American Socialist Thought in the Early 20th Century

[Hawk1981]

In America it proved to be very difficult to instill class consciousness in Marxist terms. Perplexed Marxist theoreticians repeatedly asked why there should be no socialism in the United States, one of the most industrialized nations. They could only speculate that American labor was "backward" in lacking a sophisticated sense of its own proletarian status, as a consequence of which it could not appreciate the logic of socialist doctrine. Such an analysis implied that a primary task of American socialists must be educational.

Karl Marx derived from the philosopher Hegel the idea that the historical process is a basic dimension of reality and that this process should be guided towards the realization of ideals of brotherhood, justice, and equality. Marx stated his ethical ideal in the doctrine: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." The possibilities of change were limited by the existing conditions at any moment because change must develop out of these conditions. Marx was a close student of his contemporary society in Western Europe, especially of what he took to be its dominant feature, the institutions of industrial capitalism.

Rejecting the enlightened ideals of rational accommodation, harmony of interests, and individual fulfillment, Marx emphasized a romantic glorification of conflict. All history, he taught, is the history of class struggle. He would foment conflict by setting employee against employer, and wherever it did not exist he would attempt to stimulate it by awakening a sense of class consciousness and teaching people to perceive the conflict of interests of which they had previously been aware.

Industrialism in Europe had grown up within traditional class structured societies. Industrial capitalists (bourgeoisie) readily accommodated themselves to the existing class structure, assuming a privileged position and often intermarrying with aristocrats. At the same time, the new industrial labor (proletariat) had no difficulty in perceiving their lowly status in traditional class terms. American socialist thought in the early 20th century now appears as a kind of political interlude closely related to the last generation of massive European immigration. For it was immigrants who brought Marxian socialism to America, and whose children and grandchildren failed to perpetuate it.

Perceptive radical leaders sadly noted that immigrants who brought to America their sense of class distinctions often found that attractive career opportunities were open here to them or their children, tempting them to put personal goals ahead of class solidarity.

Marxist theory affirmed that the industrial mode of production was the determinative social relationship, and that the national state was one of its products. But during the century between 1850 and 1950 most industrialized states did not behave as though their governments were committees of the bourgeoisie. On the basis of his theory Marx could hardly have predicted one of the great facts of the twentieth century, namely that successful socialist revolutions would without exception occur in economically underdeveloped countries. The economic evolution of capitalism did not bring the crisis of class conflict and revolution in highly industrialized countries that Marx had predicted.

 

[Hawk1981]

Morris Hillquit, a leading theoretician of the Socialist Party of the United States, wrote in his 1909 book Socialism in Theory and Practice, of the relationship between socialism and reform, indicating how socialists would carry through by legislative means a series of economic,political, and social reforms to their logical fulfillment in a socialized society. Hillquit searched for areas of agreement with non-socialists, and minimized the rigidities of dogma. He flattened out the conflict of the dialectic and softened the violence of revolutionary rhetoric. Most importantly, he sought to get out of the restricted ethnic circles in which Marxism had first appeared in America in order to propagandize among native Americans. His efforts were characteristic of the main line of Socialist Party leadership from Eugene Debs and Victor Berger to Norman Thomas.

Morris Hillquit

On the labor front, socialists attempted to capture existing unions or organize "dual" unions in order to guide their activity toward revolutionary objectives. Revisionists, while reaffirming the socialist view that a total transformation of society was necessary, distinguished between reforms that promoted their objective and those that simply bolstered the existing system. It was important to indoctrinate the unions with the socialist philosophy. Hillquit noted that only in England and the United States did union membership exceed the socialist vote, elsewhere in Europe the reverse was the case.

The primary lesson then to teach the American union members was that their goal was to enhance their own share of the profit through higher wages should correspondingly decrease the employer's share, and ultimately, the end result of increasing wages would be "the entire elimination of the capitalist's profits -- the socialization of industries."

 

[Hawk1981]

Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor, was one of the principal obstacles to this socialist indoctrination of labor. After emigrating to New York in 1863, Gompers had joined the cigar-makers union, of which he rose rapidly to leadership. As a devout Marxist he learned German in order to read Marx's major work, Das Capital, then untranslated into English. He chose union organization rather than party activity as the best means of promoting the socialist cause.

The secret of Gompers' success as a union organizer was to confine his efforts to skilled crafts where disciplined locals with trained leaders an strike funds could for the first time in American labor history exert effective pressure on employers. Gompers found himself increasingly at odds with the socialists who attempted to capture control of his union. Although he continued to use the socialist rhetoric of the class struggle, contrasting the selfish and grasping capitalist with the miserable defenseless worker, it became increasingly apparent, that the survival and success of the unions depended on the successful negotiations of contracts with the employers.

Samuel Gompers

It was important to create the image of the union as a responsible, business-like organization able to stabilize the labor market for the mutual benefit of the contracting parties. Out of these considerations grew what came to be known as "pure and simple" unionism.

Gompers foresaw more accurately than the socialists what was to come to pass. Labor and management would reach wage agreements at the expense of the consuming public in higher prices. For their part the socialists failed to anticipate the role of a benevolent government in supporting the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively. In the largest sense, the failure of Marxism in the United States was the failure to anticipate the kind of social order that would emerge from a mature industrialism. Marxism was largely confined to certain ethnic minorities, and as these groups experienced assimilation they generally abandoned their radicalism.

 

[Hawk1981]

Norman Thomas was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. As an articulate and engaging spokesman for democratic socialism, Thomas had considerably greater influence than the typical perennial candidate. Although most upper- and middle-class Americans found socialism unsavory, the well-educated Thomas—who often wore three-piece suits and looked and talked like a president—gained grudging admiration.

Norman Thomas

Although initially opposed to United States intervention in the Second World War as he had been to American involvement in the First World War, he reluctantly supported it following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, though he thought it could have been honorably avoided. Thomas was one of the few public figures to oppose President Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans and he accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when the organization supported the internment.

Thomas also campaigned against racial segregation, environmental depletion, and anti-labor laws and practices, and in favor of opening the United States to Jewish victims of German persecution in the 1930s.

A plaque commemorating Thomas’s graduation from Princeton University displays his quote, “I am not the champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won.”

 

[Hawk1981]

Eugene Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.

Eugene Debs

He helped motivate the American Left to organize political opposition to corporations and the First World War. Bernie Sanders described Debs as "probably the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had."

Debs was important for being the first to advocate for reforms which were subsequently implemented by more moderate left-leaning politicians, such as banking reform and child labor laws.

 

[Hawk1981]

Victor Berger was an important and influential socialist journalist in Wisconsin. He was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America. As a politician, he was elected in 1910 as the first Socialist to the US House of Representatives, representing a district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Berger was regarded as one of the Socialist Party's leading revisionist Marxists, advocating trade union-oriented and incremental politics. He promoted the use of electoral politics to implement reforms and thus gradually build a collectivist society.

Victor Berger

In a memorable editorial he stated that capitalist speculation “is another evil that is inherent in this system. It cannot be avoided any more than malaria in a swampy country. And the speculators are the mosquitos. We should have to drain the swamp-change the capitalist system-if we want to get rid of those mosquitos. Teddy Roosevelt, by starting a little fire here and there to drive them out, is simply disturbing them. He is causing them to swarm, which makes it so much more intolerable for us poor, innocent inhabitants of this big capitalist swamp.”

 

[Mushroom]

In America it proved to be very difficult to instill class consciousness in Marxist terms. Perplexed Marxist theoreticians repeatedly asked why there should be no socialism in the United States, one of the most industrialized nations. They could only speculate that American labor was "backward" in lacking a sophisticated sense of its own proletarian status, as a consequence of which it could not appreciate the logic of socialist doctrine. Such an analysis implied that a primary task of American socialists must be educational.

The problem is that the US did not have the kind of historical systems seen in Europe. And it already had their own forms of Socialism that predate Communism. We had always been a nation where the individuals owns what they own, from property and businesses to houses and they land they sit upon. In Europe even to this day, in many nations technically a person does not "own" their land, they are given rights to it either by the Government or the Crown, and it could be revoked at any time.

This was simply never the case in the US. They therefore for over 100 years had their own forms of Communal and Socialist beliefs, organizations, and philosophies which had nothing at all in common with the conditions in Europe.

Plus, the very thought to most of then of bowing down to some kind of "International Soviet" stood in stark contrast to their deeply held belief of "no foreign masters". Even to most in the Labor movements in the US, the very idea that they should follow some crackpot European Philosophy where you own nothing and the Government owns everything was in complete contradiction of almost all they stood for.

It was the same as demanding that they bow down to another King. If anything, the closest we might have gone was to form a National Socialist form of government, but the International Socialism that Marx proposed stood against almost everything they believed in.

No more owning your house, instead you live in Government housing, and the Government owns the factory you work at, and the store you buy your goods at. That is no different than the "Company Scrip and Company Store" type of system they were trying to abolish in the first place. The company owns your house, you are mostly paid in company money that you can only spend at the company store.

Why would they ever give up that fight, just to change who owns the company?

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store.

Then later when they saw the actions in the aftermath of the rise of the Soviet Union when Lenin himself banned all trade unions, their worst fears were fully justified. It is only recently when the foolish with no understanding of history are starting to think it might be a good system of government. But thankfully most of the country is still not fooled. They realize that the "old boss" will not actually be the same as the "new boss", he will be worse.

You can post all the paeans you want to how great Communism is, but the fact is we are a nation with hundreds of years of tradition of personal ownership of property. And to the traditionally independent Americans, that will never fly.

 

[Aleeshah]

Morris Hillquit, a leading theoretician of the Socialist Party of the United States, wrote in his 1909 book Socialism in Theory and Practice, of the relationship between socialism and reform, indicating how socialists would carry through by legislative means a series of economic,political, and social reforms to their logical fulfillment in a socialized society. Hillquit searched for areas of agreement with non-socialists, and minimized the rigidities of dogma. He flattened out the conflict of the dialectic and softened the violence of revolutionary rhetoric. Most importantly, he sought to get out of the restricted ethnic circles in which Marxism had first appeared in America in order to propagandize among native Americans. His efforts were characteristic of the main line of Socialist Party leadership from Eugene Debs and Victor Berger to Norman Thomas.

View attachment 337802
Morris Hillquit

On the labor front, socialists attempted to capture existing unions or organize "dual" unions in order to guide their activity toward revolutionary objectives. Revisionists, while reaffirming the socialist view that a total transformation of society was necessary, distinguished between reforms that promoted their objective and those that simply bolstered the existing system. It was important to indoctrinate the unions with the socialist philosophy. Hillquit noted that only in England and the United States did union membership exceed the socialist vote, elsewhere in Europe the reverse was the case.

The primary lesson then to teach the American union members was that their goal was to enhance their own share of the profit through higher wages should correspondingly decrease the employer's share, and ultimately, the end result of increasing wages would be "the entire elimination of the capitalist's profits -- the socialization of industries."

Social darwinism has shown American exceptionalism as the lead of late nineteenth century Anglo-Saxonism.