Talk:Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party

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Untitled

The Further Reading citations were found here: American Communism and Anticommunism:A Historian’s Bibliography and Guide to the Literature. Reproduced here without annotations. DJ Silverfish 17:01, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link. I've replaced the copyrighted list with the link you provided.--Appraiser (talk) 15:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should probably be titled "Farmer-Labor Party"

As the article correctly points out, the FLP was not strictly a Minnesota phenomenon. This article should be titled "Farmer-Labor Party" with a redirect for the existing name. Please comment if you agree or disagree. Isaac R (talk) 19:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's already a very detailed article about the national movement; oddly enough, it's to be found under Farmer-Labor Party. This article is about the folks in Minnesota. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Purging the communists?

How is it that the FLP's roots in the American communist movement are completely expunged from this article? It was no secret in the early 20th century It's a secret in the early 21st? Has it been subjected to Damnatio memoriae? It's history, people, don't revise it. 173.69.173.130 (talk) 16:52, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There were socialists in the FLP; that's no secret. What deep hidden knowledge about the CP are you claiming has been ignored? --Orange Mike | Talk 17:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know I'm about a decade late to add my two cents, but, although the FLP technically had an anti-communist clause (prohibiting Leninists from becoming members) in its constitution, the Communists did enter the FLP and played a major role in the organizing activities of the FLP, and their involvement was an instrumental part of the FLP's downfall. After the rise of Hitler (which was enabled by the incapacity of the KPD, on the one hand, and the SPD and centrist democratic parties in Germany, on the other hand, to work together), Stalin reevaluated the relations of Communist parties in bourgeois democracies, and ultimately sent the order down through the Comintern that Communists were to forge alliances with non-Leninist parties in bourgeois democracies as necessary to prevent the rise of fascism in those countries. By 1938, the entry of Communists into the FLP had become a major enough issue that Hjalmar Petersen ran a red-baited primary challenge against Elmer Benson. After Benson won the Farmer-Labor primary, the FLP was unable to mend the divide that the primary challenge had caused, and in the meanwhile the Republican Party of Minnesota (it should be noted that it was the party itself, not the Stassen campaign) picked up Petersen's red-bait (only the Republicans used "Communist" as a dog whistle for "Jew," which... the FLP did have a disproportionate number of Jews among its ranks, and at the time Minneapolis was perhaps the most antisemitic city in the country, so that, unfortunately, turned out to be a pretty potent strategy). Meanwhile, the Trotskyists (who were never friendly with the FLP to begin with, reasoning that it wasn't far enough to the left) were so put off by the presence of CPUSA members in the Farmer-Labor Movement, that the Trotskyists leveraged their influence in the Minnesota Federation of Labor to deny the FLP the MFL's support in the 1938 election. In the end, all of this resulted in Benson losing by what still to this day stands as the greatest landslide in the history of Minnesota gubernatorial elections, the Liberal Caucus losing control of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and the FLP losing four (out of five) of its seats in the United States House of Representatives.–MNTRT2009 (talk) 22:05, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Would this not imply that it wasn't communist, however? It seems to me like the two sources cited showing it to be "communist" are James M. Youngdale's "Populism, Democracy, and the Paradigm Shift" and an article in the Star Tribune titled "Why is Minnesota's Democratic Party called the DFL?". Youngdale, in the same article, argues that the co-operative ideals of Robert Owen (aka Owenism), the Jeffersonian democracy and agrarian populism of the Populist Party, and the Protestant Social Gospel were much stronger an influence on American democratic socialism than those of Marxism and dialectical materialism. In fact, Youngdale in the article seems to talk more about how the left-leaning nature of the party, as well as the pro-Hitler sentiments of the German-American immigrant voters it was trying to reach caused the party to be labeled as "communist" rather than it actually being so. The quote used from this source to justify the communist label is the following: "By and large, neither faction among the Finns became involved with the Nonpartisan Leagues or the forming Farmer-Labor Party until the Popular Front period beginning in 1936. At this time, the communists began to play an active role in Farmer-Labor politics and in the election of John Bernard to Congress, who won immediate fame for his lone vote against the Neutrality Act of 1937, an act which hamstrung aid to Republican Spain to the advantage of Francisco Franco." However, the paragraph which this is from spends much of its time discussing not communist ideology within the Farmer-Labor Party, but whether or not Finnish-American immigrant voters were willing to vote for the party. One could argue this paragraph is just as much about the difference between the Prohibitionist, Christian socialist, pro-cooperative commonwealth, and social democratic "Church faction" and the pro-Soviet and Marxist "red faction" among Finnish-American voters in Minnesota in the 1910s through 40s.

If you were to make the argument the party was infultrated by communists, such as John Bernard, mentioned in the quote above, who represented the Farmer-Labor Party in Congress from 1937 to 1939, that might be more accurate. However, it seems clear that the party, more than anything else, was anti-fascist. In fact, that is what the Star Tribune article states is the reason why communists "curried favor" with the democratic socialist Governor of Minnesota at the time, Floyd B. Olson. Olson, while definitely a socialist and "cooperativist" (in his own words), preferred to align himself with FDR's New Deal coalition and the Minnesota Democratic Party than with the Communist Party USA, hence the creation of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, born out of both practical compromise and ideological affinity. The Star Tribune article discusses how both the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party united as their own popular front to defeat fascism, a popular front which, contrary to the implications of some parts of this article, was at the exclusion of communist elements.

Furthermore, the Labour Party in the United Kingdom was also a party with communist factions, such as the Militant Tendency, but this isn't mentioned in the information box on the Wikipedia page for the Labour Party, even thought the Militant Tendency still exists and still promotes a Trotskyite and revolutionary socialist platform. Frankly, this is because anyone can see that the Labour Party isn't a communist party, and even though it has a communist faction, it is so minimal that it isn't even brought up in the Wikipedia article until the 12th section of the history page, and serves as the only mention of it in the entire article. Other members of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party elected to Congress, such as Ole J. Kvale, William Leighton Carss, Knud Wefald, Magnus Johnson, Ernest Lundeen, Paul J. Kvale, Rich T. Buckler, and Henry M. Arens were all co-operativists, democratic socialists, labor unionists, prohibitionists, suffragettes, and progressives, but none were communists. The only other communist figure one might find aside from John Bernard within the Farmer-Labor Party was Francis Shoemaker.

For these reasons, I don't know if its meaningful to mention communism as a faction of the Farmer-Labor Party, as well as including "far-left" as an ideological descriptor. I do think we could add a section about anti-fascism, as it was something the Farmer-Labor Party consistently held onto (after all, it may be the reason why Ernest Lundeen was killed, though that is not a substantiated claim). MagyarNavy1918 (talk) 15:48, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous Name

As far as the convention of naming goes, this article should not be titled "Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party", as that was NOT the party's name. As expressed in the Preamble to the 1934 Platform, the name of the political party was the "Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota." Alternately, the name of the permanent organization of the Farmer-Labor Movement in Minnesota (which handled ongoing organizing activities between elections) was the "Farmer-Labor Association." Strictly speaking, however, there was never a party named the "Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party."--MNTRT2009 (talk) 00:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]