The LPM's roots lay in the state labour parties that were established after the British government announced plans to organise local elections in 1950.

[3] The party chairman Lee Moke Sang was forced to resign as public servants were barred from political office.

[4] With the rise of more radical socialist leadership, the positions gradually took a more anti-colonial form and in June 1954, the organisation was renamed the LPM.

[7] The LPM's founding constitution demanded immediate self-government for Malaya, liberal citizenship laws, the Malayanization of the civil service, a planned economy, greater democratic justice and agrarian reform.

In view of the changed circumstances after the independence of Malaya in 1957, the LPM amended its constitution in 1959 to strive for the establishment of a united democratic socialist state of Malaya and to secure for the workers who work by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service (the latter part essentially mirroring the then Clause IV of the British Labour Party's constitution).