Vito Marcantonio - Political Ideology and Relationship With Other Political Parties and Movements

Political Ideology and Relationship With Other Political Parties and Movements

Marcantonio, who was arguably one of the more left wing Members of Congress, said that party loyalty was less important than voting his conscience (he was, however, usually the only member of his party in office). He was sympathetic to the Socialist and Communist parties, and to labor unions. He was investigated by the FBI, as many were suspicious of him because of his alleged sympathy with communism and ties to the Communist Party. In 1940, he helped form the American Peace Mobilization, identified as a communist front group, to keep the U.S. from participating in World War II, and served as its vice-chair. He appeared in a newsreel in 1940 denouncing 'the imperialist war', (the line taken by Joseph Stalin and his supporters until the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941). Marcantonio was also a Vice President of the International Workers Order, a fraternal benefit society unofficially affiliated with the Communist Party.

Marcantonio's district was centered in East Harlem, New York City, which had many residents of Italian and Puerto Rican origin. Fluent in Spanish as well as Italian, he was considered an ally of the Puerto Rican community and an advocate for the rights of the workers and the poor.

He was so popular in that district that he sometimes won the Democratic and Republican primaries, as well as the American Labor Party endorsement. Aside from Marcantonio, the only American Laborite congressman was Leo Isacson, who served in Congress from 1948 to 1949, after winning a special election but being defeated in a general election. As the sole representative of his party for most of his years in Congress, Marcantonio never held a committee chairmanship. After his defeat in 1950 and the withdrawal of Communist Party support for the ALP, the party soon fell apart. At the time of his death in 1954, he was running for Congress as the candidate of a newly formed third party, the Good Neighbor Party.

Though he initially opposed US entry into World War II, he became a supporter after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. He later campaigned in 1942 to expand the U.S. military commitment to a second front in Europe, a special interest of the USSR, which had ordered Communists throughout the world to promote the idea. He opposed American involvement in the Korean War, while suggesting that the Soviet-imposed regime in North Korea had been the victim of an unprovoked attack by South Korea, citing articles by the radical journalist I.F. Stone.