Labor Party (United States) - Organizational History - Forerunners and Origins

Forerunners and Origins

In 1872, the International, a European-based international organization for a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations, moved its headquarters to New York City. It was in a weakened and disorganized state, having recently suffered a bitter internal struggle between Marxists, who supported trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and anarchists, led by Mikhail Bakunin, who advocated the immediate revolutionary overthrow of organized government.

In 1874, the members of the American-based International, led by cigarmaker Adolph Strasser and carpenter Peter McGuire joined forces with socialists from Newark and Philadelphia to form the ephemeral Social-Democratic Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States.

Despite these organizational efforts, the socialist movement in America remained deeply divided over tactics. Newcomers from Germany often sought to follow the same parliamentary 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 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 SLP achieved its most notable electoral success in Chicago, where in 1878-79, its candidates won slots for a state senator, three state representatives, and four city aldermen.

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 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 militia and regulars in the railway strikes of 1877, a new plan was devised by the Chicago agitators. This found expression in the Lehr und Wehr Verein (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. 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.