Militant faction

Militant faction

Clarity, launched in March 1937, was the organ of the so-called "Clarity caucus" of the Socialist Party's Militant faction.
Leader	Devere Allen
Key people	Norman Thomas
Parent organization	Socialist Party of America

The Militant faction was an organized grouping of Marxists in the Socialist Party of America (SPA) who sought to steer that organization from its orientation towards electoral politics and towards direct action and revolutionary socialism. The faction emerged during 1930 and 1931 and achieved practical control of the organization in 1934. The existence of the "Militants" and the threat they represented to the political line of the SPA caused traditional electorally oriented members to form an organized grouping of their own, known as the "Old Guard faction." In 1935 the personal and political friction between these two basic tendencies lead to an organizational split, with the Old Guard faction leaving to establish the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The Militant faction itself shattered in the aftermath of the 1935 party split with only a small core loyal to perennial Presidential candidate Norman Thomas remaining in the organization by the coming of World War II.

The 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America saw the departure of the proto-communist Left Wing Section, leaving control of the party's name, emblems, and assets in the hand of the Regular faction headed by Adolph Germer, James Oneal, and Morris Hillquit. The victory proved to be Pyrrhic, with tens of thousands of members suspended or expelled by the National Executive Committee. An entire generation of the organization's most energetic young activists departed to join the ranks of the fledgling Communist Party of America and Communist Labor Party of America. Socialist Party membership plummeted from a peak of over 104,000 paid members in April 1919 to fewer than 9,000 in the first quarter of 1928.