John Keracher was born in Scotland in 1880. In 1909, be emigrated to the United States, settled in Detroit and. some time later, became a shoe salesman. Early in 1910. he came into contact with the Socialist Party of America, founded in 1901. In April, he joined the Party.
Despite its name, the Socialist Party of America did not have as its objective—its sole objective—the establishment of socialism. It was a basically left-wing, social democratic, reformist Party with, at that time, hundreds of thousands of members and supporters. And prior to the First World War, almost every kind of radical and reformer could be found in its ranks. Of the Party, and the various publications which supported it. Keracher observed:
. . . I heard some of its members speaking about the Materialist Conception of History. 1 had never heard the term before and was curious to know just what it meant.
Approaching those members, 1 asked for an explanation. Soon, I discovered, as it seemed to me then, that there was something mysterious about it. They told me that they believed in it and were sure that it was quite scientific . . .
meanwhile, I had subscribed to a number of socialist papers and started to read socialist books and pamphlets. Soon I noticed that there was much contradiction existing on socialist theory. The authors and editors held different views, often quite opposite, on important questions of principle. This was explained to me as a permissible difference of opinion on the part of the writers’. I was assured that everything was all right, that in a democratic movement, such as ours, much allowance must be made for individual opinion'. (How The Gods Were Made)
Keracher was not satisfied with such answers. Directly opposite views could not both be correct Something must be wrong, he felt which permitted such a wide tinge of opinion on the principles of socialism. John Keracher decided to find out for himself.
Among the books which I had bought were some by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels . . . I turned my attention to their writings and after a time began to grasp what was meant by the Materialist Conception of History. The more I read of their writings the clearer it became to me. I began to overcome my former indefinite position on religion, and upon other questions, such as social reforms, the function of industrial organizations (i.e. the unions), the State, and other institutions. I came to the conclusion that if Marx and Engels were correct, a great many others calling themselves socialists, must be wrong. (How The Gods Were Made)
Soon after, Keracher initiated an ambitious education programme, throughout Michigan, based on the study of the writings of Marx and Engels. Out of this grew what was termed the proletarian University, in which Keracher was its most popular lecturer Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Socialist Party of Great Britain had published, in 1910, a pamphlet titled Socialism and Religion, an analysis of religion based on the very Materialist Conception of History which had concerned John Keracher when he joined the Socialist Party of America. Copies of Socialism and Religion soon found their way to North America, and began to circulate within both the Socialist Party of Canada and sections of the SPA. such as Michigan and Detroit.
War and the Revolutionary Tea Drinkers
The First World War came is a great shock to the Socialist Party of America. At first. America was not involved, but many American workers had relatives in Europe. So, reluctantly, many took sides in what was their masters’ quarrel. Many Socialist Party members did likewise. Not so in Detroit, however.
In Britain, right from the start, the Socialist Party of Great Britain opposed the war. But, because of its opposition, and the harassment of many of its members, some went on the run or escaped abroad. This was to affect the already militant Michigan section of the SPA under the influence of Keracher and others such as Dennis Batt.
Detroit was the centre of the automobile industry, and the auto workers suffered intense exploitation which tended to make them more militant, and sympathetic towards socialist ideas, than elsewhere in the United States. Not surprisingly, therefore, the SPA in that city began to look towards anti-war Marxists in Europe in general, and Britain in particular. The Michigan section soon came under the influence of the SPGB.
In 1915, an active and charismatic member of the SPGB, Moses Baritz, arrived in Detroit, to be followed some time later by another member, Adolph Kohn. Baritz was soon holding lectures in Duffield Hall and elsewhere, and was joined by members of the Socialist Party of Canada. By 1916, Moses Baritz had moved on (and was later jailed for his anti-war activities when America became involved) but Adolph Kohn continued propagating socialist ideas. Meanwhile, a small group in Toronto, across the border to north-east in Canada, had organized themselves as the Socialist Party of North America, and had adopted the object and declaration of principles of the SPGB. A number of members of the SPA in Detroit felt that it was time that Marxist socialists in the United States should break away from the reformist Socialist Party, and form a new revolutionary Party, also basing itself on the object and principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
John Keracher and Dennis Batt were themselves very sympathetic towards the 'revolutionary tea drinkers’, as the pro-SPGB group was called; but they thought that for the time being, Marxists should remain within the SPA, and try to influence it towards socialism, rather than organize a new, separate, political party
Workers and Proletarian Parties
Nevertheless, particularly at the urging of Adolph Kohn. a small group finally decided to organize a new Socialist Party. And on July 7 I916, the Socialist Party of the United States, adopting the Object and Declaration of principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, was formed in Detroit. About 20 members of the SPA resigned immediately, including a young socialist named I. Rab. But due to the fact that the organization was unable to make effective contact with socialists outside Michigan, and was without funds, they only began with 42 members Bill Davenport became the first secretary, Bill Gribble the first organizer and Lawrence Beardsley wrote the Party's manifesto The writer, Jack London just before his death, resigned from the SPA. and wrote the new party "I congratulate you and wish you well in your adventure." Meanwhile, the SPA in Detroit went from strength to strength, although the new Party's influence remained strong. Indeed, in August 1918, the SPA in Michigan, under John Keracher. founded a new journal, The Proletarian, and like the new Party adopted the Object and Declaration of Principles of the SPGB. The new Socialist Party of the United States, however, was informed that the SPA had copyrighted the name “Socialist Party” and so, for legal reasons, renamed their party the Workers' Socialist Party of the United States (WSP/US). (In 1947, it was renamed a second time as the World Socialist Party.)
John Keracher and the Michigan Socialist Party, which had become among the largest of the Socialist Party's state organizations, came more and more in conflict with the national leadership. In 1917, revolution broke out in Russia, followed by the Bolshevik coup d'etat. Although John Keracher was well aware that a socialist revolution had not occurred in Russia, he and most of the SPA members in Detroit, like many, workers and radicals elsewhere, became a vehement supporter of Bolshevism. Not only did this mean the parting of the ways between Keracher and the "revolutionary tea drinkers" of the WSP and the SPGB, but also, in May 1919, the expulsion of the Michigan section of the Socialist Party of America, ostensibly for the Michigan section's anti-religious stance, in violation of the Party's statutes.
At an emergency meeting of the expelled Michigan members in June 1919, a resolution was passed calling for a new revolutionary party, to be formed in Chicago on September 1; and on that date, Keracher, Dennis Batt and others from the expelled Michigan section of the SPA, took part in the founding of a Communist Party. (At two simultaneous conventions, in Chicago, two Communist parties were formed!); fundamental disagreements, however, soon made it impossible for Keracher and the Michigan group to remain in the newly-formed Communist Party. Almost alone (except for the WSP), Keracher, Batt and their comrades were the only "communists" who did not believe that a proletarian revolution as imminent in the United States. Keracher also opposed the Communist Party's clandestine and anti-electoral orientation, its dual unionism, its "federation of federations" and its reformism. So, within a few months, in January 1920, the so-called Communists first tried unsuccessfully to take over Keracher's Proletarian University by force and, then, charged him and the other Michigan members, with Menshevism, and expelled them.
Six months later, in June 1920, the expelled members and several others, founded the Proletarian Party.
Union activists
The membership of the Proletarian Party was never more than 500 at the most; its stronghold remaining in the industrial midwest, especially in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Flint and Rochester. It sent a delegate to the third congress of the Communist International, in Moscow, in June 1921, yet despite efforts by CI officials to get the "Proletarians" to re-enter the American Communist Party, the Proletarian Party stubbornly refused to, and pursued its own course while still supporting the Communist International globally. Indeed, not until the mid-1930s, when Keracher opposed the Popular Front, particularly during the Spanish Civil War, did the Proletarian Party actually challenge the authority of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union internationally.
Notwithstanding the Proletarian Party's support for Bolshevism internationally, the Proletarian Party remained a "Menshevik" organization, with a kind of Marxism that owed much to Engels, and little or nothing to Lenin. Its members were, like Keracher himself, deeply influenced by not only Marx and Engels, but also by Darwin, Lewis Henry Morgan and Joseph Dietzgen. And, in this very much like the WSP and SPGB, its activities consisted almost exclusively of study classes, forums, debates, lectures and outdoor "soapbox" meetings. Many of its members, however, were active Trade Unionists.
During the 1933 Briggs Auto Body strike in Detroit, Proletarian Party members were very active; and, later, they were involved in sit-downs in Flint and elsewhere. In the early days of the United Auto Workers, their speakers spoke to large crowds, and for a small organization, the Proletarian Party provided the UAW with a large number of its best organizers, such as Frank Marquart who was initially influenced by I. Rab and Emil Mazey. Many other members of the Proletarian Party became top officials of other unions, including Carl Berreitter of the International Typographical Union, Al Renner of the Restaurant Workers, and Sam Meyers of the Retail Clerks. And many others. Yet the Party suffered a large turnover of membership. By 1940, it had lost much of its membership. And by 1971, the Proletarian Party just faded away. Nevertheless, John Keracher left his mark, not only in Michigan but even as far away as Britain.
He wrote countless leaflets, as well as articles for the Proletarian News. And some of his pamphlets, such as Producers and Parasites (1935), Crime—its Causes and Consequences (1937) and particularly How The Gods Were Made (1929), all of which were published, not by the Proletarian Party, but by Charles H. Kerr and Company of Chicago, which Keracher had taken over from an ageing Charles Kerr in 1928, found their way to Britain, and into the hands of members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain including this writer.
John Keracher left Detroit for Chicago in the late 1920s and remained there until about 1950, when he retired to Los Angeles. He died in 1958.
The World Socialist Party
Following the entry of the United States into the First World War in 1917, and the subsequent persecutions of radicals, socialists and anti-war groups, the members of the WSP were forced to go underground, curtail their activities or to move away from Detroit, to other parts of the United States. And, like Keracher some members of the WSP supported the Bolsheviks, at least for a time. During the infamous Palmer Red Raids of 1919, thousands of workers, including socialists, were arrested.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, members of the WSP in Detroit carried on as the Detroit Socialist Educational Society between 1919 and 1922. In 1921, I. Rab moved from Detroit to Boston where he worked tireless for socialism, for many more decades. The Detroit Local of the WSP came and went over the years; and at one period, during the 1950s, it took over the functions of the WSP National Headquarters. At the moment of writing, there is no active local of the World Socialist Party in Detroit.
Peter E. Newell,
Colchester, England
Sources:
The Monument, Robert Barltrop.
Jack London, Robert Barltrop.
Encyclopaedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle and others.
The Western Socialist, No.4,1966.
Crime—Its Causes and Consequences, John Keracher.
Producers and Parasites, John Keracher.
How The Gods Were Made, John Keracher.
Letter from Ronald Elbert, 30 March 1996.
World Communism: A Handbook, edited by Witold S. Sworakowski.
Blogger's Note:
I thought this short historical article from Frank Girard's Discussion Bulletin would be of interest to readers of the blog. The author of the article, the late Peter E. Newell, was a member of the SPGB in the '50s and '60s, and rejoined the party in the 1990s after long period in-between involved in anarchist politics. Peter had a longstanding interest in the history of radical movements in the Americas, and as well as writing a biography of Zapata in the 1970s, he also wrote a history of Canadian impossibilism in 2008.
Frank Girard's reasons for originally publishing the article are worth reposting:
"The DB isn't a socialist history magazine, but Peter Newell's article on John Keracher and Revolutionary Perspective's article on the British SLP both relate to a key period, 1918-20, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks were using worldwide enthusiasm among workers for the Russian Revolution and the unlimited cash they came into when they grabbed power in Russia to establish their hegemony over the revolutionary wing of the international socialist movement. I never met Keracher, but I knew one of his admirers, Clarence Ford, in Grand Rapids in the early fifties. Like many working class revolutionaries he was shockingly—to me in those days—uninterested in the relative doctrinal purity of socialist organizations and had been a member of both the SLP and Keracher's Proletarian Party, and from reading Newell's article I gather that the refusal of Keracher and his party to become a part of the CP was based on principle and not just personal antagonisms as I had assumed."
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