Intercollegiate League for Industrial Democracy

The Intercollegiate League for Industrial Democracy (known from 1933 as the Student League for Industrial Democracy) was the official youth section of the League for Industrial Democracy and a de facto junior section of the Socialist Party of America during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s. The organization merged with a student organization sponsored by the Communist Party, USA in 1935 to form the American Student Union.

In 1921 the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) was transformed into the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). With the change in name, the organization broadened its scope to become a more of a general educational society that included not only collegians and alumni, but also non-collegians in its ranks and activities. The organization continued to arrange campus lectures, as well as publishing pamphlets and off-campus speaking tours, but paid little attention to the organization of active campus groups. League student organizations continued at the University of Wisconsin,Columbia,Vassar,Yale,Harvard, the University of Texas, and elsewhere, but the emphasis of the national organization remained on building a non-campus movement in tangent with the Socialist Party.

By 1929 student members of the LID were outnumbered by non-student members. An Intercollegiate Student Council existed within the group to coordinate the activities of college students, but this was "poorly organized and somewhat inactive," according to historian Robert Cohen.

The coming of the Great Depression had a radicalizing influence on many students, who saw world capitalism in a state of chaos. Members of the Intercollegiate LID energized by the 1932 Presidential campaign of Norman Thomas, as well as competition with the Communist-led National Student League.

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