Communist Labor Party of America

Former United Mine Workers functionary Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was one of the leaders of the Regular faction that forced the Communist Labor Party of America to split

With the end of World War I and the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918, long running tension in the Socialist Party of America (SPA) between the revolutionary socialist left-wing and the electorally-oriented center deepened.[1] Radicals were particularly disheartened by the tepid 1916 campaign of "colorless" Socialist presidential candidate Allan L. Benson—an effort which saw the first reduction in the party's tally in presidential voting in party history.[2]

From roots in the Boston-based Socialist Propaganda League of America and the Boston newspaper The Revolutionary Age, an organized faction calling itself the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party emerged at the end of 1918.[3] Radical editor Louis C. Fraina composed a Left Wing Manifesto, around which the Left Wing Section organized itself, holding raucous meetings of SPA locals and branches to force endorsement of the program and running a slate of candidates in the SPA's annual election in an attempt to "capture" and remold the party according to the Russian Bolshevik Party's model.

Buoyed by the bloc voting of radical, Bolshevik-influenced branches of the Socialist Party's Foreign Language Federations, the Left Wing Section very apparently won a majority of the 15 seats on the party's governing National Executive Committee[4] as well as balloting for International delegates and International Secretary in the 1919 election.[5] Facing ceding party control to an aggressive Bolshevik National Executive Committee, the outgoing National executive Committee, guided by James Oneal and Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, declared that voting irregularities had rendered the result invalid.[6]

Suspensions and expulsions of a major part of the SPA's membership immediately followed, beginning with the May 1919 suspensions of the Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Latvian, South Slavic and Ukrainian Federations in addition to the entire state socialist parties of Michigan, Massachusetts and Ohio.[7] In New York, the State Executive Committee suspended and "reorganized" Left Wing locals and branches representing nearly half the state's membership. By July 1919, the Socialist Party had purged itself through suspensions and expulsions of more than 60,000 of the nearly 110,000 members that it had touted in January of that year.[7]

With Oneal and Germer's Party Regulars clearly in control of the situation, the suspended Foreign Language Federations and idiosyncratic Socialist Party of Michigan determined to move immediately to the formation of a Communist Party of America and issued a call for a founding convention to be held in Chicago on September 1, 1919. Others determined to fight on against the odds to restore the results of the 1919 party election at the scheduled August 30 convention of the Socialist Party. It was this latter group that would go on to establish the Communist Labor Party of America.

Executive Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht in 1918

Most of the English-speaking Left Wingers, headed by National Executive Committee members Alfred Wagenknecht and L. E. Katterfeld and including prominent New York journalist John Reed determined to fight on in an attempt to win control of the Socialist Party for the Left Wing. However, with many Left Wingers already abandoning this approach and the Regular faction firmly in control of a majority of the states electing delegates to the Emergency National Convention in Chicago scheduled for August 30, 1919, the fight was essentially over before it began.

The Credentials Committee of this convention was easily won by adherents of the Oneal-Germer Regulars, who froze out Left Wing-oriented delegations from California, Oregon and Minnesota. Roughly two dozen delegates pledging allegiance to the Left Wing Section bolted the convention to meet downstairs in a previously rented room, along with about 50 other Left Wingers from around the country. These latter delegates constituted themselves as the Communist Labor Party of America on August 31, 1919.

Executive Secretary of the Communist Labor Party of America was Alfred Wagenknecht of Ohio. The five member National Executive Committee consisted of Max Bedacht, Alexander Bilan, L. E. Katterfeld, Jack Carney and Edward Lindgren. Initial headquarters were maintained in Cleveland before being moved to New York City in December 1919.

The party moved to the underground in response to mass arrests and deportations conducted by the Justice Department and its Bureau of Investigation, guided by Special Assistant to the Attorney General J. Edgar Hoover. These raids and the move to the underground virtually destroyed the organization, which only existed in skeletal form in the first half of 1920, although publication of its legal newspaper, The Toiler, was maintained. The party also published an "illegal" underground monthly paper called Communist Labor Party News and issued the final issue of Ludwig Lore's theoretical magazine The Class Struggle under its auspices.

On April 18, 1920, Executive Secretary C. E. Ruthenberg exited the Communist Party of America and along with his factional supporters (such as Jay Lovestone and Isaac Edward Ferguson) constituted themselves as the "real" Communist Party of America with a view to merger with the Communist Labor Party of America. This organizational marriage took place at a secret Joint Unity Convention held at Bridgman, Michigan in August 1922. The resulting organization, also organized along underground lines to avoid arrest, was known as the United Communist Party of America (UCPA).

The Communist International to which the UCPA and the CPA both pledged their allegiance sought to end duplication, competition and hostility between the two communist parties and insisted on a merger into a single organization. That was eventually effected in May 1921 at a secret gathering held at the Overlook Mountain House hotel, near Woodstock, New York. The resulting unified group was also known as the Communist Party of America, which morphed into the Workers Party of America (December 1921) and changed its name in 1925 to Workers (Communist) Party and to Communist Party USA in 1929.