he Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in

the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party
of America and disaffected elements of the Party which had split from the main organization in
1899.[1]
In the first decades of the 20th century, it drew significant support from many different groups,
including trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers, and immigrant
communities. Its presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, twice won over 900,000 votes
(in 1912 and 1920), while the party also elected two United States Representatives (Victor L.
Berger and Meyer London), dozens of state legislators, more than a hundred mayors, and countless
lesser officials.[2] The party's staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although
welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression and vigilante persecution.
The organization was further shattered by a factional war over how it should respond to the October
Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919.
After endorsing Lafollettes presidential campaign in 1924, the Socialist Party returned to
independent action and experienced modest growth in the early 1930s behind presidential
candidate Norman Thomas. After the 1950s, however, the Party's appeal was weakened by the
popularity of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the organization and flexibility of the Communist
Partyunder Earl Browder, and the resurgent labor movement's desire to support
sympathetic Democratic Party politicians. A divisive and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to broaden
the party by admitting followers of Leon Trotsky and Jay Lovestone caused the traditional "Old

Guard" to leave and form the Social Democratic Federation. While the party was always
strongly anti-Fascist, as well as anti-Stalinist, the SP's ambivalent attitude towards World War II cost
it both internal and external support.
The SP stopped running presidential candidates after 1956, when its nominee Darlington Hoops won
fewer than 6,000 votes. In the party's last decades, its members, many of them prominent in the
labor, peace, civil rights and civil liberties movements, fundamentally disagreed about the socialist
movement's relationship to the labor movement and Democratic Party in the U.S., and about how
best to advance democracy abroad. In 19701973, these strategic differences had become so acute
that the Socialist Party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA and leaders of two of its
caucuses formed separate socialist organizations, the Democratic and the Socialist Party USA.

The Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) is a multi-tendency democratic-socialist party in the United
States. The party states that it is the rightful continuation and successor to the tradition of
the Socialist Party of America, which had lasted from 1901 to 1972.
The party is officially committed to left-wing democratic socialism. The Socialist Party USA, along
with its predecessors, has received varying degrees of support when its candidates have competed
against those from the Republican and Democratic parties. Some attribute this to the party having to
compete with the financial dominance of the two major parties, as well as the limitations of the
United States' legislatively[6][7] and judicially[8] entrenched two-party system. The Party supports thirdparty candidates, particularly socialists, and opposes the candidates of the two major parties.
Opposing both capitalism and "authoritarian Communism", the Party advocates bringing big
business under public ownership and democratic workers' self-management. The party opposes
unaccountable bureaucratic control of industry, as it claims was the case in the Soviet Union.[3]

History[edit]
Background[edit]
See also: Socialist movement in the United States and Socialist Party of America
In 1958, the Independent Socialist League led by Max Shachtman dissolved to join the Socialist
Party of America. Shachtman [9] 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.[10][11] Shachtman also argued that democratic
socialists should work with activists from labor unions and civil-rights organizations to help build a
social-democratic "realignment" of the Democratic Party. He died on 4 November 1972.[10]

In its 1972 Convention, the Socialist Party changed its name to "Social Democrats, USA" by a vote
of 73 to 34.[12] The change of name was supported by the two Co-Chairmen, Bayard
Rustin and Charles S. Zimmerman (of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union,
ILGWU),[13] and by the First National Vice Chairman, James S. Glaser; these three were re-elected
byacclamation.[12]
Renaming the party as SDUSA was meant to be "realistic". The New York Times observed that the
Socialist Party had last sponsoredDarlington Hoopes as its candidate for President in the 1956
election, who received only 2,121 votes, which were cast in only six states. Because the party no
longer sponsored candidates in presidential elections, the name "party" had been "misleading";
"party" had hindered the recruiting of activists who participated in the Democratic Party, according
the majority report. The name "Socialist" was replaced by "Social Democrats" because many
American associated the word "socialism" with Soviet communism.[12] Also, the Party wished to
distinguish itself from two small Marxist parties.[14]
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,[15] who also had opposed the name change.[12]
The convention voted on and adopted proposals for its program by a two-one vote, with the majority
caucus winning every vote.[15] On foreign policy, the program called for "firmness toward Communist
aggression". However, on the Vietnam War, the program opposed "any efforts to bomb Hanoi into
submission" and to work for a peace agreement that would protect Communist political cadres in
South Vietnam from further military or police reprisals. Harrington's proposal for an immediate cease
fire and an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces was defeated.[15] Harrington complained that, after
its previous convention, the Socialist Party had endorsed George McGovern with a statement of
"constructive criticism" and had not mobilized enough support for McGovern.[14]
Salvador Allende, in full Salvador Allende Gossens (born July 26, 1908, Valparaso, Chile
died September 11, 1973, Santiago), Chiles first socialist president.
Allende, born into an upper-middle-class family, received his medical degree in 1932 from the
University of Chile, where he was a Marxist activist. He participated in the founding (1933) of
Chiles Socialist Party. After election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1937, he served (193942) as
minister of health in the liberal leftist coalition of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda. Allende won the first
of his four elections to the Senate in 1945.
Allende ran for the presidency for the first time in 1952 but was temporarily expelled from the
Socialist Party for accepting the support of the outlawed Communists; he placed last in a four-man
race. He ran again in 1958with Socialist backing, as well as the support of the then-legal
Communistsand was a close second to the Conservative-Liberal candidate, Jorge Alessandri.
Again with the same support he was decisively defeated (1964) by the Christian Democrat Eduardo
Frei. For his successful 1970 campaign Allende ran as the candidate of Popular Unity, a bloc of

Socialists, Communists, Radicals, and some dissident Christian Democrats, leading in a three-sided
race ... (200 of 595 words)