Socialist Party

Internal Division

However, the party was internally divided over American involvement in World War I. The Debs faction of the party opposed American involvement in the war, claiming that the war had been caused by imperialism and that the United States should remain neutral. After the United States entered the war, Debs made an anti-war speech, urging men to refuse to sign up for the draft. Debs would be convicted of violating the Espionage Act, a law that made it a crime to make speeches that undermined the war effort, in 1919, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison (he was released by President Warren G Harding in 1921, who commuted his sentence to time served). Another faction of the party supported America's entry into the war.

Following the war, the party became fractionalized over the issue of the relationship with the new Bolshevik government in Russia. The party voted to expel its pro-Bolshevik faction in early 1919. This faction of the party formed, in September 1919, the Communist Party of America (which was made up mainly of the foreign language federations in the Socialist Party) and the Communist Labor Party, which was led by the journalist John Reed, further fracturing the left in American politics (under pressure from Moscow, the two parties would merge into the Communist Party USA in 1921). In 1920, the party convention voted to make American citizenship a requirement to serve as a party officer or delegate to the party convention. The following year, a faction of the party that wanted to join the Third International in Moscow broke away and formed the Workers Party of America. In 1924, the party convention endorsed the presidential candidacy of Progressive Party candidate Robert M. LaFollette. The party's goal, in joining with the Progressives, the American Federation of Labor, and a number of other unions in supporting LaFollette was to create a permanent farmer-labor party. This effort would, ultimately, be unsuccessful.

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