During the late 1910s the organization came under the influence of a radical faction based in Detroit headed by John Keracher, which banned the advocacy of ameliorative reforms by party members, under penalty of expulsion.

Late in April 1918, Socialist Party regular Maurice Sugar and his friends helped to raise $10,000 through entertainments and raffles to pay for the down payment on a large building in Detroit which was later christened "The House of the Masses.

[3] This appears to have been a victory of the Keracher faction, drawing the ire of a group of 8 delegates, who submitted and official written criticism charging that the convention "clearly manifested" the "conspicuous act" of "failure... to pledge allegiance to the national and international organizations" and to lend support to the trade union movement.

[3] The gathering also approved the publication of the official state bulletin as a section within The Michigan Socialist, up to that time the organ of Local Detroit, as a cost-saving measure and nominated a full slate of candidates for the fall 1916 elections.

Chief on the agenda was the question of the level of support to be given by the state organization to the European revolutionary movement in general and the Russian revolution in particular, with radical resolutions by John Keracher and Alexander Rovin "to support the Soviet Government in every possible way and to the last dollar and man" defeated by the convention's moderate majority, on the grounds that such declarations might be illegal under the Espionage Act.

[5] In its final session, the gathering had a heated battle over the financing and terms of support for The Proletarian, the new publication of the Keracher-Proletarian University faction.

"[7] The convention acted upon the resignation of State Secretary Bloomenberg by electing John Keracher to fill the balance of his unexpired term, passed a program calling for the establishment of socialism while presenting no ameliorative demands, passed a resolution on religion calling for all party agitators to speak against it from the basis of historical materialism, and unanimously endorsed the expansion of Marxist study groups in the state.

[citation needed] In 2004 the SPMI also qualified the Socialist Party ticket of Walt Brown for President and Mary Alice Herbert for Vice President for the Michigan ballot under the state qualified label of the nationally defunct Natural Law Party, combined with a slate of SPMI presidential electors.

[10] Erard appeared on conservative talk radio station WJR, where he defended socialist politics and economic ideas.

[citation needed] The SPMI twice consecutively hosted the Socialist Party USA's biennial National Organizing Conference — in August 2006 in Detroit and July 2008 in Ann Arbor.