Carl Skoglund

Carl Skoglund (1884—December 11, 1960) was a Swedish-American socialist, affectionately called Skogie by all his American friends and comrades. He was born in Dalsland and went to the United States in 1911. After spending some time in the Industrial Workers of the World he became one of the founders of the American Communist Party and later became a Trotskyist and one of the co-founders of the Socialist Workers Party.

As Carl entered his teens his father died, making it necessary for him, as the oldest child, to leave school and earn a living for the family. He found a job in a pulp mill. Wages were low and working conditions hard in the mill, so Skoglund organized a union and lead a strike for better conditions.

Through his experience in the class struggle, he became interested in Marxism and joined the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Later on Skoglund was called up for service in the Swedish army. When the conscripts were kept in uniform beyond the legal period of compulsory service, he became one of the leaders of a soldiers’ protest movement demanding that they be demobilized. For his militant political activities, Skoglund was blacklisted and could not find a job in Sweden. In 1911, he decided to go to the United States. His fiancée remained behind and they were never rejoined.

In the United States, Skoglund joined the IWW and spent a period on a railroad construction gang after which he went into the woods working as a lumberjack. There he suffered a serious foot injury, after which the company fired him.

Skoglund went to Minneapolis where he sought medical care, maintaining himself by working as a janitor and boiler tender. As the injury mended and he could get around better, he worked as a mechanic and took job as a car repairman in the railway shop. Skoglund joined the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs in 1914 and became one of the left-wing leaders of the Party’s Scandinavian Federation. Skoglund helped translate the works of Karl Marx from German to English.

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