Workers' Council of the United States
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The Workers' Council of the United States was a short lived organization of former Socialist Party of America members who had wanted the party to affiliate with the Comintern. Failing that, they agitated for the creation of an open communist party. While a small and short lived group, it never the less played an important role in the creation of the Workers Party of America, and included many individuals who would have prominent careers in radical and labor movements such as Moissaye Olgin, J. Louis Engdahl and Max Shachtman.
The group began as the Committee for the Third International in 1920 as an internal group within the Socialist party advocating affiliation with the Communist International. Meanwhile several ethnic federations were growing weary of the rightward shift of the party. The Finnish Socialist Federation voted to leave in December 1920. When the party convention decided against joining the Comintern at its June 1921 convention, the Czech federation left in late August, followed by the Jewish Socialist Federation in September. The Jewish federation would provide the bulk of the groups membership.
The Committee officially left the Socialist party after the Jewish federation had seceded, and changed its name to the Workers Council of the United States. The new group advocated a completely legal Communist movement in the United States, a stand that only aggravated internal disharmony within the recently united Communist party of America. [1]
After a series of negotiations the Workers Council, the American Labor Alliance (the CPs already existing legal front) and the Communist party agreed to the creation of the Workers Party of America at a convention at Star Casino, New York on December 23-26, 1921. One of the stipulations for the WCs joining was the creation of a daily Yiddish newspaper. This was paper, the Morgen Freiheit, was launch on April 22, 1922 with Olgin as editor. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Draper, Theodore The roots of American communism New York, Viking Press pp. 330-34
- ^ Draper, Theodore The roots of American communism New York, Viking Press pp. 340-41
