Socialist Propaganda League of America
The Socialist Propaganda League of America (SPLA) was established in 1915, apparently by C. W. Fitzgerald of Beverly, Massachusetts. The group was a membership organization established within the ranks of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and is best remembered as direct lineal antecedent of the Left Wing Section of the SPA and its governing National Council — the forerunner of the American Communist movement. It published a journal, The Internationalist, renamed The New International in 1917, last published in 1919.
The first publication of the Socialist Propaganda League was The Internationalist, with its debut issue dated January 6, 1917.
In April 1917, the name of the SPL's newspaper was changed to The New International and it was moved to New York City, to be edited by Louis C. Fraina.
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year—the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.
Ludwig Lore's magazine The Class Struggle, established in 1917, was an early theoretical journal of the organized Left Wing in the Socialist Party.
John Reed and Ben Gitlow's Left Wing magazine Voice of Labor was later made the labor paper of the Communist Labor Party.
