This group, in its various American forms, has combined its European ancestry with uniquely American characteristics. It can be traced to the utopian socialism of such Europeans as Robert Owen and Charles Fourier and the communist theories of Karl Marx. Its first American manifestation was the Socialist Labor party, founded in 1877. Its leader, Daniel De Leon, broke with the American Federation of Labor over Samuel Gompers's rejection of political action. In 1901, a merger of several socialist groups created the Socialist party in Indianapolis, which had about 10,000 members at the start.
Its perennial presidential candidate was Eugene V. Debs, a labor organizer who had led the Pullman strike of 1894. Debs advocated an Americanized socialism that anticipated much of the legislation of the New Deal and the modern welfare state rather than government ownership of the means of production. In 1912, Debs received about 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the total, in the presidential election, and twelve hundred Socialists won various state and local offices.
The nationalism of World War I hurt the Socialist party, which split between those opposing and those supporting the war. Debs was jailed for his opposition to the war. After Debs's death in 1926, Norman Thomas became the party's major figure and led a party revival during the Great Depression. But neither Thomas nor those who followed him approached the electoral popularity of Debs and the party early in the twentieth century. In short, the party has achieved little electoral success, but, in the words of one of its modern leaders, Michael Harrington, "its most significant accomplishments were made indirectly, and not in the party's own name."
See also Debs, Eugene V.; Elections: 1912 , 1920; Harrington, Michael; Haywood, William; Socialism.
