Formation of the California Communist Labor Party

Abstract

IN OCTOBER, 1919, amid the wreckage of what had once been the powerful Socialist party of California, five militant left-wing members of the party's state executive committee met in Oakland to determine the organization's fate. By unanimous vote, with a bare quorum present, the committee endorsed formation of the Communist Labor party of America, sold all physical assets of the California Socialist party to one of their communist sympathizers, and urged all Socialist locals to affiliate with the newly formed communist organization. Within a month they launched the first state-wide communist party in California.' The Communist Labor party evolved from a half-century of Marxist agitation in California, but its immediate origin was to be found in developments in the California Socialist party after 1910. That organization, after a decade of minor achievements, had become a significant force in California politics. Socialist candidates won municipal offices and state assembly seats, and in 1911 the party nearly won control of Los Angeles. By 1914 state party membership reached an all-time peak, over eighty-two hundred members, with some three hundred locals scattered throughout the state, representing both rural and urban regions.2 But coincidental with this peak of activity came the outbreak of World War I and with it a decline in the socialist movement. Ameri-