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Monthly literary periodical in Yiddish published by the Jewish Speaking Section of the Socialist Labor Party of the USA. The Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP) is the oldest socialist political party in the United States and the second oldest socialist party in the world. 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. This theory/program was formulated by early SLP leader Daniel De Leon and has since become known as De Leonism.
The party was founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party of America. Renamed in December 1878, the SLP was a confederation of small Marxist parties from throughout the United States, becoming the first nationwide Socialist party. It was especially strong in New York City where there was a very large community of German immigrants.
In 1881 a radical anarchist-oriented section left the Socialist Labor Party and formed the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party. This venture was short-lived. In 1886, the SLP took an active part in the New York City mayoral campaign of Henry George, who lost to Abram S. Hewitt. In 1890, the SLP came under the leadership of Daniel De Leon, a lawyer who lectured at Columbia Law School until he quit to devote himself full time to the SLP. De Leon concisely articulated the SLP's concept of socialism: Socialism "is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at end. — That is socialism, nothing short of that." |
