Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party
As the Great Depression hit Americans harder than any other economic downturn in their memory, many of them looked for a political savior and they looked in a number of places. Bolshevism had changed Russia from a land ruled by a monarchy, and some believed that a socialist system might be the answer to their economic woes. The Socialist Party was not a new institution in the United States. The party had been formed in 1901 and it had run Eugene Victor Debs as its candidate in five Presidential elections in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. In 1912 he had receivd 6% of the popular vote, his best showing, and in 1920 he ran for President even though he was in prison, jailed under the Sedition Act for anti-war rhetoric.
The novelist Upton Sinclair was a member of the Socialist Party in California. He ran twice as its candidate for Congress and once as its nominee for governor in 1930. In 1934, Sinclair ran in the Democratic primary for governor and surprised everyone by winning, doing so by promising an array of socialist economic reforms which he called his EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement. Sinclair was defeated him in the general election, and he was expelled from the Socialist Party for running under the banner of another political party. In the election Sinclair won 879,537 votes, an impressive number, though it made up only 38% of the high voter turnout. Republican Frank Merriam won with 49% while Raymond Haight, running under the Progressive Party banner, collected 13%. Sinclair's expulsion marked the end of any momentum for the Socialist Party in California. Sinclair's campaign encouraged radicals in other states to turn away from the Socialist Party and membership in the party declined.
On the national level, Socialists were led by Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian Minister from Marion, Ohio, who had once delivered the newspaper published by Warren Harding. He later attended and graduated from Princeton, magna cum laude. He attended Union Theological Seminary and was appointed pastor of the East Harlem Presbyterian Church, ministering to Italian-American Protestants.
Thomas preached against American participation in the First World War. This pacifist stance led to his being shunned by many of his fellow alumni from Princeton, and opposed by some of the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in New York. Thomas was a pacifist and a conscientious objector, and this drew him to the Socialist Party of America. When SPA leader Morris Hillquit made his campaign for mayor of New York in 1917 on an antiwar platform, Thomas supported Hillquit and was encouraged to work on his campaign. Soon after this, Thomas himself joined the Socialist Party.
Thomas served as the secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. When the organization started a magazine called The World Tomorrow in January 1918, Thomas became its editor. He helped to make The World Tomorrow the leading voice of liberal Christian social activism of its time. He was one of the founders of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the precursor of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Thomas ran for office five times for offices in New York as the Socialist party candidate. He ran for governor of New York in 1924, for mayor of New York in 1925, for New York State Senate in 1926, for alderman in 1927, and for mayor of New York again in 1929. In 1934, he ran for the US Senate in New York and polled almost 200,000 votes.
Eugene Debs's death in 1926 left a leadership vacuum in the Socialist Party. At the time the party had only about 8,000 paying members. It chose Thomas as its presidential candidate at the party's 1928 National Convention. The 1928 campaign was the first of Thomas's six consecutive campaigns as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party. Thomas is described as an articulate and engaging speaker. He dressed in a dignified manner and looked presidential. In his rhetoric, Thomas was quick to note the difference between socialism, the movement he represented, and communism and revolutionary Marxism. His had once admired the stated intentions of the Russian Revolution, but he soon lost any respect of the movement because of the policies of Joseph Stalin.
At the 1934 National Convention of the Socialist Party, Thomas backed a radical Declaration of Principles authored by Devere Allen, his associate from the World Tomorrow. He sought to create an all-inclusive party, which included members of dissident communist organizations. He worked with the Communist Party USA. Rather that making for a bigger tent, the party broke into factions and the New York Old Guard left to establish themselves as the Social Democratic Federation of America. Thomas sought the support of radical intellectuals and trade unionists who had been the historic core of the Socialist Party, but the efforts to work closely with the Communist Party in joint actions caused problems. Thomas's efforts to unite the factional and marginalized American Left in a common cause did not play out as Thomas had hoped.
After the Nazis rose in Germany and Austria by 1934, things changed. For a brief period in 1935 and 1936, the vision of the Socialist Party as an "all-inclusive party" seemed achievable. But in January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard, a factional battle was being won in the Trotskyist Workers Party of the United States to join the Socialist Party when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, The New Militant, published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party". About half of the Workers Party decided to jointhe Socialist Party.
At first, the prospect of the union of Trotskyists and Socialists looked like a wise move, but soone constant and significant differences began to surface among the two groups. The Trotskyists and Socialists both opposed US entry into the European war. But the two groups differed over issues such as which labor organization to support and on whether to defend the Soviet Union as the first workers' state or to condemn it becayse of the brutality of Stalin's regime.
Norman Thomas received nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in areas where the party had onced performed well. The party's membership had begun to decline and the organization was deeply factionalized with left, center and right ideological groups. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to try to unite the party and draft a roadmap for its future policy. But before the March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own, meeting in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis as its own entity, electing a National Action Committee. Some members vigorously attacked the Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged. Tensions rose and an emergency meeting of leaders of the various factions was held in New York.
No action was taken at the 1937 convention to expel the Trotskyists, but tensioms continued to build. The convention passed a ban on factional newspapers. This led to the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in 1937. Thomas himself concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to take it over. Further tensions arose over whether or not to support Republican nominee for mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia, a favorite of many in Socialist ranks, A meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by a vote of 48 to 2, with 18 abstentions. Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the Young People's Socialist League leaving the party with the Trotskyists. Dissention within the party effectively ended any hope of making it any sort of credible opposition to Franklin Roosevelt.
Thomas soon became disenchanted with Russian-style socialism. He disapproved of the Communist Party monopoly on the press, radio, schools, army and government. He wrote, "The old keenness of political discussion in the party has almost died, at least in so far as policy is concerned. A quotation from Stalin is a final answer to all argument. He receives the same sort of exaggerated veneration in public appearances, in the display of his picture, and in written references to him that is accorded to a Mussolini or a Hitler." The Social Democratic Federation of America now controlled the bulk of the Socialist Party's former property and the allegiance of those best able to fund the organization. The expulsions of the Trotskyists and disintegration of the party's youth section left the organization greatly weakened.
By 1940, only a small committed core remained in the Socialist Party, including a considerable number of militant pacifists. The Socialist Party continued to oppose Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1940, Thomas was the only presidential candidate who did not support rearmament of Great Britain and China. He also served as an active spokesman for the isolationist America First Committee during 1941. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the declaration of war, the United States' self-defense and war against fascism was supported by most Americans. The Socialist Party adopted a compromise position that did not openly oppose American participation in the war, but its failure to support the war created a rift with many leaders, including leaders of the United Auto Workers.
Thomas remained devoted to the Socialist cause for the remainder of his life. He died on December 19, 1968 in a nursing home in Huntington, New York at the age of 84. A plaque in the Norman Thomas '05 Library at Princeton University's Forbes College reads: Norman M. Thomas, class of 1905. "I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won."
The novelist Upton Sinclair was a member of the Socialist Party in California. He ran twice as its candidate for Congress and once as its nominee for governor in 1930. In 1934, Sinclair ran in the Democratic primary for governor and surprised everyone by winning, doing so by promising an array of socialist economic reforms which he called his EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement. Sinclair was defeated him in the general election, and he was expelled from the Socialist Party for running under the banner of another political party. In the election Sinclair won 879,537 votes, an impressive number, though it made up only 38% of the high voter turnout. Republican Frank Merriam won with 49% while Raymond Haight, running under the Progressive Party banner, collected 13%. Sinclair's expulsion marked the end of any momentum for the Socialist Party in California. Sinclair's campaign encouraged radicals in other states to turn away from the Socialist Party and membership in the party declined.
On the national level, Socialists were led by Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian Minister from Marion, Ohio, who had once delivered the newspaper published by Warren Harding. He later attended and graduated from Princeton, magna cum laude. He attended Union Theological Seminary and was appointed pastor of the East Harlem Presbyterian Church, ministering to Italian-American Protestants.
Thomas preached against American participation in the First World War. This pacifist stance led to his being shunned by many of his fellow alumni from Princeton, and opposed by some of the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in New York. Thomas was a pacifist and a conscientious objector, and this drew him to the Socialist Party of America. When SPA leader Morris Hillquit made his campaign for mayor of New York in 1917 on an antiwar platform, Thomas supported Hillquit and was encouraged to work on his campaign. Soon after this, Thomas himself joined the Socialist Party.
Thomas served as the secretary of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. When the organization started a magazine called The World Tomorrow in January 1918, Thomas became its editor. He helped to make The World Tomorrow the leading voice of liberal Christian social activism of its time. He was one of the founders of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, the precursor of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Thomas ran for office five times for offices in New York as the Socialist party candidate. He ran for governor of New York in 1924, for mayor of New York in 1925, for New York State Senate in 1926, for alderman in 1927, and for mayor of New York again in 1929. In 1934, he ran for the US Senate in New York and polled almost 200,000 votes.
Eugene Debs's death in 1926 left a leadership vacuum in the Socialist Party. At the time the party had only about 8,000 paying members. It chose Thomas as its presidential candidate at the party's 1928 National Convention. The 1928 campaign was the first of Thomas's six consecutive campaigns as the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party. Thomas is described as an articulate and engaging speaker. He dressed in a dignified manner and looked presidential. In his rhetoric, Thomas was quick to note the difference between socialism, the movement he represented, and communism and revolutionary Marxism. His had once admired the stated intentions of the Russian Revolution, but he soon lost any respect of the movement because of the policies of Joseph Stalin.
At the 1934 National Convention of the Socialist Party, Thomas backed a radical Declaration of Principles authored by Devere Allen, his associate from the World Tomorrow. He sought to create an all-inclusive party, which included members of dissident communist organizations. He worked with the Communist Party USA. Rather that making for a bigger tent, the party broke into factions and the New York Old Guard left to establish themselves as the Social Democratic Federation of America. Thomas sought the support of radical intellectuals and trade unionists who had been the historic core of the Socialist Party, but the efforts to work closely with the Communist Party in joint actions caused problems. Thomas's efforts to unite the factional and marginalized American Left in a common cause did not play out as Thomas had hoped.
After the Nazis rose in Germany and Austria by 1934, things changed. For a brief period in 1935 and 1936, the vision of the Socialist Party as an "all-inclusive party" seemed achievable. But in January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard, a factional battle was being won in the Trotskyist Workers Party of the United States to join the Socialist Party when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, The New Militant, published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party". About half of the Workers Party decided to jointhe Socialist Party.
At first, the prospect of the union of Trotskyists and Socialists looked like a wise move, but soone constant and significant differences began to surface among the two groups. The Trotskyists and Socialists both opposed US entry into the European war. But the two groups differed over issues such as which labor organization to support and on whether to defend the Soviet Union as the first workers' state or to condemn it becayse of the brutality of Stalin's regime.
Norman Thomas received nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in areas where the party had onced performed well. The party's membership had begun to decline and the organization was deeply factionalized with left, center and right ideological groups. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to try to unite the party and draft a roadmap for its future policy. But before the March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own, meeting in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis as its own entity, electing a National Action Committee. Some members vigorously attacked the Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged. Tensions rose and an emergency meeting of leaders of the various factions was held in New York.
No action was taken at the 1937 convention to expel the Trotskyists, but tensioms continued to build. The convention passed a ban on factional newspapers. This led to the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in 1937. Thomas himself concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to take it over. Further tensions arose over whether or not to support Republican nominee for mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia, a favorite of many in Socialist ranks, A meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by a vote of 48 to 2, with 18 abstentions. Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the Young People's Socialist League leaving the party with the Trotskyists. Dissention within the party effectively ended any hope of making it any sort of credible opposition to Franklin Roosevelt.
Thomas soon became disenchanted with Russian-style socialism. He disapproved of the Communist Party monopoly on the press, radio, schools, army and government. He wrote, "The old keenness of political discussion in the party has almost died, at least in so far as policy is concerned. A quotation from Stalin is a final answer to all argument. He receives the same sort of exaggerated veneration in public appearances, in the display of his picture, and in written references to him that is accorded to a Mussolini or a Hitler." The Social Democratic Federation of America now controlled the bulk of the Socialist Party's former property and the allegiance of those best able to fund the organization. The expulsions of the Trotskyists and disintegration of the party's youth section left the organization greatly weakened.
By 1940, only a small committed core remained in the Socialist Party, including a considerable number of militant pacifists. The Socialist Party continued to oppose Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1940, Thomas was the only presidential candidate who did not support rearmament of Great Britain and China. He also served as an active spokesman for the isolationist America First Committee during 1941. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the declaration of war, the United States' self-defense and war against fascism was supported by most Americans. The Socialist Party adopted a compromise position that did not openly oppose American participation in the war, but its failure to support the war created a rift with many leaders, including leaders of the United Auto Workers.
Thomas remained devoted to the Socialist cause for the remainder of his life. He died on December 19, 1968 in a nursing home in Huntington, New York at the age of 84. A plaque in the Norman Thomas '05 Library at Princeton University's Forbes College reads: Norman M. Thomas, class of 1905. "I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won."