Posted at Ballot Access News
The Socialist Labor Party, the original party of socialism in the United States, stopped running candidates for partisan public office after 1981, but has continued to publish its newspaper, The People, on a bimonthly schedule. However, due to a shortage of funds, the paper hasn’t been published since the March-April 2008 issue.
The SLP closed its national office, which had been in San Jose, California, on September 1, and shipped a great deal of archival material to Duke University and also to the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Both institutions have good collections relating to the history of many minor parties.
The SLP hopes to resume publication of The People in 2009.
I oppose involuntary councilism.
Anyone who alledges that they are a “libertarian” and opposes councilism is a fraud.
Agreed.
See
http://radgeek.com/?s=unions
Deleonism still survives in the World Socialist Party, a splinter grounp from the SLP, that still is very active. The WSP does not do elections though.
The reality of councilism is that in the early 1900s the bolshevik parties believed that whatever they diod was right, they also were Leninist and believed that only via their dominion would things get better; thus they subverted, or forcibly destroyed the councilist movement.
We see this is Russia with the suppression of he Makhnovist movement an the Krondstadt insurrection. This is often referred to as the Third Russian Revolution.
IOn the United Syayes councilism existed, temporarily during the Seattle general strike of 1919, the San Francisco general strike of , and the factory occupation of the 30s and 40s; especially the Ford plant occupations.
In this country the “official” trade unions opposed this sort of self determination. Even the CIO, which had become dominated by the SP and CP, opposed the notion of working people not needing “correct” leadership.
Councilism also was the active force in Italy’s ’77 factory occupations.
Councilism is the clearest historical evidence that given the info and opportunity, working people do not need bosses or managers.
Anyone who alledges that they are a “libertarian” and opposes councilism is a fraud.
Councilism is the modern mechanism whereby power is horizontal, rather than vertical.
Sivarticus,
The idea of governance by workers councils or “soviets” actually predates Leninism which itself emerged as a tendency in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party in the first decade of the 20th century. Communists traditionally have opposed governance by workers councils, seeking to control and direct them from above through the instrumentality of the state where they have existed. Workers councils have arisen more or less spontaneously in times of political turbulence, most notably in 1917-19 in Russia and Germany. They have come into being in opposition both to capitalist interests (Russia 1917, Spain 1936) and Communist totalitarianism (Hungary 1956). They were a notable presence in the immediate post war period in Eastern Germany, serving in many instances as vehicles for the organization of social and economic life prior to the full
imposition of the Stalinist occupation by 1947.
I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that workers councils have been “subverted to tyranny”. Perhaps more accurate to say “subverted by tyranny”. Where in the early phases of socialist revolution they have existed along side communist state power and their leaderships have been unsophisticated, they frequently have been manipulated and exploited, but they have also functioned as a revolutionary force in opposition to established communist power.
youre a moron, CT
There is probably no reason to have a dedicated office anyway. It would be a huge waste for them to have a Watergate office, for example.
Very important article, all must read.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0806499.htm
God bless Claiborne Pell, who died today as the first public figure of 2009 to die. He was responsible for the holy system of socialist education becoming even better through government grants. May God rest his soul, amen.
Sivarticus, there are many reports about the existance and functionality of the workers’ councils. You need to spend more time on Marxists.org. In order for the socialist new world order to rise, the socialist workers need to consolidate into the Democratic Party and the Catholic Trotskyist Party, which will necessitate the voluntary liquidation of the assets of the other socialist parties, unless they can establish a left secular socialist federation to counteract the Catholic influence of Catholic Trotskyism.
John Lowell, very interesting information. I will try to establish some links between some of the remaining officials of the Socialist Labor Party and the Catholic Trotskyist Party, as it seems we have a lot in common.
It’s weird to see this old group shut down when socialism is more popular than ever. How ironic.
On the subject of the workers’ councils, I believe these were mostly Marxist-Leninist fantasies. If they existed, then it’s funny they’re subverted so easily to tyranny. Not to mention their alleged existence seems to have been so short lived that there are few reports about their function or the productivity of this business model.
Regardless, the idea of elected managers and democratized workplaces is so frightening that I hope the idea is buried for good in the murky annals of history.
This development is regretable. The Socialist Labor Party was a fixture on the American political landscape for decades. It represented a viewpoint that, today, I’d suspect, would be looked upon with some sympathy by libertarians of an anarchist stripe. The SLP was non-statist, resisting the models on the left offered first by the Socialist and later the Communist Parties. It stood for “industrial government” or governace through worker’s councils, or “soviets” as they were called in Europe, rather than parliaments. It held to an ideal of industrial democracy. Varients of this kind of structure were in evidence in the early phases of many of the workers uprisings in the 20th century, in Russia in 1917, and in Yugoslavia and in what eventually became the German Democratic Republic in 1945. In each of these instances these councils fell victim to Communist manipulations and ultimately were reduced to vehicles for the expression of state policy. At a time when our two party, one party state proves itself incapable of representing the clear interests of the people, when the proferred “opposition” parties serve as nothing more than a black hole into which the discontent of millions is channeled and thereby rendered harmless, we are all made poorer by the loss of the alternative provided by the Socialist Labor Party.
sucks, The DeLeonists were cool, the people was actually a decent third party paper
What do the people have to say about it?
Of what?
Some one notify Philip Sawyer!
Maybe they should apply for a government bailout.