Communist Labor Party of America

The Communist Labor Party of America (CLP) was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA. The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America.

Although a legal political party at the time of its formation, with a form of organization closely resembling that of the Socialist Party whence it sprung, the group was quickly forced underground by the Palmer Raids of January 1920 and thereafter conducted its activities in secret.

The CLP merged with a dissident faction of the Communist Party of America in May 1920 to form the United Communist Party of America.

With the end of World War I and the consolidation of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918, long running tension in the Socialist Party of America (SPA) between the revolutionary socialist left wing and the electorally-oriented center deepened. Radicals were particularly disheartened by the tepid 1916 campaign of "colorless" Socialist presidential candidate Allen L. Benson — an effort which saw the first reduction in the party's tally in presidential voting in party history.

From roots in the Boston-based Socialist Propaganda League of America and the Boston newspaper The Revolutionary Age, an organized faction calling itself the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party emerged at the end of 1918. Radical editor Louis C. Fraina composed a Left Wing Manifesto, around which the Left Wing section organized itself, holding raucous meetings of SPA locals and branches to force endorsement of the program and running a slate of candidates in the SPA's annual election in an attempt to "capture" and remold the party according to the Russian Bolshevik Party's model.

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