulation of 10,000.
, National Secretary Kruse was one of five top leaders of the SPA targeted for prosecution by the United States Department of Justice
. Kruse was hauled into court, tried, and sentenced to 20 years in prison for purported violation of the wartime "Espionage Act" — a sentence which was finally overturned on appeal on grounds of judicial prejudice in 1920.
In 1919, the organized faction known as the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
exited the SPA to form two organizations which would eventually unite as the Communist Party USA
. The YPSL, headed by Left Wing supporter Oliver Carlson and generally sympathetic to the perspective of the Left Wing, initially attempted to chart an independent course from either the Socialist Party or the nascent Communist Labor Party of America and Communist Party of America. This independent course terminated financial support for the organization from the SPA, however, and the so-called Independent Young People's Socialist League essentially disintegrated, with many of the active leaders in the group enlisting in the underground communist movement, while others drifted away from political activity altogether.
The Socialist Party reorganized the YPSL with Bill Kruse reelected as its Secretary, but he, too, departed the Socialist Party for the Communist movement in 1921. The League was once again relaunched at a 1922 convention, with Albert Weisbord
as National Secretary. Weisbord managed to rebuild a network of YPSL Circles but in 1924 he joined Carlson and Kruse in the ranks of the Workers Party of America
, "legal" successor to the underground communist movement.
The YPSL organization survived the defection of its third leader and were active in the Socialist Party-endorsed campaign of Robert M. LaFollette for President of the United States
in 1924. An attempt was made to start a new official publication for the organization called Free Youth, but the effort failed due to lack of funds, with the membership of the Socialist Party down to about 10% of where it stood five years previously. With the rest of the Socialist Party, the YPSL entered five years of decline and malaise following the unsatisfying outcome of the 1924 campaign.
beginning in 1929, combined with a new and energetic Socialist Party leadership around 1928 Presidential Candidate Norman Thomas
and party Executive Secretary Clarence Senior
lead to a revitalization of the Socialist Party's youth wing, as the YPSL grew along with the adult party. According to National Secretary Emanuel Switkes, at the end of 1930 the national YPSL organization had about 1500 members, divided into 65 branches in 25 cities of 9 states.
The for a time the YPSL was subdivided into two divisions, a "junior" group including boys and girls from the ages 13 to 16 and a "senior" group of young women and men aged 16 to 30. The organization raised funds and collected clothing for strikes in Danville, Virginia
and Ward, West Virginia, and assisted in picketing on behalf of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the Furriers Union, the Retail Clerks Union, and others. The group also held a jamboree in Reading, Pennsylvania
, the national headquarters of the YPSL organization.
The official organ of the YPSL during the depression decade was a monthly tabloid newspaper launched in April 1933 initially called The Challenge, the name later being changed to The Challenge of Youth. The YPSL also produced a theoretical magazine and discussion bulletin called Young Socialist Review, which was available for 10 cents a copy. The magazine seems to have appeared irregularly. National Chairman of the YPSL in 1935 was Arthur G. McDowell and National Secretary was Winston Dancis.
of America, targeted at children who might otherwise be swept up by the Boy Scouts
(perceived to be a quasi-military training organization) or the Sunday schools (believed to be aimed at fostering passivity and fatalism
through inculcation of religious dogma). Boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 15 were eligible for membership in the group, of which it was said that it "trains them for service in the class struggle and membership in the Young People's Socialist League."
Yipsel Circles were called up on to "make Falcon work a part of their regular activity" and volunteers from the YPSL ranks were sought to serve as leaders and advisors of the new Junior youth organization. The group seems to have been started on YPSL initiative as the initial report of the group in the YPSL's official newspaper indicated that "the Yipsel National Executive will take up with the National Office of the Socialist Party and sympathetic labor organizations the matter of aid to the [Red Falcon] movement."
Red Falcon headquarters was located at the Rand School of Social Science
, located at 7 East 15th Street in New York City. There organization published its own monthly magazine, The Falcon Call, for its members, with the first issue having come off the press in January 1933. Activities of one branch of the group included early morning distribution of trade union
leaflets at an non-union handkerchief factory and visits to a New York museum "to see visual portrayal of the story of evolution."
The Red Falcons were accorded independent status and a full-time national office at Socialist Party headquarters late in 1935, when National Secretary Clarence Senior
preemptively acceded to the group's demand for the same, staving off a planned "March on Chicago." Sam Schwimer, editor of The Falcon Call, was chosen as the National Secretary of the group.
The Red Falcons held a "Guides' Convention" in association with the July 1936 National Convention of the Socialist Party in Cleveland, with Secretary Elizabeth Most stepping down from her position. Harry Fleischman was named by National Secretary Senior as the new head of the children's group, which claimed an organized membership of "approximately 2500."
In addition to their direct efforts in financial assistance and picketing of labor actions, the YPSL also conducted educational and propaganda activities among its members as well as providing an opportunity for like minded young people to participate in athletics, dramatic performances, and other social activities. Local branches sometimes produced their own publications, such as the monthlies The Socialist (Boston), Free Youth (New York), as well as less professional mimeographed bulletins in Chicago
, Cleveland
, Los Angeles
, and Syracuse, New York
.
1936 saw the YPSL's membership in the range between 2,000 and 6,000 members, as compared to the Young Communist League
, which had around 11,0000 members at that time. The Socialist youth organization continued to experience minimal growth, while the YCL exploded to around 22,000 members by 1939, making it far and away the leading left youth organization in the country. During the 1930s the youth party emphasized on the working class
and non-college youth, despite the fact that the leadership group were mostly college graduate". The YPSL organ, the Young Socialist Review, deemphasized college work, and instead targeting work on organizing at the High School
level. While, YPSL was periodically active in collegiate affairs, this effort was often conducted y members who were connected with other left youth organizations, such as the Student League for Industrial Democracy
.
" and an electorally-oriented "Old Guard
." Young, energetic, and brash, the YPSL branches seem to have almost universally been drawn to the Militant faction, bringing some branches into conflict with the Locals of the adult party with which they were nominally associated. The New York YPSL found themselves locked out of their office and blackballed from membership in the adult party by the Old Guard-dominated New York State Committee in early 1935 when they refused to support the weekly newspaper of the Old Guard, The New Leader. A complaint was filed and the matter was brought before the National Executive Committee for judgment at its March 23–24, 1935, session held in Buffalo, New York
. The NEC instructed the New York State Committee to adhere to the national constitution of the SPA, which called for the admission of YPSL members of 2 years good standing. Six weeks were given for compliance.
In 1936, an influx of Trotskyist
members into the adult tilted the YPSL's ideological direction to the left, with National Secretary Ernest Erber particularly supportive of the new radical trend. Several hundred members of the Trotskyist Spartacus Youth League joined the YPSL as part of a mass entry into the Socialist Party known among the Trotskyists as the "French Turn
." The Trotskyists were expelled en masse in 1937, but many young activists exited the YPSL with them during the acrimonious split.
In 1936, the party turned its attention towards campus, creating the National Student Committee. The organization was never drew many members, many speculating because of its ties with the Socialist Party of America
or because of YPSL's factionalism
. The only strength YPSL had with the campus movement, was through more sophisticated members who had earned high ranks within other student organizations, such as the American Youth Congress
(AYC) and the American Student Union (ASU). With the ever growing YCL, YPSL help founding the Youth Committee Against War (YCAW), which became an organization in which YPSL members voiced their politics about the peace movement. While ultimately did not lead to much more support, which would have been seen as one of socialisms biggest failures in the United States, to not be able to gain popular support from young workers and college students, losing many left-leaning supporters to the Communists.
When Nazi Germany
started World War II
, the SPA firmely said that they did not want the United States
to participate in the war. The relationships between YPSL and YCL was hurt by this, being that YCL wanted to join the war. The YCL drew strength from both liberals and socialist alike, many supporters were convinced that Europe
needed help to defeat the fascist state of Nazi Germany. Despite socialist opposition, both AYC and ASU both supported YCL in its foreign policies regarding the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. By the end of the 1939, YCL used much its time attacking YPSL.
(SYL) had been making overtures to YPSL. The mother party, Socialist Party of America
, told YPSL it could not have contact with the "totalitarian" organizations of SYL or ISL, although YPSL ignored this, and the relationship between YPSL and its mother party worsened. In 1953, the Socialist Party cut off money to YPSL, and then suspended YPSL's New York branch, which was the one with the most contact with SYL (and the ISL). In August, the party including the "suspended" members voted to disaffiliate with its mother party. In February 1954, the Young People's Socialist League merged with SYL to form the Young Socialist League.
The party revived YPSL after the split but by 1958. By that time the Socialist Party had merged with the Social Democratic Federation and had become the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. This was party of a strategy favored by David McReynolds
and others to merge all the democratic socialist groups into one organization. Max Shachtman
of the ISL was receptive to this idea and, after much controversy, the ISL agreed to disband, turn over its assets to the SP-SDF and its members joined the individually. The YSL mergerd with the YPSL organizationally at a convention in August 1958.
The YPSL grew quickly in the early 1960s, from 300 members in 1960 to over 800 in 1962. Two of its important leaders were Tom Kahn
and Rachelle Horowitz, two students who had joined the YSL at Brooklyn College
in the mid 1950s. They had helped organize several important civil rights demonstrations with the aid of Bayard Rustin
, including the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington and the 1958 and 1959 Youth March for Integrated Schools. In 1960 YPSL members played important roles organizing pickets at local Woolworths
in support of the Southern sit-in
s and protesting the arrival of the HUAC
to the San Francisco Bay area.
Within the SP-SDF and the YPSL, Max Shactman's group was known as the "realignment tendency", because he increasingly felt that it was better for the Socialist to create a realignment within the Democratic Party
consisting of the AFL-CIO
, African Americans and liberals. It was also anti-communist. When Shachtman made a speech supporting the Bay of Pigs Invasion
in April 1961 to the Berkeley chapter of the Socialist Party, the local YPSL chapter withdrew his invitation to speak the following day. Domestically they were against working with Stalinists
. Besides the "realignment tendency", YPSL contained more traditional "third camp
" socialists, which maintained the politics that Shachtman had formulated in the late 1940s. This was called the "labor party tendency" because they favored a labor party on the British model, rather than a strategy of reforming the Democratic Party as a socialist party.
During this period the YPSL worked within other groups, such as the Student Peace Union
and the Students for a Democratic Society
, but their internal factionalism got in the way. Mike Parker
, a yipsel of the labor party faction, had become the groups national secretary in 1960 and other yipsels poured into the SPU, where they also recruited new members. This helped to give the SPUs ideology a "Third Camp" orientation that held both the west and the USSR responsible for nuclear proliferation. Its most popular slogan was "Not Test! East or West!". However, the SPU was a base for the labor-party faction within the YPSL and the realignment tendency sought to having it merge with Student SANE to dilute their influence. This idea was defeated by Parker, but the intense YPSL factionalism within the SPU continued until the group disbanded in spring 1964.
YPSL was hostile to the new SDS "activist" approach in 1960; they were weary that it would become another "protest group" and compete with them within the civil rights movement. They were briefly successful in getting Al Haber removed as field secretary in March 1961, but he was quickly rehired after threatening to form another youth group. In May 1961 the YPSL tried to get the SDS to affiliate a number of independent groups in which it was active, such as the Politics Club at the University of Chicago
as chapters, but were rebuffed. The SDS gradually took a more radical line than its parent organization, the League for Industrial Democracy
, which was controlled by the realignment caucus. It recruited among "red diaper babies
and criticized the "'paranoic' use of terms like 'staliniod' and 'stalinist'".
The dispute came to a head at the SDSs June 1962 convention at Port Huron, Michigan
. The YPSL representative, Michael Harrington
objected to seating an observer from the Communist Party. Harrington was also upset with the manifesto adopted by the convention, the Port Huron Statement
, for its criticism of American labor unions and for its criticism of liberal and socialist opposition to communism. He was able to get some concessions, but when he got back to New York he got a call from a yipsel saying that the changes had been thrown out. Harrington alerted the LID executive board who promptly changed the locks on the SDS doors, fired Al Haber (again) and summoned the SDS leaders for a stiff "talking to". After reading the statement, the LID board found that the changes Harrington had favored had been included in the final documen; after some financial backers came to SDSs defense, the locks were removed from their office and Haber was reinstated. The incident left a negative impression on the SDS leaders toward democratic socialists and liberals.
By 1964 the SP-SDF was becoming increasingly under the control of the realignment tendency, while the YPSL was becoming more radicalized, and tended more toward Trotskyism. At its national convention in August 1964 the YPSL elected a leadership particularly hostile to the Party, passed resolutions moving the YPSLs headquarters to Chicago without consulting the Party, deleted all references to the Party in its constitution and initiated a referendum on seceding from the parent organization. The National Action Committee of the Socialist Party suspended the YPSL on September 8, pending a meeting of the full National Committee. The National Committee met on November 28–29 and passed two resolutions, one lifting the suspension if the YPSL would agree to continue in its constitutional role as the party's youth section, and another empowering it to appoint a special youth committee to co-ordinate the activities of loyal yipsels and chapters should the YPSL leadership not comply with the first resolution. Following this, the YPSL National Executive Committee voted to dissolve the organization; the Party followed through with its pledge and appointed a "caretaker" committee until a new convention could be held. When the YPSL was reconstitution its leaders and staff were mainly associates of Max Schachtman. Most of the "labor party" adherents found their way into Hal Draper
s Independent Socialist Clubs.
A number of the YPSL leaders from the late 1960s and early 1970s became notable figures, including the Carl Gershman
of the National Endowment for Democracy
, Josh Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute
and Max Green, the author of Epitaph for American Labor: Radicalism in the Union Movement (1996). Gershman, Muravchik and Green were the Vice Chairman, National Chairman and National Secretary of the organization in 1971.
from May 1–4, 1919, the Committee was supposed to consist of all State Secretaries of the YPSL organized state parties. Other members could only by elected into the Committee by a referendum vote. All unorganized state organization included in the YPSL was entitled to a National Committeeman, if the state organization consisted a membership of over 100 members. The election of a committeeman was to be supervised of a National Secretary of the organization. Members who sought a position in the National Committee or any subcommittees needed a one year's consecutive membership.
A National Secretary was nominated by the various state Leagues. Voting was by a referendum of the membership conducted by the standing National Secretary of the League. The National Secretary had a term of two years, taking office in July and was ineligible to stand for re-election after having served two-consecutive terms.
.
on the weekend of August 26–27, 1933. A total of 147 delegates were seated, representing 100 Circles in 37 cities from 14 states and one Canadian province. According to official organizational reports, the YPSL counted 204 constituent Circles with a total membership of "around 4,000."
The convention authorized the establishment of regular Educational and Student departments in addition to the Industrial Department first established at the convention of 1932. Winston Dancis was unanimously elected National Secretary, Arthur G. McDowell was elected National Chairman, succeeding the retiring Julius Umansky, and a new NEC was chosen, including Dancis, McDowell, Austin Adams (Reading, PA), John Domurad (Holyoke, MA), Aaron Levenstein (New York City), Robert Parker (Cleveland), Paul A. Rasmussen (Illinois), John Stroebel (Milwaukee), Noah C.A. Walter, Jr. (New York City), and Milton Weisberg (Pittsburgh). William Gomberg was elected National Student Secretary, Gus Tyler
Educational Secretary, and Arthur McDowell reelected as Industrial Secretary.
The case of former National Secretary Smerkin was heard by the convention. The decision of the NEC to recall Smerkin and reorganize the Chicago Circle due to their "disruptive" campaign "under Communist Party influence to divide YPSL ranks and disrupt the organization" was ratified by a vote of 110 to 9.
.
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...
. Its political activities tend to concentrate on increasing the voter turnout of young democratic socialists
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
and affecting the issues impacting that demographic group.
Foundation and early years
The youth section of the Socialist Party of AmericaSocialist 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...
(SPA) had its roots in non-coordinated groups established at the local level by party members interested in conducting special activities to attract young people to the socialist movement. These groups have diverse names, including the "Athenian Literary Society," "Young People's Alliance," and "Social Science Study Club."
The Young People's Socialist League (YPSL, pronounced "YIP-sell") was founded on May 17, 1907, in Chicago, Illinois, with the group containing about 30 members at the time of its formation. Key individuals in the formation of the group included Charles Schuler, A.W. Mance, Merle B. Haver, and Rube Burrows. Schuler remained as the Secretary of the organization all the way through 1913. Participants sought their own headquarters and held a series of money-raising entertainments and social events to that end, successful enough for the group to open an office on the third floor of the Chicago Daily Socialist Building in November 1907.
Simultaneously 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...
, several already existing socialist youth groups united themselves in 1907 to form a "Young People's Socialist Federation." In connection with this growing New York socialist youth movement, in 1908 the publishing association responsible for producing 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...
began to issue The Little Socialist Magazine for Boys and Girls — a publication which was renamed The Young Socialists' Magazine in June 1911 and which eventually became the official organ of the national YPSL movement.
The 1912 National Convention of the Socialist Party took note of a need to better coordinate the Socialist youth movement, placing it under the Women's Department of the National Office. This move proved to be merely cosmetic and there was still no national organization binding the numerous largely autonomous local organizations together until 1913. It was at this time the SPA's National Committee was pushed into action by the efforts of the party's California State Secretary, a vociferous supporter of the socialist youth movement. While there remained support among some for the formation of a semi-autonomous organization which elected its own National Secretary and Executive Committee, in the end the National Committee of the SPA decided to form a "Young People's Department," directly attached and fully subordinate to the National Office of the adult SPA.
In 1915 a unified national YPSL was formally launched when various local Circles adopted a constitution by a referendum vote. Two years later, YPSL National Secretary William "Bill" Kruse
William Kruse (American)
William F. "Bill" Kruse was an important head of the Young People's Socialist League in the 1910s. He was a member of the Socialist Party of America until 1921, acting as a leader of the party's Left Wing faction, loyal to the Third International...
reported the group had a membership of about 5,000, spread in Circles in 147 cities. The official organ of the YPSL was The Young Socialists' Magazine, with a circulation of 10,000.
World War I and the factional war
With the coming of American entry into World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, National Secretary Kruse was one of five top leaders of the SPA targeted for prosecution by the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
. Kruse was hauled into court, tried, and sentenced to 20 years in prison for purported violation of the wartime "Espionage Act" — a sentence which was finally overturned on appeal on grounds of judicial prejudice in 1920.
In 1919, the organized faction known as the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year — the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.-Precusors:A...
exited the SPA to form two organizations which would eventually unite as the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. The YPSL, headed by Left Wing supporter Oliver Carlson and generally sympathetic to the perspective of the Left Wing, initially attempted to chart an independent course from either the Socialist Party or the nascent Communist Labor Party of America and Communist Party of America. This independent course terminated financial support for the organization from the SPA, however, and the so-called Independent Young People's Socialist League essentially disintegrated, with many of the active leaders in the group enlisting in the underground communist movement, while others drifted away from political activity altogether.
The Socialist Party reorganized the YPSL with Bill Kruse reelected as its Secretary, but he, too, departed the Socialist Party for the Communist movement in 1921. The League was once again relaunched at a 1922 convention, with Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord
Albert Weisbord was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a small Trotskyist political organization of the 1930s called the Communist League of...
as National Secretary. Weisbord managed to rebuild a network of YPSL Circles but in 1924 he joined Carlson and Kruse in the ranks of the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
, "legal" successor to the underground communist movement.
The YPSL organization survived the defection of its third leader and were active in the Socialist Party-endorsed campaign of Robert M. LaFollette 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 1924. An attempt was made to start a new official publication for the organization called Free Youth, but the effort failed due to lack of funds, with the membership of the Socialist Party down to about 10% of where it stood five years previously. With the rest of the Socialist Party, the YPSL entered five years of decline and malaise following the unsatisfying outcome of the 1924 campaign.
Growth in the early 1930s
The Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
beginning in 1929, combined with a new and energetic Socialist Party leadership around 1928 Presidential Candidate Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
and party Executive Secretary Clarence Senior
Clarence Senior
Clarence Ollson Senior was, as a young man, an American socialist political activist best remembered as the National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America during the 1930s. Originally a protégé of Presidential candidate Norman Thomas, during the inner-party fight of the 1930s,...
lead to a revitalization of the Socialist Party's youth wing, as the YPSL grew along with the adult party. According to National Secretary Emanuel Switkes, at the end of 1930 the national YPSL organization had about 1500 members, divided into 65 branches in 25 cities of 9 states.
The for a time the YPSL was subdivided into two divisions, a "junior" group including boys and girls from the ages 13 to 16 and a "senior" group of young women and men aged 16 to 30. The organization raised funds and collected clothing for strikes in Danville, Virginia
Danville, Virginia
Danville is an independent city in Virginia, United States, bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina. It was the last capital of the Confederate States of America. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Danville with Pittsylvania county for...
and Ward, West Virginia, and assisted in picketing on behalf of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s...
, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the Furriers Union, the Retail Clerks Union, and others. The group also held a jamboree in Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...
, the national headquarters of the YPSL organization.
The official organ of the YPSL during the depression decade was a monthly tabloid newspaper launched in April 1933 initially called The Challenge, the name later being changed to The Challenge of Youth. The YPSL also produced a theoretical magazine and discussion bulletin called Young Socialist Review, which was available for 10 cents a copy. The magazine seems to have appeared irregularly. National Chairman of the YPSL in 1935 was Arthur G. McDowell and National Secretary was Winston Dancis.
Red Falcons
In 1933 the party established a children's organization known as the Red FalconsRed Falcons
Red Falcons was the name of various socialist youth organizations, popular in Europe and the United States, especially between the first and second world wars, but of which many are still active today...
of America, targeted at children who might otherwise be swept up by the Boy Scouts
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
(perceived to be a quasi-military training organization) or the Sunday schools (believed to be aimed at fostering passivity and fatalism
Fatalism
Fatalism is a philosophical doctrine emphasizing the subjugation of all events or actions to fate.Fatalism generally refers to several of the following ideas:...
through inculcation of religious dogma). Boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 15 were eligible for membership in the group, of which it was said that it "trains them for service in the class struggle and membership in the Young People's Socialist League."
Yipsel Circles were called up on to "make Falcon work a part of their regular activity" and volunteers from the YPSL ranks were sought to serve as leaders and advisors of the new Junior youth organization. The group seems to have been started on YPSL initiative as the initial report of the group in the YPSL's official newspaper indicated that "the Yipsel National Executive will take up with the National Office of the Socialist Party and sympathetic labor organizations the matter of aid to the [Red Falcon] movement."
Red Falcon headquarters was located at the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
, located at 7 East 15th Street in New York City. There organization published its own monthly magazine, The Falcon Call, for its members, with the first issue having come off the press in January 1933. Activities of one branch of the group included early morning distribution of 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...
leaflets at an non-union handkerchief factory and visits to a New York museum "to see visual portrayal of the story of evolution."
The Red Falcons were accorded independent status and a full-time national office at Socialist Party headquarters late in 1935, when National Secretary Clarence Senior
Clarence Senior
Clarence Ollson Senior was, as a young man, an American socialist political activist best remembered as the National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America during the 1930s. Originally a protégé of Presidential candidate Norman Thomas, during the inner-party fight of the 1930s,...
preemptively acceded to the group's demand for the same, staving off a planned "March on Chicago." Sam Schwimer, editor of The Falcon Call, was chosen as the National Secretary of the group.
The Red Falcons held a "Guides' Convention" in association with the July 1936 National Convention of the Socialist Party in Cleveland, with Secretary Elizabeth Most stepping down from her position. Harry Fleischman was named by National Secretary Senior as the new head of the children's group, which claimed an organized membership of "approximately 2500."
YPSL membership data
The 8th National Convention of the YPSL, held in 1935, raised the group's maximum membership age from 25 to 30, a decision ratified by vote of the membership.In addition to their direct efforts in financial assistance and picketing of labor actions, the YPSL also conducted educational and propaganda activities among its members as well as providing an opportunity for like minded young people to participate in athletics, dramatic performances, and other social activities. Local branches sometimes produced their own publications, such as the monthlies The Socialist (Boston), Free Youth (New York), as well as less professional mimeographed bulletins 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...
, Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
.
1936 saw the YPSL's membership in the range between 2,000 and 6,000 members, as compared to the Young Communist League
Young Communist League
The Young Communist League was or is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX was generally taken by all sections of the Communist Youth International.Examples of YCLs:...
, which had around 11,0000 members at that time. The Socialist youth organization continued to experience minimal growth, while the YCL exploded to around 22,000 members by 1939, making it far and away the leading left youth organization in the country. During the 1930s the youth party emphasized on 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...
and non-college youth, despite the fact that the leadership group were mostly college graduate". The YPSL organ, the Young Socialist Review, deemphasized college work, and instead targeting work on organizing at the High School
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
level. While, YPSL was periodically active in collegiate affairs, this effort was often conducted y members who were connected with other left youth organizations, such as the Student League for Industrial Democracy
Student League for Industrial Democracy
There have been two organization by this name, both were the student affiliates of the adult League for Industrial Democracy.*A group known originally as the Intercollegiate League for Industrial Democracy, existing as an autonomous section of the League for Industrial Democracy during the early...
.
Decline in the late 1930s
A bitter struggle between the rivaling factions appeared during the late 1930s within the mother party, between the revolutionary socialist "MilitantsMilitant faction
The Militant faction was an organized grouping of Marxists in the Socialist Party of America who sought to steer that organization from its orientation towards electoral politics and towards direct action and revolutionary socialism. The faction emerged during 1930 and 1931 and achieved practical...
" and an electorally-oriented "Old Guard
Old Guard faction
The Old Guard faction was an organized grouping of Marxists in the Socialist Party of America who sought to retain the organization's traditional orientation towards electoral politics by fighting generally younger party members who factionally organized to promote greater efforts at direct action...
." Young, energetic, and brash, the YPSL branches seem to have almost universally been drawn to the Militant faction, bringing some branches into conflict with the Locals of the adult party with which they were nominally associated. The New York YPSL found themselves locked out of their office and blackballed from membership in the adult party by the Old Guard-dominated New York State Committee in early 1935 when they refused to support the weekly newspaper of the Old Guard, The New Leader. A complaint was filed and the matter was brought before the National Executive Committee for judgment at its March 23–24, 1935, session held in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. The NEC instructed the New York State Committee to adhere to the national constitution of the SPA, which called for the admission of YPSL members of 2 years good standing. Six weeks were given for compliance.
In 1936, an influx of Trotskyist
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
members into the adult tilted the YPSL's ideological direction to the left, with National Secretary Ernest Erber particularly supportive of the new radical trend. Several hundred members of the Trotskyist Spartacus Youth League joined the YPSL as part of a mass entry into the Socialist Party known among the Trotskyists as the "French Turn
French Turn
The French Turn was the name given to the entry between 1934 and 1936 of the French Trotskyists into the Section Française de l'International Ouvrière...
." The Trotskyists were expelled en masse in 1937, but many young activists exited the YPSL with them during the acrimonious split.
In 1936, the party turned its attention towards campus, creating the National Student Committee. The organization was never drew many members, many speculating because of its ties with 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...
or because of YPSL's factionalism
Political faction
A political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
. The only strength YPSL had with the campus movement, was through more sophisticated members who had earned high ranks within other student organizations, such as the American Youth Congress
American Youth Congress
American Youth Congress was an early youth voice organization composed of youth from all across the country to discuss the problems facing youth as a whole in the 1930s. It met several years in a row - one year it notably met on the lawn of the White House. The delegates are known to have caused...
(AYC) and the American Student Union (ASU). With the ever growing YCL, YPSL help founding the Youth Committee Against War (YCAW), which became an organization in which YPSL members voiced their politics about the peace movement. While ultimately did not lead to much more support, which would have been seen as one of socialisms biggest failures in the United States, to not be able to gain popular support from young workers and college students, losing many left-leaning supporters to the Communists.
When Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
started World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the SPA firmely said that they did not want the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to participate in the war. The relationships between YPSL and YCL was hurt by this, being that YCL wanted to join the war. The YCL drew strength from both liberals and socialist alike, many supporters were convinced that Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
needed help to defeat the fascist state of Nazi Germany. Despite socialist opposition, both AYC and ASU both supported YCL in its foreign policies regarding the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. By the end of the 1939, YCL used much its time attacking YPSL.
The Cold War and Vietnam eras
By 1952, the Socialist Party's YPSL had 134 members, 62 of which had been recruited that year. The Independent Socialist League (ISL) affiliated Socialist Youth LeagueSocialist Youth League (US)
The Socialist Youth League was the youth group affiliated with the Workers Party, a splinter Trotskyist party led by Max Shachtman. The parent group changed its name to the Independent Socialist League in 1950. In February 1954, the Socialist Youth League merged with the a faction of the Young...
(SYL) had been making overtures to YPSL. The mother party, 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...
, told YPSL it could not have contact with the "totalitarian" organizations of SYL or ISL, although YPSL ignored this, and the relationship between YPSL and its mother party worsened. In 1953, the Socialist Party cut off money to YPSL, and then suspended YPSL's New York branch, which was the one with the most contact with SYL (and the ISL). In August, the party including the "suspended" members voted to disaffiliate with its mother party. In February 1954, the Young People's Socialist League merged with SYL to form the Young Socialist League.
The party revived YPSL after the split but by 1958. By that time the Socialist Party had merged with the Social Democratic Federation and had become the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. This was party of a strategy favored by David McReynolds
David McReynolds
David McReynolds is an American democratic socialist and pacifist activist who described himself as "a peace movement bureaucrat" during his 40-year career with Liberation magazine and the War Resisters League...
and others to merge all the democratic socialist groups into one organization. Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He evolved from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL-CIO President George Meany.-Beginnings:...
of the ISL was receptive to this idea and, after much controversy, the ISL agreed to disband, turn over its assets to the SP-SDF and its members joined the individually. The YSL mergerd with the YPSL organizationally at a convention in August 1958.
The YPSL grew quickly in the early 1960s, from 300 members in 1960 to over 800 in 1962. Two of its important leaders were Tom Kahn
Tom Kahn
Tom David Kahn was an American social democrat known for his leadership in other organizations. He was an activist and influential strategist in the African-American civil-rights movement. He was a senior adviser and leader in the U.S. labor movement.Kahn was raised in New York City. At...
and Rachelle Horowitz, two students who had joined the YSL at Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
in the mid 1950s. They had helped organize several important civil rights demonstrations with the aid of Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
, including the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington and the 1958 and 1959 Youth March for Integrated Schools. In 1960 YPSL members played important roles organizing pickets at local Woolworths
F. W. Woolworth Company
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first successful Woolworth store was opened on July 18, 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store"...
in support of the Southern sit-in
Sit-in
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment.-Process:In a sit-in, protesters remain until they are evicted, usually by force, or arrested, or until their requests have been met...
s and protesting the arrival of the HUAC
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
to the San Francisco Bay area.
Within the SP-SDF and the YPSL, Max Shactman's group was known as the "realignment tendency", because he increasingly felt that it was better for the Socialist to create a realignment within the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
consisting of the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
, African Americans and liberals. It was also anti-communist. When Shachtman made a speech supporting the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
in April 1961 to the Berkeley chapter of the Socialist Party, the local YPSL chapter withdrew his invitation to speak the following day. Domestically they were against working with Stalinists
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. Besides the "realignment tendency", YPSL contained more traditional "third camp
Third camp
The third camp, also known as third camp socialism or third camp Trotskyism, is a branch of socialism which aims to oppose both capitalism and Stalinism, by supporting the organised working class as a "third camp"....
" socialists, which maintained the politics that Shachtman had formulated in the late 1940s. This was called the "labor party tendency" because they favored a labor party on the British model, rather than a strategy of reforming the Democratic Party as a socialist party.
During this period the YPSL worked within other groups, such as the Student Peace Union
Student Peace Union
Student Peace Union was a nationwide student organization active on college campuses in the United States from 1959 to 1964. Its national headquarters were located near the campus of the University of Chicago....
and the Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
, but their internal factionalism got in the way. Mike Parker
Mike Parker
Michael Parker is an American politician from the U.S. state of Mississippi. He served in Congress as a member of the Democratic Party and, later, the Republican Party. He later served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army, with authority over the U.S...
, a yipsel of the labor party faction, had become the groups national secretary in 1960 and other yipsels poured into the SPU, where they also recruited new members. This helped to give the SPUs ideology a "Third Camp" orientation that held both the west and the USSR responsible for nuclear proliferation. Its most popular slogan was "Not Test! East or West!". However, the SPU was a base for the labor-party faction within the YPSL and the realignment tendency sought to having it merge with Student SANE to dilute their influence. This idea was defeated by Parker, but the intense YPSL factionalism within the SPU continued until the group disbanded in spring 1964.
YPSL was hostile to the new SDS "activist" approach in 1960; they were weary that it would become another "protest group" and compete with them within the civil rights movement. They were briefly successful in getting Al Haber removed as field secretary in March 1961, but he was quickly rehired after threatening to form another youth group. In May 1961 the YPSL tried to get the SDS to affiliate a number of independent groups in which it was active, such as the Politics Club at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
as chapters, but were rebuffed. The SDS gradually took a more radical line than its parent organization, the League for Industrial Democracy
League for Industrial Democracy
The League for Industrial Democracy , from 1960-1965 known as the Students for a Democratic Society , was founded in 1905 by a group of notable socialists including Harry W. Laidler, Jack London, Norman Thomas, Upton Sinclair, and J.G. Phelps Stokes...
, which was controlled by the realignment caucus. It recruited among "red diaper babies
Red diaper baby
Red diaper baby describes a child of parents who were members of the United States Communist Party or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims.-History:...
and criticized the "'paranoic' use of terms like 'staliniod' and 'stalinist'".
The dispute came to a head at the SDSs June 1962 convention at Port Huron, Michigan
Port Huron, Michigan
Port Huron is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of St. Clair County. The population was 30,184 at the 2010 census. The city is adjacent to Port Huron Township but is administratively autonomous. It is joined by the Blue Water Bridge over the St. Clair River to Sarnia,...
. The YPSL representative, Michael Harrington
Michael Harrington
Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington was an American democratic socialist, writer, political activist, professor of political science, radio commentator and founder of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Personal life:...
objected to seating an observer from the Communist Party. Harrington was also upset with the manifesto adopted by the convention, the Port Huron Statement
Port Huron Statement
The Port Huron Statement is the manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society , written primarily by Tom Hayden, then the Field Secretary of SDS, and completed on June 15, 1962 at an SDS convention at what is now a state park in Lakeport, Michigan, a...
, for its criticism of American labor unions and for its criticism of liberal and socialist opposition to communism. He was able to get some concessions, but when he got back to New York he got a call from a yipsel saying that the changes had been thrown out. Harrington alerted the LID executive board who promptly changed the locks on the SDS doors, fired Al Haber (again) and summoned the SDS leaders for a stiff "talking to". After reading the statement, the LID board found that the changes Harrington had favored had been included in the final documen; after some financial backers came to SDSs defense, the locks were removed from their office and Haber was reinstated. The incident left a negative impression on the SDS leaders toward democratic socialists and liberals.
By 1964 the SP-SDF was becoming increasingly under the control of the realignment tendency, while the YPSL was becoming more radicalized, and tended more toward Trotskyism. At its national convention in August 1964 the YPSL elected a leadership particularly hostile to the Party, passed resolutions moving the YPSLs headquarters to Chicago without consulting the Party, deleted all references to the Party in its constitution and initiated a referendum on seceding from the parent organization. The National Action Committee of the Socialist Party suspended the YPSL on September 8, pending a meeting of the full National Committee. The National Committee met on November 28–29 and passed two resolutions, one lifting the suspension if the YPSL would agree to continue in its constitutional role as the party's youth section, and another empowering it to appoint a special youth committee to co-ordinate the activities of loyal yipsels and chapters should the YPSL leadership not comply with the first resolution. Following this, the YPSL National Executive Committee voted to dissolve the organization; the Party followed through with its pledge and appointed a "caretaker" committee until a new convention could be held. When the YPSL was reconstitution its leaders and staff were mainly associates of Max Schachtman. Most of the "labor party" adherents found their way into Hal Draper
Hal Draper
Hal Draper was an American socialist activist and author who played a significant role in the Berkeley, California, Free Speech Movement and is perhaps best known for his extensive scholarship on the history and meaning of the thought of Karl Marx.Draper was a lifelong advocate of what he called...
s Independent Socialist Clubs.
A number of the YPSL leaders from the late 1960s and early 1970s became notable figures, including the Carl Gershman
Carl Gershman
Carl Gershman has been the President of the National Endowment for Democracy since its 1984 founding. He had served as the U.S...
of the National Endowment for Democracy
National Endowment for Democracy
The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is a U.S. non-profit organization that was founded in 1983 to promote US-friendly democracy by providing cash grants funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress...
, Josh Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
and Max Green, the author of Epitaph for American Labor: Radicalism in the Union Movement (1996). Gershman, Muravchik and Green were the Vice Chairman, National Chairman and National Secretary of the organization in 1971.
First National Convention
According to YPSL first national conventionNational Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
from May 1–4, 1919, the Committee was supposed to consist of all State Secretaries of the YPSL organized state parties. Other members could only by elected into the Committee by a referendum vote. All unorganized state organization included in the YPSL was entitled to a National Committeeman, if the state organization consisted a membership of over 100 members. The election of a committeeman was to be supervised of a National Secretary of the organization. Members who sought a position in the National Committee or any subcommittees needed a one year's consecutive membership.
A National Secretary was nominated by the various state Leagues. Voting was by a referendum of the membership conducted by the standing National Secretary of the League. The National Secretary had a term of two years, taking office in July and was ineligible to stand for re-election after having served two-consecutive terms.
1932 National Convention
The 1932 National Convention decided to launch a new official newspaper for the YPSL, a monthly which was born the following spring as The ChallengeChallenge (1933)
Challenge was a tabloid-sized monthly newspaper established in Chicago in April 1933 which served as the official organ of the Young People's Socialist League, youth section of the Socialist Party of America...
.
7th National Convention
The 7th National Convention of the YPSL was held in Reading, PennsylvaniaReading, Pennsylvania
Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...
on the weekend of August 26–27, 1933. A total of 147 delegates were seated, representing 100 Circles in 37 cities from 14 states and one Canadian province. According to official organizational reports, the YPSL counted 204 constituent Circles with a total membership of "around 4,000."
The convention authorized the establishment of regular Educational and Student departments in addition to the Industrial Department first established at the convention of 1932. Winston Dancis was unanimously elected National Secretary, Arthur G. McDowell was elected National Chairman, succeeding the retiring Julius Umansky, and a new NEC was chosen, including Dancis, McDowell, Austin Adams (Reading, PA), John Domurad (Holyoke, MA), Aaron Levenstein (New York City), Robert Parker (Cleveland), Paul A. Rasmussen (Illinois), John Stroebel (Milwaukee), Noah C.A. Walter, Jr. (New York City), and Milton Weisberg (Pittsburgh). William Gomberg was elected National Student Secretary, Gus Tyler
Gus Tyler
August "Gus" Tyler was an American socialist activist of the 1930s, a labor union official, author, and newspaper columnist...
Educational Secretary, and Arthur McDowell reelected as Industrial Secretary.
The case of former National Secretary Smerkin was heard by the convention. The decision of the NEC to recall Smerkin and reorganize the Chicago Circle due to their "disruptive" campaign "under Communist Party influence to divide YPSL ranks and disrupt the organization" was ratified by a vote of 110 to 9.
1935 National Convention
The 1935 National Convention of the YPSL was held in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh, 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...
.
National Secretaries
- William F. "Bill" KruseWilliam Kruse (American)William F. "Bill" Kruse was an important head of the Young People's Socialist League in the 1910s. He was a member of the Socialist Party of America until 1921, acting as a leader of the party's Left Wing faction, loyal to the Third International...
(1915–1919) - Oliver Carlson (1919–1921)
- Albert WeisbordAlbert WeisbordAlbert Weisbord was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a small Trotskyist political organization of the 1930s called the Communist League of...
(1922–1924) - Emanuel Switkes
- George Smerkin (c. May 1933) —removed by YPSL NEC for participation in unsanctioned political activities.
- Winston "Win" Dancis (May 1933-?)
- Ben Fischer (c. 1935)
Official publications
- Young Socialists' Magazine
- Free Youth (New York) (February 15, 1931 - November 1, 1931) —semi-monthly, 18 issues produced.
- The ChallengeChallenge (1933)Challenge was a tabloid-sized monthly newspaper established in Chicago in April 1933 which served as the official organ of the Young People's Socialist League, youth section of the Socialist Party of America...
(Chicago and New York) (March 1933 - September 1946)