Америка Социалистік Пропаганда Лигасының Тарихы

Membership organization established within the ranks of the Socialist Party of America

The Socialist Propaganda League of America (SPLA) was established in 1915, apparently by C. W. Fitzgerald of Beverly, Massachusetts. The group was a membership organization established within the ranks of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and is best remembered as direct lineal antecedent of the Left Wing Section of the SPA and its governing National Council — the forerunner of the American Communist movement. It published a journal, The Internationalist, renamed The New International in 1917, last published in 1919.

In the fall of 1915, C. W. Fitzgerald wrote and sent a leaflet to Vladimir Lenin of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. Lenin replied, outlining his views on the situation faced by the revolutionary socialist movement. It was not until November 1916 that any sort of broad based organization was established. A November 26, 1916, meeting in Boston approved a first manifesto for the organization and established an official journal, The Internationalist The paper was launched in Boston at the start of January 1917 and continued under that name through April of that year. The initial editor of The Internationalist was John D. Williams. Williams made the acquaintance of a young Italian American radical named Louis C. Fraina, until recently a key editor at the now defunct magazine The New Review. Louis Fraina became the publication's editor at that date. Nevertheless, Draper and other historians of the American left regard The Internationalist and its successor as the first propaganda organs of the movement which congealed as the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party in 1919 — forerunner of the American communist movement. The meeting of about 2,000 people was also addressed by writer Andre Tridon as well as IWW poet Arturo Giovanitti. The New International was directly succeeded by The Revolutionary Age, also edited by Fraina, with the first issue of that paper appearing in the middle of November. "The League is still in existence, but its paper is no longer published, since The Revolutionary Age expresses its policy," Fraina noted in March 1919. Prominent members of the SPL joined the new Communist Party of America, which eventually merged with the Communist Labor Party to form first the Workers Party of America and eventually the Communist Party USA.

"Letter to C. W. Fitzgerald in Beverly, Massachusetts, from N. Lenin (V. I. Ul'ianov) in Berne, Switzerland, November 1915," originally published in Lenin Collected Works, Fourth Edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers, vol. 21, pp. 423–428, here at the Marxists Internet Archive
"Letter to C. W. Fitzgerald in Beverly, Massachusetts, from N. Lenin (V. I. Ul'ianov) in Berne, Switzerland, November 1915," PDF Version of above from Tim Davenport's article in Marxist History with remarks on dating the letter
"Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America (Adopted at a Meeting Held in the City of Boston, November 26, 1916)," International Socialist Review, vol. 17, no. 7 (January 1917), pp. 483–485. "Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America (January 1919)" Revolutionary Age, vol. 1, no. 21 (March 8, 1919), pg. 8. "Constitution of the Socialist Propaganda League of America," The Internationalist, vol. 1, no. 1 (January 6, 1918), pg. 2.