Social Democracy of America
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Social Democracy of America
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| Founded | June 7, 1897 |
| Dissolved | 1900 |
| Preceded by | Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth |
| Succeeded by | Social Democratic Party and Cooperative Brotherhood |
| Ideology |
Social democracy Democratic socialism |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| International affiliation | None |
The Social Democracy of America (SDA), later known as the Cooperative Brotherhood, was a short lived party in the United States that sought to combine the planting of an intentional community with political action in order to create a socialist society. It was an organizational forerunner of both the Socialist Party of America and the Burley, Washington cooperative socialist colony.
After being jailed in the aftermath of the 1894 Pullman Strike, Eugene Victor Debs became interested in socialist ideas. Despite supporting William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential race, Debs announced his conversion to socialism in January 1897. In June of that year he held a convention of his American Railway Union in Chicago. There it was decided to merge the ARU with a faction of the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth and other elements to create a new organization, the Social Democracy of America. The magazine of the ARU, Railway Times, became the new organization's official organ, The Social Democrat.
Among the elements that joined the ARU and BCC in forming the new party was a faction of independent Midwestern socialists centered around Victor Berger. This mainly German-American group kept up a loosely organized Social Democratisher Verein and published the oldest socialist daily in the country, the Milwaukee Vorwarts. This tendency emphasized electoral socialism, especially in local politics, in order to appeal to workers on issues of immediate, day-to-day importance. Prominent "American" adherents to this faction included Seymour Stedman and Frederic Heath.
While the SDA was being organized, there was some factional trouble within the older Socialist Labor Party. Some elements within the SLPs Jewish membership, concentrated in Manhattans Lower East Side, had objected to the party's dual unionism policy. As a consequence the Party's Yiddish language papers, the Dos Abend Blatt and Arbeter-Zeitung were put under direct party control. When the dissidents responded by launching The Jewish Daily Forward and forming "Press Clubs" to influence party activity among Jewish members, the Party leadership expelled the fourth, fifth and twelfth assembly district branches on July 4. The expelled branches held a convention July 31 to August 2, at which they decided to affiliate with the Social Democracy of America. Among the prominent members of this faction were Abraham Cahan, Meyer London, Isaac Hourwich, Morris Winchevsky, Michael Zametkin, Max Pine and Louis F. Miller.
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