Special Collections Staff Picks

Source: Workers Vanguard, uncataloged periodical, Hoover Collection

Workers vanguard front page

Staff Person: Ralph Scott

Description:
The Workers Vanguard is the official publication of the International Communist League (Fourth International). The International Communist League (sometimes known in the United States as the Spartacist League), describes itself as “a proletarian, revolutionary and international tendency committed to the task of building Leninist parties and national sections of a democratic centralist international.” In January of 1919 V.I. Lenin called upon the left wing of the Socialist Party of America to join the Communist International (Comintern). This left wing attempted to gain control of the Socialist Party, but party leaders were tipped off and arranged for the Chicago Police to throw out the left wing members at the meeting. This left wing became the current Communist Party USA. In 1937 a “Revolutionary Tendency” was again formed in the American Socialist Workers Party (SWP). This Lenin/Trotsky “Tendency” was expelled from the SWP in 1963 and in 1966 formed the Spartacist League/U.S. The Workers Vanguard is the main party organ. This issue features an article on immigration reform showing pickets at the Smithfield Food plant in Tar Heel, NC.

Posted by Ralph Scott under J. Edgar Hoover Collection on International Communism, newspapers and Tags: communism, immigration, labor