SOCIALIST COMIC BOOK

 

The Socialist Labor Party was officially formed in 1876 as The Workingman’s Party, though the founders had been active in the union movement for years previous to this.

The name was changed in the 1880s. The SLP was involved with the Knights of Labor during their peak period and the leader Daniel De Leon was a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World.

There were divisions among the various Communist, Socialist and Anarchist groups in the country about whether to support electoral politics or direct action in the labor force, and the SLP had various other alliances over the years

The SLP believed in participating in political elections and was successful in some state and local elections and also had divisions that supported Industrial Unionism and direct action through strikes.

The history of early Unionism is complicated and I would do a disservice to the many workers who devoted their lives to unionism to write casually about it.

The Socialist Labor party is the oldest American Socialist organization in the country and the second oldest in the world, but with membership down to a handful, the newspaper and general office were closed in 2008. their webpage remains at  http://www.slp.org/

This pamphlet carries a Brooklyn address with a zip code, indicating a date of post-1965.