The history of left-wing politics in the United States consists of a broad range of individuals and groups that have sought fundamental egalitarian changes.Richard J. Oestreicher. "Overview of the American Left". American Left Ephermera Collection, Univ. of Pittsburgh. Retrieved February 26, 2015. Left-wing activists in the United States have been credited with advancing social change on issues such as labor and civil rights as well as providing critiques of capitalism.
Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. Left-wing politics in the United States dates back to the French Revolution which gave rise to the terms Left and Right and which influenced American politics, with the Democratic-Republican Party representing the Left as opposed to the Federalist Party representing the Right.
Explanations for weakness of left-wing politics in the United States include the failures of socialist organization and leadership, the limitations imposed by the United States Constitution,Lipset & Marks, p. 11. American political system's persistent hostility toward third partiesLipset & Marks, p. 83. and political repression.
Eugene V. Debs 1920, 914,191 votes, remains the all-time high number of votes for a Socialist Party candidate in a U.S. presidential election as of 2024.
Debs 1912, 6.0% of the popular vote, remains the all-time highest percentage of the vote for a Socialist Party candidate in a U.S. presidential election as of 2024. Colonial era Many indigenous tribes in North America practiced what Marxists would later call primitive communism, meaning they practiced economic cooperation among the members of their tribes.
Utopian communities The first European socialists to arrive in North America were a Christian sect known as Labadists, who founded the commune of Bohemia Manor in 1683, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their communal way of life was based on the communal practices of the apostles and early Christians. The Shakers, an offshoot of the Quakers, also began to settle utopian socialist communities in the late 18th century, some of which lasted into the 20th century.
Democratic reform While there was little organized labor action in colonial America, it was frequently tied to the right to vote and the broader rights of working people. The first strike in America was a group of Polish workers who demanded the right to vote in the Jamestown colony.
In 1676, an interracial group of angry Virginians came together in Bacon's Rebellion, listing complaints ranging including unjust taxation, judicial corruption, and installing a person in a position of power against the people's consent."Bacon's Declaration in the Name of the People 30 July 1676". www.let.rug.nl. Retrieved 2019-06-14. While the rebellion ultimately failed, it was one of the first populist movements in the Thirteen Colonies, and was the largest uprising against British colonial rule prior to the American Revolution.
In the 1760s, a group of predominately lower-class North Carolina citizens began to organize against what they saw as a corrupt and unequal colonial government. While the demonstrations started out peaceful, they escalated into what would become known as the War of the Regulation. In 1768, the Regulators entered Hillsborough, broke up the provincial court, and dragged those they saw as corrupt officials through the streets. After a loss at the Battle of Alamance, the Regulator movement was essentially defeated, and their demands were never met. However, this served as one of the catalysts to the American Revolution.
Early abolitionism
As slavery began to develop in the 17th century, many figures began to oppose it. Roger Williams, the founder of the Colony of Rhode Island, led an unsuccessful attempt to ban slavery in the colonies. Samuel Sewall, a puritan judge who felt remorse over his part in the Salem Witch Trials, became an abolitionist later in life, writing The Selling of Joseph, which argued against slavery and racial inferiority using scriptural arguments.
Many of the most prominent early abolitionists were Quakers, though a small number of them did own slaves. The first two prominent Friends to denounce slavery were Anthony Benezet and John Woolman. They asked the Quakers, "What thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries".(Zuber 1993, 4) In that same year, a group of Quakers along with some German Mennonites met at the meeting house in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to discuss why they were distancing themselves from slavery. This call for abolition was frequently combined with a larger critique of greed and wealth, as in John Woolman's A Plea for the Poor:Wealth desired for its own sake obstructs the increase of virtue, and large possessions in the hands of selfish men have a bad tendency, for by their means too small a number of people are employed in things useful; and therefore they, or some of them, are necessitated to labour too hard, while others would want business to earn their bread were not employments invented which, having no real use, serve only to please the vain mind.Slaves themselves also resisted the rise of chattel slavery. In the 17th century, new slaves would petition courts for their freedom, arguing that a conversion to Christianity should give them the right to escape slavery. Many slaves, inspired by the First Great Awakening, had a deeply religious view of the struggle against slavery, comparing themselves to the ancient Israelites in Egypt. There were a number of slave revolts: in Virginia in 1663,Joseph Cephas Carroll, Slave Insurrections in the United States, 1800–1865, p. 13 in New York in 1712 and 1741, and in South Carolina in 1736. The revolts themselves frequently included Native Americans and poor whites.
19th and 20th century Marxist development
The first secular American socialists were German Marxist immigrants who arrived following the Revolutions of 1848, also known as Forty-Eighters.Draper, pp. 11–12. Joseph Weydemeyer, a German colleague of Karl Marx who sought refuge in New York in 1851, following the 1848 revolutions, established the first Marxist journal in the U.S., called Die Revolution. It folded after two issues. in 1852 he established the Proletarierbund, which would become the American Workers League, the first Marxist organization in the U.S. But it too was short-lived, having failed to attract a native English-speaking membership.Coleman, pp. 15–16
In 1866, William H. Sylvis formed the National Labor Union (NLU). Friedrich Sorge, a German who had found refuge in New York following the 1848 revolutions, took Local No. 5 of the NLU into the First International as Section One in the U.S. By 1872, there were 22 sections, which were able to hold a convention in New York. The General Council of the International moved to New York with Sorge as General Secretary, but following internal conflict, it dissolved in 1876.Coleman, pp. 15–17
A larger wave of German immigrants followed in the 1870s and 1880s, which included social democratic followers of Ferdinand Lasalle. Lasalle believed that state aid through political action was the road to revolution and was opposed to trade unionism which he saw as futile, believing that according to the Iron Law of Wages employers would only pay subsistence wages. The Lasalleans formed the Social Democratic Party of North America in 1874 and both Marxists and Lasalleans formed the Workingmen's Party of the United States in 1876. When the Lasalleans gained control in 1877, they changed the name to the Socialist Labor Party of North America (SLP). However many socialists abandoned political action altogether and moved to trade unionism. Two former socialists, Adolph Strasser and Samuel Gompers, formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886.
Anarchists split from the Socialist Labor Party to form the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party in 1881. By 1885 they had 7,000 members, double the membership of the SLP.Draper, p. 13. They were inspired by the International Anarchist Congress of 1881 in London. There were two federations in the United States that pledged adherence to the International. A convention of immigrant anarchists in Chicago formed the International Working People's Association (Black International), while a group of Native Americans in San Francisco formed the International Workingmen's Association (Red International).Woodcock, p. 395 Following a violent demonstration at Haymarket in Chicago in 1886, public opinion turned against anarchism. While very little violence could be attributed to anarchists, the attempted murder of a financier by an anarchist in 1892 and the 1901 assassination of the American president, William McKinley, by a professed anarchist led to the ending of political asylum for anarchists in 1903.Woodcock, p. 397-398 In 1919, following the Palmer raids, anarchists were imprisoned and many, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported. Yet anarchism again reached great public notice with the trial of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, who would be executed in 1927.Woodcock, p. 399-400
Daniel De Leon, who became leader of the SLP in 1890, took it in a Marxist direction. Eugene Debs, who had been an organizer for the American Railway Union formed the rival Social Democratic Party in 1898. Members of the SLP, led by Morris Hillquit and opposed to the De Leon's domineering personal rule and his anti-AFL trade union policy joined with the Social Democrats to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA).
In 1905 a convention of socialists, anarchists and trade unionists disenchanted with the bureaucracy and craft unionism of the American Federation of Labor, founded the rival Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), led by such figures as William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, Helen Keller, De Leon and Debs.Draper, pp. 14–16.
The organizers of the IWW disagreed on whether electoral politics could be employed to liberate the working class. Debs left the IWW in 1906, and De Leon was expelled in 1908, forming a rival "Chicago IWW" that was closely linked to the SLP. The (Minneapolis) IWW's ideology evolved into anarcho-syndicalism, or "revolutionary industrial unionism", and avoided electoral political activity altogether.Draper, pp. 16–17. It was successful in organizing unskilled migratory workers in the lumber, agriculture, and construction trades in the Western states and immigrant textile workers in the Eastern states and occasionally accepted violence as part of industrial action.Draper, pp. 21–22.
The SPA was divided between reformers who believed that socialism could be achieved through gradual reform of capitalism and revolutionaries who thought that socialism could only develop after capitalism was overthrown, but the party steered a center path between the two.Draper, pp. 22–24. The SPA achieved the peak of its success by 1912 when its presidential candidate received 5.9% of the popular vote. The first Socialist congressman, Victor Berger, had been elected in 1910. By the beginning of 1912, there were 1,039 Socialist officeholders, including 56 mayors, 305 aldermen and councilmen, 22 police officials, and some state legislators. Milwaukee, Berkeley, Butte, Schenectady, and Flint were run by Socialists. A Socialist challenger to Gompers took one third of the vote in a challenge for leadership of the AFL. The SPA had 5 English and 8 foreign-language daily newspapers, 262 English and 36 foreign-language weeklies, and 10 English and 2 foreign-language monthlies.Draper, pp. 41–42.