Obscure but interesting

The Socialist Labor Party (formed already in 1876) was a relatively important organization around 1900. Today, the SLP is a curious political fossil, still spouting essentially the same message of "socialist industrial unionism" as it did a century ago.

The SLP's main theoretician was Daniel De Leon, who died in 1914. His theories could be considered a blend of Marxism and syndicalism, although the SLP itself would most certainly reject this description. De Leon was succeeded as SLP leader by Arnold Petersen. In many ways, the SLP was more radical than the "official" Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs. However, the SLP was also strongly sectarian. It attempted to create its very own socialist dual unions, which were quickly outflanked by both the more conservative AFL and the revolutionary IWW. The SLP also had a very simplistic view of the socialist revolution: the party would win the elections to the federal Congress, and simultaneously, the socialist industrial unions should take over the economy. However, the party had no real idea how to bring this happy state of affairs around, and so was forced into sterile propaganda and eventual fossilization. Arnold Petersen was National Secretary from 1914 to 1969, a ridiculously long period, during which he purged the party of "disrupters" (read dissidents) on a regular basis.

"The SLP and the USSR" is a pamphlet published by the SLP itself in 1978. Despite the somewhat obscure subject, it does contain some interesting pieces of information, and could be of interest to students of labour movement history or Communist history.

The SLP's seemingly revolutionary politics and opposition to World War I made Lenin and the Bolsheviks interested in it. At the time, the Bolsheviks were trying to create a new international out of the revolutionary elements which had repudiated the Second International's support for the warring nations during the war. The Bolsheviks even sent a representative to the United States to meet with the SLP. Ironically, the representative was Alexandra Kollontai, who was critical of the SLP's syndicalist view of the labour unions. In 1920-21, Kollontai herself became the leader of a semi-syndicalist opposition group within the Bolshevik Party, the famed Workers' Opposition!

The SLP did support the October revolution in Russia, and sent two observers to the Comintern congress in 1921, but they never actually joined the Third (Communist) International. One reason was that the American Communists mostly came from the Socialist Party and the IWW. The SLP had a long-standing feud with both organizations. A deeper reason was the general incompatibility between SLP's program and the Bolshevik program. Thus, the SLP rejected the famous 21 conditions for Comintern affiliation, especially the call for Communist work within non-Communist labour unions, and the demand to create an illegal organization. The SLP held to a kind of American exceptionalism, claiming that Bolshevik methods were suitable to a backward nation such as Russia, while De Leon's program of "socialist industrial unionism" was the correct line in an advanced, modern nation like the United States.

At the same time, the SLP claimed that Lenin had studied De Leon's writings thoroughly, expressed support for his ideas and admiration for the man himself (Lenin had seen De Leon at a congress of the Second International, but the two men never actually met and talked). "The SLP and the USSR" admits that the party grossly exaggerated Lenin's sympathies for and knowledge of De Leon's ideas. Ironically, it might have been John Reed who had planted this idea with the SLP leadership, hoping to recruit them to Communism! Lenin did know about SLP's opposition to the war, and in passing compared the socialist industrial unions with the soviets. He even wanted to translate one of De Leon's writings against reformism to Russian, "Two Pages From Roman History". In general, however, the politics of Lenin were obviously different from those of the SLP, and there are only a few scattered remarks about the party in the Bolshevik leader's voluminous writings. Arnold Petersen seems to have deliberately fostered the notion that "Premier Lenin" was a (closet?) De Leonist, combining the Communist cult of Lenin with his own personality cult of the late De Leon.

"The SLP and the USSR" forthrightly admits that SLP's stance towards the Soviet Union was contradictory until 1939-40. On the one hand, the SLP rejected the politics of the Comintern and the American Communist Party. On the other hand, the party supported Soviet domestic policy, including those of Joseph Stalin. The SLP even supported Stalin's great purges, Petersen comparing them favourably to his own purges of "disrupters"! The Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 and subsequent Soviet attacks on Poland and Finland finally woke the SLP from their stupor, Petersen now declaring that the Soviet Union wasn't socialist, but rather a "bureaucratic state despotism". (That Petersen could make such a sudden shift without much opposition, shows that the SLP at this time was weird and cultish. Of course, the Soviet Union didn't care either way.)

This pamphlet was written in 1978, two years after Petersen's death, during the SLP's short reform period, hence its honest assessment of the party's politics. It makes a fine addition to my little archive of labour-related books.