Although there is general agreement on this as a strategic goal, some socialists believe the formation of a progressive party with ties to the established unions would mark a major step toward this goal. This position has been revived repeatedly in the United States since the creation of the British Labour Party in 1900. Some have gone a step further by arguing socialists should work within the fringes of the mainstream parties while pushing for a break and the initiation of a progressive party.

         

History demonstrates the labor party perspective is bound to fail. Rather than a step toward a genuinely independent politics, the labor party perspective provides a safe way back into mainstream corporate politics.

 

The Socialist Party

         

The Socialist Party of America (SP) remains the most successful effort to establish an independent political party at the national level in US history. A mass party with more than 100,000 members at its zenith in 1912, the SP included a wide range of factions and perspectives. Nevertheless, a key point of unity was an agreement that the working class needed to form its own party, one that was independent of both corporate parties, completely.

         

From its origins in 1901, the Socialist Party grew rapidly, establishing a solid base of support within the working class in localities around the country, as well as within certain unions. Still, the Party remained on the margins at the national and state levels. In spite of this record of success, influential members of its social democratic wing began to view the British Labour Party as a model. The Labour Party had been formed as an organizational venue in which the reformist socialists of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) could cooperate with mainstream union officials based on a program explicitly not socialist. Within a few years after its formation, the Labour Party had become an important factor in Parliament, acting as a pressure group on the Liberal Party government. Furthermore, a secret agreement between the leaders of the Labour Party and the Liberal Party avoided a split in the left of center vote in key constituencies.

         

The success of the British Labour Party dazzled many of the moderate leaders of the Socialist Party of America. When their tentative effort to initiate the formation of a labor party became widely known, the project was dropped and those behind the move publicly declared they remained committed to furthering the growth of the Socialist Party.

          The evidence is clear the idea of a labor party had begun to percolate within the social democratic wing of the Socialist Party in the years prior to World War I. Those who held this perspective were convinced when such a progressive party was formed, socialists would be able to work within it to transform it into a genuinely socialist party.

 

The Nonpartisan League

         

The consensus among socialists on the need to remain outside of the two party system was shattered by the formation of the Nonpartisan League (NPL) in the spring of 1915. Initially organized in North Dakota, it rapidly became a major force in that state’s politics. With the state government under NPL control, legislation was enacted to create a state owned grain mill and a state owned bank to provide low interest loans to farmers; both measures were designed to aid small farmers in countering the power of large corporations.

         

The League focused its electoral efforts at the state level. Its members in a specific legislative district would endorse a single candidate pledged to the implementation of the organization’s program. The candidate then would stand in the primary election of the mainstream party that had garnered the majority of the vote in that district. Because the NPL was an organization of small farmers residing in rural areas, most of its candidates were elected on the Republican Party ticket. Thus, the League’s electoral strategy remained firmly within the confines of the two party system. Nevertheless, it had no loyalty to either of the mainstream parties; instead, it sought to mobilize the progressive vote within both the Republican and Democratic parties.          

         

The League soon expanded beyond its initial base in North Dakota and became a substantial force throughout the entire region. Indeed, at its peak the Nonpartisan League enrolled 245,000 members in thirteen states. The organization’s headquarters was soon moved to St. Paul, but Minnesota was a very different state than North Dakota. Powerful corporate interests fought the League bitterly, mobilizing vigilante violence and the state courts to crush it. To counter these attacks, the NPL forged alliances with industrial unions based in the Twin Cities, unions that were often led by Socialist Party members.

         

Arthur Townley, the autocratic leader of the League, believed the organization could become a key component in a broad coalition of progressive forces that could make a major alteration in the political landscape at the national level. Townley envisioned this coalition working within the constraints of the two-party system.

         

Still, there were others within the leading circles of the League who had another scenario in mind. Townley recruited organizers from within the Socialist Party frequently, some of whom came to play important roles in the League. Most of those recruited from the SP were disdainful of both mainstream parties. They were convinced the NPL should be joining with other progressives in forming a broad third party that brought together small farmers and industrial workers. Former members of the Socialist Party, who were in the leadership of the League developed a new twist to the original labor party perspective. Operating as a left-wing within an organization enmeshed within the two-party system, they urged the NPL to move toward independent politics by participating in the creation of a broadly based progressive party. When this first step was consolidated, socialists then would work within the third party to persuade it to take another step by adopting a socialist program.

         

The Nonpartisan League disintegrated in the post-war period. The harsh repression experienced by the organizers of the League during the war was a key underlying factor. These attacks intensified the underlying split within the leadership of the NPL, dividing those who were content to work within the two-party system and those who looked to the formation of an independent party. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (FLP), a third party based in a single state, would emerge from the disintegration of the League.

 

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party

         

For more than twenty years, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party maintained its position as one of the two major parties in that state. It first formed as a stable political formation during the 1922 election. The new party brought together progressive Republicans who had been members of the Nonpartisan League with liberal Democrats and those in the Socialist Party who were looking for a more pragmatic alternative. This was a broad coalition with substantial support throughout the state. Socialists who had been active in the Nonpartisan League were instrumental in bringing farmers into the new party.

           

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party remained a pressure group on the outskirts of power throughout the 1920s, but the Great Depression of 1929 changed this balance of power dramatically. For the first time, the FLP was able to elect one of its nominees, Floyd Olson, as governor. In 1930, Olson negotiated a secret agreement with the Democratic National Committee representative for Minnesota, Joseph Wolf. Under this agreement, the Democrats agreed to nominate a candidate who was not well known for governor. In return, the FLP would nominate a relative unknown for the US Senate.

         

The agreement helped Olson to be elected as governor, although it was not implemented fully in the contest for senator. Through this secret agreement, the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party initiated a working relationship with the Democratic Party at its national level, even before the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932.

         

Olson proved to be an effective politician who could mobilize popular opinion in support of a program of social reforms. As a result, several of his proposed measures were enacted with the support of liberal Democrats in the state senate. Banks were blocked from foreclosing on farms and a modest program of work relief was also established for the unemployed. Olson’s legislative program complemented the New Deal program of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

         

Indeed, Olson was closely tied to the president. Roosevelt consulted with Olson and made patronage appointments to Democrats sympathetic to the Farmer-Labor Party. In 1936, Roosevelt made sure that the Democrats did not nominate candidates for governor and the US Senate, leaving the field open for the candidates of the FLP to win overwhelming victories.

         

Olson’s choice to succeed him, Elmer Benson, was not a skillful politician and his relationship with the state legislature became adversarial. In 1938, Benson was defeated for re-election and control of the FLP in state politics came to an end. As World War II unfolded, the FLP lost its momentum and fused with the Democratic Party in 1944.

         

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party never moved beyond the limits set by the agenda of liberal reformism. As an experiment in progressive politics, the FLP achieved limited success. As a model of socialist politics, it was a total failure. The FLP always remained a satellite of the national Democratic Party and the Roosevelt administration. It was never a genuinely independent party and its absorption back into the two-party system was a logical endpoint in its evolution.        

 

DSA and the Labor Party Question

         

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States, currently. Although it operates within the Democratic Party, DSA encompasses a wide range of political tendencies.

         

One tendency within DSA adheres to a version of the labor party perspective. Those within it support the candidates of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, while also calling for the formation of a broad-based third party. Such a progressive third party would bring together the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party with community activists and shop floor militants based on a program that would be very similar to the one being advocated currently by liberal elected officials within the Democratic Party.

         

Those advancing this argument see this step by step approach as the only way forward given the existing situation in the United States. The argument assumes that a break with the Democratic Party would, in itself, be sufficient to propel further steps toward a socialist politics. This overlooks the tight interlinking between the acceptance of a program of liberal reforms and an adaptation to mainstream politics.

         

The liberal agenda begins with the belief that the capitalist system needs merely to be tweaked, rather than challenged in its fundamental structures. A tactical approach to the two-party system follows as a logical consequence. Socialists need to question both the idea of working within the Democratic Party and the argument that capitalism can be reformed and they need to do this simultaneously. There is little reason to expect that a broad left party will move toward a socialist politics. On the contrary, it is far more likely that it will soon return to the Democratic Party as did the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.

         

Although the systematic argument of the DSA Left is presented as a new one that arises from the specific circumstances currently confronting the Left; in fact, the perspective is quite similar to the one formulated by socialists who held leadership positions within the Nonpartisan League. Still, despite the similarity in political perspective, the objective situation is quite different now than a hundred years ago. Senator Bernie Sanders is locked into the Democratic Party, while the League remained on the edge of the two-party system. The NPL led the way to the formation of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, but it is highly unlikely that the current divisions within the Democratic Party will lead to the formation of a third party.

          

Instead of viewing the British Labour Party or the Nonpartisan League/Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party as historical models to be emulated, contemporary socialists should look toward Eugene Debs and the left-wing of the Socialist Party, with its close ties to the IWW and radical trade unionists. The labor party perspective heads down a path to nowhere.

         

Further Reading

Chester, Eric Thomas. 2004. True Mission: Socialists and the Labor Party Question in the U. S. Pluto, London, England.

Gieske, Millard L. 1979. Minnesota Farmer Laborism: the Third Party Alternative. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

Morlan, Robert. 1955. Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915-1922. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

Thorpe, Andrew. 1997. A History of the British Labour Party. Palgrave Macmillan, London, England.