Socialist Labor Party of America
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Socialist Labor Party
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| Founded | July 15, 1876 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California |
| Newspaper | Weekly People |
| Ideology | Marxism–De Leonism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| Website | |
| slp.org | |
The Socialist Labor Party (SLP), established in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party, is the oldest socialist political party in the United States and the second oldest socialist party in the world still in existence. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor Party and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party. It has operated continuously since then, although its current existence is tenuous. The party advocates the ideology of "socialist industrial unionism"—belief in a fundamental transformation of society through the combined political and industrial action of the working class organized in industrial unions.
In 1872, the International, a European-based international organization for a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations, moved its headquarters to New York City. It was in a weakened and disorganized state, having recently suffered a bitter internal struggle between Marxists, who supported trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and anarchists, led by Mikhail Bakunin, who advocated the immediate revolutionary overthrow of organized government.
In 1874, the members of the American-based International, led by cigarmaker Adolph Strasser and carpenter Peter J. McGuire joined forces with socialists from Newark and Philadelphia to form the ephemeral Social-Democratic Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States.
Despite these organizational efforts, the socialist movement in America remained deeply divided over tactics. German immigrants preferred the parliamentary approach employed by Ferdinand Lassalle and the fledgling Social Democratic Party of Germany, while longer-term residents of America usually supported a trade union orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented "Lassalleans." The gathering agreed to issue a call for a Unity Congress to be held in July to establish a new political party.
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