31 Facts About Alfred Wagenknecht

Alfred Wagenknecht was an American Marxist activist and political functionary.

Alfred Wagenknecht is best remembered for having played a critical role in the establishment of the American Communist Party in 1919 as a leader of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party.

Alfred Wagenknecht, called "Wag" by many of his friends, was born August 15,1881, in Gorlitz, Imperial Germany, the son of Ernst Wagenknecht, a shoemaker.

The family emigrated to the United States in 1884, and thus the German-born Alfred Wagenknecht essentially grew up as an American, living in Cleveland before departing as a young man for Washington state, on the West Coast.

The Wagenknecht family was politically radical from Alfred's early years, with his father making a cash donation to the colonization fund established by the fledgling Social Democracy of America in November 1897.

Alfred Wagenknecht was drawn to radical politics at an early age, elected Organizer of the Pike Street Branch of Local Seattle, Socialist Party of America in 1903.

The next year saw Alfred Wagenknecht serving as the Press Agent for Local Seattle.

Alfred Wagenknecht was an active member in the party's radical Pike Street Branch, which engaged in a long-running battle with the moderate Central Branch throughout the decade.

In 1905 Alfred Wagenknecht married Hortense Allison, sister of party comrade Elmer Allison.

Alfred Wagenknecht was prominent in the ongoing free speech fights which local Seattle had with city officials over the right to speak in public and hold meetings on city streets and sidewalks.

Alfred Wagenknecht was elected to the State Committee of the Socialist Party of Washington in 1905 and was the paid Local Secretary-Treasurer of a newly reorganized Local Seattle in 1906.

In 1907, with the return of Hermon F Titus's left wing publication, The Socialist, to Seattle, Wagenknecht left the employ of Local Seattle and went to work for Titus as Business Manager for his publication.

Alfred Wagenknecht was a delegate of the SPW to the 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party, where he fought a bitter battle with a representative of a moderate faction of the old Local Seattle organization which had been deprived of its charter by the State Committee for "political fusionism" late in 1906.

In July 1913, Alfred Wagenknecht became Editor of the Everett, Washington Socialist weekly The Commonwealth.

Shortly after assuming editorship of The Commonwealth, Alfred Wagenknecht decided to move along, going to work for the National Office of the Socialist Party of America as a National Organizer.

Alfred Wagenknecht was a delegate to the pivotal 1917 Emergency National Convention of the SPA, held at the Planters' Hotel in St Louis, Missouri, at which the St Louis Program against the war in Europe was adopted.

Alfred Wagenknecht was not eligible to participate in the seminal 1919 Emergency National Convention of the SPA owing to the expulsion of the Socialist Party of Ohio from the party for their endorsement of the Left Wing Manifesto, which was portrayed by the Regular-dominated outgoing NEC as an automatic violation of the party constitution.

Alfred Wagenknecht presided over this alternative convention, which on August 31,1919, declared itself to be the founding convention of the Communist Labor Party.

Alfred Wagenknecht served on the UCP's Editorial Committee and on the three-member Unity Committee which continued to negotiate a merger agreement with the remaining CPA organization, headed by Charles Dirba.

From June 1921, Alfred Wagenknecht served as the Manager of the unified CPA's "legal" weekly newspaper, The Toiler, with Alfred Wagenknecht's brother-in-law, Elmer Allison editing the publication.

In 1922, a legal "mass organization" called the Friends of Soviet Russia was established by the unified CPA, and Alfred Wagenknecht was named by the CEC of the party to head it.

Thereafter, Alfred Wagenknecht was made the District Organizer for the tiny Wilkes Barre district of the WPA, with this job beginning in May 1923.

In 1924, Alfred Wagenknecht worked as a "Director of Special Campaigns" for the WPA, managing the fund-raising drive for the Daily Worker.

Alfred Wagenknecht seems to have been difficult for both the Pepper-Ruthenberg-Lovestone and the Foster-Cannon-Lore factions and was shipped off to the Philippines to organize trade unions on behalf of the Red International of Labor Unions late in 1924.

Later, Alfred Wagenknecht turned his hand to film, producing and co-starring in the silent film The Passaic Textile Strike, a semi-fictional account of the 1926 strike of 16,000 textile workers at Passaic, New Jersey, initially led by Alfred Wagenknecht and other American Marxist and Communist leaders.

Alfred Wagenknecht was bypassed for the responsible position by a rapid succession of three others who were selected for the post based upon their loyalty to the majority faction headed by Executive Secretary Jay Lovestone.

Alfred Wagenknecht was attempting to reestablish a tent colony of mill strikers which had been disbursed by local authorities.

Alfred Wagenknecht separated from his wife Hortense in 1930 and was finally divorced in January 1948.

In November 1930, Alfred Wagenknecht was placed in charge of the National Campaign Committee for Unemployment Insurance, a single-purpose mass organization of the party aimed at organizing around the issue of unemployment insurance.

Alfred Wagenknecht was the State Chairman of the Communist Party in Missouri from 1938 to 1941 and in Illinois from 1941 to 1945.

Alfred Wagenknecht remained a Communist Party loyalist for the rest of his days, dying on August 26,1956 in Illinois and honored at his passing with a full-page photograph inside the front cover of Political Affairs, the theoretical monthly of the Communist Party USA.