SOCIAL DEMOCRACY... BUILDS IN THE UNITED STATES!

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Social Democrats, USA - Moving Past Label of Democratic Socialism

Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is a political association of democratic socialists and social democrats founded in 1972. The Socialist Party of America (SPA) had stopped running independent presidential candidates and consequently the term party in the SPA's name had confused the public. Replacing Socialist with Social Democrats, SDUSA clarified its vision to Americans who confused social democracy with the ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which SDUSA opposes.

In response, former SPA Co-Chairman Michael Harrington resigned from SDUSA in 1973 and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) which criticized SDUSA's anti-communism and welcomed the New Politics movement associated with George McGovern and the New Left. SDUSA members opposed McGovern's politics and a few of them helped to start the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and such members have been called Scoop Jackson Democrats or neoconservatives, or both. SDUSA's members had been active in the civil rights movement which had been led since the 1940s by A. Philip Randolph. SDUSA's leaders had organized the 1963 March on Washington, during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Under the leadership of Randolph and Bayard Rustin, SDUSA championed Rustin's emphasis on economic inequality as the most important issue facing African Americans after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. SDUSA's efforts to reduce economic inequality led to a focus on labor unions and economic policy. As a result, SDUSA members were active in the AFL–CIO confederation as well as in individual unions, especially the American Federation of Teachers.

SDUSA's electoral strategy of political realignment intended to organize labor unions, civil rights organizations and other constituencies into a coalition that would transform the Democratic Party into a social democratic party. The realignment strategy emphasized working with unions and especially the AFL–CIO, putting an emphasis on economic issues that would unite working class voters. SDUSA opposed the New Politics of Senator McGovern which had lost all states other than Massachusetts to Richard Nixon at the 1972 presidential election, when Americans voted for a Democratic House of Representatives in the House elections. While SDUSA had endorsed McGovern, it had adopted resolutions criticizing the New Politics for having made criticisms of labor unions and working class Americans and for its advocacy of an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Vietnam.

SDUSA's organizational activities included sponsoring discussions and issuing position papers—it was known mainly because of its members' activities in other organizations. It included civil rights activists and leaders of labor unions such as Bayard Rustin, Norman Hill and Tom Kahn of the AFL–CIO as well as Sandra Feldman and Rachelle Horowitz of the AFT. Kahn organized the AFL–CIO's support of Solidarity, an independent labor union that challenged the Polish People's Republic. Penn Kemble and Carl Gershman cooperated with Republican and Democratic administrations on democracy promotion, beginning with the Reagan administration. Other members included the pragmatic philosopher Sidney Hook. SDUSA ceased operations in 2005 following the death of Penn Kemble. In 2008–2009, two small organizations emerged, each proclaiming itself to be the successor to SDUSA.

SDUSA's politics were criticized by former SPA Chairman Michael Harrington, who in 1972 announced that he favored an immediate pull-out of American forces from Vietnam (without requiring any guarantees). After losing all votes at the 1972 convention that changed the SPA to SDUSA, Harrington resigned in 1973 and formed his Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) which welcomed the New Politics and middle-class leadership. The name change and the formation of DSOC represented a split with the socialist movement in the United States. Some SDUSA members have been called "right-wing social-democrats", a taunt according to Ben Wattenberg.

SDUSA members supported Solidarity, with Kahn working for AFL–CIO and later Gershman working for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Their support of Solidarity was criticized by the Carter administration, the Soviet Union and other supporters of détente. Like the AFL–CIO and at Solidarity's request, SDUSA members supported using economic aid to Poland's communist party-led government as a bargaining chip to help Solidarity while neoconservatives and hard-line conservatives opposed such aid in 1981. SDUSA leaders Penn Kemble and Bayard Rustin and former SDUSA member Joshua Muravchik were called "second-generation neoconservatives" by Justin Vaïsse. Along with Kahn, Horowitz and Gersham, these leaders are also regarded as Shachtmanites by most other scholars. SDUSA leader Penn Kemble rejected the neoconservative label and called himself a social democrat (even while dying in 2005). Joshua Muravchik disputed the Shachtmanite label for his generation and has called himself a neoconservative, much to the disappointment of his SDUSA associates who continue to identify with social democracy and to disagree with neoconservatism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democrats,_USA