Grace Carlson and Dorothy Schultz were a bonafide Socialist Workers Party sister act
Grace Marie Holmes Carlson, November 13, 1906 (St. Paul, Minn.) – July 7, 1992 (Madison, Wis.)
VP candidate for Socialist Workers Party (aka Militant Workers Party) (1948)
Running mate with nominee: Farrell Dobbs (1907-1983)
Popular vote: 13,613 (0.03%)
Electoral vote: 0/531
The campaign:
Although 1948 was their first Presidential election, the Socialist Workers Party had been around for awhile, tracing their history through twists and turns, mergers and splits with both the Communists and Socialists. In the Marxist universe during this wild election year where third parties really begin to proliferate, they saw themselves as the American party of Trotskyism. Farrell Dobbs (in his first of four runs for President) and Grace Carlson, two veteran SWP members who had served time in Federal prison as a result of the Smith Act, were selected as the Party's ticket.
The SWP 1948 platform is fairly predictable, but it does go into some detail concerning their views of the other parties, which is rather unusual for a party platform. Here is their take on Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, the Communist Party USA (which had endorsed Wallace), and the Socialist Party of America:
The party of Henry Wallace represents nothing but an attempt to exploit the disgust of the people with the Democrats and the Republicans. The Wallace party is the unashamed champion of decaying capitalism. Claiming support as an anti-war party, its leader, Wallace, has betrayed the struggle in advance by declaring his readiness to support the projected war when it breaks out. Wallace's stock-in-trade is a recitation of evils without one single concrete proposal to mobilize labor's strength
against monopoly capitalism, the source of all the evils he criticizes.
The Communist Party (Stalinists), which is supporting the Wallace party in this year's election, is interested in the class struggle only insofar as it can be exploited to advance the interests of the arch-reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy in the Kremlin. When it serves Stalin's purposes, as it did during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the American Stalinists talk class struggle, support strikes, pay lip-service to the need for socialism, etc. And similarly, when it serves Stalin's purposes, as it did during the wartime period of the Washington-Moscow alliance, the American Stalinists advocate class collaboration, "national unity," cessation of labor and Negro struggles, strike-breaking, etc. In their case they remain instruments of Stalin's reactionary foreign policy and must be seen as enemies of the workers' true class interests and revolutionary socialism.
The Socialist Party of Norman Thomas pretends that war can be stopped by the United Nations just as it pretended that the war could be stopped by the League of Nations. While denouncing war in general it is no less ready to support World War III than it was to support World War II. It seeks to reform and not to abolish capitalism.
Interesting that the Socialist Labor Party failed to show up on the SWP denunciation list.
The SWP placed 8th nationally, with votes recorded in over a dozen states, some of them as write-ins only. Their strongest result was by far in New Jersey with 0.30%.
Election history:
1940 - US Senate (Minn.) (Trotskyist Anti-War Party) - defeated
1942 - Mayor of St. Paul, Minn. primary (Socialist Workers Party) - defeated
1946 - US Senate (Minn.) (Revolutionary Workers Party) - defeated
1950 - US House of Representatives (Minn.) (Socialist Workers Party) - defeated
Other occupations: teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, vocational rehabilitation counselor, professor at St. Marys Junior college in Minneapolis, hospital secretary
Buried: ?
Notes:
Her sister Dorothy Schultz ran for Congress in Minnesota 1946 as part of the Revoltionary Workers
Party.
Educated in Catholic schools.
Imprisoned for a year and half starting Dec. 31, 1943 for anti-war political activity.
Left the SWP in June 1952 and returned to the Catholic Church as a venue for social justice work. Considered herself a religious Marxist.
PhD in psychology at the University of Minnesota, 1933.
Her mother was a German immigrant.
Met and befriended Trotsky's widow, Natalia Sedova, in 1941.
Since she was a convicted felon, she was unable to vote for herself in 1948.
