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Masthead of Solidarity
It is now nearly eighty years since the German sociologist Werner Sombart raised
the question, 'why is there no socialism in the United States?' In the ensuing
decades, the problem has been a source of apparently endless debate among
historians examining the distinctive qualities of the American experience,
American radicals seeking an explanation for their political weakness, and Europeans alternately fascinated and repelled by the capitalist colossus to their west.
Indeed, long before Sombart, the exceptional economic and political history of
the United States commanded attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
Marx and Engels themselves occasionally sought to solve the riddle of
America, the land where, as Marx once put it, capitalism had developed more
'shamelessly' than in any other country. They could never quite decide, however,
whether the unique qualities of nineteenth-century American life boded well or
ill for the future development of socialism. Would the early achievement of
political democracy prove an impediment to class consciousness in the United
States or encourage it by making economic inequalities appear all the more illegitimate? Was the absence of a feudal tradition a barrier to the development of class
ideologies, or did it make possible the early emergence of a modern, socialist
political culture? If America was, in so many ways, the most capitalist nation on
earth, should it not also become the most socialist? Marx and Engels could never
quite answer such questions to their own satisfaction, and subsequent writers who
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in the United States, (indeed, Americans, in the late 1820s, created the first
'Workingmen'sparties'in the world) but they have tended to be locally-oriented
and short-lived.As Montgomeryobserves, the Americanform of socialismhas
centeredon controlof the workplace,ratherthancreatinga working-classpresence
in politics.3 'Whyis there no socialism' thus becomes a problemof explalningthe
disjunctureof industrialrelationsand politicalpracticein the United States.
Finally, there is the problem of proposed answers that simply explain too
much. Descriptionsof an unchangingAmericanideology, or timeless aspects of
the American social order such as mobility, leave little room for understanding
the powerful Americanradicaltraditionbased upon cross-classmovementsand
appeals to moral sentimentratherthan economic interest. Nor can they explain
those periodswhen socialistpoliticsdid attractwidespreadsupport.It is too little
noted that at the time Sombartwrote there was, in fact, socialismin the United
States. In the first fifteen years of this century, the American Socialist party
appeared to rival those in Europe, except the German, in mass support and
prospects for future growth. Around 1910, the American Socialist party had
elected more officialsthan its Englishcounterpart;certainly,Sombart'squestion
mightas readilyhave been asked about Britainas the United Statesbefore World
War I. Thus, what must be explainedis not simplywhy socialismis today absent
from American politics, but why it once rose and fell. Such a definitionof the
question, I will argue, requires that we 'historicize'the problem of American
socialism.Rather than assumingan unchangingpatternof Americanexceptionalism, we need to examinethe key periodswhen Americandevelopmentdiverged
most markedlyfrom that of Europe.
With these admonitionsin mind, let us review some of the most prominent
explanationsfor the weaknessof socialismin the United States. Probablythe most
straight-forwardapproachis the contention that the failure of socialismresults
from the success of Americancapitalism.Variousaspectsof the Americansocial
order, accordingto this argument,have led workersto identifytheir interestswith
the socio-economicstatus quo. This, indeed, was the burden of Sombart'sown
analysis.The economicconditionof workersin the United States, he insisted,was
far better than that of Europeansin terms of wages, housing, and diet. Socially,
moreover,they were far less sharplydistinguishedfromthe middleclassthan their
Europeancounterparts.And finally, they were consciousof being able to move
west if dissatisfiedwiththeirpresentconditions.The successof capitalism,Sombart
believed, made the Americanworker 'a sober, calculatingbusinessman,without
ideals.' 'On the reefs of roast beef and apple pie,' he added, 'socialisticutopias
of every sort are sent to their doom.'4
From FrederickJacksonTurner's'frontierthesis,' whichsaw in the westward
movementthe key to Americandistinctiveness,to more recent studiesattributing
the failure of socialismto high rates of geographicaland social mobilityand the
abilityof Americanworkersto acquireproperty,the successof capitalismhas been
seen as makingthe Americanworkingclass complacentand renderingsocialism
irrelevantto Americanpolitics. As anyone who has lived in both America and
Western Europe can testify, extremelyhigh rates of geographicalmobility are a
distinctive feature of American life. In the nineteenth century, each decade
witnessed a wholesale turnover of population in working-classneighborhoods,
presumablywith adverse effects on the possibility of creating permanentclass
institutions.5Even today, the lure of the Sunbeltdrawsworkersfromthe depressed
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industrialheartland,an example of the individual'safety-valve'that Turneridentified as the alternativeto class conflictin the United States. A recent varianton
the theme was the contention,popularduringthe 1960's,that the white working
class had exchangedmaterialsecurityand a privilegedstatusin relationto minorities at home and workers abroad, for a renunciationof economic and political
radicalism.Socialism,accordingto this view, could come to the United Statesonly
as the indirectresult of revolutionsin the thirdworld, or the activityof marginal
social groupslike migrantworkersand welfaremothers,not yet absorbedinto the
Americanmainstream.
Plausibleas they appear,the 'successof capitalism'and 'mobility'approaches
raise as many questions as they answer. First, they rest upon assumptionsabout
the standardof living of Americanworkersthat are rarelysubjectedto empirical
verification.Have the wage levels and ratesof socialmobilityof Americanworkers
alwaysbeen significantlyhigherthan in WesternEurope?Vague referencesto the
'scarcityof labor' in the United States do not suffice to answer that question.6
Manyimmigrantscomplainedthat certainaspectsof their lives -- the length of the
work day, the pace of factory labor - comparedunfavorablywith conditionsat
home.
More importantly,the preciseimplicationsof the abilityto acquireproperty
for class consciousnessand socialism are far more problematicalthan is often
assumed. A venerabletraditionof analysis, datingback at least as far as Alexis
de Tocqueville, insists that far from promotingpolitical stability,social mobility
is a destabilizingforce, raisingexpectationsfaster than they can be satisfiedand
thus encouragingdemands for further change. Certainly,recent American and
Europeanstudies of labor historysuggestthat the better off workers- artisanlsin
the nineteenthcentury,skilled factoryworkersin the twentieth,were most likely
to take the lead in union organizingand radical politics.7As for geographical
mobility, until historiansare able to generalize about the success or failure of
those millionswho have, over the decades,left Americanfarmsandcities in search
of economic opportunity,the implicationsof the extraordinaryturbulenceof the
Americanpopulationmustremainan open question.8But in anycase, the historian
must beware of the temptationsimply to deduce political ideology from social
statisticsor to assign disproportionateinfluence to a single aspect of the social
structure.And finally, the 'successof capitalism'formulacan hardlyexplain the
relative weakness of socialism during the Great Depression, which failed to
producea mass-basedsocialistmovement,or the radicalismof the 1960's,which
arose in a period of unparalleledaffluence.
Even more popularthan the 'socialmobility'thesis is the contentionthat the
very ethos of Americanlife is inherentlyhostile to class consciousness,socialisnm,
and radicalismof any kind. Probablythe best known expressionof this point of
view is Louis Hartz's The Liberal Traditionin America. To summarizeHartz's
argumentvery briefly,Americanswere 'bornequal', never havinghad to launch
a revolutionto obtain politicaldemocracyor social equality, with the result that
American ideology has been dominated by a Lockean, individualisticoutlook
againstwhich neither socialismon the left nor serious conservatismon the right
can make any headway.A thoroughlybourgeois'fragment'spun off by Europe,
Americapossessedonly one part of the Europeansocial order. Lackinga hereditaryaristocracyanda dispossessedworkingclass, it had no need for classideologies
and politics.
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brief stay in the United States. In 1910, for example, threequartersas many
Italians left for home as entered the United States. Not intendingto make the
United States a permanenthaven, Gerald Rosenblumargues, these new immigrantsreinforcedthe narrow'business'orientationof Americanlabororganizations:
higherwages, not efforts at social change, were what attractedthem to unions.21
Despite the popularityof what might be called the 'ethnic'interpretationof
the weaknessof Americansocialism,it is by no meansclear that culturaldivisions
were an insuperablebarrierto class consciousnessor political socialism.Racism
and ethnic prejudice are not, as they are sometimes treated, 'transhistorical'
phenomenathat exists independentof historicaltime and place. What needs to
be studiedis what kind of organizingand what conditionshave allowedunionsto
overcome pre-existingprejudices.Unions organizedon an industrialbasis have
undercertaincircumstancesbeen able to bringblack and white workerstogether.
The IndustrialWorkersof the Worldmanagedto lead successful,militantstrikes
earlyin this centuryby recognizingthat ethnicitycan, undercertaincircumstances,
generatedistinctiveformsof radicalprotest.This is especiallytrue whereclass and
ethnic lines coincide, as in turn-of-the-century
Americanindustrialcommunities.
Ethnic group solidarity,Victor Greene has argued, actuallyincreasedmilitancy
during strikes by immigrantworkers in the Pennsylvaniacoal fields, and the
IWW'stacticof establishingstrikecommitteescomposedof democratically-elected
representativesfrom each ethnic group, broughtto its strikes all the strengthof
the pre-existingnetworkof immigrantinstitutions.So long as each groupbelieved
no one group was receivingfavored treatment,the bonds of ethnicityin no way
contradicteda willingnessto work with others. Like many 'global'explanationsof
the failure of socialism, in other words, the ethnic approachproves too much:
ratherthan investigatingthe specificcircumstancesunderwhich racialand ethnic
divisionsinhibitclass solidarity,it assumesthat a diverseworkingclass can never
achieve unity in economic or politicalaction.22
From the recent emphasisupon the resiliencyof immigrantsub-cultureshas
emerged the latest explanationfor the failure of American socialism. In The
RadicalPersuasionAileen Kraditor,a formerradicalhistorianwho has repudiated
her earlierwritingsand taken a prominentrole in a new conservativehistorians'
crganization,argues that the very strengthof ethnic culturesrenderedpolitical
radicalismirrelevant to the immigrantproletariat. In early twentieth-century
America, accordingto Kraditor,workerswere able to create culturalenclavesso
self-sufficientthat they saw no need for far-reachingpolitical change: all they
wantedwas to be left alone, enjoyingrelativelocal autonomy.Those radicalswho
did try to organize in lower-classcommunitieswere perceived either as misfits
who had rejectedtheirculturalinheritanceor as representativesof a hostileoutside
environment.In a sense, Kraditor'sbook representsa rightward,but in some
ways logical, extension of the new social and labor history. Her emphasisupon
the culturalresiliencyof immigrantworkers'ethnic communitiesreflectsa major
preoccupationof recent historicalwriting,as does her subordinationof political
and ideological considerationsto ones of culture. Correctlycriticizingan older
stereotypeof the unifiedclass-consciousproletariat,Kraditorsubstitutesanother
equally ahistoricalconstruct, the self-satisfied,community-orientedworker, for
whom the privatesphereis sufficientunto itself and who is thereforeuninterested
in radicalideologies or politicalchange.23
Related to the compositionof the Americanworkingclass, of course, is the
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the local level in the United States becauseworkersdid not see the nationalstate
as being under the control of a hostile class. And even on the local level, Ira
Katznelsonargues,workerstraditionallyallocatedeconomicissuesto unions,while
politics revolved not around questions of class, but rather the distributionof
patronageamong competingethnic groupsby urbanpoliticalmachines.25
The unusualstructureof Americanpolitics has also affected the possibilities
for socialistparties.The electoralcollege method of choosingthe presidenthelps
entrenchthe two-partysystem (since votes cast for a thirdcandidatewho cannot
achieve a majorityare 'wasted'). The size and regional diversityof the country
has made it difficultto translatelocal laborstrengthinto nationalpower. American
politicalpartieshave proven remarkablyadept at absorbingprotest, adoptingthe
demandsof reformersin watered down form, and forcing radicalsto choose in
elections between the lesser of two evils. The contrast between the American
1930's,when FranklinD. Roosevelt'sNew Deal made broadconcessionsto labor
and therebycementedan alliancewith the union movement,and the conservative
policiesof Depression-eraBritishgovernments,is only one exampleof the remarkable flexibilityof Americanparties. To liberal historians,such actions vindicate
the receptivityof the Americanpoliticalorderto demandsfor reform;to radicals
they often appearas frustratingbarriersto trulyradicalchange.26
Other political factors have also inhibited the rise of labor and socialist
politics. Americanhistorianshave yet to assessthe full implicationsof the disfranchisement of southern blacks from the late nineteenthcentury until the 1960's.
Here was a group comprisinga significantportionof the Americanworkingclass
that, when given the opportunity,proved receptive to parties like the Populists
whichsoughtfar-reachingchangesin Americanlife. Theirexclusionfrompolitical
participationshifted Americanpolitics to the right while entrenchingwithin the
Democratic party a powerful bloc of Southernreactionaries.At various times,
immigrantsand most migrantlaborershave also been barredfrom voting. Industrial workers, moreover, have never formed anythingapproachinga majorityof
the Americanelectorate. In a vast nation, predominantlyruraluntil well into this
century, parties resting exclusively upon labor could not hope to win national
power. In 1900, the United States was already the world's foremost induistrial
power, yet a majorityof the populationstill lived in places with fewer than 2500
residents.
A final 'political'considerationoften stressed by historianssympatheticto
Americansocialismbut minimizedby those who are not, is outrightrepression.
The Populistswere deprivedof electoralvictoriesthroughoutthe Southby blatant
fraudin the 1890's.Violence by federaland state troops and privatepolice forces
suppressedstrikeson manyoccasions,andcourtinjunctionsdefeatedmanyothers.
The first Red Scare of 1919-20, whichjailed and deportedradicalleaders, devastated both the SocialistPartyand IWW. The second, after WorldWar II, effectively destroyedthe CommunistParty.27
Each of these 'political'approachescontains an element of plausibility,but
many suffer from a shortcomingshared by other explanationsfor the failure of
socialism:they invoke aspectsof Americanpoliticscommonto other countriesto
explainAmericanexceptionalism.To take one example,virtuallyevery European
socialistmovementsufferedgovernmentalrepressionat one time or anotherin its
history, sometimes far more severe repressionthan anythingexperiencedin the
United States (very few Americanradicals,after all, were ever executed by the
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Both stand out as eras when the trajectoryof socialistmovementsin the United
States diverged most markedlyfrom that of their Europeancounterparts.Why
did the Socialist and Communist parties fail to build upon their undoubted
successes and establish themselves as permanentparts of the American body
politic?
One kind of internalapproach,associatedmost prominentlywith Daniel Bell,
argues that American socialists and communistsfailed to attractbroad support
because of their sectarianorientationand concernwith ideologicalpurityrather
than the give and take essentialto successin Americanpolitics. 'In the worldbut
not of it,' they eschewedreformsin favorof a preoccupationwith socialistrevolution, therebyisolatingthemselvesmore or less by choice. A somewhatanalogous
argumentis that of JamesWeinstein,who begins by challengingBell's portraitof
the Socialistparty, insistingthat between 1900 and 1919 it acted as a traditional
reformistparty, taking ideology less seriouslythan the winningof votes. In the
end, however, accordingto Weinstein,the partysuccumbedto the kind of ideological rigidity described by Bell, the attempt of one faction, allied with the
Comintern, to impose the Soviet model of a highly-disciplined,ideologically
correctpartyuponwhathad been a broadcoalitionin the mainstreamof American
politics.28
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Socialist party for the first time accurately reflected the composition of the
Americanproletariat.
Oppositionto the war laid the partyopen to the massiverepressionthat was,
at least in part, responsiblefor its demise. One may speculate whether, had
American Socialists, like their European counterparts,supported the war and
perhapseven entered a coalitionwartimegovernmentas junior partners,as the
Labourpartyin Britaindid, they mighthave shieldedthemselvesfrom repression
and establishedtheir politicallegitimacy.(Of course, given the experienceof our
own times, one may well ask whether participationin governingan imperialist
nation involves a socialistparty in an inevitablesacrificeof principle,at least so
far as foreignpolicyis concerned.)Whatis clearis an outcomefraughtwith irony,
in view of the assumptionthat Americansocialismis so much weaker than that
of Europe. Of the two great 'isms'createdby the nineteenthcentury- socialism
and nationalism- the latter in western Europe proved far the strongerin 1914.
Socialistinternationalismwas crucifiedon the crossof socialistsupportfor the war
effort. Wasthe Americanparty'soppositionto the wara courageousact of suicide?
At least, history ought to record that the American Socialist party went to its
death not because there was less socialismin the United States than in Europe,
but because, apartfrom the RussianBolsheviks,the Americanwas the partythat
remainedmost true to socialistprinciples.
If the periodbeforeWorldWarI representedone opportunityfor the development of a masssocialistpartyin the United States, the 1930'sappearsto represent
another. By the mid-thirties,the Communistparty had establisheditself as the
major force on the socialist left. The achievementsof the communists,recent
researchhas made clear, were indeedimpressive.Movingfar beyondthe electoral
emphasisof the old Socialistparty, they understoodthat struggle,on a varietyof
frontsis the most effective meansof mass mobilizationand education.In contrast
to the socialists'isolationfromthe militantstrugglesof the pre-WorldWarI years,
the communiststook the lead in a remarkablearrayof activities- union-building,
demonstrationsof the unemployed,civil rightsagitation,aid to republicanSpain,
etc. Indeed, the wide variety of their activities becomes all the more amazing
when it is rememberedthat the party at its pre-warpeak numberedwell under
100,000 members.30
Given the mass militancyof the CIO and rangeof partyconcerns,why did a
largersocialistor laborpoliticalpresencenot emergefrom the Great Depression?
Some accountsstressthe resiliencyof the politicalsystemitself, the way President
Roosevelt managedto absorblabor militancyinto a redefinedDemocraticparty
coalition. Others point to the internecinewarfarebetween AFL and CIO unions
as sabotagingefforts toward the creation of an independentlabor party. Still
others blame the Communistparty'squest for legitimacy,especiallyin its Popular
Front period. The party's determinationto forge an alliance of all anti-fascist
elements, including the Democratic party, and its ideological emphasis upon
American nationalism('Communismis twentieth-centuryAmericanism'as the
mid-thirtiesslogan went), foreclosedthe possibilityof independentsocialistpolitics. Accordingto James Weinstein, here also lay a cardinaldifferencebetween
the old socialists, who at least had made socialisma part of Americanpolitical
discourse,and the 1930scommunists,who saw themselvesas the left wing of the
New Deal coalition.3'
But like the old Socialistparty,the communistswere unableto cut the gordian
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movements within the limits of trade union economism and social democratic
reformism'is hardlyuniqueto the United States.33
To abandonAmericanexceptionalismas an organizingtheme is not, of course,
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NOTES
An earlierversionof this paperwas deliveredat the conferenceon 'Whyis thereno socialism
in the United States' in May 1983, organizedby the Centre d'EtudesNord-Americaines,
Ecole des HautesEtudesen SciencesSociales,Paris,andwillbe publishedin the proceedings
of the conference.
1 Among the many reviews of the 'why is there no socialism?'debate, two of the
betterrecentsurveysare: SeymourMartinLipset,'WhyNo Socialismin the United States?',
in Sourcesof Contemporary
Radicalism,SewerynBialerand SophiaSluzer,ed., New York
1977, 31-149, which containsan interestingsection on how Marx, Engels, and other European socialistsviewedthe problem,andJeromeKarabel,'TheFailureof AmericanSocialism
Reconsidered,'SocialistRegister,1979, 204-27. See also R. LaurenceMoore, European
Socialistsand the AmericanPromisedLand, New York 1970. An excellent collection of
discussionsof the historyof Americansocialismand introductionto the Sombartquestion
is JohnH. M. Laslettand SeymourM. Lipset,ed. Failureof a Dream?:Essaysin theHistory
of American Socialism, Garden City, N.Y., 1974. Still indispensablefor the history of
socialismin the United States is Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons, ed., Socialismand
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stage in the developmentof capitalism,a stage the United States, becauseof the extremely
rapidexpansionof capitalismin the late nineteenthand twentiethcenturies,in effect leaped
over. In Europe, classicalsocialismof the Second Internationalvariety assistedthe bourrevolution,a historicaltask unnecessaryin
geoisie in completingthe bourgeois-democratic
the United States. Harvey Klehr, 'Leninism,Lewis Corey, and the Failureof American
Socialism,'LaborHistory,XVIII (Spring1977), 249-56.
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