Workers' Communist Party

The Workers' Communist Party was the first ruling party in the UASR. Founded in 1876 as the Socialist Labor Party during the existence of the Old United States as a merger of four Marxist and reformist socialist parties, the party grew gradually amongst the American working class over the next few decades, absorbing Eugene V. Debs' Social Democracy of America in 1898. The SLP further absorbed the Social Democratic Party in 1908, a party created by SDA dissidents opposed to the initial merger. With the severe effects of the Great War (see: Bienno Rosso), the US saw a significantly marked increase in worker militancy. The WPA/WCP grew to become a significant challenger to the established Republican and Democratic parties. Following the Great Depression which began in 1930, the WCP entered into an electoral pact with the agrarian Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, running Norman Thomas in the 1932 presidential election, and subsequently winning by a large margin. In response, reactionary elements within the American government and military orchestrated a fascist coup d'etat, executing key members of the WCP, including Thomas. This triggered the establishment of the Union of American Socialist Republics and the Second American Civil War, with Red forces victorious.

Foundation as Workingmen's Party of the United States
The history of the Workers' Communist Party ultimately began with the rump First International moving it's headquarters to New York City (now Metropolis) in 1872 after the Hague Conference resulting in the expulsion of Mikhail Bakunin's anarchist faction. In 1874, American elements of the floundering body worked to establish the Social-Democratic Party of North America, the first national Marxist party in the Old United States, but divides between the German immigrant movement, which favored the reformist politics of Ferdinand Lassalle, and Anglo-Americans who favored trade union organization as a prelude to revolution, hindered it's effectiveness. In April of that year, delegates representing these two sections of the workers' movement agreed to convene a Unity Congress in July to oversee the foundation of a new political party, upon which the remnants of the First International would be dissolved.

On July 19th, 1876, seven delegates representing 3,000 members of four organizations: the Marxists of the now disbanded International, the aforementioned Social-Democratic Party of North America, the Workingmens' Party of Illinois and the Social Political Workingmen's Society, formed the proto-WCP titled the "Workingmen's Party of the United States", with the Anglo-American Philip Van Patten elected as it's Corresponding Secretary.

The Socialistic Labor Party and the Coming of Daniel DeLeon (1877-1897)
The following year, a Party Congress in Newark, New Jersey would see the infant party's name changed to "Socialist Labor Party", although it was usually rendered as "Socialistic Labor Party" throughout the 1880s and 1890s, based of the translation of the party's German name (Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Partei). The party during this initial phase was dominated by German emigres, although there was already an active English section of the party in Chicago at the time, and experienced a brief surge in it's heart of Illinois, at it's height electing a state senator and three state representatives and it's candidate for Mayor of Chicago winning 20% of the vote, before economic crisis and factional infighting from anarchists who sought to form a militia to protect strikers against the backdrop of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 against the party's more political inclined leadership saw the party shed most of it's initial momentum, dipping below two and a half thousand members at the end of the decade.

The beginnings of the 1880s saw the party come under an even tighter grip by German emigres fleeing a new wave of state repression in the Kaiserreich, many of whom more inclined to direct action on behalf of their inability to vote as non-citizens, which coupled with the split of the anarchist-controlled New York Section as the Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party, taking most of it's English speaking members with it, saw the SLP contract even further into a tiny, almost exclusively German party, having only one and a half thousand members in 1883, to the point where it's Secretary, Philip Van Patten, faked suicide and defected to become a government employee. At this point, however, Marxists forcefully reestablished control over the organization and began to aggressively proselytize, cultivating a relationship with the Knights of Labor and doubling from 30 sections in 1884 to 60 just two years later. Despite this, the SLP struggled to connect with English speaking workers and mainly consisted of local Sections loosely bound by a National Executive Committee throughout the 1880s.

1890 is usually understood as a watershed year for the Socialist Labor Party as the year it came under the influence of academic-turned-Marxist theoretician Daniel DeLeon, a brilliant, if secretarian, scholar of Marx and promoter of uncompromising "impossiblism." Perhaps most importantly however, he was a excellent and multi-lingual lecturer in a party where only two members of it's National Executive Committee spoke fluent English and only 17 of it's 77 Sections used it as a first language. DeLeon quickly obtained the positions of "National Lecturer", touring the country weeks at a time espousing the revolutionary cause, and chief editor of the Weekly People, the SLP's official English language paper, making him the organization's de facto leader. As the party slowly drew in supporters from German and Anglo-Americans alike, it began to participate in both electoral action, putting forth candidates for Mayor of New York City, Governor of New York and President of the United States (an office the party sought to abolish) under it's own name for the first time, and industrial, forming the Socialist and Trade Labor Alliance, an explicitly industrial unionist federation to counter the declining Knights of Labour and rising American Federation of Labour, both of whom were craft-union federations that sought to deal with "bread and butter" issues and distanced themselves from the socialist movement. The STLA, along with the Industrial Workers' of the World, would eventually merge to form the "Solidarity" federation, one that would see increasing importance in the coming years.

Joining the Third International (1920-1929)
The militancy of the Biennio Rosso was further inflamed during the transition to peacetime economy. Within the Socialist Labor Party, revolutionaries fought a factional war against the reformist tendencies. Many formerly reformist leaders, such Morris Hilquit and Robert LaFollette moved into the revolutionary camp, while others left politics.

The working masses continued to organise even when the party appeared reticent to act. Beginning in May 1920, workers organized soviet congresses and armed militias to defend their prerogatives. The working class was in open insurrection against capital, and no call for conciliation could be countenanced.

The Party had sent a delegations to the previous year's Comintern congress. This world meeting of revolutionary workers' parties, under the spiritual leadership of the Bolsheviks, was to forge a united communist revolutionary movement, and that required uniting the working class behind an international set of principles.

The 21 Conditions would be adopted in the August Convention, which brought the various fractions of the Socialist Labor Party into programmatic unity. In alignment with both the revolutionary spirit of the time, and Lenin's doctrine for the First Period's revolutionary moment, the Socialist Labor Party was reorganized into two parallel organizations. The party would continue its above-ground political activities, including standing in elections, disciplining the trade union movement, and organizing public demonstrations as the Workers' Party of America.

And underground, parallel organization, the Communist Party of North America, would coordinate the party's illegal, insurrectionist activities. This would include organizing and arming the Spartacus League paramilitaries, illegal strikes by federal railway and postal workers, acts of sabotage in areas under the Jim Crow regime, and the funneling of intelligence to their Bolshevik allies. Additionally, the CPNA united the above ground parties in the US and Canada into organizational unity.

This organizational split would be rendered defunct during the Comintern's transition to the Second Period policy of regroupment, but during this crucial insurrectionary period it provided most of the bite in fighting against state repression. Leadership in both organizations overlapped heavily, even as the underground branches in northern states became defunct. Even after the party adopted more conciliatory stances in 1924, the parallel underground organizations continued to exist in Southern states.

The Party had established itself as separate, distinct pillar in American civil society. Around the Workers' Party, a cluster of parallel institutions formed to provide for the material and morale needs of the working class: youth groups, civic clubs, grocery co-ops, schools, radio stations, newspapers, printers, art and even housing co-operatives.

The Party would take a leading role in the struggle against Jim Crow in the South, providing the boots on the ground required to spur the federal government into action. By the end of the 1920s, the legal face of Jim Crow had been destroyed, and many of its cultural institutions were under assault by the cross-racial alliances between white and black workers.

As the Comintern moved towards the Third Period policy of revolutionary agitation, the ECCI required Comintern parties to make their affiliation explicit in their name. At the 1929 convention, the party considered a number of name changes. The centre favored the name Communist Party of the United States. The party's left flank, indebted to the theoretic lineage of the KAPD, wished to adopt the name Communist Workers' Party of America. Since the latter would be an unpalatable sign of left-deviation in Moscow, the ultimate compromise bowed to the reality that the brand of the Workers' Party was well established. As the Roaring Twenties came to an end, the Party adopted the name Workers' Communist Party of America.