American Socialist Party

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Logo of the Socialist Party of America from 1901–1973

The Socialist Party of America ( SPA ) was a socialist political party in the United States and an American part of the Socialist International . It was founded in 1901 by the merger of the Social Democratic Party of Eugene V. Debs , which had been founded three years earlier by veterans of the Pullman strike at the American Railway Union , and a wing of the older Socialist Labor Party of America . The party was disbanded in 1973 after long conflicts over the Vietnam War . The successor parties are the Socialist Party of the USA (SPUSA), the Social Democrats USA (SDUSA) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

history

Early history

From 1901 until the outbreak of World War I , the Socialist Party was in its own view the most successful third party of the 20th century in the United States, with thousands of locally elected officials. There were two socialists, Meyer London from New York and Victor L. Berger from Wisconsin , who were members of Congress ; over 70 mayors and many state parliaments and city council members. Socialist organizations were strongest in the Midwest , especially Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

The programmatic spectrum of the first members ranged from a more labor-oriented socialism , as in New York's party chairman Morris Hillquit and Congressman Berger, to a radical syndicalism of the IWW as in Bill Haywood and the long-serving agrarian-utopian radicalism as in Julius Wayland , who did the Central organ, Appeal To Reason . The party membership was made up of trade unionists, miners, immigrants and intellectuals, who were often at odds with one another. The party had a strained relationship with the AFL union at the time . While the latter was outwardly against the socialists, party leaders such as Berger and Hillquit pushed for cooperation with the AFL in the hope of establishing a broader workers' party. Their leading ally in the AFL was Max Hayes , President of the International Typographical Union . However, these efforts were punished with bitter contempt by many in the Socialist Party.

On June 16, 1918, party leader Eugene Victor Debs gave an antiwar speech in Canton , Ohio , protesting World War I. He was arrested under the Sedition Act of 1918 , which criminalized any criticism of the government's war policy. He was charged and given a 10-year prison term. The rejection of the First World War caused a decline in the membership of the older members. An increase in membership in their language groups from countries involved in the October Revolution turned out to be an illusion, as these members were soon lost to the Communist Labor Party . The party also lost some of its best activists in favor of America's entry into World War I. These included Walter Lippmann , John Spargo , George Phelps Stokes and William English Walling . Without further ado, they formed a group called the National Party . They were hoping to team up with what remains of Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party and the Prohibition Party .

Exclusion of supporters of Bolshevism

In January 1919 Lenin invited the left wing of the Socialist Party to found the Comintern .

The left wing held a conference in June 1919 to regain control of the party. This was to be done by demanding that sections of the party who had been excluded be given their seats back. The language associations that Charles Ruthenberg and Louis Fraina eventually joined , however, abandoned these efforts and founded their own party, the Communist Party of America (CPA) , at their own congress in Chicago on September 2, 1919 . At the same time, a group around Alfred Wagenknecht founded the Communist Labor Party, which was to reunite with parts of the CPA in 1920 and with the rest of the CPA in 1921.

Meanwhile, plans put forward by John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow to crush the Socialist Party Congress were moving forward. When they were made aware of this, those responsible notified the police, who removed the left from the hall. The remaining delegates on the left also left the hall and met with the excluded delegates. This led to the establishment of the Communist Labor Party on September 1, 1919. The two parties eventually merged in 1921 to form the forerunner of the United States Communist Party .

Election campaigns

From 1904 to 1912, Eugene V. Debs ran in every presidential election as a candidate for the Socialist Party. The best result was achieved in the 1912 election campaign when Debs received 6% of the vote on his party. In 1920 Debs ran again as a presidential candidate; this time from prison, where he was serving a sentence for publicly speaking out against the entry of the United States into the First World War. It received roughly the same number of votes as in the 1912 election. Debs was pardoned on Christmas 1921 by then-US President Warren G. Harding .

In 1924 there was no presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. She helped the AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods support the Progressive Party candidate , Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin. Under the leadership of Debs and Hillquit, American socialists followed the example of the UK socialists who in just a few years created the Labor Party . It was against the heartfelt appeals of Debs and Hillquit that the new party disbanded in 1925.

In 1928 the Socialist Party ran again alone in the presidential election. The leadership of the party at the time was Norman Thomas , a Presbyterian pastor from Harlem and founder of the human rights organization American Civil Liberties Union . Thomas remained the party's presidential candidate until after the end of World War II .

The turn to the left

During the Great Depression the party experienced a large increase in membership, especially among the youth. However, the youth leaders quickly gained the view of reconciliation and reunification with the CPUSA while maintaining the Comintern's united front policy . The leaders of the united front were Reinhold Niebuhr , Andrew Biemiller , Daniel Hoan and Gus Tyler . Many of these individuals became founding members of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a key liberal organization during the Cold War . The so-called "militants" triumphed at the party congress of the Socialist Party in Detroit in June 1934. They accelerated the departure of the opposing "Old Guard" led by Louis Waldman and David Dubinsky and the establishment of a national peasant workers' party led by Huey Pierce Long , aspired to. After this failed, the leaders of the "Old Guard" founded the Social Democratic Federation in 1936 , unwittingly supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt .

At that time, the militants, while maintaining the strategies of the Popular Front (veiled implementation of communist goals through cooperation with social democratic and bourgeois parties), were on a wave of success like Roosevelt. The party was then supported by the mass entries of the American supporters of Leon Trotsky , James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman . The Trotskyists caused great turmoil within the party, especially since they were able to win the majority of the party youth for their positions, which ultimately led to their exclusion in 1938.

Time of dwindling

From 1940 only a small core remained in the party. In 1948, Norman Thomas ran his final presidential candidacy, after which he became a critical supporter of the post-war liberal consensus. The party had some local successes in Milwaukee , Bridgeport ( Connecticut ) and Reading ( Pennsylvania ). In New York, their candidates often ran on Liberal lists . In 1956 the party reconciled and reunited with the Social Democratic Federation . In 1958, the party admitted members of the Independent Socialist League , previously led by Trotsky's former confidante Max Shachtman. Although he turned to a social democratic stance, Shachtman was merely promoting the French turn policy , which he had advocated since the 1930s. Shachtman's younger followers such as Bayard Rustin were able to inject new energy into the party and help it play an active role in the civil rights movement .

Splitting up

In the late 1960s, the Socialist Party fell under the control of Shachtman's supporters, who separated themselves from the New Left by supporting the Vietnam War and the right wing of the Democratic Party , led by Scoop Jackson . After long, grueling conflict, they gained full control of the party in 1973 and renamed it Social Democrats USA (SDUSA).

Meanwhile, the wing of the party, led by Michael Harrington , formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (later, after merging with the New American Movement in 1983, Democratic Socialists of America , DSA), which also worked within the Democratic Party, but only by theirs left wing, which was led by George McGovern , was assisted. They had some success in the 1970s but were dependent on Harrington's personality and, later, on the support of Jesse Jackson . A third part of the old party, led by the well-known anti-war activist David McReynolds , claimed the name Socialist Party of the USA (SPUSA). This last newly formed Socialist Party has grown into a small third party in the United States with nearly 1,500 members. This party, which represents a decidedly left-wing socialist position, regularly puts up candidates for public office, but mostly without great success.

Presidential candidates

(for candidates from 1976 to today: see US Socialist Party )

See also

literature

  • Eric Thomas Chester: True Mission. Socialists and the Labor Party Question in the US Pluto Press UK et al., London et al. 2004, ISBN 0-7453-2214-X .

Web links