Socialist Parties of the United States

 

     In spite of the obvious advantages of a popular front against exploitation the left has always been a fractious place.  What some participants and historians might see as the struggle to develop a correct “line” that will most effectively advance the people’s cause will seem to others internecine infighting. At times, activists were perhaps influenced by the temptation to defeat one’s comrades when capitalism seemed too big a bully to challenge.  Nonetheless, the history of American revolutionary groups is a rich one, full of heroism and critical to the reforms that have made our economic system more livable for more people over the last hundred and fifty years.  This survey is meant to pay tribute to the generations of activists who have moved the country forward, and socialists have been at the forefront of nearly every campaign for social progress from abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and labor rights, but it may also remind progressives of the energy lost to factionalism.

     I have sought to include in this list all parties explicitly calling for revolutionary change while excluding reformist or mixed groups like the Progressive Parties associated with Robert LaFollette and with Henry Wallace, or the Working Families or New York Liberal Party.  I have concentrated on groups that meant to initiate a mass electoral movement, however limited their success.  The Industrial Workers of the World is included due to its outsize role in American history though it was a union and not a political party.

     Though my arrangement is primarily chronological, some broad general groupings exist.  The early groups contributed to the formation of the Socialist Party which has been the top socialist vote-getter by far, having achieved totals little short of a million in 1912 and 1920 with Debs as candidate and in 1932 with Norman Thomas at the head of the ticket.  The formation of what came to be called the Old Left was inspired by the Bolshevik victory in Russia and the formation of the Comintern.  Though the Communist Party was America’s most organized and active left-wing group, its members were obliged to adopt the Soviet line and to suppress internal discussion.  Later, with the arrival of the New Left in the ‘sixties, others imitated the Maoist program while some sought to follow models from Cuba or Vietnam.   Since the collapse of the mass movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, many groups of the New Communist Movement, none very large, argued over correct policy while many other leftists worked in single-issue groups.

     The overwhelming positive implication of this simple listing is the evidence it provides of a grand tradition of workers, both native-born and immigrant, continuously agitating for a better society, thus illuminating a history often ignored.  It suggests as well several negative factors that have contributed to the relative weakness of socialist ideas in the American political forum. 

     First is factionalism itself.  Apart from dividing workers and thus diluting their interests, this tends to encourage the suppression of open discussion essential for a vigorous movement.  In politics, as in science and other arenas, the enforcement of orthodoxy deaden progress.  There can be no certainty that a given analysis or strategy is effective; a healthy organization will be always ready to consider opposing conclusions from the facts and to take new information into account.  For political purposes numbers are far more useful than a theoretically perfect program.

     The development of antidemocratic tendencies was further encouraged by the emulation of foreign regimes whether Soviet, Chinese, or Third World.  Just as the people’s victory in Russia was largekly subverted by the Leninist idea of a dictatorship euphemistically labeled “democratic centralism” and Stalin’s dictatorship.  Communist parties were until recent times intolerant of internal discussion.  The unfortunate effects of Americans “tailing” after other regimes rather than seeking appropriate American solutions include agitation against comrades such as Trotskyites and the artificial linking of the priorities of socialists in the United States with the practices in countries abroad with claims to be socialist.

     The hard fact is that the most disciplined parties, typified by the Communists of the ‘thirties, have been the most effective.   The same pattern emerged again in the ‘sixties as activists from Socialist Workers and Progressive Labor in gained outsize influence in contrast to the more casually organized members of SDS.  An openness to the free discussion of new ideas seems contrary to the unanimity useful for collective action.   This dialectic is evident today on the right wing as the Trumpite fascists have proven far more successful than the more reasonable traditional Republicans.

     Most Americans have a shallow involvement in politics and, unfortunately, little grasp of their own interests.  They have often been distracted and misled by racism, sexism, and xenophobia, but some in every generation have recognized that socialism offers the solution of social and economic problems.  The following list is a reminder of this ongoing struggle.  I am sure it is far from complete.

 

 

1876 The Socialist Labor Party (originally the Workingmen's Party of the United States) was the first socialist party in the United States.  Some elements broke to help form the Socialist Party.  

1898 the Social Democratic Party of America was founded which merged into the Socialist Party in 1901.

1901 the Socialist Party organized including elements of the Socialist Labor Party.  In 1971 the party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA which split in 1973 into two factions, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the Socialist Party USA.

1905 Industrial Workers of the World as a union did not run candidates but included people from the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party.

1919 Communist Party of the USA from a split in the Socialist Party.  Another splinter, the Communist Labor Party of America merged with the CPUSA in 1921.

1928 Communist League of America formed by Trotskyites after their expulsion from the CPUSA which in 1934 joined with the American Workers Party to establish the Workers Party of the United States which lasted until 1936 when its members joined the Socialist Party.

1934 Workers Party of the United States formed by the merger of the Trotskyist Communist League of America and A. J. Muste's American Workers Party.

1935 the Revolutionary Workers League split from the Workers Party of the United States, disbanded in 1946

1936 American Labor Party formed by members of the Socialist Party.

1937 Socialist Workers Party of Trotskyites expelled from the Socialist Party.

1938 the Leninist League broke from Trotsky and the Socialist Workers Party, In 1946 it was renamed the Workers League for a Revolutionary Party.

1959 Workers World Party split from SWP.

1962 Progressive Labor Movement formed by Maoists within the CPUSA renamed Progressive Labor Party in 1965.

1964 Spartacist League split from the Socialist Workers.

1966 Black Panther Party disbanded in 1982.

1966 Freedom Socialist Party feminist split from Socialist Workers, spawned the Radical Women activist group.

1967 Marxist-Leninist Party (USA), dissolved in 1973.

1967 Peace and Freedom Party.

1967 Youth International Party formed by hip radicals

1968 Young Lords, a Chicago gang, reformed as a political group.

1968 Young Patriots formed by white Southerners in Chicago along the model of the Black Panthers.

1968 White Panthers formed by hip white radicals along the model of the Black Panthers.

1970 Gray Panthers, old persons group along the model of the Black Panthers.

1971 People’s Party, a national grouping including the Peace and Freedom Party that functioned only in the 1972 election, reformed in 2017 by supporters of Bernie Sanders

1971 New American Movement, formed by SDS members, merged with DSOC in 1983 to establish the Democratic Socialists of America

1971 Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) was formed from the October League (Marxist–Leninist), many of whose members had been SDS activists who followed a Maoist line.

1972 The African People's Socialist Party.

1973 Communist Workers' Party split from Progressive Labor, dissolved to join New Democratic Movement in 1985.

1975 Revolutionary Communist Party (originally the Revolutionary Union)  split from Progressive Labor.

1986 Labor Militant founded by Trotskyites, changed to Socialist Alternative (United States) in 1998.

1990 Green Party evolved from environmentally concerned Committees of Correspondence

1995 Socialist Equality Party (United States) formed by the Workers League, the US supporters of the ICFI. The Workers League had been founded in 1966 by the American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI), which emerged out of a split with the Socialist Workers Party

2004 Party for Socialism and Liberation, split from Workers World

Four Political Poems by Heinrich Heine

 

My translations are followed by the German originals. 

 

     Heinrich Heine’s collection Neue Gedichte (1844) contains a section titled “Zeitgedichte” which may be translated “poems of the times,” or “topical poems.”  Many of these had appeared in the radical German journal Vorwärts! which had been established in Paris by the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer to avoid censorship in German-speaking lands.  Karl Marx had contributed from its start and, in the latter part of the publication’s scant year of existence, and, after the folding of his Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher, Marx assumed editorial duties before Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia convinced Louis Philippe to suppress it.  The poet remained a friend and comrade of Marx in spite of differences in temperament and ideology.  Shortly after Vorwärts! was forced to close, when Marx was expelled from France, he sent Heine a note saying “Of all the people I am leaving behind here, those I leave with most regret are the Heines.  I would gladly include you in my luggage!”

    The fact that the modern ear has become so accustomed to more-or-less free verse creates a significant obstacle to the translation of much earlier poetry.  Chinese poetry, for instance, is most commonly brought into English with little regard for the sound forms of the original.  Those who can enjoy the originals are rarely capable of transferring the musicality of Troubadour poetry.   Not only is it a chore to devise equivalent rhymes, even when smooth, the result often reminds readers of nursery rhymes and advertising jingles rather than artful verse.  I have done what I could to model my prosody on Heine’s (with a little slippage here and there) rather than to make him seem modern in ways in which he was not.  He had, after all, for all his irony, self-consciousness, and cynicism, one foot in Romanticism. 

  

Adam the First

 

You sent forth with a flaming sword

A gendarme out of God’s abode

And ran me out of Paradise.

You neither right nor pity showed.

 

I exited with my dear wife

To find another place to stay,

But that I’d eaten wisdom’s fruit

You cannot take away.

 

You cannot change what I know now,

Your pettiness, your futile forms.

You try to make yourself so big

And frighten us through death and storms.

 

Oh, God, how pitiful it is,

Consilium abeundi!

Must I call that Magnificus,

Oh God, and you the lumen mundi?

 

I know that I will never miss

Your all-so-perfect land!

How can it be a paradise

Where tabooed trees do stand?

 

I want my total freedom now!

The very smallest limitation

Turns what could be Paradise

To hell and persecution.

 

 

Secret

 

We hardly sigh, our eyes are dry

We sometimes laugh, we smile a lot!

We give no sign, no little clue

Of that great secret that we’ve got

 

With silent pain it cultivates

Our soul’s most bloody ground.

It screams out in the wild wild heart,

But from the lips no sound.

 

Ask the infant in her cradle,

Ask the dead man buried there –

It may be they can tell to you

The secret that I would not share.

 

 

Doctrine

By Heinrich Heine

 

Hey!  Beat the drum and have no fear!

Kiss market girls without offense!

For this is all we know of truth

And this is all books’ deepest sense.

 

Drum every sleeper from his bed,

Drum reveille with youthful power

March forward, forward to the drum,

That’s all you need to know this hour. 

 

That’s the heart of Hegel’s thought,

The deepest sense of books, no doubt!

I understand because I’m smart

And since I beat the drum so loud.

 

 

The Emperor of China

 

My father was a dry old oaf,

A sober-minded thing,

But I drink hearty, lots of schnapps,

And I’m a great, great king!

 

I’ve found it is a magic drink.

Prepared at my command.

When I have drunk down all my schnapps,

Blood drenches my whole land!

 

The Middle Kingdom changes then

To fields of flowers wild,

And I myself almost a man,

My wife may get a child.

 

Everywhere there’s plenty now,

The ill folks feeling fine!

Confucius, court philosopher,

whose thoughts with reason shine!

 

The soldiers’ pumpernickel bread

Transforms to almond bread!

And all the bums in all the towns

In velvet promenade.

 

The big shots of the ruling class,

May have deluded brains,

But they regain their youthful strength

And toss their coiffured manes.

 

The great pagoda, sign and fortress strong

Of faith, we now can share.

The last Jews will soon be baptized

And get fine medals there.

 

 

All the Manchu fat cats shout,

as revolution wanes,

“We want no constitution now,

We use just whips and canes!”

 

Asclepius the wise advised

Us not to drink.  I take

And drink my schnapps and drink some more,

For love of country’s sake.

 

I’ll take a schnapps, and then a schnapps,

It tastes like heaven’s manna!

I’ll give the people just the crap

And hear them cheer “Hosanna!”

 

 

Adam der Erste 

 

Du schicktest mit dem Flammenschwert

Den himmlischen Gendarmen,

Und jagtest mich aus dem Paradies,

Ganz ohne Recht und Erbarmen!

 

Ich ziehe fort mit meiner Frau

Nach andren Erdenländern;

Doch daß ich genossen des Wissens Frucht,

Das kannst du nicht mehr ändern.

 

Du kannst nicht ändern, daß ich weiß,

Wie sehr du klein und nichtig,

Und machst du dich auch noch so sehr

Durch Tod und Donnern wichtig.

 

O Gott! wie erbärmlich ist doch dies

Consilium abeundi!

Das nenne ich einen Magnifikus

Der Welt, ein lumen mundi!

 

Vermissen werde ich nimmermehr

Die paradiesischen Räume;

Das war kein wahres Paradies

Es gab dort verbotene Bäume.

 

Ich will mein volles Freiheitsrecht!

Find ich die g'ringste Beschränknis,

Verwandelt sich mir das Paradies

In Hölle und Gefängnis.

 

 

Geheimnis

 

Wir seufzen nicht, das Aug' ist trocken,

Wir lächeln oft, wir lachen gar!

In keinem Blick, in keiner Miene,

Wird das Geheimnis offenbar.

 

Mit seinen stummen Qualen hegt es

In unsrer Seele blut'gem Grund;

Wird es auch laut im wilden Herzen,

Krampfhaft verschlossen bleibt der Mund.

 

Frag du den Säugling in der Wiege

Frag du die Toten in dem Grab,

Vielleicht daß diese dir entdecken,

Was ich dir stets verschwiegen hab.

 

 

Doktrin

 

Schlage die Trommel und fürchte dich nicht,

und küsse die Marketenderin!

Das ist die ganze Wissenschaft,

das ist der Bücher tiefster Sinn.

 

Trommle die Leute aus dem Schlaf,

trommle Reveille mit Jugendkraft,

marschiere trommelnd immer voran,

das ist die ganze Wissenschaft.

 

Das ist die Hegelsche Philosophie,

das ist der Bücher tiefster Sinn!

Ich habe sie begriffen, weil ich gescheit,

und weil ich ein guter Tambour bin.

 

 

Der Kaiser von China.

 

Mein Vater war ein trockner Taps,

Ein nüchterner Duckmäuser,

Ich aber trinke meinen Schnaps

Und bin ein großer Kaiser.

 

Das ist ein Zaubertrank! Ich hab’s

Entdeckt in meinem Gemüthe:

Sobald ich getrunken meinen Schnaps

Steht China ganz in Blüthe.

 

Das Reich der Mitte verwandelt sich dann

In einen Blumenanger,

Ich selber werde fast ein Mann

Und meine Frau wird schwanger.

 

All überall ist Ueberfluß

Und es gesunden die Kranken;

Mein Hofweltweiser Confusius

Bekömmt die klarsten Gedanken.

 

Der Pumpernickel des Soldats

Wird Mandelkuchen – O Freude!

Und alle Lumpen meines Staats

Spazieren in Sammt und Seide.

 

Die Mandarinenritterschaft,

Die invaliden Köpfe,

Gewinnen wieder Jugendkraft

Und schütteln ihre Zöpfe.

 

Die große Pagode, Symbol und Hort

Des Glaubens, ist fertig geworden;

Die letzten Juden taufen sich dort

Und kriegen den Drachen-Orden.

 

Es schwindet der Geist der Revolution

Und es rufen die edelsten Mantschu:

Wir wollen keine Constitution,

Wir wollen den Stock, den Kantschu!

 

Wohl haben die Schüler Eskulaps

Das Trinken mir widerrathen,

Ich aber trinke meinen Schnaps

Zum Besten meiner Staaten.

 

Und noch einen Schnaps, und noch einen Schnaps!

Das schmeckt wie lauter Manna!

Mein Volk ist glücklich, hat’s auch den Raps

Und jubelt: Hoseanna!

The Triumph and Tragedy of Revolution

November 15, 2016

It has been only a bare week after the election of the most authoritarian-minded president in American history, an unapologetic bigot to whom immigrants, Muslims, gay people, women, and minorities are lesser beings, an avaricious businessman whose career illustrates the very worst of American capitalism, enriching only himself while short-changing workers, contractors, and consumers. Those across a broad spectrum of political opinion, those with any humanity at all, must lament the elevation of Donald Trump and struggle to prevent progress from being rolled back in every arena of public life.

Yet at this time in which fascists and racists are assuming high governmental posts, a time when, if ever, a popular united front seems required, I choose to present a critique of the history of the left. I used to hear that even some conservative Italians used to vote Communist because the Communists were the only politicians who were not corrupt. We have not only our program but also our honesty and our candor to distinguish us from the selfish reactionary opportunists. We have as well the record of centuries to testify that steady organization and pressure from the masses can move history forward. First the aristocrats, then the middle class, and finally the laborers have gained power along with a greater share of what they produce. We have eliminated slavery, child labor, and prohibitions on homosexuality and have granted women the vote and workers the right to organize. No step forward in human society has ever occurred at the urging of conservatives; rather, progress has always come from those at first labeled radical, then liberal, then mainstream. This pattern will not be readily ended.

Yet the history of the left is not entirely noble. The student of Greek history will note that “tyrants” arose from the popular party and that autocrats throughout history often enjoy high levels of support. “Democracy” fails when the majority chooses to oppress the minority. We have just witnessed in America the very first candidate who doubts the value of democracy, who forms mutual admiration societies with dictators, who fears education and celebrates white supremacy. Why, then criticize the revolutionaries? Because we can afford to be more honest. The facts and the trends of history still favor us even after the rise to power of a hateful and ridiculous man.


     I have always called myself a revolutionary socialist. The qualifying adjective does not imply that change can come only through an armed uprising, but only that to be effective the revolution must be radical and thorough-going, not the patchwork ameliorations of European social democracy. What is required is social ownership of the means of production; anything less could provide only symptomatic relief for the problems of capitalism. I do believe that a ruling class will never cede power if another viable choice exists. Many factors short of bloodshed can constitute sufficient force: an army that will no longer obey a tyrannical regime (as in Portugal in 1974), the increasing financial cost of maintaining the status quo (probably the major motive for Britain’s giving up on empire), or, everybody’s favorite, massive and well-organized resistance that makes governing impossible (as in Tunisia in 2011). Frederick Douglass was right when he said, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”
     I cannot claim to be a pacifist (though I admire pacifists) because I think I would be justified in resisting an assault on me or on my loved ones (ineffectual though my resistance might be). If this is allowed for an individual, how much more it must be for a society when the well-being of multitudes is involved. Oppression and institutional violence deprive people of the lives they deserve no less than physical brutality. The slave may be fed daily, but who would doubt his right to revolt?
     Indeed, evidence seems to point to the potency of blood when argument has proven futile. John Brown declared with action his belief in the Biblical principle that “without shedding of blood there is no remission [of sins].” [1] One may regard Old Ossawatomie as an extremist, but Abraham Lincoln said very nearly the same in his eloquent Second Inaugural Address: “If God wills that it [war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’"
     Would the United States have become independent without war? (Canada, of course, did.) Or the French have rid themselves (temporarily) of the Bourbons? The executed martyrs of the Easter Uprising in Dublin, after plunging into an unwinnable military contest, enjoyed vastly multiplied influence in death. And, in the USA, who can deny that the deaths of children in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963 and of college-age volunteers during Freedom Summer in 1964 hastened the progress of civil rights? Or that the violence in America’s cities stimulated the so-called War on Poverty”? Surely the deaths at Kent State advanced the struggle against the war in Vietnam. At a state-sponsored correctional services seminar, I was told that only after Rockefeller’s murderous assault on the inmates of Attica in 1971 were inmates granted twenty-six of their twenty-seven demands.[2] These are only a few examples of an all-but-self-evident principle.
     Yet the very efficacy of blood as a catalyst for social change testifies to its dangerous power, equal, as Freud came to believe, with that of sexuality, in the unconscious. Any human can feel the blood boil as provocation mounts, and most any human may, in the heat of the moment, act with unjustifiable force. Anarchists like Sorel and Malatesta celebrated violence, as did some in the IWW and later in the Weather Underground. If such figures seem to occupy only the fringe of American political thought, one need only cite the homage paid to military veterans, revered specifically for their use of force, by mainstream opinion.
     The invocation of such a formidable psychological force is highly hazardous. The pacifists would have us believe that the practice of violence itself brutalizes the sensibility and the oppressed may easily become an oppressor after a bloody victory. Again history offers countless examples. Hundreds of thousands at any rate died in la Terreur and the suppression of the revolt in the Vendée that followed the French Revolution. The Irish Free State in its attempts to consolidate its position killed more combatants than had died in the War of Independence. Even among partisans of socialism (indeed, especially among us) the monstrous crimes of Stalin, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge and the lesser betrayals of self-described people’s regimes in Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere must be admitted, examined, and analyzed. Yet each of these struggles was fundamentally just at the start; each overturned a violent and viciously backward regime.
     What then is to be done? One warning sign of a wrong turn is the rise of cult of personality. In political groups as in religious movements one does well to beware any leader touted as irreplaceable and superior to all others, with the guaranteed answer to any question. [3] Yet many throughout history seem to seek such leaders, to voluntarily cede individual decision-making and to become instead units in a larger system. This is the distinctive appeal of the dictator and the cult-leader; it must be no part of the left. No person is always or predictably right; no country owns virtue. This is not to say that distinctions do not exist. They do, and the responsible citizen will often select the least of evils.
     Secondly, the left must realize that the people’s interest is almost always for peace. While a mortal struggle may on occasion seem unavoidable, it must remain a genuine last resort, used with the greatest caution. It is wise to abandon the romantic appeal even of violent poses. Suffering is bad and thus war is bad and only in the rarest cases might it be less bad than peace.
     Even in our present state of submission to the plutocrats it is necessary to recall the history of people’s movements, glorious and hopeful, but on occasion dismal as well. Though progressives have led all social advances achieved by our species, they have also proven all-too-human in victory. American radicals have at times emulated the authoritarian model of Stalinism, mindlessly enlisting their best efforts in support of tyrants and murderers. While many have selflessly pursued a vision of betterment, those in leadership ranging from union leaders to heads of state have sometimes sought self-aggrandizement no less than those on the right whose philosophy explicitly values selfishness. It can never be wise to cede one's own discernment to a "great man" however charismatic. Great disasters have arisen from those who claimed to represent people's power. It may seem far from reality to warn in these reactionary days against excesses from revolutionaries, but every share of actual power brings new hazards and pitfalls. The broadest human self-interest is given form by socialism, but its advocates must always guard against the darker regions of the backbrain. These will never vanish, but we can cultivate our gardens, making vegetables out of earth and sweat and tending with equal care our solicitude for all others, including opponents.


1. Hebrews 9:22. The passage is describing the earlier Mosaic practice of animal sacrifice and its replacement by the higher order sacrifice of Christ.

2. The only unsatisfied demand was that rebels might be allowed to travel to a sympathetic foreign country. (Algeria was a refuge for some Panthers and for Tim Leary at the time.)

3. Apart from leadership from the Comintern or from the Fourth Internationale, one may note such personality cults as those around Bob Avakian of the Revolutionary Communist Party.