Originally called the Workingmen's party when it was organized in 1876, the party was renamed in 1877. Most of its members were immigrants from the large industrial U.S. cities. In 1890 Marxist Daniel De Leon joined the SLP and became editor of its newspaper, The People. Under De Leon's leadership the SLP adopted a Marxist view that advocated revolution in order to free workers from the bonds of capitalism. In 1892 the SLP ran Simon Wing as a presidential candidate. The SLP continued to run presidential candidates for many years; however, electoral strength for the party reached a peak in 1898 when the SLP candidate fielded 82,204 votes.
In 1898 Eugene Debs and other veterans of the American Railway Union's national strike against the Pullman Company organized the Socialist Democratic Party (SDP). The majority of SDP members were laborers who had been born in the United States. In 1901 one wing of the SLP merged with Eugene Debs' Social Democratic Party (SDP) at a unity convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. The newly merged Socialist Party of the United States of America was a mix of people harboring moderate to radical views including Marxists, Christians, pro-Zion and anti-Zion Jewish reformers, pacifists, populists, anarchists, and others. The continuing reform versus revolution debate was blunted by the adoption of platforms that envisioned revolution as the ultimate goal, while advocating immediate reform measures, but the party faced continuous internal conflict due to the variety of opinions held by its members.
The Socialist party sought to become a major component of the American political system. Debs ran as the party's presidential candidate in 1908, 1912, and 1920, polling over 915,000 votes in 1920. In 1919 a major ideological divide within the party caused a number of members to split off and form what eventually became the Communist Party of the United States. In 1924 the Socialist party did not field a presidential candidate, but instead it supported the campaign of Senator robert la follette of Wisconsin who ran on the Progressive Party ticket. La Follette polled 5 million popular votes but carried only his home state. The Great Depression of the early 1930s increased support for the Socialist party; its 1932 presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, received 896,000 votes.
After that election the membership and political impact of the Socialist party began to decline. The heterogeneity of views led to conflicts among various party factions, and over the years these factions were subject to numerous splits and mergers. Some members left to join the Communist party because they felt the Socialist agenda was not sufficiently radical. Others became Democrats, theorizing that working with a major political party was the most viable means of achieving reform.
In 1976 the Socialist party ran a presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. Since then the party has fielded presidential candidates in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000. In 2000 the presidential candidate, David McReynolds, a peace activist and former party chair, earned ballot status in seven states. Since 1973, the Socialist party has concentrated on grassroots organizing and having an impact on local politics.
Further readings
Fried, Albert., ed. 1992. Socialism in America: From the Shakers to the Third International: A Documentary History. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Gary Marks. 2001. It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States. New York: Norton.
Miller, Timothy. 1998. The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-Century America: 1900–1960. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Press.
Socialist Party of the United States of America. Available online at <sp-usa.org> (accessed August 11, 2003.
From around the world. There appears to be a plan globally.....
I was surprised to see a Hari Raya message this year coming from the SDP. The presenter is none other than SDP CEC member Jufrie Mahmood. He's the most ideal candidate since he is the most senior Muslim SDP member.
By Igor Ilic
ZAGREB | Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:01pm IST
ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatia's coalition faces a no-confidence vote over corruption and economic problems, which may fail but will highlight the country's political instability as it aims to conclude European Union entry talks next year.
The Social Democrats (SDP), Croatia's leading opposition party, will file the motion in parliament this week against the conservative-led government of Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, a party spokeswoman said.
Kosor's government still commands a slight majority and is unlikely to fall in the vote. However, the SPD holds a solid edge in opinion polls over Kosor's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) a year before a general election is due to be held.
"We plan to file the motion on Wednesday. Then, the vote must take place within 30 days," SDP spokeswoman Ivana Grljak said. The vote can be held seven days after the motion is filed at the earliest.
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| Thursday, 25 March 2010 |
|
 The inevitable has happened. Supermarket chain Sheng Siong is increasing rentals by an incredible 30 percent for its stallholders in five wet markets from next month. Singapore Democrats
The inevitable has happened. Supermarket chain Sheng Siong is increasing rentals by an incredible 30 percent for its stallholders in five wet markets from next month (see report below). The wet markets were bought over by Sheng Siong recently against strong protests by both residents and stallholders.
The Singapore Democrats voiced out strongly against the move precisely because we were concerned that Sheng Siong would hike rentals for stallholders. Our worst fears have been confirmed.
Despite the serious objections, the HDB allowed the sales of the wet markets in Choa Chu Kang, Bukit Batok and Serangoon to go through. In particular, stallholders at the Fajar Market in Bukit Panjang with the support of residents in the area appealed to their PAP member of parliament Dr Teo Ho Pin to stop the sale, but to no avail.
The SDP, which had contested the Bukit Panjang constituency in the last general elections, wrote letters asking for meetings with both Sheng Siong and Dr Teo to highlight the plight of the residents and stallholders but was stonewalled. |
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Support for the Social Democrats is at the lowest for several years, according to the Finnish broadcasting corporation Yle’s July opinion poll.
Only 20,4 per cent of voters would vote for the SDP if there were a parliamentary election today. This is 2 per cent points lower than in May’s opinion poll – before the SDP elected their new leader, Jutta Urpilainen. This is bad news for the SDP who would clearly have been hoping that a new leader would have bought new momentum to the party and made it look a fresh prospect for voters. That no such favourable bounce has occurred will be worrying for the party, most particularly for Urpilainen, who faces her first major test as party chairman in October’s municipal elections. In the last municipal elections of 2004, the SDP received over 24 per cent of the votes.
Both of the largest government parties, Centre and Kokoomus (National coalition party) enjoy equal popularity; both would receive 22 per cent support of the voters according to Yle’s poll.
Worryingly, the right-wing party ‘True Finns’ again put in a good showing, with 5,9 per cent of voters asked saying that they would vote for them. This could be helped by those wishing to register a protest vote after the electoral financing scandal surrounding all the main parties. For the other parties, changes were small and not significant statistically.
Municipal elections throughout mainland Finland take place on 26 October.
Pictured is SDP chairman Jutta Urpilainen.
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http://www.google.com/search?q=who+is+SDP%3F+%22USA%22+%22United+States%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&q=Socialist+Democratic+Party+USA&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=Socialist+Democratic+Party+USA&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=9a951961ff9ba31dWelcome to the official website of the Social Democrats, USA, current as of 2010. The old website, still availible at www.socialdemocrats.org, is also archived here, under "About Us". The information posted at the old website does not represent Social Democrats, USA, now under new, democratic management. For our current offical positions, see our Statement of Principles and Constitution.
Happy Birthday to Us!
We turned 1 year old on May 3rd. And look what Glenn Beck has to say about us:
PARTY WITHIN A PARTY
We have no intention of ceding our heritage to self-styled anarchists and revolutionaries. The Social Democrats, USA kept the name Socialist Party for our political arm because we are the party of Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Helen Keller, Carl Sandburg, Norman Thomas, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and thousands of people who worked to build the civil rights and trade union movements in this country. Many good folks gave their lives in these movements.
The Socialist Party, USA, in 1956, chose to stop running candidates of its own, except on rare occasion. During the 1960's, we began to work in the Democratic Party. This is where our allies in the civil rights and trade union movement worked and continue to work politically. We are proud of what we helped accomplish within the Democratic Party, particularly the civil rights legislation and anti-poverty programs of the the 1960's. The struggle continues. The U.S. is woefully behind the rest of the world in providing low cost health care to all its citizens. As a society, we pay the cost. Health statistics make the USA look like a third world country. We have only the 47th highest life expectancy among nations. What country can be called a super power and not defend its citizens from preventable disease? We fail our young people by making higher education affordable only to the lucky. Perhaps most grievously, we fail our veterans and our senior citizens. Those who gave us so much are faced with cuts in the programs upon which they rely for survival.
When the banks and the auto industry were in chaos, they demanded and got a bailout. The Republican Party and the "Blue Dog" Democrats argue the cost of aiding the average family with health care, tuition, and housing is too expensive. It is Democratic legislators that we must influence, not to waste the stimulus monies, but to make a plan that rebuilds our public infrastructure, creates ecologically friendly ways to travel, and provides health care for every American. Our movement has been involved in the left wing of the Democratic Party since 1947. Socialist Party members helped found Americans for Democratic Action. ADA is this country's premiere "anti-Communist, liberal" organization. We are proud of our long relationships with Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, and others. We look forward to forging a good working relationship with our fellow pro-labor, anti-totalitarian, left Democrats.
Whose Party?
The right wing accuses us of boring from within. They like the Norman Thomas' quote "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." When Thomas said this, liberals self-identified very publicly. Hubert Humphrey, for instance, wore the label proudly and worked closely with members of the Socialist Party. American liberalism is much akin to social democracy in protecting the most vulnerable and expanding opportunity. The political upheaval over the Vietnam war shattered the old liberal coalition in the Democratic Party into isolated single interest groups with no long range vision. America was the bulwark against both Fascism and Communism, those pretend socialists. Socialism seemed anti-American.
How American is socialism? Consider "The Pledge of Allegiance". The Pledge was written by the Rev. Francis Bellamy, a Christian pastor and Socialist Party member. Bellamy did not mention the Creator, because as a minister, he believed that blasphemous. He wrote the rest of the Pledge as we say it today.
The members of the Social Democrats, USA are proud of "our flag and the republic for which it stands." We are also internationalists. We work with democratic socialist, social democratic, and labor parties around the world.
"Political party" means something different to people outside this country. Our political parties are huge catch-all electoral coalitions. Socialist author and Democratic Party activist, Michael Harrington, was fond of saying, "The Democratic Party contains some of the worst and most of the best people in American politics." He also pointed out that small left wing sects, like the Socialist Workers' Party, have more people on national staff than the Democratic Party does in non-presidential election years. In other countries, members of a political party are required to express substantial agreement with the party's programme, pay dues, and participate in electoral campaigns. The British Labour Party, one of the parties with which we work, has less than 200,000 members. Yet, it governs a nation of more than 80 million. The Social Democrats, USA insists that its members agree with our statement of principles, pay dues, and participate in the life of the organization. In this way, we remain a "socialist party."
The SD,USA does not generally favor third party candidacies. American politics makes the "two party system" a fixture. There are exceptions, but these are usually regional and temporary. We have learned from our allies in organized labor and the civil rights movement that we need to effect change now. Workers, the poor, and the victims of discrimination can't wait. We are not hiding in the Democratic Party. You will know us by the far reaching proposals we put forward for both the short and long term change. Despite what the right wing pundits say, the liberal movement has become tiny in America. The old liberal, pro-labor coalition needs reviving. We are working with our allies to do just that. You will find Social Democrats building unions and community groups. You may be working with us supporting excellent local candidates for public office. The economic elites want to either own our economy or let it be destroyed and the United States with it. Perhaps you love America enough to join us in extending democracy to our economy.
The Party of the Second Part
There is a group which refers to itself as "revolutionary socialist" which uses the name "Socialist Party of the United States of America". This organization was formed by people who left the old Socialist Party, USA when the later group changed its name to Social Democrats, USA to focus solely on working in the Democratic Party. The Social Democrats, USA never gave up the use of the name Socialist Party, USA and old leadership made this clear. Since 1995, the website banner read: "SD, USA is the successor to the Socialist Party, USA, the Party of Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas, and Bayard Rustin and is a member of the Socialist International". The older website is mirrored here, on the About Us page.
Dispite the fact that their constitutions dropped the name Socialist Party, USA in 1979 and that Party leadership sought to legally trademark the name "Socialist Party of the United States of America" in 2007, this group uses the initials SP, USA. Most members connected to the real Socialist Party, USA have passed away or resigned. It is a conceit for this group to claim any connection to the Party of Debs and Thomas. A political party is not an inheritence. The SP of the USA relies more on the ideas of Leon Trotsky than of Eugene Debs.
Recently, in an effort to become more like Daniel De Leon, the SP of the USA began expelling anyone suspected of having membership in SD,USA. This included the entire state of Pennsylvania, membership of more than one hundred. While having no formal ban on dual membership with this "party", whose national membership is less than 1,000, we have strong disagreements with them, particularly on the nature of democracy.
Many of us have strong personal ties with SP of the USA members. We endorsed SP of the USA, 2008 presidential candidate, Brian Moore, as "the best candidate running with no hope of influencing the outcome." The SD,USA is sad to see "that other Socialist Party" has become just another psuedo-party, anti-American, left wing sect. Such groups abuse the word socialism every bit as much as the right wing pundits, Fascists, and Communists do.
One in five Americans finds socialism superior, poll says
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
20% of the American public believes that socialism is superior to capitalism, says a poll by Rasmussen Reports released on Thursday, April 9.
Asked the question "Which is a better system - capitalism or socialism?", 53% of those polled found capitalism the better system, 20% preferred socialism, and 27% were unsure. The survey did not define either capitalism or socialism, but Rasmussen also cites a December 2008 result saying that 15% of Americans prefer a government-managed economy.
Analysis of the poll's data by website FiveThirtyEight.com furthermore found that support for capitalism was closely correlated with income; respondents earning under $20,000 a year having an eight percentage point preference for capitalism, while those earning more than $100,000 a year expressed a fifty-seven percentage point preference for capitalism. Rasmussen noted that socialism had much broader support among people under 30, where 33% support socialism and 37% support capitalism, than among any other age group.
Socialism has found support in several countries, with member parties of the Socialist International in government in over 50 countries around the world and with several other regimes describing themselves as socialist or communist; the 20% result Rasmussen finds is comparable to the electoral support for the New Democratic Party in Canada. Support for an independent socialist movement in the United States, however, has historically been limited. Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won 6.1% of the popular vote in 1912, and two members of the Socialist Party, Victor L. Berger and Meyer London, were elected to the United States Congress before the Great Depression. This brief flirtation with socialism is contrasted against the times during and following the First World War and Second World War, which were marked by "Red scares" periods of pronounced anti-communism in the United States.
Currently, only a single member of the United States Congress describes himself as a socialist: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The Social Democrats USA (SD USA), one of the successors of the Socialist Party of America, has expressed solidarity with the 76-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Sanders founded in 1991. It supports positions such as a living wage, universal health care, and the right of workers to form trade unions and engage in collective bargaining.
SD USA executive director Gabriel McClosky-Ross offered Wikinews an exclusive statement on the Rasmussen poll result:
| I joined the Socialist Party, USA in 1972, when I was 16. That was seven months before the name change to Social Democrats, USA. I was a subscriber to the Party's publication, New America for four years by that point. I grew up in a Catholic working class neighborhood. Many of my neighbors read the Catholic Worker. However, I would not meet another self described social democrat or democratic socialist who was close to my age until I completed college and entered the seminary when I was 21. That was not for a lack of my attempts at persuasion. Now when I speak on behalf of the Social Democrats, I meet many people who call themselves socialists or they are considering doing so. Two things have changed. First, Stalinism in the Soviet Union finally and thankfully collapsed and The Peoples' Republic of China is a transparently "state capitalist" regime. Second, the propaganda machine that equated private ownership of productive property with democracy is spurting under onslaught of facts that indicate just the opposite. There were two presidential elections in a row where the count looked fishy and the money trail lead to the top of Republican Party. Then the banks collapsed and it was apparent that the largest financial institutions in the world were involved in sub-prime mortgage ponzi schemes. I am not sure whether to celebrate or lament becoming an economist and union organizer instead of a priest given the current crisis. As my mentor, Michael Harrington, was fond of saying there are many kinds of socialism. Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, history's three greatest mass murderers, all called themselves socialists. Hopefully, America is ready for a broad social democratic movement that works with trade unions and community organizations for national health care, re-industrialization, ecologically friendly mass transit, infrastructure repair, and eventually a democratization of our economy. Building such a movement will be very hard work. The cyber-world has many benefits, but people seemed to be convinced that social change can occur by email. It is great shame, that it takes 8.2% unemployment and massive economic dislocation to push people back to real time organizing and protest. Simply that people are angry is not enough. The Bolsheviks, Fascists, and Nazis all rode waves of mass discontent to power. A peoples' movement must be militantly democratic and refuse to make common cause with even the 'mildest and friendliest totalitarians.' A truly democratic movement for social democracy must transcend the narrow special interest group politics that has made up most of political discourse since the protests against the Vietnam War. To transcend the current economic crisis we need a full employment economy and that means a movement concentrated on 'red letter' social democratic issues of democratic worker and community control of industry. |
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| Gabriel McCloskey-Ross, Social Democrats USA, Executive Director |
Anti-communism has been an important part of American politics for several decades.
While support for socialism in the United States may be growing, Rasmussen's polling finds that absolute majorities of the American public support both capitalism and free markets. Meanwhile, anti-communist sentiment remains strong in many segments of the US population, with opposition to socialism being a defining feature of Conservatism in the United States.
In an exclusive statement to Wikinews, John F. McManus, President of the anti-socialist John Birch Society, offered the John Birch Society's position on the poll result:
| If 20 percent of the American people prefer socialism, it is likely that half believe it has more to do with sociability that it has to do with an economic system that places government in control of their lives. Ask these 20 percent what socialism truly is and the response will rarely point to the great hero of all socialists, Karl Marx. The John Birch Society believes that everyone is a capitalist. If one starts out defining capital as the means of production (which is its definition), then everyone from the primitive fisherman to the corporate executive uses capital and is a capitalist. The distinction that most don't make is who owns and controls the capital. Does each individual have the right to own his means of production even a fishing pole? Or does the government own and/or control all the means of production? When each individual has the right to own capital (property), there is freedom up to the point where no one is permitted to impede someone else's similar right. Where socialism reigns, the government dominates, either completely a la communism or essentially a la fascism (Nazi-style or Mussolini-style). Most Americans are victims of an absolutely horrible educational system. Too many have been persuaded that government should take care of them. We tell such fools that, if that's what they want, they should turn themselves in at the local prison where they will be cared for 24 hours a day. We ask them to stop advocating converting our entire nation into what effectively will be a coast-to-coast prison. The proper role of government can never be more than the protection of the lives, liberty and property of the people who pay for it. The improper role of government is to take care of the people which it always does poorly and does so almost always as a grab for power rather than a supposedly noble concern for the downtrodden. |
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| John F. McManus, John Birch Society, President |
Americans currently most often cite the economy as their number one concern in polls, ahead of terrorism. In December 2008, workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago staged a union-backed factory occupation in a fight against company management a return to tactics of direct action from the historically more subdued American organized labor movement.
On April 10 2009, Alabama representative Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama) told the Birmingham News that seventeen members of the US House of Representatives are socialists. He did not specify which members
Socialism for the Rich / Free Enterprise for the Rest of Us?
Don't Working People Deserve Some Help? The Congress has indebted each American and his or her grandchildren for three thousand dollars to aid the interests of the Wall Street, i.e. the wealthiest people in the land. The "Banksters"; have engineered the largest wealth transfer in history. Working families will spend generations paying off the greed of the world's unscrupulous lenders. Like the Bolsheviks before them, they talk of the common good while assuring their exalted status by "socializing"; the cost of doing business. That means the workers pay the cost, do the work, suffer the shortages, and the ruling class gets even wealthier.
Why Socialism Now?
By David A. Hacker
Back in 1990, after the fall of the Communist states in Eastern Europe, there was much rethinking and new thinking about the meaning of socialism and whether it had been discredited. Jewish Currents, a progressive secular magazine that evolved from a Communist Party line publication to democratic socialism, asked its major contributors whether these events had changed their own view of socialism and whether they still considered themselves to be socialist now. . . Read More