The American Marxist movement may not have been born in Pittsburgh. But it was arguably conceived here, at a Downtown meeting hall long since replaced by office towers. What began as a chaotic meeting of labor activists would end with a pledge to form a new political party — the first to be rooted in Karl Marx’s ideas.
Over several contentious days in April 1876, representatives of unions and socialist groups from across the country gathered in Pittsburgh. Their goal: to form a nationwide labor movement, possibly even a united political party. The conference drew political outsiders of all stripes, from craft unionists to paper-money supporters to the mysterious (to outsiders, anyway) social democrats.
Radical ideas about labor weren’t new to Western Pennsylvania. William H. Sylvis, born in Armagh, Indiana County, led the National Labor Union — an early attempt after the Civil War to unite workers across the country. The National Labor Union forged ties with Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association in the 1860s, although its overtures toward Black and women workers were limited. Sylvis died in 1869, leaving to others the task of uniting America’s workers.
Calling for unity
Laborers’ secret societies flourished in the following years. One, the Junior Sons of ’76, held meetings in Altoona and Clearfield County, where its members evidently made enemies. The Clearfield Republican called them “broken-down, ring-boned and spavined political hacks from Centre and Clearfield counties who want office.” Still, when the group called a national meeting in Tyrone, Blair County in December 1875, at least a few left-wing allies joined. The attendees agreed to meet again in April for a National Labor Convention in Pittsburgh.
That convention, launched at Lafayette Hall on Wood Street, drew more than 100 delegates from unions and socialist groups. It moved to Schiller Hall at Fourth Ave. and Liberty Street (near modern Gateway Center) the next day — by which time cracks were already forming. Representatives of several regional social-democratic parties were in attendance, and these small groups — comprised mostly of German-American radicals — took a more radical view of the proceedings. Otto Weydemeyer, son of Marx’s famed correspondent Joseph Weydemeyer, was among the delegates. The Pittsburgh Commercial reported:
Mr. Wydemyer (sic), a communist, offered . . . an elaborate argument in favor of the introduction of a co-operative plan by the laboring masses. It advocated trades unions, and a union of all trades unions, as the only means of bettering the condition of the working classes. Workingmen should make no independent effort in a political way until they were thoroughly organized according to the communistic idea, when they could assert themselves through the ballot box independently of the old political parties and the propertied classes.
These ideas were new to many Americans, including union activists. One resolution stated in part: “(We) do now organize and pledge ourselves to support a Workingmen’s Party, free from corruption, to liberate the working classes from social and industrial bondage.” The convention split on several points, and on the second day more than 20 social democrats threatened to withdraw. Amid jeers and mockery, the social democrats formed their own caucus and plotted their own activities.
Breaking away
Where the more moderate elements drew praise from the local press, the social democrats remained the subject of suspicion. The Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette wrote: “The Social Democrats, who are very like the French Communists in their political views, broke away from their brethren, but the others preferred to let them go rather than submit to their dictation.”
The conference itself ended with few tangible gains. But as Philip S. Foner noted in The Workingmen’s Party of the United States, the socialist attendees left with an agreement to unite in a single party. Their proposed platform called for an international workers’ movement, aimed at “the emancipation of the laboring class.” They were far from unified themselves: The mostly German socialists were split between Marxists and devotees of the late Ferdinand Lasalle — the romantic, dueling radical who believed workers would be free only when governments funded their cooperative enterprises.
A workingmen’s party
Despite their differences, the call for unity and a new convention drew praise from the left. Less than three months after the Pittsburgh split, the socialists would assemble again in Philadelphia, this time to dissolve their local parties and unite in a new Workingmen’s Party of the United States. That party, soon to be renamed the Socialist Labor Party, would be the first national organization to advance Marxist ideas. Successive splits from the SLP formed the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and many others.
In Pittsburgh, the social democrats continued their work as the national labor revolt of 1877 loomed. Within weeks of the convention walkout, local activists held a meeting at the East Diamond in Allegheny (now the North Side). Accompanied by a brass band, speakers told some 200 people of their program, as the Weekly Gazette put it: “They advocate the abolition of of the capitalists’ control of manufacturing enterprises, contending that the laboring classes of the country should be permitted to reap the benefit of their productions through co-operation.”
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