The Workingmen's Party of the United States: A History of the First Marxist Party in the Americas

146 Pages·1984·5.379 MB·English

by  Philip Sheldon Foner

STUDIES IN MARXISM, Vol. 14
THE WORKINGMEN’S PARTY
OF THE UNITED STATES
A History of the
First Marxist Party in the Americas
by
Philip S. Foner
Professor Emeritus, Lincoln University
MEP Publications
Minneapolis
MEP PUBLICATIONS
c/o Anthmpology Department
University of Minnesota
215 Ford Hall, 224 Church St. SE.
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
C0pyright ©Phillp S. Foner 1984
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Foner, Philip Sheldon, 1910-
The Workingmen’s Party of the United States.
(Studies in Marxism ; v. 14)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Workingmen’s Party of the United States—History.
2. Communism—United States—History—l9th century.
I. Title. II. Series: Studies in Marxism (Minneapolis,
Minn.) ; v. 14.
JK2391.W7F66 1984 324.273'7 83-26553
ISBN 0-930656-35—0
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Preface
1. Prologue 9
2. Formation of the Workingmen’s Party of the United States 25
3. Organization, Education, and Growth 37
4. The Great Debate 53
5. The WPUS and the Great Labor Uprising of 1877 68
6. Triumph of the “Political-Action Socialists” 91
'1 Epflogue 105
Appendix
Declaration of Principles of the Workingmen’s Party
of the United States 115
Constitution of the Workingmen’s Party of the United States 117
Notes 125
Index 143

PREFACE
This is the story of the first Marxist political organization in North
America, the Workingmen’s Party of the United States (WPUS).l
It lasted only a little over one year-from July, 1876, to December,
1877—but in the course of its brief existence, it made several important
contributions. It recruited, publicized, and nominated for office the
first Black socialist in U.S. history. It played an important role in
several key areas during the “Great Labor Uprising of 1877,” the
tremendous revolt of workers that was triggered by the railroad strike
in July of that year and the first nationwide strike in United States
history. It also made a major contribution to the founding and forma-
tion of the modern U.S. labor movement.
When it came into existence, The Socialist, published in New York
City, greeted its birth with the toast: “Success and long life to the
Workingmen’s Party of the United States.” Although in a formal sense,
the WPUS did not enjoy a long life, in reality it has had the longest life
of any radical party in the United States. In 1877, its name was
changed to the Socialistic Labor Party, which is still in existence today
as the Socialist Labor Party. That organization split, and out of the
split the Socialist Party of America emerged in 1901. That party, in
turn, split in 1919, and out of that split emerged the present-day
Communist Party of the United States. Thus, despite its brief formal
existence, the Workingmen’s Party of the United States was the first
link in a chain that has continued to the present day.
I wish to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the
following institutions and their staffs: Tamiment Institute Library,
New York University; Columbia University Library; State Historical
Society of Wisconsin; University of Wisconsin Library; Library of the
Institute for Marxism-Leninism, Berlin, German Democratic Republic;
Library of the University of California, Los Angeles; Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley; Haverford College library; Lincoln
University Pennsylvania Library; University of Cincinnati Library;
Library of the Cincinnati Historical Society; Library of Congress,
National Archives; University of Kentucky Library; Missouri Historical
8 / Preface
Society; University of Missouri Library; Boston Public Library; Univer-
sity of Minnesota Library; University of Pennsylvania Library; Free
Library of Philadelphia; Farmington Library, University of Maine;
Widener and Lamont Libraries, Harvard University.
I wish to thank Professor Marie De Brizzi of the University of
Paris for fumishing me with copies of reports of the First lntemational
in the United States in the Paris Police Archives. I wish also to thank
Mr. Kenneth Lapides for permitting me to read some of his writings
on Marx on the trade unions, and Paul Le Blanc for permitting me
to read his writings on the Workingmen’s Party of the United States.
I also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the Workingmen’s Party
of the United States with Mr. Le Blanc and am grateful for a number
of valuable suggestions. I also thank my brother Henry Foner and
Mr. Terry Schwartz of Normandale Community College in Minneapolis
for reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions.
Philip S. Foner
Professor Emeritus of History
Lincoln University, Pennsylvania
l
PROLOGUE
The contributions made by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to the labor
movement of their day were many and far-reaching.1 In both Europe
and the United States in the last century, their followers were among
the founders and first defenders of the trade unions, and their ideas
helped shape the modern labor movement almost from its inception.2
Although it was not until the post-Civil War decade that Marxist in-
fluence began to be directly linked with a broad trade-union movement
in the United States, even during the decade before the Civil War,
Marxist thought had begun to penetrate the country and to influence
the early socialist movement here. From 1852 to 1861, Marx was the
European correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune. Published by
Horace Greeley and edited by Charles A. Dana, it was one of the most
influential newspapers in the United States. Marx contributed almost
five htaindred articles to the Dibune during his association with the
paper.
The pioneer Marxist in the United States was Joseph Weydemeyer,
a close friend of Marx and Engels who migrated to the country at the
end of 1851. Through both his newspapers, Die Revolution and Die
Reform, and the organizations, Proletariarbund and the American labor
Union, he laid the foundations of Marxism in the United States. The
American Labor Union, initiated in 1853 by five German immigrants
headed by Weydemeyer, was a pioneer Marxist effort to build a labor
federation that would unite native- and foreign-bom and skilled and
unskilled workers—an organization combining working-class political
and trade-union demands.4 As David Herreshoff has pointed out, the
American Labor Union was “a quasi-party, quasi-trade union organiza-
tion” with “a program designed to gain access to the non-socialist
bulk of the working class by employing issues of immediate relevance
to the United States, without losing sight of the socialist goal.”s
Although both the Proletariarbund and the American Labor Union
passed out of existence within three years, labor radicalism in the
10 / 1. Prologue
German community in the United States continued to develop, re-
flected by the formation of the Communist Club of New York on
October 25, 1857. The club was not only the first Marxist organization
in the Western Hemisphere, but also the only socialist (and labor)
organization that invited Blacks to join as equal members. Its consti-
tution required all members to “recognize the complete equality of
all persons-no matter of whatever color or sex.”6 The club corre-
sponded with Marx and tried to stimulate the establishment in this
country of a broad labor association to cooperate with similar move-
ments in Europe. Joseph Weydemeyer, who at that time was living
in Milwaukee, hailed the formation of the first Marxist organization
in the hemisphere and helped it to broaden its contacts. By 1858,
there were Communist Clubs in New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati.7
The Communist Clubs were in the forefront of the struggle against
slavery, and their members played an important role in mobilizing the
German-American workers in opposition to the “peculiar institution.”8
When the Civil War began with the attack on Fort Sumter, most of the
German radical organizations disbanded because the majority of their
members had enlisted in the Union forces. The New York Communist
Club did not meet for the duration of the war since most of its mem-
bers had joined the Union Army. Several socialist leaders attained
positions of high rank. Joseph Weydemeyer was commissioned a colonel
and assigned by Lincoln to command the military district of St. Louis.
August Willich, the former Prussian officer and friend of Karl Marx,
took part in a number of engagements; he was severely wounded and
left the army with the rank of brigadier general. Robert Rosa, who had
been a Prussian officer before he became a member of the Communist
Club, was a major in the Forty-Fifth Reg'ment of New York. Fritz
Jacobi, vice-president of the Communist Club of New York, enlisted
as a private and was a lieutenant when he died on the field of
Fredericksburg.9
By the time the Civil War was over, the Marxist movement in the
United States had all but disappeared. Several leading Marxists had
died during the war, while others had drifted into other organizations.
Weydemeyer survived the war but died in 1866. This decline, however,
was only temporary. For one thing, immediately following the war,
the Marxists gained two recruits who were to play leading roles in
rebuilding Marxist influence—Adolph Douailo and Friedrich A. Sorge.ll
Both had become refugees after the failure of the German Revolution
of 1848 and both had moved simultaneously into the Marxist move-
ment. Douai publicly announced his conversion to Marxism in 1868
after reading the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital, published in
German in 1867. Nine years later, Douai began a series of articles on
1. Prologue / 11
Das Kapital in The Socialist, which announced that this was the first
attempt to render Marx’s classic work into English in a concise and
popular form.12
Sorge at first studied the ideas of Ferdinand Lassalle, whose
followers were exercising considerable influence in the German-
American community. However, he decided that Lassalle’s theories
were based on false principles. He rejected the thesis of the “iron law
of wages,” which held that the amount paid to a worker was equal to
what was “necessary for his subsistence” and would never be any
higher. He also rejected the view that trade unions and strikes were of
no importance and that the ballot was the only instrument for lifting
“the yoke of capital” from labor, since it alone could enable the
workers to establish producers’ cooperatives with state aid and thereby
raise themselves out of wage slavery into socialism. Convinced that
these ideas appealed more to handicraftsmen than to factory workers,
Sorge concluded that Lassalleanism had no future in the United
States.13
Logically and inevitably, Sorge turned to Marxism and began to
promote its ideas in the New York-based German Labor Association.
Later, he described the results of these efforts:
The members, almost exclusively plain wage-workers of every
possible trade, vied with each other in the study of the most
difficult economic and political problems. Among the hundreds
of members who belonged to the society from 1869 to 1874,
there was hardly one who had not read his Marx (Capital), and
more than a dozen of them had mastered the most involved
passages and definitions and were armed against any attacks of
the capitalist, middle-class, radical or reform schools.1
The group did not exist merely to conduct study circles but also
used Marxist principles in developing political perspectives for working-
class action. Samuel Gompers, one of the founders and the long-time
president and guiding spirit of the American Federation of Labor,
later recalled that he and many of the other founders of the Federation
were influenced by these Marxist groups and by the writings of Marx
and Engels, which they were able to read as a result of their association
with the groups. Gompers recalls, for example, how a translation of the
Communist Manifesto aroused him “to master the German language”
in order that he might read for himself the works of Marx and
Engels.”
In June, 1867, Sorge sent the first of many letters to Marx, in-
forming him of his desire to set up a section of the International
Workingmen’s Association in Hoboken, New Jersey, near New York
City, where he lived. Marx, who (like Engels) never fully trusted
12 / 1. Prologue
Adolph Douai’s grasp of Marxism because of the influence of the
“currency nonsense” on his social philosophy,l6 developed great
respect for Sorge and encouraged him to proceed. Thus began a cor-
respondenoe that was to continue regularly until Marx’s death in
I883.”
The lntemational Workingmen’s Association—the First Inter-
national—was launched on September 28, 1864, when more than two
thousand workers crowded into St. Martin’s Hall in London to attend
a meeting sponsored by British and French labor organizations. It
quickly became the focal point for the European working-class move-
ment, and in less than a decade, it also established itself in the United
States. Its aim, wrote Marx, was “to make the workmen of different
countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army
of emancipation.”m
Marx and Engels were active in the organization from its inception,
although apparently neither had anything to do with the preparations
that brought it into being. As Saul K. Padover points out, however,
without Marx, “it is questionable whether the organization would have
survived or would have had any meaning.”19 It was Marx, for example,
who wrote the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen’s
Association, and he also wrote virtually all of the public statements
and major reports of the General Council, of which he was a leading
figure. So much importance did Marx attach to the International that
his involvement with it caused a delay in the original publication of
the first volume of Das Kapital.”
It was to the General Council of the IWA that Marx delivered his
famous speech on “Wages, Price and Profit,” which set forth his theo-
retical justification of trade unionism and the struggle for such im-
mediate demands as higher wages. The occasion of the speech was a
debate with a follower of Robert Owen, the utopian socialist, who had
argued that every wage increase nullifies itself by producing a price
increase. Marx also included in his speech a careful explanation of his
view of the inherent inability of the trade unions, by themselves, to
achieve the socialist goal. However, he made clear his position that
the struggle for immediate demands was an essential preliminary to
the achievement of socialism.21
All radicals in the United States were moved by Marx’s appeal
in the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen ’s Associa-
tion: “To conquer political power has therefore become the great
duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for
in England, Germany, Italy, and France there have taken place simul-
taneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the
political reorganization of the working men’s party.”22 It was this