The Socialist Labor Party (SLP)"The name of this organization shall be Socialist Labor Party". Art. I, Sec. 1 of th

adopted at the Eleventh National Convention (New York, July 1904; amended at the National Conventions 1908, 1912, 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 2001, 2005 and 2007) (cited February 18, 2016). is the first

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

political party in the United States American electoral politics have been dominated by two major political parties since shortly after the founding of the republic of the United States of America. Since the 1850s, the two have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party� ...

, established in 1876. Originally known as the

Workingmen's Party of the United States The Workingmen's Party of the United States (WPUS), established in 1876, was one of the first Marxist-influenced political parties in the United States. It is remembered as the forerunner of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Organizational h ...

, the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor PartySocialistic Labor Party. Platform, Constitution, and Resolutions, Adopted at the National Congress of the Workingmen's Party of the United States, Held at Newark, New Jersey, December 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 1877. Together with a condensed report of the Congress Proceedings
(Ohio Volks-Zeitung: Cincinnati, Ohio, 1878), pp. 26–27. and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party.While th
1885 constitution and platform
uses the term "socialistic" in the party name, th
1890 constitution and platform
uses the term "socialist" in the party name. As both of these sources appear to be scans of original documents, it is safe to assume that this second name change necessarily occurred somewhere between 1885 and 1890. Unfortunately, the other sources provided by the SLP are not original scans and must be taken with a grain of salt. Th
Report of the Proceedings of the Sixth National Convention of the Socialistic Labor Party, Held at Buffalo, New York, September 17, 19, 20 & 21, 1887
(New York Labor News Company: New York, September 1887) would seem to indicate that party was still calling itself the Socialistic Labor Party in that year. While the majority of the .pdf is not an original scan, the cover page is. Yet, th
1887 platform
(which is in no part an original scan) would seem to indicate that the party was calling itself the ''Socialist'' Labor Party by 1887. Likewise, the 1889 platform (reported i
this non-scan copy
of the ''Workmen's Advocate'' on October 26, 1889) employs the name Socialist Labor Party. The party was additionally known in some states as the Industrial Party or Industrial Government Party. In 1890, the SLP came under the influence of

Daniel De Leon Daniel De Leon (; December 14, 1852 – May 11, 1914), alternatively spelt Daniel de León, was a Curaçaoan-American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer. He is regarded as the forefather o ...

, who used his role as editor of '' The Weekly People'', the SLP's English-language official organ, to expand the party's popularity beyond its then largely German-speaking membership. Despite his accomplishments, De Leon was a polarizing figure among the SLP's membership. In 1899, his opponents left the SLP and merged with the

Social Democratic Party of America The Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1898. The group was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America (SDA) and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of ...

to form the

Socialist Party of America 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 Ameri ...

. After his death in 1914, De Leon was followed as national secretary by

Arnold Petersen Arnold Petersen (April 16, 1885 – February 5, 1976) was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1914 to 1969. Petersen played a major role as spokesman for that party and as a promoter of the De Leonist version of Mar ...

. Critical of both the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and the reformism of the Socialist Party of America, the SLP became increasingly isolated from the majority of the

American Left The American Left consists of individuals and groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives b ...

. Its support increased in the 1950s and into the early 1960s, when

Eric Hass Eric Hass (March 4, 1905 – October 2, 1980) was a four-time Socialist Labor candidate for President of the United States. Life Hass was of German and Danish ancestry, and was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1905. He died of a heart attack in ...

was influential in the party, but slightly declined in the mid 1960s. The SLP experienced another increase in support in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but then subsequently declined at a fast rate with the party last nominating a candidate for president in 1976. In 2008, the party closed its national office and the party's newspaper ''

The People The ''Sunday People'' is a British tabloid Sunday newspaper. It was founded as ''The People'' on 16 October 1881. At one point owned by Odhams Press, The ''People'' was acquired along with Odhams by the Mirror Group in 1961, along with the ' ...

'' ceased publications in 2011. The party has since become dormant. The party advocates "socialist

industrial unionism Industrial unionism is a trade union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in ...

", the belief in a fundamental transformation of society through the combined political and industrial action of the

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

organized in

industrial unions Industrial unionism is a trade union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in ...

Organizational history

Forerunners and origins

In 1872, the

International International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

, 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 Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary ...

, who advocated the immediate revolutionary overthrow of organized government. In 1874, the members of the American-based International, led by cigarmaker

Adolph Strasser Adolph Strasser (1843-1939), born in the Austro-Hungarian empire, was an American trade union organizer. Strasser is best remembered as a founder of the United Cigarmakers Union and the American Federation of Labor (AF of L). Strasser was additiona ...

and carpenter

Peter J. McGuire Peter J. McGuire (July 6, 1852 – February 18, 1906) was an American labor leader of the nineteenth century. He co-founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1881 along with Gustav Luebkert and became one of the leading ...

joined forces with socialists from Newark and Philadelphia to form the ephemeral Social-Democratic Party of North America, the first

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

political party in the United States. 1877-slp-congress

Despite these organizational efforts, the socialist movement in America remained deeply divided over tactics. German immigrants preferred the parliamentary approach employed by

Ferdinand Lassalle Ferdinand Lassalle (; 11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864) was a Prussian-German jurist, philosopher, socialist and political activist best remembered as the initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany. "Lassalle was the first man in Ger ...

and the fledgling

Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...

while longer-term residents of America usually supported a

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented "

Lassallean The General German Workers' Association (german: Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiter-Verein, ADAV) was a German political party founded on 23 May 1863 in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony by Ferdinand Lassalle. It was the first organized mass working-class ...

s". 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 Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectic ...

of the now-disbanded International, and three

groups—the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati and the Social-Democratic Party of North America.Girard and Perry, ''The Socialist Labor Party'', pg. 4. The organization formed by this Unity Convention was known as the

(WPUS), and the native English-speaking

Philip Van Patten Simon Philip Van Patten (1852–1918) was an American socialist political activist prominent during the latter half of the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s. Van Patten is best remembered for being named the first Corresponding Secretary of t ...

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 Paul Grottkau (1846–1898) was a German-American socialist political activist and newspaper publisher. Grottkau is best remembered as an editor alongside Haymarket affair victim August Spies of the '' Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung,'' one of the le ...

's '' Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung'', Joseph Brucker's ''Milwaukee Socialist'' and an English-language weekly also published in Milwaukee called ''The Emancipator.''Heath, ''Social Democracy Red Book'', pg. 33. German émigrés dominated the organization, although in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Albert Parsons Albert Richard Parsons (June 20, 1848 – November 11, 1887) was a pioneering American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist. As a teenager, he served in the military force of the Confederate States of Americ ...

and G.A. Schilling maintained an active English-speaking section. In 1877, the Workingmen's Party met at

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Ross, Jack (2015)
''The Socialist Party of America''
In the 1879 Chicago mayoral election, the party's nominee received more than 20% of the vote. 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.Morris Hillquit, ''HIstory of Socialism in the United States''. New York: Funk and Wagnall Co., 1903; pg. 225. 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 had survived.Hillquit, ''HIstory of Socialism in the United States'', pg. 227. In 1878, the party established its own English-language paper, ''The National Socialist,'' but managed to keep the publication alive only one year. The year 1878 saw the establishment of a more enduring newspaper: the German-language ''

New Yorker Volkszeitung ''New Yorker Volkszeitung'' was the longest-running German language daily labor newspaper in the United States of America, established in 1878 and suspending publication in October 1932. At the time of its demise during the Great Depression the ' ...

'' (''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 Karl Daniel Adolf Douai (1819 – 1888), known to his peers as "Adolf", was a German Texan teacher as well as a socialist and abolitionist newspaper editor. Douai was driven from Texas in 1856 due to his published opposition of slavery, living out ...

, and Sergei Shevitch 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 gained strength, fueled by the Depression (economics), economic crisis and strike action, 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 Great Railroad Strike of 1877, 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.Hillquit, ''History of Socialism in the United States'', pg. 228.

In the 1880s

The years 1880 and 1881 saw a new influx of political refugees from Germany, activists in the socialist movement fleeing the crackdown on radicalism launched with the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878. This influx of new German members, coming during a time of low ebb of the English-speaking membership, extended Germanic influence in the SLP. Excluded from the voting booth by their lack of citizenship status, many of the newcomers had little use for electoral politics. An SLP German militia sued on Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, Second Amendment grounds to keep and bear arms in Chicago parades. However, the Supreme Court ruled against them in ''Presser v. Illinois''. The Anarchism, anarchist movement expanded rapidly with the debate over tactics between the parliamentarism, electorally-oriented socialists and the direct action-oriented anarchists becoming ever more bitter. The 1881 SLP Convention in New York saw some of the party's anarchist members and one New York section split from the party to form a new party called the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party as part of an International Workingmen's Association. The official organ of this short-lived splinter group was a newspaper called ''The Anarchist''. In 1882, Johann Most, a former German Social Democrat turned Anarchist firebrand, came to the United States, further fueling the growth and militancy of the American anarchist movement. The SLP further divided the next year when Marxist Paul Grottkau was forced by the anarchists to resign as editor of the Chicago daily, the ''Arbeiter Zeitung.'' In his place August Spies was installed, a man later executed as part of the anti-anarchist repression which followed the Haymarket affair of May 1886. After a brief honeymoon period in the late 1870s had run its course, the SLP saw the departure of most of its English-speaking members. The party's English-language organ, ''Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement'', appeared monthly from Detroit in the shadow of the powerful Chicago German-language radical press until it was finally discontinued altogether at the end of 1883. The party was so thoroughly German that it published the stenographic proceedings of its 1884 and 1885 National Conventions only in that language. From 1885, the official organ of the party was a German-language weekly, ''Der Sozialist''. No English-language SLP organ existed from the demise of the Bulletin in 1883 to the establishment of the ''Workingmen's Advocate'' in 1886. The party's membership situation was so dismal that the English-speaking Corresponding Secretary of the organization, Philip Van Patten, left a suicide note in April 1883 and mysteriously disappeared. He later surfaced as a government employee, a socialist oppositionist no more. Membership in the organization atrophied to just 1,500 by 1883. What growth there was among the American radical movement was experienced by the rival anarchist organization, the International Working People's Association (IWPA), also sometimes referred to as the International Workingmen's Association. A split between the electorally oriented SLP and the revolution-minded IWPA, which took with it a good portion of the SLP's left-wing, including such prominent leaders as the English-speaking orator

and the German-speaking newspaper editor August Spies, began to develop early in the 1880s, with the split formalized by 1883, a year in which the SLP and the IWPA held competing conventions in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. At its December 1883 Baltimore Convention, the SLP made a vain effort at reestablishing organizational unity with the IWPA, adopting a particularly radical "proclamation" in the name of the party and eliminating the position of National Secretary to allow the form of decentralization favored by the anarchists. The issue of violence proved an insurmountable barrier to unity between the SLP and the anarchist movement and as Paul Grottkau, Alexander Jonas and their co-thinkers began to again forcefully espouse the Marxist point of view in 1884, the SLP began to rebound. In March 1884, the SLP consisted of 30 sections and two years later it had doubled.Hillquit, ''History of Socialism in the United States'', pg. 242. Three new privately owned English-language newspapers were briefly established, although none could achieve the critical mass of subscribers and advertising revenue necessary for survival. The SLP attempted to again make a foray into American electoral politics despite its still heavily German composition, joining forces with other labor organization into the United Labor Party (New York), United Labor Party to support Single Tax advocate Henry George in the 1886 New York City mayoral election. The party remained almost completely separated from the English-speaking workers movement and longing for leaders who could traverse the seemingly insurmountable language barrier which limited the organization to a sort of Teutonic ghetto. Throughout the decade of the 1880s, the SLP was based upon local "Sections" coordinated by a loose National Executive Committee based in New York City. It was not until 1889 that any move was made to establish intermediate state levels of organization.

Relationship with the labor movement

The SLP did attempt to play an influence in the existing labor movement during the decade of the 1880s. As early as 1881, National Secretary Philip Van Patten joined the Order of the Knights of Labor, the leading national union of the day.Hillquit, ''History of Socialism in the United States'', pg. 293. A decade later, the SLP retained a faith in the established trade union organizations to conduct their own affairs along a generally socialist course. In each issue of ''

'' during 1891 the weekly affairs of the New York Central Labor Federation, the New York Central Labor Union, the Brooklyn Central Labor Federation, the Brooklyn Central Labor Union and the Hudson County, New Jersey (Jersey City, New Jersey, Jersey City) Central Labor Federation were covered in detail under the recurring headline "Parliaments of Labor". The doings of individual unions in the New York area and around the world were similarly covered in short summary. Despite its active role as cheerleader and publicist, the SLP was unable to exert any sort of real influence in the Knights of Labor until it was already in steep decline toward the start of the 1890s, when it won effective control of the New York District Assembly of the K of L in 1893. In that same year, socialist delegates to the governing General Assembly of the K of L were largely responsible for the defeat of Terence Powderly and his replacement by J. R. Sovereign as Grand Master Workman, the chief executive officer of the organization. So great was the SLP's influence that the newly elected Sovereign promised to appoint a member of the party as editor of the ''Journal of the Knights of Labor.'' When he recanted on this pledge, a bitter feud erupted, ending with the December 1895 General Assembly refusing to seat ''de facto'' SLP party leader

as a delegate from District Assembly 49, resulting in an outright break of the two organizations and withdrawal of the greater part of the New York district from the organization, thereby hastening the Knights of Labor's demise.

Coming of Daniel De Leon

The year 1890 has long been regarded as a watershed by the SLP as it marked the date when the organization came under the influence of

. A native of the South American island of Curaçao, De Leon had been resident in the United States for 18 years before he began to play a leading role in the American socialist movement. De Leon attended a Gymnasium (school), Gymnasium in Hildesheim, Germany in the 1860s before studying at the University of Leyden, from which he graduated in 1872 at the age of 20. De Leon was a brilliant student—well versed in history, philosophy and mathematics. He was also a linguist with few peers, possessing fluency in Spanish, German, Dutch, Latin, French, English and ancient Greek; and a reading knowledge of Portuguese, Italian and modern Greek. Upon graduation, De Leon immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. There he made the acquaintance of a group of Cubans who sought the liberation of their native land and edited their Spanish-language newspaper. De Leon paid the bills with a job teaching Latin, Greek and math at a school in Westchester, New York.Johnson, "Daniel De Leon — Our Comrade," pg. 89. This teaching job enabled De Leon to finance his further education at Columbia Law School, from which he graduated with honors in 1878. Thereafter, De Leon moved to Texas, where he lawyer, practiced law for a time before returning to Columbia University in 1883 to take a position as a lecturer on Latin American diplomacy. De Leon seems to have been further politicized by the 1886 workers' campaign for the Eight-hour day, Eight-Hour Day and the brutal excesses of the police which came with it. De Leon was on the committee which nominated Henry George to run for Mayor of New York, Mayor in that same year and he spoke in public several times on George's behalf during the course of the campaign. De Leon participated in the first Nationalist Clubs, Nationalist Club in New York City, a group dedicated to advancing the socialist ideas expressed by Edward Bellamy in his extremely popular novel of the day, ''Looking Backward'' (1888). De Leon was also deeply influenced by ''The Co-operative Commonwealth'' by Laurence Gronlund.Bernard Johnpoll with Lillian Johnpoll, ''The Impossible Dream: The Rise and Demise of the American Left''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981; pg. 250. The failings of the Nationalist Club movement to develop a viable program or strategy for winning political power left De Leon searching for an alternative. This he found in the scientific determinism underlying the writings of Karl Marx. In the fall of 1890, De Leon abandoned his academic career to devote himself full-time to the SLP. He was engaged in the spring of 1891 as the party's "National Lecturer", traveling the entire country from coast to coast to speak on the SLP's behalf. He was also named the SLP's candidate for Governor of New York in the fall of that same year, gathering a respectable 14,651 votes. As the historian Bernard Johnpoll notes, the SLP which Daniel De Leon joined in 1890 differed little from the organization which had been born at the end of the 1870s as it was largely a German-language organization located in an English-speaking country. Just 17 of the party's 77 branches used English as their basic language while only two members of the party's governing National Executive Committee spoke English fluently. The arrival of an erudite, well-read and multilingual university lecturer with English fluency was seen as a great triumph for the SLP organization. In the spring of 1891, De Leon was set to work as the National Organizer for the SLP. He pioneered for an English-speaking organization on a cross-country six-week tour to the West Coast and back in April and May. In 1892, De Leon was elected editor of ''The Weekly People'', the SLP's English-language official organ. He retained this important position without interruption for the rest of his life. De Leon never assumed the formal role of head of the organization, National Secretary, but was always recognized—by supporters and detractors alike—as the leader of the SLP through his tight editorial control of the official party press. While increasing the exposure and popularity of the organization among the American-born during his editorial tenure, De Leon proved to be a polarizing figure among the SLP's membership during his editorial tenure as historian Howard Quint notes:

Even De Leon's opponents were usually willing to concede that he possessed a tremendous intellectual grasp of Marxism. Those who had suffered under his editorial lashings looked on him as an unmitigated scoundrel who took fiendish delight in character assassination, vituperation, and scurrility. But most of De Leon's contemporaries, and especially his critics, misunderstood him, just as he himself lacked understanding of people. He was not a petty tyrant who desired power for power's sake. Rather, he was a dogmatism, dogmatic idealist, devoted brain and soul to a cause, a zealot who could not tolerate heresy or backsliding, a doctrinaire who would make no compromise with principles. For this strong-willed man, this late nineteenth-century Grand Inquisitioner of American socialism, there was no middle ground. You were either a disciplined and undeviating Marxist or no socialist at all. You were either with the mischief-making, scatterbrained reformism, reformers and 'labor fakirs' or you were against them. You either agreed on the necessity of uncompromising revolutionary tactics or you did not, and those falling into the latter category were automatically expendable as far as the Socialist Labor Party was concerned.

Early electoral politics

The Socialist Labor Party advocated a two-pronged attack against capitalism, including both economic and political components—trade unions and electoral campaigns. The SLP ran candidates under its own name for the first time in the New York (state), New York elections of 1886, in which it put forward a full ticket headed by J. Edward Hall as its gubernatorial nominee and Alexander Jonas as its candidate for Mayor of New York. Fewer than 3,000 votes were cast for this ticket throughout the entire state of New York, a result so disheartening that the German language party paper the ''

'' and some prominent party leaders advocated abandonment of electoral campaigns for the time being.Hillquit, ''History of Socialism in the United States'', pg. 282. The National Convention of 1889 upheld the policy of political action and the SLP was again active in the New York elections of 1890. In 1891, the party's electoral effort was led by the candidacy of Daniel De Leon for Governor of New York. De Leon polled a respectable 14,651 votes in the losing effort. The party nominated its first candidate for President of the United States in 1892, a decision made in September of that year at a national conference of the organization held at party headquarters in New York City, despite the fact that the SLP's platform called for the abolition of the offices of President and Vice President. A pro-forma nominating convention was held in New York City in August, attended by just 8 delegates, at which candidates were named and a platform approved. The party's ticket, featuring Boston, Massachusetts, Boston camera manufacturer Simon Wing and New York electrician Charles H. Matchett, appeared on the ballot in just six states and drew a total of 21,512 votes. The number of votes gathered by the SLP ticket in 1892 constituted 0.18% of the national presidential vote that year. In percentage terms, the next two presidential elections of 1896 and 1900 were the most successful for the party as the SLP presidential candidate Charles H. Matchett received 0.26% of the national popular vote in 1896 and the party's candidate in 1900 Joseph Maloney received 0.29% of the popular vote nationwide. The latter's run was also the first time the SLP candidate was eclipsed by another socialist as Eugene Debs ran for the first time for the Socialist Party that year and received 0.6% of the national popular vote. Although SLP presidential candidates would go on to get higher vote totals in the mid-20th century, they would never again surpass 0.25% of the national vote.

Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance

The main ideological principle of the SLP is revolutionary industrial unionism (also known as "socialist industrial unionism"). The early Socialist Labor Party, influenced by the father of the

, argued that the wage gains and improvements of conditions achievable by trade unions were insignificant and ephemeral. Only the capture of the state through the ballot box would enable a restructuring of the economy and society in anything resembling a permanent manner. So long as capitalism existed, wage gains here would be offset by the pressure of wage cuts there and incomes would be driven down to a subsistence minimum through the inexorable pressure of the market. Thus the political campaign for the capture of the state—winning office for the sake of winning power to enact change—was considered paramount. For the Marxists who had come to dominate the Socialist Labor Party by the 1890s, this idea was exactly backwards. So long as fundamental economic relations between workers and employers remained unchanged, any alteration of the personnel of the state apparatus would be short-lived and would fall to nothing due to the wealth of the employers and their desire to preserve the existing economic order. The employing class controlled press and school and pulpit, the Marxists believed, their ideas of the "natural" order of things stuffed the heads of their willing political servitors. Only through collective action,

activities, could the working class begin to achieve consciousness of itself, the nature of the world and its purported historic mission. However, what sort of trade unions would instill in the working class the ideas and drive to action that would lead to a revolutionary restructuring of the economic order? This was the central question, over which the SLP ultimately divided. On the one hand there were those who advocated the policy of "boring from within" the already-existing unions, attempting to win their memberships over to the idea of socialist reorganization of society through the force of propaganda and practical example. Ultimately, it was believed that enough individual unions could be won over that the entire trade union movement could be moved in a socialist direction. Others rejected the existing network of craft unions as hopelessly reactionary bureaucracies, sometimes outright criminal in their administration, but never able to see beyond their own narrow and isolated concerns of wages, hours, recognition, and jurisdiction. A completely new, explicitly socialist industrial union structure was required, these individuals believed, an organization established on a broad basis uniting workers of different crafts in common cause. This new organization would gain the support of the working class when average workers at the bench witnessed the superiority of its form of organization and ideas in actual practice. At the SLP's national convention of 1896, this issue came to a head with the formation of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, a party-sponsored industrial union federation founded to compete directly with the unions of the emerging American Federation of Labor and the declining Knights of Labor, which eventually became a part of the Industrial Workers of the World when that organization was founded in 1905.

Party split of 1899

De Leon's opponents (primarily German-Americans, Jewish immigrants of various origins and

ists led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit) left the SLP in 1899. They later merged with the

, headed by Victor L. Berger and Eugene V. Debs to form the

20th century

In July 1908, the SLP briefly made national news with the nomination of Martin R. Preston, a convicted killer serving a 25-year prison sentence in Nevada, for President of the United States."Convict Nominated: Socialist Labor Party Name Murderer for President,"
''Tyrone [PA] Daily Herald'', vol. XX, no. XX (July 6, 1908), pg. 1. Making the nomination on the convention floor was party leader Daniel De Leon himself, who noted that Preston had "acted as the protector of defenseless girls" during a strike and had killed a restaurateur who had threatened him with death. Despite the fact that the 32-year-old Preston was under the constitutionally mandated presidential age of 35, he was nonetheless unanimously nominated by the New York convention, which immediately notified him of their selection by telegram. However, Preston declined the nomination, leaving the SLP's National Executive Committee to name a new standard-bearer for the November election.

became national secretary for most of the 20th century from the death of De Leon in 1914 to 1969. The SLP, always critical of both the

and of the Socialist Party's "reformism", became increasingly isolated from the majority of the

.Kenneth T. Jackson, ''The Encyclopedia of New York City''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995; pg. 1083. The party had always advocated what they considered the purist socialism in its program, arguing that other parties had abandoned Marxism and became either fan clubs for dictators or merely a Political radicalism, radical wing of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party. The party experienced two growth spurts in the 20th century. The first occurred in the late 1940s. The presidential ticket, which had been receiving 15,000 to 30,000 votes, increased to 45,226 in 1944. Meanwhile, the aggregate nationwide totals for United States Senate, Senate nominees increased during this same period from an average in the 40,000 range to 96,139 in 1946 and 100,072 in 1948. The party's fortunes began to sag during the early 1950s and by 1954 the aggregate nationwide totals for Senate nominees was down to 30,577.

became influential in the SLP in the early 1950s. Hass, the nominee for president in 1952, 1956, 1960 and 1964, played a major role in rebuilding the SLP. He authored the booklet "Socialism: A Home Study Course". Hass increased the party's nationwide totals and recruited many local candidates. His vote for president increased from 30,250 in 1952 to 47,522 in 1960 (a 50% increase). Although his total slipped to 45,187 in 1964, Hass outpolled all other third party candidates—the only time this happened to the SLP. Aggregate nationwide totals for Senate nominees increased throughout the late 1960s, hitting 112,990 in 1972. The increased interest in the SLP in the late 1960s was not a permanent growth spurt. New recruits subscribed to the anti-authoritarian views of the time and wanted their voices to have an equal status with the old-time party workers. Newcomers felt that the party was too controlled by a small clique, resulting in widespread discontent. The SLP nominated its last presidential candidate in 1976, and has run few campaigns since then. In 1980, members of the SLP in Minnesota, claiming that the party had become bureaucratic and authoritarian in its internal party structure, split from the party and formed the New Union Party.

21st century

The SLP began having trouble funding their newspaper ''The People'', so frequency was changed from monthly to bi-monthly in 2004. However, that did not save the paper from collapse and it was suspended as of March 31, 2008. An online version, published quarterly, ceased publication in 2011. As of January 2007, the party had 77 members-at-large as well as seven sections of which four (San Francisco Bay Area, Wayne County, Cleveland and Portland) held meetings, with an average attendance of 3–6 members. The SLP closed its national office on September 1, 2008.

Legacy

De Leon and the SLP helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. They soon had a falling out with the element that they termed "the bummery" and left to form their own rival union, also called the Industrial Workers of the World, based in Detroit. De Leon died in 1914 and with his passing this organization lost its central focus. This body was renamed the Workers International Industrial Union (WIIU) and declined into little more than SLP members. The WIIU was wound up in 1924. Famed author Jack London was an early member of the Socialist Labor Party, joining in 1896. He left in 1901 to join the

. The science fiction writer Mack Reynolds, who wrote one of the first Star Trek novels, ''Star Trek'' novels, was an active member of the SLP (his father Verne L. Reynolds was twice the SLP's candidate for vice president). His fiction often deals with socialist reform and revolution as well as Utopian socialism, socialist utopian thought and his characters often use De Leonite terminology such as "industrial feudalism".Hough, Lawrence E. (1998). "Welcome to the Revolution: The Literary Legacy of Mack Reynolds". ''Utopian Studies''. p. 324.

National Conventions

Secretaries of the party

Presidential tickets

All election results taken fro
Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
an
Vote for presidential and vice presidential candidates of the Socialist Labor Party

Notable members

* John J. Ballam * J. Mahlon Barnes * Ella Reeve Bloor * Frank Bohn (socialist), Frank Bohn * George Boomer * Louis B. Boudin * Abraham Cahan * John C. Chase * Maximilian Cohen * James Connolly * Georgia Cozzini *

* Solon De Leon *

* Benjamin Feigenbaum * Louis C. Fraina *

* Julius Gerber * Margaret Haile * J. Edward Hall * Benjamin Hanford * Job Harriman * Caleb Harrison *

* Max S. Hayes * Morris Hillquit * Isaac Hourwich * Frank Johns * Olive M. Johnson * Antoinette Konikow * William Ross Knudsen * Joseph A. Labadie * Algernon Lee * Jack London * Meyer London * William Mailly * Charles Matchett * James H. Maurer * P. J. McGuire * Thomas J. Morgan * Kate Richards O'Hare *

* Patrick L. Quinlan * Arthur E. Reimer * Mack Reynolds * Verne L. Reynolds * Wilhelm Rosenberg * Lucien Sanial * George A. Schilling * Sergei Shevitch * Algie Martin Simons * Henry Slobodin * August Spies *

* Leslie White * Morris Winchevsky * Simon Wing

Party press

Party-owned

* ''Vorbote (Chicago), Vorbote'' (''The Warning'') (1874–1924) – Chicago weekly. Predated the SLP, party organ 1876–1878. Broke with SLP for anarchism in the early 1880s. * ''Arbeiter Stimme'' (''Worker's Voice'') (1876–1878) – New York City weekly. Predated the SLP under the title ''Sozial-Demokrat''. New York Public Library holds master negative film. * ''The Labor Standard'' (April 1876–December 1881) – New York City. Originally organ of the Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America under title ''The Socialist''. New York Public Library holds master negative film. * ''The Social Democrat (1877), The Social Democrat'' (c. 1877) – New York daily. * ''The National Socialist'' (May 1878 – 1879) – Cincinnati official organ with John McIntosh as editor. * ''Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement'' (1879–1883) – published in Detroit and New York City. * ''Der Sozialist'' (1885–1892) – German language. Published in New York City. ** ''Vorwärts (SLP), Vorwärts'' (''Forward'') (1892–1932) – published in New York City. Broke with SLP in 1899 and became privately owned publication. * ''The Workmen's Advocate'' (1885–1891) – originally published by the New Haven (CT) Trades Council. Official organ of SLP from November 21, 1886. Subscription list taken over by ''The People'' in 1891. ** ''

'' (1891–2011) – published in New York City by ''New Yorker Volkszeitung'' on behalf of the SLP. Party-owned from 1899. Later moved to Palo Alto, CA. * ''Pittsburgher Volkszeitung'' (c. 1891) – German language. Pittsburgh weekly.

Privately owned

English

* ''Advance (1896), Advance'' (1896–1902) – San Francisco weekly. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film. * ''The Echo (SLP), The Echo'' (c. 1877) – Boston weekly. * ''Emancipator (Cincinnati SLP), Emancipator'' (c. 1877) – Cincinnati and Milwaukee weekly. * ''Emancipator (Cleveland SLP), Emancipator'' (1894) – Cleveland weekly. * ''The Evening Telegram (SLP), The Evening Telegram'' (c. 1884) – New Haven weekly. * ''Lawrence Labor'' (1896) – Lawrence, MA weekly. * ''The Liberator (SLP), The Liberator'' (1896–1897) * ''Manchester Labor'' (1896) – Manchester, NH weekly. * ''Ohio Labor'' (1895–1896) – Toledo weekly. * ''Philadelphia Labor'' (1893–1894) – Philadelphia weekly. * ''Quincy Labor'' (1895) – Quincy, IL weekly * ''Rochester Labor'' (1896) – Rochester, NY weekly * ''Rochester Socialist'' (1898) – Rochester, NY monthly. * ''St. Louis Labor'' (1893–1928) – St. Louis daily. Broke with SLP circa 1897. * ''San Antonio Labor'' (1894–1896) – San Antonio weekly. * ''San Francisco Truth (c. 1884) – San Francisco weekly. * ''Savannah Labor'' (1895) – Savannah, GA weekly. * ''The Socialist (Detroit SLP), The Socialist'' (c. 1877) – Detroit weekly. * ''The Socialist Alliance (SLP), The Socialist Alliance'' (1898) – Chicago weekly. * ''The Star (SLP), The Star'' (c. 1877) – St. Louis daily. * ''The Times (SLP), The Times'' (c. 1877) – Indianapolis weekly. * ''The Tocsin (SLP), The Tocsin'' (?–1899) – Minneapolis weekly. * ''The Truth (SLP), The Truth'' (1898) – Davenport, IA. Bilingual English and German. * ''The Voice of the People (SLP), The Voice of the People'' (c. 1884) – New York City weekly. * ''The Wage Worker (SLP), The Wage Worker'' (?–1899) – Kansas City weekly. * ''Worcester Labor'' (1896) – Worcester, MA weekly. * ''Workingmen's Ballot'' (c. 1877) – Boston weekly.

German

* ''Arbeiter von Ohio'' (''Ohio Worker'') (c. 1877) – Cincinnati weekly. * '' Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung'' (''Chicago Workers' News'') (1876–1924) – Chicago daily paper, which published ''Vorbote''. * ''Chicagoer Sozialist'' (''Chicago Socialist'') (c. 1877) – Chicago daily. * ''Chicagoer Volkszeitung'' (''Chicago People's News'') (c. 1877) – Chicago daily. * ''Cleveland Volksfreund'' (''Cleveland People's Friend'') (1898) – Weekly. * ''Freiheitsbanner'' (''Freedom Flag'') (c. 1877) – Cincinnati weekly. * ''Illinois Volkszeitung'' (c. 1884) * ''Milwaukee Sozialist'' (''Milwaukee Socialist'') (c. 1877) – Milwaukee daily. Predated the SLP. * ''Die Neue Zeit (SLP), Die Neue Zeit'' (''The New Era'') (c. 1877) – Louisville and Chicago daily. * ''

'' (''New York People's News'') (1878–1932) – New York City daily. Broke with SLP in 1899, but continued publication until 1932. * ''Ohio Volkszeitung'' (''Ohio People's News'') (c. 1877) – Cincinnati daily. * ''Philadelphia Tageblatt'' (''Philadelphia Daily Paper'') (1877–1942) – Philadelphia daily. Broke with SLP at some point. * ''Pittsburgher Arbeiter Zietung'' (c. 1890) – Pittsburgh weekly. * ''Vorwärts (Milwaukee 1877), Vorwärts!'' (''Forward!'') (1877–1878) – Milwaukee weekly. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film. * ''Vorwärts (Milwaukee 1893), Vorwärts!'' (1893–1932) – Milwaukee daily with Victor Berger as editor. Broke with SLP in 1897. Wisconsin Historical Society holds master negative film. * ''Vorwärts (Newark SLP), Vorwärts'' (''Forward'') (c. 1877) – Newark daily. * ''Volksstimme des Westens'' (''Voice of the People of the West'') (c. 1877) – St. Louis daily.

Other languages

; Bulgarian * ''Rabotnicheska Prosveta'' (''Workers' Enlightenment'') (1911–1969) – published in Granite City, IL and Detroit. Weekly. ; Czech * ''Delnicke Listy'' (''Voice of Labor'') (c. 1877) – Cleveland weekly; predated the SLP. * ''Pravda (SLP), Pravda'' (''Truth'') (1898) – New York City weekly. ; Danish-Norwegian * ''Arbejderen'' (''The Worker'') (1898) – Chicago weekly. ; Hungarian * ''A Munkás'' (''The Worker'') (1910–1961) – New York City weekly. New York Public Library holds master negative film. * ''Nepszava (SLP), Nepszava'' (''People's Voice'') (1898) – New York City weekly. ; Latvian * ''Proletareets'' (''The Proletarian'') (1902–1911) ; Norwegian * ''Den Nye Tid'' (''The New Time'') (c. 1877) – Chicago weekly. ; Polish * ''Sila (SLP), Sila'' (''The Force'') (1898) – Buffalo weekly. ; Serbo-Croatian * ''Radnička Borba'' (''Workers' Struggle'') (1907–1970) – published in New York, Cleveland and Detroit. Weekly, later semi-monthly. ; Swedish * ''Arbetaren (SLP), Arbetaren'' (''The Worker'') (1895–1928) – New York City weekly. ; Ukrainian * ''Robitinychyi Holos'' (''Workers' Voice'') (1922–?) – New York City weekly. ; Yiddish * ''Der Emes (United States), Der Ermes'' (''The Truth'') (1895–1896) – Boston weekly. * ''Arbeiter Zeitung (SLP), Arbeiter Zeitung'' (''Workers' News'') (1898) – New York City. : Sources: ''Proceedings of the National Congress, 1877'', pp. 16–17; Hillquit (1903), pp. 225, 242; American Labor Press Directory (1925), pp. 22–23; Library of Congress ''Chronicling America'' database.

Footnotes

External links

; Contemporary SLP links
Socialist Labor Party of America
Official party website.

Index of issues available in pdf, 1999–2008. ; Primary documents
''Bulletin of the Social Labor Movement''
Vol 1. No. 14 (December 1880–January 1881). Full issue of rare official organ. * iarchive:1891ReportOfTheNecOfTheSlp, "1891 Report of the NEC of the SLP". December 18, 1891.
SLP Documents Downloads
Early American Marxism website. Index for assorted party documents in pdf format.
Report of the Proceedings of the National Convention of the Socialistic Labor Party
Index for pdfs of proceedings of the party (1878–1887).

Socialist Labor Party. Extensive collection of editorials and writings by Daniel De Leon in pdf format. ; Links relating to the historic SLP

Early American Marxism website. Partial, but lengthy list of official publications of the party.

Includes extensive party history.

Socialist Labor Party. Official party history of the party's most notable leader. * iarchive:PapersOfTheSocialistLaborPartyOfAmericaRecordsOfTheSocialistLabor, ''Papers of the Socialist Labor Party of America: Records of the Socialist Labor Party of America; guide to a microfilm edition''. User guide to the microfilm collection filmed by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. ; Archives
Socialist Labor Party Seattle Section Records
1930–1962. 2.73 cubic feet (7 boxes).
George E. Rennar Papers
1933–1972. 37.43 cubic feet. Contains ephemera on the Socialist Labor Party. {{DEFAULTSORT:Socialist Labor Party Of America Socialist Labor Party of America, Political parties established in 1876 Political parties in the United States 1876 establishments in Pennsylvania Mountain View, California Daniel De Leon Socialist parties in the United States