Alfred Wagenknecht facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alfred Wagenknecht
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Wagenknecht c. 1918
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| Born |
Alfred Wagenknecht
August 15, 1881 |
| Died | August 26, 1956 (aged 75) |
| Political party | Communist Communist Labor (1919-1921) Socialist (until 1919) |
Alfred Wagenknecht (born August 15, 1881 – died August 26, 1956) was an American activist and political leader. He is best known for helping to create the American Communist Party in 1919. He was a key leader of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, a group that wanted big changes in society. Wagenknecht also served as a top leader for the Communist Labor Party of America and the United Communist Party of America in 1919 and 1920.
Contents
About Alfred Wagenknecht
Early Life and Family
Alfred Wagenknecht, often called "Wag" by his friends, was born on August 15, 1881, in Görlitz, which was part of Germany at the time. His father, Ernst Wagenknecht, was a shoemaker. In 1884, when Alfred was three years old, his family moved to the United States. So, even though he was born in Germany, Alfred grew up mostly in America. They lived in Cleveland before he moved to Washington state on the West Coast as a young man.
Alfred's family was very interested in politics from his early years. His father even gave money to a group called the Social Democracy of America in 1897, which aimed to create new communities based on their political ideas.
Political Work in Washington State
Alfred Wagenknecht became involved in politics when he was young. In 1903, he was chosen to be an organizer for a local group of the Socialist Party of America in Seattle. In this role, he arranged for speakers, organized "street meetings" where people would give speeches from a soapbox to share socialist ideas with others, and planned fun events like music shows and dances.
The next year, Wagenknecht worked as the Press Agent for the Seattle group. He was a very active member of the party's more radical Pike Street Branch. This group often disagreed with the more moderate Central Branch for many years.
In 1905, Wagenknecht married Hortense Allison, whose brother, Elmer Allison, was also a party member. Wagenknecht was well-known for his involvement in "free speech fights" in Seattle. These were battles with city officials over the right to speak in public and hold meetings on city streets.
In 1905, Wagenknecht was elected to the State Committee of the Socialist Party of Washington (SPW). In 1906, he became the paid Secretary-Treasurer for a newly organized local group in Seattle.
In 1907, when a left-wing newspaper called The Socialist returned to Seattle, Wagenknecht left his job with the local party group to work for the newspaper as its Business Manager.
Wagenknecht was a representative for the SPW at the 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party. There, he had a big debate with a representative from a moderate group in Seattle. This moderate group had lost its official status from the State Committee in 1906 for trying to combine with other political parties. Wagenknecht and the other representative each spoke for 20 minutes. In the end, the convention decided not to go against the left-wing State Committee's decision.
In 1912, he was elected Assistant State Secretary of the SPW.
Like many party members back then, Wagenknecht often ran for public office as a Socialist. He ran for US Congress in 1906, for Seattle Comptroller in 1908, and for Congress again in 1912.
In July 1913, Wagenknecht became the editor of The Commonwealth, a Socialist newspaper in Everett, Washington.
Moving to Ohio
Soon after becoming an editor, Wagenknecht decided to move on. He started working for the national office of the Socialist Party of America as a National Organizer. In 1914, he was elected to the party's main governing group, the National Executive Committee, for the first time. After his time in Chicago, Wagenknecht moved his family back to Ohio. There, he was elected State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Ohio in 1917 and served until 1919. He also attended an important meeting in 1917 in St. Louis, Missouri, where the party adopted the St. Louis Program, which was against the war in Europe.
After the United States joined the war, Wagenknecht's strong opposition to military action caused him trouble with the law. He was arrested along with other Socialist leaders for supposedly trying to stop people from joining the army. They were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison in July 1917. The US Supreme Court upheld this decision in January 1918. They were released in December 1918.
While still in jail, Wagenknecht was chosen by the Socialist Party of Ohio to be their candidate for Ohio Secretary of State in the November election.
After his release, "Wag" was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party and worked for the party's Propaganda Department. He strongly supported the Left Wing Manifesto, a document written by Louis C. Fraina. He was very active in the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, a group that wanted to make the Socialist Party more radical. Wagenknecht ran for National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party in 1919 and received the most votes. However, the outgoing committee canceled the election, claiming there were problems with how some groups voted.
Wagenknecht and the Left Wing tried to set up their own National Executive Committee, even though the old committee refused to count the votes. This "new committee" met once in Chicago in August to try and take control of the party. Wagenknecht declared himself "Executive Secretary Pro Tem" (temporary leader). But the current Executive Secretary, Adolph Germer, and the party's main group rejected this effort.
Founding the Communist Labor Party
Wagenknecht was not allowed to attend the important 1919 meeting of the Socialist Party because the Socialist Party of Ohio had been kicked out for supporting the Left Wing Manifesto. So, Wagenknecht cleverly rented a room downstairs from the official meeting in Chicago. He held a separate meeting there, and many unhappy Left Wing representatives left the official meeting to join his. Wagenknecht led this alternative meeting, which, on August 31, 1919, announced itself as the start of the Communist Labor Party. This meeting elected Wagenknecht as the National Secretary of the CLP, a role he kept throughout the group's short existence.
The CLP faced big challenges due to raids by the US Department of Justice, led by A. Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover. These actions started in late 1919 and peaked with a huge operation on January 1-2, 1920. The CLP was forced to go underground. Local groups broke into secret "groups" of no more than 10 members, who met secretly, used fake names (pseudonyms), and tried to avoid being caught. Wagenknecht used names like "Paul Holt," "A.B. Mayer," "A.B. Martin," and "U.P. Duffy" during these "underground years" from 1920 to 1923.
In April 1920, C. E. Ruthenberg, who had been in prison with Wagenknecht and was now a rival leader, left the Communist Party of America (CPA) with many supporters and a lot of the organization's money. This Ruthenberg-CPA group and Wagenknecht's CLP finally decided to join forces, as requested by the Communist International. They held a secret meeting in Bridgman, Michigan, in late May 1920. This meeting decided that Wagenknecht would remain the executive secretary of the new organization, called the United Communist Party (UCP). Ruthenberg was given the important job of Editor of the party's official newspaper, The Communist. Wagenknecht also served on the UCP's Editorial Committee and on a three-person Unity Committee that continued to work on merging with the remaining CPA organization, led by Charles Dirba. They finally united at a secret meeting in May 1921 at a hotel near Woodstock, New York. Confusingly, this new unified group kept the name "Communist Party of America."
The merger of the UCP meant Wagenknecht was no longer an executive secretary. From June 1921, Wagenknecht managed the unified CPA's "legal" weekly newspaper, The Toiler. In 1922, a legal organization called the Friends of Soviet Russia was created by the unified CPA, and Wagenknecht was chosen to lead it. He also served on the main committees of the underground CPA and the party's "Legal Political Party," the Workers Party of America (WPA), from 1922 to 1923. After the underground party was finally dissolved, Wagenknecht became the District Organizer for the small Wilkes Barre area for the WPA, starting in May 1923.
Communist Party Leader
In 1924, Wagenknecht worked as a "Director of Special Campaigns" for the WPA, managing fundraising for The Daily Worker, a newspaper. Wagenknecht seemed to have trouble fitting in with the different groups within the party. So, in late 1924, he was sent to the Philippines to help organize labor unions for the Red International of Labor Unions.
Later, Wagenknecht got involved in film. He produced and co-starred in the silent film The Passaic Textile Strike. This film was a partly fictional story about the 1926 strike of 16,000 textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey, which Wagenknecht and other Communist leaders had initially led.
In the late 1920s, Wagenknecht was suggested for the role of business manager of the Daily Worker. A group led by William Z. Foster called him the "most capable comrade for the position." However, he was passed over for the job three times in a row. The people chosen instead were loyal to the main group led by Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone. Lovestone even criticized Wagenknecht in a pamphlet, saying Wagenknecht had been "hesitant" and "wavering" about the idea of splitting the Socialist Party a decade earlier.
In 1929, Wagenknecht was the executive secretary of the American section of the Workers International Relief, a group that helped people. In June, this job took him to Gastonia, North Carolina, where a difficult strike was happening at the Loray Mill. Wagenknecht was trying to help re-establish a tent camp for the striking workers that local officials had broken up. Instead, on June 12, Wagenknecht himself was arrested.
Wagenknecht separated from his wife Hortense in 1930 and they officially divorced in January 1948.
When the Great Depression started in 1929, the Communist Party USA began to focus a lot on helping unemployed workers. In November 1930, Wagenknecht was put in charge of the National Campaign Committee for Unemployment Insurance. This was a special group created by the party to organize around the issue of unemployment insurance. The group collected many signatures, claiming to have 1.4 million. Wagenknecht and a group of 140 people presented these signatures to Congress on February 10, 1931. This petition led the House of Representatives to discuss the Communists and their issue the next day. Some members argued for sending foreign radicals out of America, while others, like Rep. Fiorello LaGuardia of New York, argued for unemployment insurance laws to help calm revolutionary feelings.
In 1933, Wagenknecht served as the executive secretary of the National Committee to Aid Victims of German Fascism, another group supported by the Communist Party. In the fall of that year, he ran for the New York State Assembly.
Wagenknecht was the State Chairman of the Communist Party in Missouri from 1938 to 1941 and in Illinois from 1941 to 1945.
Later Life and Death
Alfred Wagenknecht remained loyal to the Communist Party for the rest of his life. He passed away on August 26, 1956, in Illinois. After his death, he was honored with a full-page photograph in Political Affairs, a monthly magazine of the Communist Party USA.
Works
- "The Struggle Against Unemployment in the USA," International Press Correspondence, March 26, 1931, pp. 340–341.
See also
