Communist Party leader William Z. Foster looks at the history, struggles, and current debates within the Socialist Party during the mid-1930s in which the S.P. rapidly grew and moved to the left under the leadership of Norman Thomas and within the social crisis and its subsequent radicalizations. The Old Guard, Neo-Constructivists, Trotskyists, ‘Militants’, Thomasites, among others, struggled for control of the Party’s orientation, resources, and policies. While destructive to the Party and its left-wing, the debates in the S.P. of those years are, or should be, of real interest to revolutionaries today as the comrades of the 1930s grappled with many of the most important questions continuing to face our movement in a climate of rapid social and political change.

The Crisis in the Socialist Party by William Z. Foster. Workers Library Publishers, New York. November, 1936.

Contents: I) The Failure of the Socialist Party and the Reason Why Success Was Possible, Why the Socialist Party Failed, II) A Generation of Reformism and Its Disastrous Effects, The Socialist Party’s Failure to Assume Mass Leadership, Passivity in Strikes and Other Struggles, Contradictory Industrial Union Policy, Anti-Labor Party Tendency, Opportunist Trade Union Neutrality, Opportunist War Policy, Sabotaging the Russian Revolution, Neck Deep in Class Collaboration, Socialist Party Inertia in the Crisis, A Word in Summary, III) A Generation of Reformism and Its Disastrous Effects (Continued), The War Against the Left Wing, 26. The Two Wings of the Party, Early Phases of the Inner-Party Struggle, The 1912 Split, The 1919 Split, The Communist Party, IV) The Present Situation in the Socialist Party, The Turn to the Left, The Socialist Party’s PettyBourgeois Leadership, The Question of the Daily Mass Struggles, The New Socialist Party Sectarian Reformism, Under-estimation of Immediate Demands, Retreat Before Fascism, A Reactionary Peace Policy, A Sectarian Labor Party Policy, Thomas Defeatism, The Question of Cultivating the Revolutionary Forces, Reformist Theoretical Weakness, Hostility Against the United Front, Unfriendly Attitude Towards the Soviet Union, The Perspective of the Socialist Party. 70 pages.

PDF of pamphlet: https://archive.org/download/TheCrisisInTheSocialistParty/CISP_text.pdf