Socialist Party of America

Socialist Party of America, U.S. national political party founded in 1901 from the merger of the Social Democratic Parties of Chicago and Springfield, Massachusetts, and other independent state socialist groups. The party attracted a membership of immigrant and American-born workers, farmers, intellectuals, and labor and social activists, among others. The party was active until 1972.

Founding and early goals

The Chicago and Springfield Social Democratic parties convened with independent state socialist groups for a Joint Unity Convention in Indianapolis, from July 29 through August 1, 1901. There they formed the Socialist Party of America, adopting a platform that advocated for the following points:

• The collective ownership of all means of transportation and communication and all other public utilities as well as of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts, and combines. No part of the revenue therefrom to be used on the reduction of taxes of the capitalist class, but the entire revenue to be applied first, to the increase of wages and the shortening of the hours of labor by the employees and then to the improvement of the service and diminishing the rates to the consumers.
• The progressive reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the increasing facilities of production, to decrease the share of the capitalist class and to increase the share of the workers in the product of their labor.
• State or national insurance of working people in case of accidents, lack of employment, sickness, and want in old age, the revenue therefor to be derived from the government.
• The inauguration of a system of public industries for the employment of the unemployed, the public credit to be utilized for that purpose, in order that the workers may receive the product of their toil.
• The education of all children up to the age of 18 years, and state and municipal aid for books, clothing, and food.
• Equal civil and political rights for men and women.
• The initiative and referendum, proportional representation, and the right of recall of representatives by their constituents.

Rise, peak, and challenges

The Socialist Party of America reached its peak in 1912 with 113,000 members, at which time it became one of the largest socialist groups worldwide. That same year Socialist leader Eugene Debs ran for president and won more than 900,000 votes, about 6 percent of the popular vote, though he did not receive any votes in the electoral college, and Woodrow Wilson became president. Debs again garnered some 900,000 votes when he ran as the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in 1920. The party’s strength during this period was also reflected in its hundreds of party-affiliated newspapers and in the election of its members to positions such as city council, mayor, and other political and representational roles in more than 300 cities throughout the U.S.

Compared to the Democratic and Republican parties of the early 20th century, the Socialist Party of America was relatively socially progressive. Influenced by socialist movements abroad, its doctrine welcomed the inclusion of European immigrants, women, and Black Americans to its ranks. The group advocated for open immigration policies, women’s suffrage, and desegregation as part of its platforms. Still, immigrant, female, and Black members of the party were sometimes treated as second to the white, male-dominated party leadership, isolated into special interest groups, or otherwise neglected. Some of these members eventually split from the Socialist Party, forming new groups or defecting to organizations such as the Communist Labor Party and the Industrial Workers of the World.

Decline and legacy

In-group fighting and the post-World War I Red Scare—an intense period of anti-communist suspicion and political repression in the United States—allowed the Communist Party to supersede the Socialist Party of America in terms of membership from 1919 onward. Even though both groups faced government repression, the Socialists were further weakened by internal divisions, and many disillusioned radicals began to gravitate toward the Communist Party, which presented itself as more militant and energized by the recent Russian Revolution. Though the Socialist Party regained some of its numbers in the 1920s and ’30s, a second Red Scare following World War II, which was marked by widespread fears of subversion and loyalty investigations during the early Cold War, irreparably damaged the party. In the 1948 presidential election, Socialist candidate Norman Thomas, who had previously run for president five times, received fewer than 150,000 votes, about 15 percent of the number of votes Debs received in 1920. After 1956, when Socialist candidate Darlington Hoopes received about 2,000 votes, the party stopped nominating presidential candidates. In March 1972 the group merged with the Socialist Party, U.S.A. and the Democratic Socialist Foundation, a former split-off. By the end of 1972 the group had changed its name to the Social Democrats, U.S.A., hoping to attract voting members of the Democratic Party to its ranks. The group would continue to advocate for socialist causes, but it would no longer support any national political campaigns.

The Socialist Party of America never won a major election, but it did see many of its proposals adopted by the two major political parties and the federal government. Thomas believed by the end of his career that “to the considerable extent that capitalism has delivered more than seemed possible a generation ago…it has done so by accepting things it used to denounce as Socialism.” At the time of Thomas’s first presidential run, government endorsement of such issues as the eight-hour workday, the rights of organized labor, and public housing may have seemed a Socialist Party pipe dream. By 1940 these programs had been adopted by the federal government, albeit in ways that were partial and often far less ambitious than the Socialist ideal.