Previous entries — Part One, Introduction; Part Two, Electoral Politics; Part Three, Labor; Part Four, Diversity in the SPA The 1910s were a period of opportunity for socialist organizing across the world, and represented the peak of mass membership in socialist organizations in the United States. The country’s economic inequality was becoming more salient, with … Read more
Previous entries — Part One, Introduction; Part Two, Electoral Politics; Part Three, Labor As we learn from the successful organizing of the SPA, we must also acknowledge the SPA’s greatest failure. At the same time reactionary tendencies dominated the AFL, bigotry also had a far too common place in the socialist movement. Many prominent SPA … Read more
Previous entries — Part One: Introduction; Part Two: Electoral Politics There were two different approaches to “the labor question” in the 1910s SPA. The first approach was to work within the existing unions. In the early 20th century, the dominant AFL was composed of trade unions representing workers with specific skills, did not stand up … Read more
