Socialist Party USA

 

SPUSA is headquartered at the A. J. Muste Institute. As of September 2024^[update], the Socialist Party had 11 local and state parties. Active SPUSA state parties include Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin. Inactive state parties include California, Maine, Kansas.^[3]

In 1975, chairman Frank Zeidler claimed that SPUSA had around 500 members nationwide.^[4] SPUSA saw growth during the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, expanding from around 600 members to around 1,700 members.^[5] In 2008, WMNF claimed that SPUSA had around 3,000 members.^[6] However, in 2010, CommonDreams wrote that SPUSA had only 1,000 members, and party members described that as an increase in membership.^[7] In May 2011, The New York Times stated that SPUSA had "about 1,000 members nationally".^[8] In February 2012, The Root stated that SPUSA had "around 1,500" members.^[9][10]

In 1958, the Independent Socialist League, led by Max Shachtman, dissolved and joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA), which was founded by Eugene V. Debs.^[11] Shachtman had written that Soviet communism was a new form of class society, bureaucratic collectivism, in which the ruling class exploited and oppressed the population, and therefore he opposed the spread of communism.^[12][13][14] Shachtman argued that democratic socialists should work with labor unions and civil rights organizations to build a social democratic "realignment" of the Democratic Party. "Shachmanites" had a great amount of influence on the SPA.^[13]

In its 1972 convention, the SPA changed its name to Social Democrats, USA by a vote of 73 to 34, supported by both Co-Chairmen, Bayard Rustin and Charles S. Zimmerman.^[15][16] This rename was meant to be "realistic". The New York Times observed that the Socialist Party had last sponsored Darlington Hoopes as its candidate for president in the 1956 election, who received only 2,121 votes, in just six states. The majority report noted that the name "party" was "misleading" because the SPA no longer sponsored presidential candidates, and also hindered recruitment of activists who participated in the Democratic Party. The name "Socialist" was replaced by "Social Democrats" because many American associated the word "socialism" with Soviet communism.^[15] The party also wished to distinguish itself from two small Marxist parties.^[17]

The convention elected a national committee of 33 members, with 22 seats for the majority caucus, 8 seats for Harrington's Coalition Caucus, 2 for the Debs caucus, and one for the "independent" Samuel  H. Friedman.^[18] These minority caucuses all opposed the name change.^[15] The convention voted on and adopted proposals for its program by a two-one vote, with the majority caucus winning every vote.^[18]

After their defeat at the convention, members of the two minority caucuses helped to found new socialist organizations. Harrington's Coalition Caucus created the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

The Debs Caucus, led by David McReynolds, formed the Union for Democratic Socialism. On May 30, 1973, the UDS incorporated the Socialist Party of the United States of America.^[19] Many activists from the local and state branches of the old Socialist Party of America, including the party's Wisconsin, California, Illinois, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. organizations, participated in the reconstitution of SPUSA.^[20]

After its founding, the party promoted itself as the legitimate heir of the Socialist Party of America.^[21] SPUSA elected Frank Zeidler, former Mayor of Milwaukee, as its first national chairperson. Later, SPUSA nominated Zeidler for President. Zeidler believed the party would be able to collaborate with other socialist parties nationwide to spread the message of socialism.^[4]

In 2008, SPUSA candidate for President Brian Moore vocally opposed the idea that Barack Obama was a socialist of any kind,^[22] saying it was "misleading of the Republicans" to spread that message.^[23]

In 2009, the Socialist Party of Connecticut protested in Hartford against Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.^[24]

In 2010, SPUSA Co-Chair Billy Wharton called Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address a "public relations ploy".^[25] Wharton criticized the Affordable Care Act as designed "to protect the profit margins of private insurance companies".^[26]

SPUSA argues that socialism can only come through social revolution. SPUSA tendencies include both democratic socialism, for a gradual transformation of society, and revolutionary socialism, for a rapid transformation following a slow "socialist transformation from below" through radically democratic "people's organizations".^[2] SPUSA describes socialism as a radically democratic system which "places people's lives under their own control—a classless, feminist, socialist society free of racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia," and in which "the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups"; "full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work"; "workers have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms of job actions"; and "production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few."^[2]

Socialist Party candidates support expanding social spending and social ownership of capital. In 2009, Greg Pason's proposals included socializing the United States health care system, a steeply graduated income tax, universal rent control and the elimination of all educational debts and tuition fees.^[27] In 1997, Pason called auto insurance "a regressive tax against working people".^[28] Moore was also vocal of his support for socialized medicine.^[29] Moore supported economic democracy through social ownership and workers' control of our reigning industrial and financial institutions.^[22]

SPUSA has fielded electoral candidates for local, state, and federal offices. SPUSA candidates usually run on a SPUSA ballot line, as independent, or as Green Party candidates.

SPUSA has often endorsed members of the Vermont Progressive Party (VPP), such as Peter Diamondstone.^[30] Most of these individuals were members of the Vermont socialist Liberty Union Party, but not members of SPUSA. These endorsees-but-not-members of SPUSA are not included below.

SPUSA has won several local offices, but never a state legislature, statewide, or federal office.

• Pat Noble, member of the Red Bank Regional High School Board of Education
• Samantha Pree-Stinson, member of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation

In the 1984 presidential election, SPUSA nominated the Citizens Party candidate for president, Sonia Johnson.

In the 2020 presidential election, the SPUSA nominated the Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins for president. Hawkins also received various state-level party endorsements, such as the Liberty Union Party in Vermont, in a bid to unite the "non-sectarian independent Left" behind a single campaign.^[52]

• Democratic Socialists of America
• Social Democrats, USA
• Green Party of the United States
• Socialist Party of America
• Socialist Alternative (United States)
• History of left-wing politics in the United States
• History of the socialist movement in the United States

• Smallwood, Frank (1983). The Other Candidates: Third Parties in Presidential Elections. University Press of New England. p. 317. ISBN 0-87451-256-5. 6,898 David McReynolds David McReynolds.
• Presidential Elections since 1789. Congressional Quarterly. 1991. p. 248. ISBN 0-87187-609-4.
• Busky, Donald F. (2000). Democratic socialism: A global survey. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-96886-3.^{[third-party source needed]}
• Freeman, Joe (2008). We Will be Heard: Women's Struggles for Political Power in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-7425-5607-2. 3,882 Willa Kenoyer Willa Kenoyer.

• David A. Epstein, Left, Right, Out: The History of Third Parties in America. Arts and Letters Imperium Publications. 2008.
• Alan Feuer, "Inside Socialist Party Headquarters". The New York Times. October 20, 2008.
• R. W. Tucker, "The Debs Caucus: A Party Within a Party". Madison, WI. Socialist Party of Wisconsin. December 1970.

• Official website  
• The Radical Pamphlet Collection at the Library of Congress contains materials from the Socialist Party of the United States of America.
• Constitution of the Socialist Party USA
• SPUSA platform