The Socialist Propaganda League of America (SPLA) was established in 1915, apparently by C. W. Fitzgerald of

Beverly, Massachusetts Beverly is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States, and a suburb of Boston. The population was 42,670 at the time of the 2020 United States census. A resort, residential, and manufacturing community on the Massachusetts North Sho ...

. The group was a membership organization established within the ranks of 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 America ...

(SPA) and is best remembered as direct lineal antecedent of the Left Wing Section of the SPA and its governing National Council — the forerunner of the American Communist movement. It published a journal, ''The Internationalist'', renamed ''The New International'' in 1917, last published in 1919.

Organizational history

Establishment

In the fall of 1915, C.W. Fitzgerald wrote and sent a leaflet to

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Lenin replied, outlining his views on the situation faced by the revolutionary socialist movement. It was not until November 1916 that any sort of broad-based organization was established. A November 26, 1916, meeting in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

approved a first

manifesto A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...

for the organization and established an official journal, ''The Internationalist'' .The paper was launched in Boston at the start of January 1917 and continued under that name through April of that year. Walter Goldwater, ''Radical Periodicals in America, 1890-1950.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Library, 1964; pg. 18. The initial editor of ''The Internationalist'' was John D. Williams. According to the group's constitutional objectives, "The SPLA declares emphatically and will work uncompromisingly in the economic and political fields for industrial revolution to establish

industrial democracy Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the deci ...

by the mass action of the working class."

Move to New York

In January 1917, editor Williams traveled to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in order to raise money for the Socialist Propaganda League and its newly launched paper.Theodore Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism.'' New York: Viking Press, 1957; pg. 86. Williams made the acquaintance of a young

Italian-American Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...

radical named Louis C. Fraina, until recently a key editor at the now-defunct magazine '' The New Review.'' Williams sought an experienced editor to take over the publication and a compact was made. Beginning with an issue dated April 21, 1917, ''The Internationalist'' was moved to New York City and published by the Socialist Propaganda League as ''The New International''.Goldwater, ''Radical Periodicals in America, 1890-1950,'' pg. 27. Louis Fraina became the publication's editor at that date. The publication was financed through donations made by Dutch engineer and left wing socialist S.J. Rutgers. Circulation was small, estimated by historian Theodore Draper at "no more than a thousand copies of each issue," which served to limit the paper's influence.Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism,'' pg. 87. Nevertheless, Draper and other historians of the American left regard ''The Internationalist'' and its successor as the first propaganda organs of the movement which congealed as the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party in 1919 — forerunner of the American communist movement. In January 1918, in the aftermath of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

victory in Russia and the establishment of a Revolutionary Socialist regime there, the SPLA issue a second manifesto of the organization. The manifesto denounced " bourgeois democracy" as a "fraud" by means of which "Imperialism promotes the most brutal interests," advocated for "the unity of

industrial action Industrial action (British English) or job action (American English) is a temporary show of dissatisfaction by employees—especially a strike or slowdown or working to rule—to protest against bad working conditions or low pay and to increas ...

and Socialist politics," argued that "the revolution of the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian or a . Marxist ph ...

annihilates the

parliamentary In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

regime and its state" and instead establishes a new form of government based upon

workers' councils A workers' council, also called labour council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of poli ...

that combine legislative and executive authority. The SPLA stated in this manifesto that "the organization is formed to work in the Socialist Party as well as independently of the party" and for "the revolutionary reorganization of the American Socialist movement" both from within and without the SPA. The organization achieved a significant degree of public notice as leading exponents of the Bolshevik Revolution in the United States. On February 28, 1918, a mass meeting was held in a New York City hall at which Louis Fraina quixotically called for the establishment of a "Red Guard" of draft age men to be sent to

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

to fight for the Bolshevik government against the German army then invading the country."Ask Wilson's Leave to Fight for Russia: Harlem Socialists Move to Organize a "Red Guard" Here of Men Above Draft Age,"
''New York Times,'' March 1, 1918; pg. 2. The meeting of about 2,000 people was also addressed by writer Andre Tridon as well as IWW poet Arturo Giovanitti.

Invitation to join the Communist International

The Socialist Propaganda League called for a new revolutionary socialist International and was invited by name to attend the founding Congress of the

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

in 1919. The organization, however, was unable to send a representative in time to attend the gathering.

Dissolution and legacy

A total of 12 issues of ''The New International'' are known to have been produced through October 1918. ''The New International'' was directly succeeded by '' The Revolutionary Age,'' also edited by Fraina, with the first issue of that paper appearing in the middle of November.Goldwater, ''Radical Periodicals in America, 1890-1950,'' pg. 35. "The League is still in existence, but its paper is no longer published, since ''The Revolutionary Age'' expresses its policy," Fraina noted in March 1919. Prominent members of the SPL joined the new Communist Party of America, which eventually merged with the Communist Labor Party to form first the Workers Party of America and eventually the

Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, also referred to as the American Communist Party mainly during the 20th century, is a communist party in the United States. It was established ...

Key members

* C.W. Fitzgerald * Louis C. Fraina * John Jurgis * Otto Huiswoud * S.J. Rutgers * John D. Williams

Publications

"Letter to C.W. Fitzgerald in Beverly, Massachusetts, from N. Lenin (V.I. Ul'ianov) in Berne, Switzerland, November 1915,"
originally published in ''Lenin Collected Works,'' Fourth Edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 21, pp. 423–428, here at the Marxists Internet Archive
"Letter to C.W. Fitzgerald in Beverly, Massachusetts, from N. Lenin (V.I. Ul'ianov) in Berne, Switzerland, November 1915,"
PDF-Version of above from Tim Davenport's article in ''Marxist History'' with remarks on dating the letter * "Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America (Adopted at a Meeting Held in the City of Boston, November 26, 1916)," ''International Socialist Review,'' vol. 17, no. 7 (January 1917), pp. 483–485.
"Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America (January 1919)"
''Revolutionary Age,'' vol. 1, no. 21 (March 8, 1919), pg. 8.
"Constitution of the Socialist Propaganda League of America,"
''The Internationalist,'' vol. 1, no. 1 (January 6, 1918), pg. 2.

References

{{reflist

External links

* Tim Davenport

Early American Marxism website, www.marxisthistory.org/ * Tim Davenport and Marty Goodman (eds.)

Marxists Internet Archive. —Downloadable pdfs of official SPLA newspapers. 1915 establishments in the United States Factions of the Socialist Party of America 1919 disestablishments in the United States