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League for Industrial Democracy

The League for Industrial Democracy (LID) was founded as a successor to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1921. Members decided to change its name to reflect a more inclusive and more organizational perspective.[1]

suggestion that the labor movement was "too quiescent, to be counted with enthusiasm" as an agent for change,

espousal of and dislike of formal offices, seen as potentially undemocratic and lacking accountability, and

participatory democracy

failure to explicitly exclude communists from its vision of the .

New Left

Activities[edit]

The LID has been actively supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland since 1980, providing financial, moral and political support. Furthermore, in 1986, the LID coordinated efforts on a campaign to protest the crackdown on Polish universities by the government. The LID, in conjunction with Poland Watch Center and Committee in Support of Solidarity, publishes a quarterly bulletin Solidarnosc. The Brussels-based Committee in Support of Solidarity (CSS) is a group heavily supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S. government-funded organization that sponsors anticommunist,"democracy-building" projects around the globe. In a three-year period, CSS received over a million dollars from NED.


The League is a membership organization.

Bernard K. Johnpoll and Mark R. Yerburgh (eds.), The League for Industrial Democracy: A Documentary History. In three volumes. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS. New York: Random House, 1973.

League for Industrial Democracy

. Online documents at Early American Marxism site. Retrieved August 23, 2006.

Intercollegiate Socialist Society (1905 - 1921)

Thirty-five years of educational pioneering; L.I.D. celebrates past achievements and asks "Where do we go from here?"

Forty years of education, the task ahead

The L.I.D.: fifty years of democratic education, 1905-1955.

The proceedings of the 70th annual conference of the League for Industrial Democracy held in New York City on May 2 and 3, 1975.

The challenge of change and conflict in American society

Guide to League for Industrial Democracy. Pamphlets, 1922-1978. 5266. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University.

at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives

League for Industrial Democracy Records