Criminal syndicalism laws
Criminal syndicalism laws were statutes that prohibited the advocacy of violence as a means to achieve social or political change. These laws were characterized by their broad definitions, allowing for prosecution of individuals simply for being associated with certain organizations, disseminating their literature, or facilitating their meetings. Notably, these laws were employed against groups like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and were perceived as tools to suppress radical organizations without the need for evidence of direct involvement in violent acts. Originating in the early 1900s in response to events like the assassination of President William McKinley, criminal syndicalism laws were enacted in multiple states during periods of social unrest, including World War I and the Red Scare. Enforcement was particularly stringent in states like California, where hundreds were arrested and prosecuted for alleged violations. Although the laws saw a decline in use after 1924, they influenced later legislation, such as the Smith Act during the Cold War. Ultimately, the principles behind criminal syndicalism laws were largely invalidated by Supreme Court rulings, most significantly in the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case, which established a high standard for lawful limits on free speech, particularly regarding advocacy of violence.
Subject Terms
Criminal syndicalism laws
Definition: Laws against belonging to a criminal organization
Significance: Criminal syndicalism laws, passed by most U.S. states around the time of World War I, were designed to facilitate the prosecution of members of radical organizations
Criminal syndicalism laws generally outlawed the advocacy of violence to bring about social and political change. The laws were drawn so broadly that simply being a member of an organization deemed to advocate such ideas, printing or distributing such a group’s literature, or even renting a hall to such groups would violate the law. It was unnecessary to prove that particular individuals associated with the groups used violence or even advocated it. Criminal syndicalism laws were used legally to crush such groups as the militant labor organization the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
The laws were also used as a model for later sedition laws used to prosecute the Communist Party of the United States. The clear purpose and the actual use of criminal syndicalism laws was to facilitate the jailing of members of radical organizations without evidence of individual participation in the organizations’ work, thus effectively suppressing target groups that were deemed subversive without the need to prove that they had actually used violence or otherwise violated the law.
The model of later criminal syndicalism laws were laws passed by four states in 1902 and 1903 in the wake of the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley by an anarchist. These so-called criminal anarchy laws, such as the 1902 New York law, banned advocating the doctrine that government should be overthrown by force, violence, or assassination, with penalties for those who personally advocated such beliefs, who helped disseminate such doctrines, or who organized, joined, or voluntarily assembled with any group advocating such beliefs. During the 1917-1920 period of American involvement in World War I and the postwar Red Scare, similar laws, more broadly drawn to outlaw advocacy or membership in organizations that advocated violence as a means of bringing about economic or political change, targeted the IWW and the American Communist Party. Such laws were passed by more than twenty states. These laws were especially enforced in California and the Pacific Northwest, where the IWW was especially active; for example, between 1919 and 1924, more than five hundred people were arrested for criminal syndicalism in California alone, of whom 264 were prosecuted and 109 were convicted.
After 1924 criminal syndicalism prosecutions in California and elsewhere largely disappeared, partly because the IWW had been effectively suppressed through such prosecutions and other legal forms of repression. However, criminal syndicalism laws were one of the models for the 1940 federal Smith Act, which was used to suppress the Communist Party of the United States during the Cold War. The laws were periodically resurrected during times of high social tension, such as the Great Depression and the Black Power and antiwar movements of the 1960’s. Criminal syndicalism laws were effectively interred, however, in a series of Supreme Court rulings, and especially in the 1969 Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. In this case the Court ruled in a criminal syndicalism prosecution brought against a Ku Klux Klan leader that the states could not forbid even individual advocacy of violence unless it was “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite and produce such action,” a standard which could virtually never be met and which paved the path for future rulings expanding free speech protections, such as the 1989 and 1990 decisions protecting flag burning as a form of political expression.