The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a 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 of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.It was also known as the "Socialist Party of the United States" (as early as the 1910s) and "Socialist Party USA" (as early as 1935, most common in the 1960s), but the organization's official name has always been "Socialist Party of America".
In the first decades of the 20th century, the SPA drew significant support from many different groups, including trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers and immigrants.For example, see "Immigrants, Negroes, Intellectuals, Millionaires and Ministers", Chapter 2 of The Socialist Party of America: A history by David A. Shannon, Macmillan Books (New York, 1955) and Quadrangle Books (Chicago, 1967). Eugene V. Debs twice won over 900,000 votes in presidential elections (1912 and 1920), while the party also elected two U.S. representatives (Victor L. Berger and Meyer London), dozens of state legislators, more than 100 mayors, and countless lesser officials.James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925, New York: Vintage Books, 1969, pp. 116–118 (Tables 2 and 3). The party's staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression, and vigilante persecution. The party was further shattered by a factional war over how to respond to the October Revolution in the Russian Republic in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919—many members left the Socialist Party to found Leninist parties including the Communist Party USA.
After endorsing Robert M. La Follette's Progressive Party in 1924, the party returned to independent action at the presidential level. It had modest growth in the early 1930s behind presidential candidate Norman Thomas. The party's appeal was weakened by the popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the organization and flexibility of the Communist Party under Earl Browder and the resurgent labor movement's desire to support sympathetic Democratic Party politicians. A divisive and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to broaden the party by admitting followers of Leon Trotsky and Jay Lovestone caused the traditional Old Guard faction to leave and form the Social Democratic Federation. While the party was always strongly anti-fascist as well as anti-Stalinist, its opposition to American entry into World War II cost it both internal and external support.
The party stopped running presidential candidates after 1956, when its nominee, Darlington Hoopes, won fewer than 6,000 votes. In the party's last decades, its members, many of them prominent in the labor, peace, civil rights, and civil liberties movements, fundamentally disagreed about the socialist movement's relationship to the labor movement and the Democratic Party and about how best to advance democracy abroad. In 1970–1973, these strategic differences became so acute that the SPA changed its name to Social Democrats, USA, both because the term "party" in its name had confused the public and to distance itself from the Soviet Union. Leaders of two of its caucuses formed separate socialist organizations, the Socialist Party USA and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, the precursor of the Democratic Socialists of America.
History
Early history
In 1901, the Socialist Party was formed by a merger between the Social Democratic Party of America (headquartered in Chicago, IL) and dissident Lassallean members of the Socialist Labor Party of America, who had also adopted the name Social Democratic Party of America (headquartered in Springfield, MA). The new party chose "socialist" over "social democratic" because the latter lost its meaning when translated from German to English.
From 1901 to the onset of World War I, the Socialist Party had numerous elected officials throughout the United States. The Mapping Social Movements Project has identified more than 1,000 elected Party members in 353 cities and towns. There were two Socialist members of Congress, Meyer London of New York City and Victor Berger of Milwaukee (a part of the sewer socialism movement, a major front in socialism, Milwaukee being the first major city to elect a socialist mayor, which it did four times between 1910 and 1956); over 70 mayors; and many state legislators and city councilors. The party was able to successfully run candidates in smaller municipalities as well as big cities, winning the mayoralty of Butte, Montana, with Lewis Duncan and that of Schenectady, New York, with George R. Lunn. Its voting strength was greatest among recent Jewish, Finnish and German immigrants, coal miners and former populist farmers in the Midwest.Shannon, David (1955). The Socialist Party of America: A History. According to Jimmy Weinstein, its electoral base was strongest west of the Mississippi River, "in the states where mining, lumbering, and tenant farming prevailed". It was also able to attract support from railroad workers. Its vote shares were highest in Oklahoma, Nevada, Montana, Washington, California, Idaho, Florida, Arizona and Wisconsin, and it also attracted support in Texas, Arkansas and Kansas. From 1900 (before its formal union) to 1912, it ran Eugene V. Debs for president at each election. The best showing ever for a socialist ticket was in 1912, when Debs gained 901,551 total votes, 6% of the popular vote. In 1920, Debs ran again, this time while imprisoned for opposing World War I, and received 913,693 votes, 3.4% of the total.
Early political perspectives ranged from radical socialism to social democracy. Victor Berger and New York party leader Morris Hillquit sat on the party's more social democratic or right-wing side. Radical socialists and syndicalists, including Debs and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), sat on the left. There were also agrarian utopian-leaning radicals, such as Julius Wayland of Kansas, who edited the party's leading national newspaper, Appeal to Reason, along with trade unionists; Jewish, Finnish and German immigrants; and intellectuals such as Walter Lippmann and the Black activist/intellectual Hubert Harrison. The party outsourced its newspapers and publications so that it would not have an internal editorial board that was a power in its own right. As a result, a handful of outside publishers dominated the published messages the party distributed and agitated for a much more radical anti-capitalist revolutionary message than the party itself tolerated. The Appeal to Reason newspaper thus became part of its radical left wing as did the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company of Chicago, which produced over half of the pamphlets and books that were sold at party meetings.Martinek, Jason D. (2010). "Business at the Margins of Capitalism: Charles H. Kerr and Company and the Progressive Era Socialist Movement" (PDF). Business & Economic History On-Line. Vol. 8. p. 6.
Approaches to agriculture and farmers' interests were subject to significant debate in the party. While members in most parts of the country advocated collective farming, the Texas and Oklahoma state parties supported populist policies based on small-scale farm ownership, which socialists elsewhere considered economically backward. The populist position was backed by Algie Martin Simons, who argued that small farmers were not being eradicated under capitalist pressure as many socialists believed, but that they were "a permanent factor in the agricultural life in America" and that socialist and labor movements needed to attract their support to advance working-class interests. After disappointing performances in the 1908 elections when it ran on an under-developed agrarian platform based on land collectivization, in 1912 the party adopted a program of reforms including state-backed agricultural cooperatives, socialization of transport, storage and processing facilities, progressive land taxes, and government-supported land leases for small farmers.
Positions in the party on racial segregation varied and were the subject of heated debate from its foundation to the 1919 split. At its founding convention, a resolution was presented in favor of "equal rights for all human beings without distinction of color, race or sex", specifically highlighting African Americans as particularly oppressed and exploited and calling for them to be organized by the socialist and labor movements. This was opposed by a number of white delegates, who argued that specific appeals to black workers were unnecessary. Two of the black delegates present agreed with this position, but the third, William Costley, held that blacks were in "a distinct and peculiar position in contradiction to other laboring elements in the United States". Costley introduced his own resolution, which also condemned the campaign of "lynching, burning and disenfranchisement" that black Americans suffered. His resolution passed, albeit with the language on "lynching, burning, and disenfranchisement" removed.
While the resolution enshrined a commitment to opposing racism, sections of the party continued to argue against that. For example, Victor Berger drew on scientific racism to claim that blacks and mulattoes "constitute[d] a lower race". They were opposed by others who defended the spirit of the resolution, most notably Debs. This spread of opinion was reflected in the drawing up of constitutions by state parties in the South. The Socialist Party of Louisiana initially adopted a "Negro clause" that opposed disenfranchisement of blacks, but it supported segregation. The clause was supported by some Southern socialists and opposed by others, although this was not because of its accommodation of racism as such, but because it officially enshrined this accommodation. The party's National Committee persuaded the Louisiana party to withdraw the clause, but when the state party subsequently established segregated branches, the wider party did not object. Segregated locals could also be found in state parties in Texas and elsewhere. When Texas socialists established a Land Renters' Union in 1911, they initially banned black tenants from joining, before later setting up segregated locals for black and brown farmers.