William Heighton and the U.S. Origins of the Workers’ Party in Socialist Thought

• In Event: Brushing History against the Grain

Abstract

According to conventional wisdom, the idea of the “revolutionary proletariat” was introduced by Karl Marx in the 1840s; prior to this, socialist thought had not looked to any particular social group within modern society to be the agent of the coming social transformation. But this idea is often criticized as a theoretical (even “metaphysical”) construct with little relationship to empirical reality. Recent scholarship has taken the workers’ parties of the late nineteenth century to be the product of the class-based political movements to gain suffrage: working class politics arose out of a demand for political inclusion, not, as Marx’s theory would have it, for social revolution. If the historian of socialist thought broadens their gaze beyond Western Europe, however, this narrative encounters serious problems.
The world’s first labor party was founded in Philadelphia in 1828, and the idea first set out in print the year before by a wage-worker named William Heighton. Though this effort at independent electoral action lasted only a few years, the ideas behind it marked a significant development in the history of socialist thought. Heighton, I argue, is the first socialist to propose not only that workers must be the agents of their own emancipation, but that the course of action must be to form a workers’ political party and ultimately ascend to power via democratic elections. Contrary to the European labor parties of the latter nineteenth century, this idea arose not out of a class-based movement to win political inclusion, but instead, a socialist critique of the limits as well as the promise of democratic rights already attained. On the one hand, Heighton’s analysis simultaneously criticizes the emptiness of formal democratic rights while all candidates for office represent only the interests of the exploiting classes, and at the same times sees the proper exercise of these rights as the essential instrument for workers’ self-emancipation: the missing ingredient was an independent party, through which workers could nominate and elect candidates of their own choosing, loyal to their class interests, and, ultimately, allow them to translate a demographic majority into political ascendancy, and eliminate the system of laws that underpins the economic order they suffer under.
This paper will begin with a brief overview of the historiography on Heighton and the Philadelphia workingmen’s movement of 1827-1831. Then, it will discuss the social, political, and ideological context of 1820s Philadelphia out of which Heighton and his circle emerged. Next, it will analyze Heighton’s thought as initially formulated in his first major public statement, the “Address to the Members of the Trades Societies” of April 1827. Then, it will explore the ways in which various aspects of this political program were drawn out, debated, and revised amidst the period of intense organizing spanning the next four years. The paper will conclude with reflections on the significance of Heighton’s thought for broader themes in the history of socialist thought, and in particular controversies surrounding the idea of a “revolutionary proletariat”.

Author

• Sean Monahan, Dartmouth College