International Working People's Association

Last updated
International Working People's Association
AbbreviationIWPA
Founded1881 (1881)
Dissolved1887 (1887)
Split from Socialist Labor Party of America
Preceded by Anarchist International
International Workingmen's Association (IWA) (claimed)
Succeeded by International Anarchist Congress
Newspaper Freiheit
Membership (1883)5,000
Ideology Insurrectionary anarchism
Anarcho-collectivism
Anarcho-communism
Chicago idea
Political position Far-left

The International Working People's Association (IWPA), sometimes known as the "Black International," and originally named the "International Revolutionary Socialists", [1] was an international anarchist political organization established in 1881 at a convention held in London, England.

Contents

In the United States, the group was created by an 1881 congress in Chicago, Illinois held by the New York Social Revolutionary Club. The US IWPA is best remembered as the political organization uniting Albert Parsons, August Spies, and other anarchist leaders prosecuted in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket bombing.

Organizational history

International context

In 1872, the International Workingmen's Association (now known as the "First International") had split, after the anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin had been expelled by the General Council (whom Karl Marx directed). During the years 1872-1877 the St. Imier International claimed to be the heir of the IWA.

In 1881, a congress of anarchist and social revolutionary clubs was held in London, England aiming to establish a new international organization. This new organization, the International Working People's Association (later known as the "Black International") was intended to provide rallying point around which various national groups could organize themselves.

The London gathering was attended by a New York social revolutionary group, which upon returning to America called for a gathering of American revolutionary groups in Chicago. [2] The 1881 Chicago convention which followed adopted for itself the name Revolutionary Socialist Party and approved a platform urging the formation of trade unions on "communistic" principles and urging that support only be lent to unions of a "progressive" character. [2] The platform also denounced use of the ballot as a vehicle for revolutionary social change, declaring instead that elections were "an invention of the bourgeoisie to fool the workers." [2] Instead, it would be "armed organizations of workingmen who stand ready with the gun to resist encroachment upon their rights" which were pivotal, the platform declared. [2]

US context

In 1876, most of the major American socialist organizations merged into the Workingmen's Party of the United States (WPUS). In 1877, the WPUS was renamed to the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP).

During its first years, the SLP had very slow progress and few electoral victories. This proved frustrating and demoralizing for many Sections of the SLP. These sections began to debate the question of armed struggle and to organize paramilitary Lehr-und-Wehr Vereine lit. 'Education and Defense Societies'. [3] This more aggressive revolutionary socialist movement was particularly strong in the tough industrial center of Chicago, populated by a large number of German-speaking immigrants cognizant of the European revolutionary movement and its German-based propaganda literature.

Anarchists and revolutionary socialists (who in the vernacular of the day called themselves "Social Revolutionists") [4] were united by their disdain with electoral politics and piecemeal ameliorative reform. [3] Tepid changes, such as currency reform, civil service reform, state ownership of public works, and reduction of the tariff were dismissed as inconsequential. Only through the application of armed force would revolutionary transformation of American society and economy be possible. These groups formed various independent revolutionary clubs.

Creation of the Revolutionary Socialists

Anarchist journalist and orator Johann Most as a young man Johann Most.png
Anarchist journalist and orator Johann Most as a young man

In 1881, US sympathizers of the IWPA held the 1881 Chicago Social Revolutionary Congress. This congress was chiefly organized by the New York Social Revolutionary Club and numerous other "revolutionary clubs" formed by anarchist-oriented members who split from the SLP. [5] This congress formalized itself as either the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party (RSLP) or Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), but did not merge all of its sub-organizations together.

A key turning-point came in December 1882 with the arrival in America of Johann Most, a former parliamentary representative of the Social Democratic Party of Germany who had turned to anarchism. Most had just finished up a 16-month term of imprisonment for having glorified the assassination of Russian Tsar Alexander II and urged its emulation in his newspaper, Freiheit (Freedom). [4] A popular orator and brilliant journalist in the German language, Most's arrival was celebrated by an enthusiastic crowd in the great hall of the Cooper Union Institute in New York City. [6] A tour of the principal industrial cities of America by Most followed in early 1883, a successful venture which led to the formation of a number of new local anarchist groups. [6]

Further aiding the anarchist cause, Most brought with him to New York City his newspaper, Freiheit (Freedom), which uncompromisingly advocated struggle against state authority, widening the gap between the electorally oriented socialists of the Socialist Labor Party and the burgeoning movement of "Social Revolutionists". [7]

Creation of the US IWPA

In 1883, the split between the SLP and the social revolutionists and anarchist was formalized, when the groups held separate conventions, in Baltimore, Maryland, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, respectively. The October 1883 convention of the anarchists and revolutionary socialists held in Pittsburgh was attended by representatives of groups in 26 cities, including among them Johann Most, August Spies, and Albert R. Parsons. [6]

The Pittsburgh conclave formally merged the social revolutionary organizations together and launched the International Working People's Association (IWPA) in America. The convention adopted a manifesto known as the Pittsburgh Proclamation, declaring the organization for "destruction of the existing class rule by all means" and for the establishment of an economic system based upon "free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and associations, resting upon a federalistic basis." [8] An "Information Bureau" in Chicago was established to coordinate the activity of the "loose-knit federation of autonomous groups" [9] declaring allegiance to the organization. [6]

Delegates to the Pittsburgh convention agreed in the efficacy of armed force, but differed as to its function. Eastern delegates surrounding Johann Most argued in favor of the "propaganda of the deed"—individualistic acts of terrorism which would win alienated workers to the anarchist cause through the power of example. [10] Western-based delegates such as Spies and Parsons argued instead for a primary emphasis on work in trade unions as the vehicle for revolutionary change, dismissing the labor movement's obsessive concern with immediate demands but insisting that the direct action of unions would be key in establishing the embryonic production groups of the new society. [10] This mixture of anarchism and syndicalism would be known as the "Chicago Idea". [10]

Growth

The IWPA grew steadily in America from the time of its launch in the fall of 1883, reaching a peak of about 5,000 members. [9] The majority of these members were immigrants hailing from Europe, primarily Germany. [9] The circulation of Most's newspaper, Freiheit, increased handsomely, while some important German-language newspapers transferred their loyalties from the SLP to the new organization. [11]

Meanwhile, the Socialist Labor Party withered on the vine, with its membership plummeting to just 1,500 and its National Secretary, Philip Van Patten, leaving a mysterious suicide note and disappearing, only to reemerge later in another city as a government employee. [12] At its December 1883 Baltimore convention, the SLP took the extraordinary, albeit short-lived, step of abolishing the role of National Secretary altogether and adopting a particularly radical program in hopes of cobbling together some sort of organizational unity with the so-called "Internationalists" of the IWPA. [13] Ultimately, however, the SLP determined that the difference over the question of violence between itself and the IWPA made unification impossible and a polemic war against anarchism was launched.

Decline

Death sentences handed down to seven prominent Chicago anarchist leaders in conjunction with the 1886 Haymarket bombing effectively stunted and dispersed the IWPA. HaymarketMartyrs.jpg
Death sentences handed down to seven prominent Chicago anarchist leaders in conjunction with the 1886 Haymarket bombing effectively stunted and dispersed the IWPA.

In the aftermath of the 1886 Haymarket bombing and the repression launched against prominent leaders of the American anarchist movement such as English-language newspaper editor Albert Parsons and German-language newspaper editor August Spies, American sections of the IWPA began to disintegrate rapidly. [14] At least a portion of the American anarchist movement, at least one historian believes, came over to the more moderate Socialist Labor Party in the aftermath of the Chicago debacle. [14]

The anarchist movement dissipated severely following the execution of the Haymarket leaders in 1887. Although The Alarm continued to be published in Chicago for a time, sympathizers and advertisers were scared off by the harsh repression and public approbation meted out to the anarchist leaders. [3] A few small anarchist groups survived, however, notably those surrounding Johann Most and Benjamin Tucker and their respective newspapers, Freiheit and Liberty, published in New York and Boston. [3]

Later revivals

The International Working People's Association (the so-called "Black International") is not to be confused with the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) established by Burnette G. Haskell and others on July 15, 1881, which borrowed its name from the First International. [9] While discussions were held regarding a merger of these two organizations, talks came to naught. Haskell's IWA (known informally as the "Red International") disappeared at the end of the 1890s. [9]

An effort was made to revive the International Working People's Association by a convention of anarchists held in Amsterdam in 1907, but the organization was essentially stillborn. [9]

A final move to relaunch the IWPA, more successful than the 1907 effort, was made in December 1921 at another convention of international anarchists held in Berlin. [9]

Publications

American newspapers associated with the IWPA

Sources: Richard T. Ely, Recent American Socialism, pp. 31, 32, 36. Dirk Hoerder with Christiane Harzig (eds.), The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987; Volume 3, pp. 389-390, 407-408, 411-413.

Pamphlet literature

See also

Key members

Other anarchist internationals and international networks

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Parsons</span> American socialist and anarchist newspaper editor

Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneering American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist. As a teenager, he served in the military force of the Confederate States of America in Texas, during the American Civil War. After the war, he settled in Texas, and became an activist for the rights of former slaves, and later a Republican official during Reconstruction. With his wife Lucy Parsons, he then moved to Chicago in 1873 and worked in newspapers. There he became interested in the rights of workers. In 1884, he began editing The Alarm newspaper. Parsons was one of four Chicago radical leaders controversially convicted of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police remembered as the Haymarket affair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris Hillquit</span> American lawyer and politician (1869 – 1933)

Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side. Together with Eugene V. Debs and Congressman Victor L. Berger, Hillquit was one of the leading public faces of American socialism during the first two decades of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ella Reeve Bloor</span> American labor organizer and a founder of the Communist Labor Party of America

Ella Reev "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements. Bloor is best remembered as one of the top-ranking female functionaries in the Communist Party USA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Spargo</span>

John Spargo was a British political writer who, later in life, became an expert in the history and crafts of Vermont. At first Spargo was active in the Socialist Party of America. A Methodist preacher, he tried to meld the Protestant Social Gospel with Marxist socialism in Marxian Socialism and Religion: A Study of the Relation of the Marxian Theories to the Fundamental Principles of Religion (1915). He also founded a settlement house in Yonkers, N.Y. Spargo moved steadily to the right after 1917 when he supported American intervention in World War I. With AFL leader Samuel Gompers he organized the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy in 1917. Spargo helped draft the Colby Note that formalised the Wilson administration's anti-communist policies. He strongly denounced the Bolshevik Revolution in Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy (1919). He opposed the foreign policy of the New Deal, especially its recognition of the USSR in 1933. He supported the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1930s and Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. He endorsed Barry Goldwater In the 1964 Elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dyer Lum</span> American labor activist (1839–1893)

Dyer Daniel Lum was an American labor activist, economist and political journalist. He was a leading figure in the American anarchist movement of the 1880s and early 1890s, working within the organized labor movement and together with individualist theorists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Hanford</span> American socialist

Benjamin Hanford was an American socialist politician during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A printer by trade, Hanford is best remembered for his 1904 and 1908 runs for Vice President of the United States on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America, running next to Presidential nominee Eugene V. Debs. Hanford was also the creator of the fictional character "Jimmie Higgins," a prototypical Socialist rank-and-filer whose silent work on the unglamorous tasks needed by any political organization made the group's achievements possible — a character later reprised in a novel by Upton Sinclair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max S. Hayes</span> American editor and politician (1866–1945)

Maximillian Sebastian Hayes was an American newspaper editor, trade union activist, and socialist politician. In 1912 Hayes became the first candidate to challenge Samuel Gompers for the presidency of the American Federation of Labor in nearly a decade, drawing about 30 percent of the vote in his losing effort. Hayes is best remembered as the long-time editor of the Cleveland Citizen and as the vice presidential candidate of the Farmer–Labor Party ticket in 1920.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labor Party (United States, 19th century)</span> Number of 19th century political parties in the US

Labor Party was the name or partial name of a number of United States political parties which were organized during the 1870s and 1880s.

<i>New York Call</i>

The New York Call was a socialist daily newspaper published in New York City from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America, following the Chicago Daily Socialist (1906–1912) and preceding the Milwaukee Leader (1911–1938).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Bohn (socialist)</span>

Frank Bohn was an advocate of industrial unionism who was a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. From 1906 to 1908 he was the National Secretary of the Socialist Labor Party of America, before leaving to join forces with the rival Socialist Party of America. After World War I his politics became increasingly nationalistic and he left the labor movement altogether.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Rosenberg</span> American dramatist

Wilhelm Ludwig "William" Rosenberg was a German-American teacher, poet, playwright, journalist, and socialist political activist. He is best remembered as the head of the Socialist Labor Party of America from 1884 to 1889.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas J. Morgan</span> American activist (1847–1912)

Thomas John "Tommy" Morgan, Jr. was an English-born American labor leader and socialist political activist. Morgan is best remembered as one of the pioneer English-speaking Socialists in the city of Chicago and a frequent candidate for public office of the Socialist Party of America. Morgan was also one of the founders and leading figures of the United Labor Party, an Illinois political party which elected 7 of its members to the Illinois State Assembly and another to the Illinois State Senate in the election of 1886. He was married to Elizabeth Chambers Morgan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Grottkau</span> American journalist

Paul Grottkau (1846–1898) was a German-American socialist political activist and newspaper publisher. Grottkau is best remembered as an editor alongside Haymarket affair victim August Spies of the Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, one of the leading American radical newspapers of the decade of the 1880s. Later moving to Milwaukee, Grottkau became one of the leading luminaries of the socialist movement in Wisconsin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Van Patten</span> American architect (1852–1918)

Simon Philip Van Patten (1852–1918) was an American socialist political activist prominent during the latter half of the 1870s and the first half of the 1880s. Van Patten is best remembered for being named the first Corresponding Secretary of the Workingmen's Party of the United States in 1876 and for heading it and its successor organization, the Socialist Labor Party of America, for the next six years. In 1883 Van Patten mysteriously disappeared, with his friends reporting him as a potential suicide to law enforcement authorities. He later turned up as a government employee, however, having abandoned radical politics in favor of stable employment.

The People was an official organ of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), a weekly newspaper established in New York City in 1891. The paper is best remembered as a vehicle for the ideas of Daniel DeLeon (1852–1914), the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The paper became a daily in 1900, reverting to weekly publication in 1914 for budgetary reasons. Publication of the paper was moved to Palo Alto, California, during its later years, finally terminating publication in 2008. Its 117 years of continuous publication make The People the longest running socialist newspaper in the history of American political radicalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Labor Party of America</span> American political party

The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) is a political party in the United States. It was established in 1876, and was the first socialist party formed in the country.

The Alarm was an anarchist newspaper published in the American city of Chicago during the 1880s. The weekly was the most prominent English-language anarchist periodical of its day. The paper was famously edited by Albert Parsons, who was controversially tried and executed in response to the Haymarket affair of 1886.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergei Shevitch</span> Russian newspaper editor and socialist political activist

Sergei Egorovich Shevitch was a Russian newspaper editor and socialist political activist who achieved his greatest fame in the United States of America. As editor of the New Yorker Volkszeitung from 1879 to 1890, Shevitch emerged as arguably the most important leader of the Socialist Labor Party of America. In 1889, Shevitch was the leader of a split of the Socialist Labor Party of America, emerging victorious and serving for a short while as the National Secretary of the organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Workingmen's Association in America</span> Political party in United States

The International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in the United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA, commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members, frequently new immigrants to America, including those who spoke German, French, Czech, as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justus Schwab</span> Radical saloon keeper in New York City

Justus H. Schwab (1847–1900) was the keeper of a radical saloon in New York City's Lower East Side. An emigre from Germany, Schwab was involved in early American anarchism in the early 1880s, including the anti-authoritarian New York Social Revolutionary Club's split from the Socialistic Labor Party and Johann Most's entry to the United States.

References

  1. ↑ Parsons, Albert; Parsons, Lucy (1889). Life of Albert R. Parsons, with Brief History of the Labor Movement in America. L.E. Parsons. p. 19.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Volume 2: From the Founding of the AF of L to the Emergence of American Imperialism. New York: International Publishers, 1955; pg. 38.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Alan Dawley, "The International Working People's Association," Archived 2013-08-10 at the Wayback Machine The Lucy Parsons Project, http://flag.blackened.net/lpp/ Archived 2013-08-09 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved August 25, 2013.
  4. 1 2 Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903; pg. 236.
  5. ↑ Morris Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903; pg. 235.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, pg. 237.
  7. ↑ Professor Richard T. Ely wrote in 1885 that "hopes of a permanent union [between socialists and the bloc of social revolutionists and anarchists] were certainly not abandoned until after the advent of John Most on our shores in December 1882." See: Richard T. Ely, Recent American Socialism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1885; pg. 26.
  8. ↑ Ely, Recent American Socialism, pp. 27–28.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "International Working People's Association," in Candace Falk with Barry Pateman and Jessica M. Moran (eds.), Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years: Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003; pp. 571-572.
  10. 1 2 3 Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 2, pg. 39.
  11. ↑ Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, pg. 238.
  12. ↑ Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, pg. 238-239,
  13. ↑ Hillquit, History of Socialism in the United States, pg. 240.
  14. 1 2 Howard H. Quint, The Forging of American Socialism: Origins of the Modern Movement: The Impact of Socialism on American Thought and Action, 1886-1901. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1953; pg. 35.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.