Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Workers Party of the United States (WPUS) was established in December 1934 by a merger of the American Workers Party (AWP) led by A.J.

Muste and the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA) led by James P. Cannon.

The formation of the U.S. Workers Party was the fusion of two revolutionary socialist organizations that had both successfully led two militant strikes to victory.

Lacking a class theory of its own, which can come into the labor movement in no other way than through the Marxist party, the American workers, with all their militancy and capacity for sacrifice, fell victim to all kinds of quackery and treason and landed in a blind alley every time.”[1] It was also these strikes that led to the fusion of the two organizations.

Yet after both the CLA and AWP had successfully led important strikes in 1934 James P. Cannon declared, “We, on our part, venture to say that the work of the League in the Minneapolis strikes helped convince the members of the AWP that we also are able to “speak American"; that our internationalism is not an abstraction but a guide to action on the national field.