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TheAmerican Workers Party (AWP) was asocialist political party established in December 1933 by activists in theConference for Progressive Labor Action, a group headed byA. J. Muste. The American Workers Party was established in December 1933 by activists in theConference for Progressive Labor Action. The figurative leader of the AWP was Muste, but it had a structure and values that lent itsfar-left radicalism a highly democratic and collaborative quality.

The AWP sought to find what it called "an American approach" forMarxism at the depth of theGreat Depression. The group published a popularly-written newspaper,Labor Action, and created Unemployed Leagues, which attracted tens of thousands of members and should not be confused with theCommunist Party USA'sUnemployed Councils.

The AWP is best known inlabor history for its leadership of the successful 1934 ToledoAuto-Lite Strike, which foreshadowed the creation of theUnited Auto Workers union. Exerting influence through its Unemployed League chapter, the AWP in Toledo kept the Auto-Lite strike from being broken by the desperate unemployed. Instead, the AWP brought the mass of unemployed to bear as a powerful vehicle for solidarity with the auto parts factory workers on the picket lines. The Auto-Lite strike, along with theMinneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 (led by theTrotskyistCommunist League of America) and the1934 West Coast Longshore Strike (led by theCommunist Party USA), was an important catalyst for the rise ofindustrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through theCongress of Industrial Organizations.

While it never actually attracted any workers, numbering no more than a few hundred members, the AWP attracted a number of prominent labor activists, such asJ. B. S. Hardman of the needle trades. It also attracted a number of intellectuals, many of them former members of the Communist Party who rebelled against its strictures but remained radical. The latter includedJames Burnham,Sidney Hook,James Rorty, andV. F. Calverton.

In December 1934, the AWP merged with the TrotskyistCommunist League of America, to form theWorkers Party of the United States. That was the fusion of two revolutionary socialist organizations, which had both successfully led two militant strikes to victory. Most AWP members were absorbed into the mainstream Trotskyist movement, and some, like Burnham, became major figures in later 1930s.

A few others, such asLouis Budenz andArnold Johnson, did not accept the rapprochement with Trotskyism and instead joined the Communist Party, considering its adoption of thePopular Front to be analogous to what the AWP had tried to accomplish with its "American approach."

Others, such as Hook and Rorty, became political independents but remained, for a time, largely sympathetic to the Workers Party of the United States.

• Louis Budenz.This is My Story. McGraw-Hill, 1947.
• Margaret Budenz.Streets. Our Sunday Visitor, 1979.
• James P. Cannon.History of American Trotskyism. Pathfinder Press, 1944.
• Farrell Dobbs.Teamster Rebellion. Monad Press, 1972.
• Sidney Hook.Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century. Harper & Row, 1987.
• Christopher Phelps.Young Sidney Hook. Cornell University Press, 1997.
• JoAnn Ooiman Robinson.Abraham Went Out. Temple, 1981.
• Wald, Alan M. (1987).The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. University of North Carolina Press.ISBN 0-8078-4169-2.

• A.J. Muste,"My Experience in the Labor and Radical Struggles of the Thirties." (mp3 audio) American Archive Pilot Project, Illinois Public Media, WILL. Speech of February 9, 1966.—Original resides in the archives of the University of Illinois.
• Toward an American revolutionary labor movement; statement of programmatic orientation
• On The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike, by Ted Selander, a participant in the historic strike (Archived 2009-10-25)
• Street Fighting Man, A Look at the 1934 Auto-Lite Strike

• Defunct Marxist parties in the United States
• Political parties established in 1933
• Political parties disestablished in 1934
• 1933 establishments in the United States
• 1934 disestablishments in the United States

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