Socialism and America 0151835756, 9780151835751

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iJ2ISiStJiiiJ!llSllSIis?Sia^

JRVING

„HbWE SOOAUSM

searching review of American its past, present, and socialism

A

—

future

^bVINGHOWE

SOOAUSM Nearly a million Americans voted for a socialist for president in 1912, and more than a thousand American socialists held public office. Since then, democratic socialism has had its ups and downs in the United States; radical leftist movements on the one hand, and reform movements like the New Deal on the other, have stolen much of its thunder. In these essays Irving

veys a

Howe sur-

movement he has known

firsthand since the 1930s flects

on

its

future.

and

re-

Howe sees hope

for a reconciliation of liberalism

and democratic socialism, both committed to a gradual approach and to human and civil rights. And wide-ranging concluding eshe weighs the chances for the survival of socialism as a living in a say,

ideal.

(Continued on back flap)

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/socialismamericaOOhowe

Socialism

and

America

BOOKS BY IRVING HOWE A

Margin of Hope

Celebrations and Attacks

Leon Trotsky

World of Our Fathers (with the assistance of Kenneth Libo) The

Critical Point

Decline of the

New

Steady Work: Essays in the Politics of

Democratic Radicalism, i9^3-ig66

A

Thomas Hardy:

A The American Communist

Critical Study

World More

A

Party:

Attractive

Critical History

(with Lewis Coser) Politics

William Faulkner:

Sherwood Anderson:

A

A

and

the

Novel

Critical Study

Critical

Biography

The U.A.W. and Walter Reuther (with B.

J.

Widick)

BOOKS EDITED BY IRVING HOWE How We

Lived

(with Kenneth Libo)

The World of

the Blue-Collar

The

Worker

Works of Socialism

Essential

Seventies: Problems

&

Proposals

(with Michael Harrington) Voices

from

the Yiddish

(with Ehezer Greenberg)

A

Treasury of Yiddish Poetry

(with Ehezer Greenberg)

The Idea of the Modern

The Basic Writings of Trotsky The Radical Imagination Edith Wharton:

A

Critical Collection

The Radical Papers

A

Treasury of Yiddish Stories

(with Ehezer Greenberg)

Irving

Howe

Socialism and AMERICA

HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH, PUBLISHERS SAN DIEGO

NEW YORK

LONDON

(^

Copyright All rights reserved. in

No

part of this publication

©

may

1985, 1977

Howe

by Irving

be reproduced or transmitted

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,

recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to to:

make

copies of any part of the

work should be mailed

Permissions, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Orlando, Florida 32887.

"Socialism and Liberalism: Articles of Conciliation?" and "Thinking about Socialism"

first

appeared in slightly different form in Dissent.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Howe,

Irving.

Socialism and America.

I.

Socialism

—United

Bibliography:

—

United States

HX86.H794

1985

p.

States. 2. Socialism

History.

335'-00973

I.

Title.

85-8691

ISBN 0-15-183575-6 Designed by G.B.D. Smith Printed in the United States of America First edition

A B c D E

For Michael Harrington

and Michael Walzer

Contents

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

PART ONE: The Era of Debs

xi

Socialism and America

3

Socialists in the Thirties

The

49

Brilliant Masquerade:

Why

Has Socialism Failed

PART TWO:

The

A in

Note on "Browderism" America?

105

Socialist Idea

Socialism and Liberalism: Articles of Conciliation?

Thinking about Socialism Notes

87

147

177

219

Vll

Preface

This book offers historical material about American socialism, but it is

not a history of that movement.

essays intended as a socialist

thought.

My it

sort

in

its

second part,

modest contribution toward the renewal of

thought, but

What

It offers,

it is

not a full-scale examination of socialist

of book

is

deepest feeling about this

it,

then?

book

has neither a beginning nor an end.

is

It

that, in a certain sense,

forms part of a continu-

ing discussion, sometimes in the form of reassertion and sometimes in the

form of self-criticism,

democratic

socialists for

that has been

some decades and

going on among

will surely continue

for decades to come. All major world-views or political tendencies

making any claim

to intellectual seriousness are

committed

to a similar exercise. Sustained self-scrutiny, hard self-criticism,

and, perhaps in consequence, a partial self-renewal: these are the

order of the day.

An self as

uninitiated reader

coming

someone overhearing

to this

book may

see her (him)

a stream of dialogue or reflection.

IX

X / Preface

Even

for a reader

interest

—

who

strongly disagrees, this can have a strong

provided, of course, the stream of dialogue or reflection

seems worth listening

to.

And

that,

of course, each reader will

judge for him (her) self. At the same time, be read apart from the tradition to which as a self-sufficient

What

work of

the question:

Why

ments and decline

mean

necessarily

sometimes

can

it

a question or

any

aren't

I

linked

—

book can

can be read

and opinion.

analysis

mo-

did American socialism thrive at some others?

at

To

confront a question doesn't

to come up with a quick or assured answer; mean quite the opposite. It can mean redefming

modifying previous answers, or even deciding there

as

think

believe this

to write has been a need to confront

satisfactory answers.

have posed,

what

me

has impelled

I

it is

is

well

as

some

enough

And

to confront the question

tributary questions,

historical material to

I

make

I

have provided the discussion

intelligible.

There

—

is

only one kind of unity that fmally matters in a book

the unity of a

problem

steadily considered

and engaged. I.H.

Acknowledgments

The

first

three chapters of this

W. W. Cook lectures in 198 1.

at the

book were

University of Michigan

Appearing here for the

first

extensively revised and enlarged.

begun the

to undertake this project

Cook

originally given as the

by

lectures extended

Law

School

time in print, they have been

But

I

could not even have

without the kind invitation for the dean of the

Law

School

at

Michigan, Terrance Sandalow. In completing this book,

I

was able to take time off from

my

teaching obligations because of a grant provided by the Ford

Foundation. And, again,

My greatest debt mist

who

is

to

I

wish to offer

Mark

my

thanks.

Levinson, a brilliant young econo-

served as research assistant and watchful critic for this

book. Portions of the manuscript have been read and helpfully criticized

by

friends:

Joseph Clark, Lewis Coser, Emanuel Gelt-

man, Michael Harrington, Robert Heilbroner, Robert Lekachman, and Michael Walzer.

My

thanks to them.

xii

/ Acknowledgments

The two concluding ent form, in Dissent.

chapters have appeared, in sHghtly differ-

A few sentences in the first chapter have been

borrowed from The American Communist Party: A

by Lewis Coser and me.

Critical History,

PART Socialism

ONE

and America

The Let us stop the clock at socialists.

I

191 2, a pretty

good year

stop there if only because

move to other years

that

were not

so good.

membership of about 118,000, the

Era of Debs

we

for

American

will soon have to

With an

all-time peak

Socialist Party polled 879,000

votes in the 191 2 election, or nearly 6 percent of the total.

More

than a thousand socialists had been elected to

was

office: there

a

congressman from Wisconsin, Victor Berger; there were mayors in Butte,

Montana; Berkeley, California;

were many members officials class:

came

the

straight

mayor of

in state legislatures.

Flint,

Michigan; there

Some of

these elected

from the ranks of the American working was a cigarmaker; the mayor of New

Flint

Castle, Pennsylvania, a railroad

brakeman; the mayor of Saint

Marys, Ohio, a machinist.

Over three hundred English- and foreign-language publicasome painfully crude but others quite sophisticated,

tions,

spread the socialist message. There were five socialist dailies in

English and eight in other languages; 262 weeklies in English,

4 / Socialism and America

thirty-six in other languages; ten

The total more than two

monthhes

in English,

two

in

other languages.

circulation of this press has been

estimated as

million: the

weekly Appeal

published in Kansas, had an average circulation of over

son,

750,000; the National Ripsaw,

blending

socialist

and populist

appeals to farmers, 150,000; the Jewish Daily Forward, 150,000; the Texas Rebel, 35,000. In

by

Rea-

to

Oklahoma

nearly

26,000; the daily Milwaukee Leader,

alone there were eleven socialist weeklies

1913. Eclectic, vivid, impassioned, erratic, this press offered sche-

matic lessons in Marxist economics side by side with essays on

popular science; fierce

calls to direct

bland Christian moralizing.

revolutionary action with

Some of

these papers appealed to

segments of the population just breaking into literacy, others

immigrants for

to

whom

coming triumph of

the

seemed indistinguishable from

their

coming

rise

socialism

on the

social

ladder.

In the Appeal

indigenous voice.

to

Reason American socialism found

Hawked by

a nation-wide

its

most

"Appeal Army,"

paper expressed both an unspoiled idealism and the naivete

this

of a poorly digested Marxism. Bubbling with ingenuous enthusiasm, for

it

spoke in rich homespun accents.

its air

A office

of certainty,

torrent in

its

It

was remarkable,

also,

lack of reflectiveness.

of pamphlets poured out of the

socialist national

Chicago. Speakers, organizers, part-time volunteers

toured and tramped across the country. Socialist lyceums sprang

up

as part

of that urge to self-improvement which swept America

during the early years of the century.

The

socialist hall,

where

bundles of "literature" lay stacked, became a familiar landmark in

hundreds of

cities

and towns.

At the 19 1 2 convention of the American Federation of Labor,

The Era

Max

Hayes, a

won

from Cleveland,

socialist printer

Of Debs / a third

$

of

the vote for president against the powerful incumbent, Samuel

Gompers, apostle of bread-and-butter unionism. The controlled, or

were strong

in,

such important unions

socialists

as the

West-

ern Federation of Miners, the Brewery Workers, the Machinists, the Jewish garment unions.

over the

Illinois

was

far

still

presided

socialists

AFL

and Pennsylvania federations of labor. The

from being

formed

socialists

Openly declared

socialist in its

dominant outlook, but the

a significant minority within

it.

Thousands of rank-and-fders performed the daily routine of the party with a religious devotion. the party's spokesman, establish a rapport

At

with the American people such

radical in this country has ever had.

brotherhood and revolt

made

least as great

an

asset

Eugene Victor Debs, an orator

—

two

the

Pouring out

him

for

as

was

able to

no other

his call to

inseparable

—Debs

the slogans of radicalism vibrate with truth and beauty and

hope: the very slogans that in the mouths of others could seem the merest rhetoric.

The American ment:

it

did not

working But

it

socialist

command

class, as

movement was not

sect.

It

social

steps

mood of the

Progressivism as sentiment and

was bubbling with

vast meetings, thousands

from the country

movement was

as a

at a

rebellious impulse.

growth of "the party" would continue

socialists, as

isolation

of the

whole, where

high point and

As Debs

of Americans were convinced

sion toward the cooperative

of the

democratic parties did.

breathed an aura of hope and expectation,

sharing in the optimistic

the culture

move-

the support of a major portion of the

some European

had taken a few large

left-wing

yet a mass

fired

that the

in a benevolent progres-

commonwealth. Behind every word

of most other Americans, lay the unspoken

assumption of Progress. Yet, within six or seven years, the Social-

6 / Socialism and America

ist

Party

oned,

its

would be

with many of

in shambles,

leaders impris-

its

by government

organization torn apart

repression,

its

ranks split into warring factions, and thousands of the faithful

bewildered and demoralized. What,

it

seems worth asking, could

happen to undo so promising a movement? Before going ahead to the years critical

When

of World

War

anatomy of Debsian

I,

we must

one considers the inner diversity

conflicting opinions,

styles,

turn back a

little

for a

socialism.

—

and

accents,

indeed, the chaos of

levels

of thought

within the Debsian Socialist Party, the most remarkable thing

about

that

it is

the same party

it

—

ever held together.

How

could they

all

stay in

the stolid social democrats of Wisconsin with

immigrant workers

the fierce syndicalists of the West, the Jewish

of New York with the inflamed tenant farmers of Oklahoma, the Christian socialists with the orthodox Marxists?

One answer neglect

it.

is

so simple that

In the years before

most

historians

World War

tions that figure so strongly in

I

have tended to

the regional distinc-

our culture were

still real,

mere indulgence of nostalgia. Distance mattered. What a local did in the

not a

socialist

coal-mining town of Krebs, Oklahoma, seldom

touched a Yiddish-speaking branch on the Lower East Side of

New

York.

What moderate comrades did much

Reading, Pennsylvania, seldom had

to

win

elections in

importance for the

tough left-wingers in the Western Federation of Miners. Victor Berger, the "revisionist" leader of the German-immigrant social

democracy 191 2

—with

in

Milwaukee, somehow coexisted

Big

Bill

Haywood,

the

"direct action," which, he did not

The country was York to Oklahoma.

violence.

New

large;

it

Wobbly

—

at

least

until

hero preaching

mince words, often meant took a few days to get from

The Era

The sentiment of regionalism was Party

was

as it

in the

United

strong in the Sociahst

as

States generally. Eventually,

overriding national issues had to be confronted, this to be a source of grave troubles for the party.

somewhat

the regionalism that kept comrades

them

to stay

The

It's

was mostly

by some, but he chose

tional life

and party disputes; he made

from party conventions practice. This enabled

good

extent,

apart also enabled

a clearinghouse for

Debs was loved by many and

a coherent national leadership.

which

would prove the moment,

even a question whether one could really speak

criticized

intellectually

At

—by

him

to keep aloof it

from organiza-

a practice to stay

to avoid problems he wasn't always

for the party since

it

it

was

also,

larger ideals.

to

some

gave Debs a position from

to serve as unifying figure above factions, the its

away

democratic standards, a dubious

equipped to confront, and

who embodied

when

together.

national office of the party

propaganda.

of

somewhat

Of Debs / 7

One might

spokesman

almost say that the

Debsian party was really a confederation of regional baronies that

sometimes coincided with, but

Week by week, went their own ways. dencies.

also crisscrossed, ideological ten-

these regional baronies pretty

much

The firmest of the baronies was located in Wisconsin, drawing upon descendents of exiles from autocratic Germany. A good many of the Milwaukee comrades were skilled AFL craftsmen for

whom

social

democracy was both

a cause

and a culture. Sober,

well organized, attentive to municipal detail, these "sewer socialists,"

as leftist critics

sneeringly called them, had

little

of the

West and

marked the Debsian They had achieved something, however, that no other segment of the movement quite did: they lived in close harmony

millennial zeal that

cadres in the

Southwest.

with, and enjoyed the support of, the local trade unions, thereby

8

/

Socialism

overcoming

and America

between party and union

that disastrous hostility

which has been the curse of American sociaHsm. Victor Berger, the leader

of the Wisconsin

somewhat pedestrian

was

socialists,

vain, boastful, acerbic, but also a

shrewd

man,

a disagreeable

political tactician.

The

democrats of Wisconsin, even with

social

their German accents, had intuitively grasped the sentiments of those many Americans who desired an accumulation of reforms but were put off by the rhetoric of revolution. They seldom rose

to the rebellious lyricism a keener apprehension

of Debs; but in the end they showed

of the developing changes

American

in

society than such fundamentalist and utterly indigenous radicals as the

"Texas reds," the Oklahoma

rebels, the

Colorado syndical-

ists.

Sharply different from the Wisconsin

temperament, though cluster

1910 the Jewish

most

socialists

vital political

munity

fairly close in

of Jewish immigrant

—were

few decades

—

denying

—

refugees

of electoral

about

politics.

sterile accents

in Yiddish,

closer to the position

or Jewish socialists from Russian Poland, as

By

A

of a

of course

had a distinctively Jewish character; but in a

few years they had moved

York

York.

minority and probably the

they had begun with the

"universalistic" radicalism, that their socialism

New

segment within the immigrant Jewish com-

starting to learn the arts

earlier

tone and

formal opinion, was the

socialists in

a strong

socialists in

who

of the Bundists,

had come to

New

from the 1905 Russian Revolution and were

trying to link socialist politics with Yiddish culture.

The

result

had been a quickening of militancy and a growth of sophistication within the Jewish socialist ranks. Intense and excitable, with a loftiness

of

spirit

even

its

opponents envied,

New York

ism gave the Jewish garment workers a sense of mission.

The

leader of Jewish socialism

social-

home and of

was Morris

Hillquit, a

The Era

complex and

reflective

in the tradition

and

racy,

who

man,

who

regarded himself

of Karl Kautsky and the German

Of Debs / 9 as a

Marxist

social

democ-

kept soberly trying to steer the erratic American

movement between

the extremes of antipolitical syndicalism and

incoherent reform.

The Jewish

socialists

kept picking up strength, but mostly

within the immigrant milieu; never did they manage to gain

more than a few pockets of Irish, German, and native- American support. The very successes they scored on the Lower East Side made them realize that victories in a minority subculture could not be decisive in the country

as a

happening: their ranks were

still

Debs came

whole.

And something

aglow with

fervor,

else

was

and when

to speak at Rutgers Square thousands hurried to listen,

but the unions these garment workers had built were to stabilization,

and the

first

signs could be noticed

now

close

of that "prag-

matic" accommodation to the established order which strong unions seemed to require.

From

the

Lower

East Side to

Oklahoma

is

an endless cultural

journey, yet in those fervent years there were certain underlying

between the immigrant Jewish

similarities tile

farmers flocking into the

both

felt rejected

tional

—

to their

Seventy years simple fact siana gave a tenth

is

new,

later

it

that in 191 2

faith,

socialists

party.

both were

afflicted;

ground of religious

clumsily

state

and

Oklahoma

still

which they

may

emo-

innocently,

Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Loui-

party's national total.

for president, almost

Oklahoma had

organization in the party, and by 1914

hundred of

—

stagger the imagination, but the

its

twelve thousand dues-paying members in 961 a

close to the

shifted

political faith.

Debs over eighty thousand votes

of the

and the gen-

Both were poor;

the strongest

socialists

locals,

claimed

with over

their people elected to local office, including six in

10 / Socialism and America

the state legislature.

tage at its

work within

There was obviously a strong populist herithis

Southwestern socialism and,

years of strength, a populist flavor

socialist leaders insisted

many

respects, writes

—though

through

all

the Southwestern

they had gone "beyond" populism. In

James Green in

his splendid

book, Grass-

Roots Socialism,

the southwestern Socialists looked back to the radical traditions

of the nineteenth century, not just to Populist agrarianism, but further back to the natural rights philosophy articulated

Paine and

Thomas

Jefferson.

.

.

.

by

Tom

[B]ehind Christian Socialism

they saw the millennial theology preached by the early radical revivalists.

By

relating their radicalism to these native traditions,

the southwestemers enhanced the appeal "scientific" socialism.

.

.

.

[T]he

of what they called

movement involved much more

than just a political party with a particular program and philoso-

phy. As a revivalist crusade asm.

.

.

The bulk of

who

squeezed by railroads,

trusts,

also pockets

who

provided strong support.

of

Oklahoma

party came from

had no land, and impoverished small farm-

were

I

created a kind of religious enthusi-

the support for the

desperate renters ers

it

.^

industrial

and large competitors; but there workers

—miners and

loggers

will not enter here into the details of a deeply interesting

controversy between Lawrence

Goodwyn,

historian

of American

populism, and James Green, historian of agrarian socialism, regarding the extent to which populism and socialism in the agrarian states interlaced or their

were

distinctive.

The

populists,

drawing

main support from small farmers, had struggled for mone-

tary easement

and antimonopoly measures that would help these

farmers;

Southwestern

the

socialists,

disregarding doctrinaire

The Era

Marxists*

who

Of Debs /

II

proposed to concern themselves only with "the

agrarian proletariat," tried to develop a

*There was much turmoil and confusion

Among

garding "the farm problem."

the

men from Texas

Marxists and a few wild

program helping

the

conventions re-

at socialist

more

all

rigid (and ignorant)

(one of whom, Stanley Clark,

favored the "collective ownership of the entire earth") there was resistance to the

Oklahoma

proposals for alleviating the lot of small

farmers and landless tenants. There was, said the doctrinaire comrades,

nothing distinctively

about these proposals. As for the Okla-

socialist

homa socialists, they tended to be radical ultimatists in general but quite sensible when it came to their own, local issues. James Green writes: "The Debsian

Socialists

.

recognized that the market system of

.

.

would never allow for real equality, but that policy of forced collectivization would deprive working farmers

private property in land the

of

their natural rights.

.

.

who wanted

[T]hose

.

to maintain control

over the land would be allowed to do so in the wealth.

.

.

."

More immediately,

Oklahoma

the

open public lands for tenant use and

admittedly not easy

—was

reconciling, the interests

of small farmers,

tural laborers. Party theorists, like other

most high-minded when cautious

enough

He

could be

in matters

Oklahoma program tic.

it

as

an alternative to isolated,

satisfying,

landless tenants,

human

at others' expense.

humane

socialists, the

Southwestern proposals.

do

and perhaps and agricul-

Victor Berger,

of trade-union policy, objected to the

at the 191 2

convention because

ment encouragement of family farms. Perhaps Southwestern

to

beings, tended to be

argued that there was nothing necessarily

certainly something

intended "to

what they were trying

fmd ways of

to

socialists

Common-

create worker-controlled collec-

and workers,

tives for dispossessed farmers

inefficient small farms."^ In short,

socialist

it

was too populis-

socialist in

govern-

not; but there

was

in such a policy. Fortunately, for the

majority of delegates went along with the

12 / Socialism and America

impoverished and exploited in the rural

whether small

areas,

farmers, landless tenants, or day laborers.

To

meant

these people socialism

word of Jesus given

promise, the

a realization

flesh.

of the Christian

From both

Christianity

and socialism, they extracted a millenarian yearning reflecting the desperation of their circumstances.

however

linkage,

As one of them

said, socialist

fme with the teachings of Christ." In making

doctrines "link

briefly or tenuously, the

what

created for themselves spect," an inner

world

in

Southwestern

socialists

sociologists call "a culture

which they would

feel

moved them. For

express the desires that

what

similarity to

movement

their

the Jewish socialists

them fmd

Oklahoma

socialists

them

possibilities

of of

to be taken in, the

would hold enormous encampments,

which thousands of people would gather speeches

would

points

their voices.

summer, before the crops had

In the

its

were doing on the Lower

East Side: bringing people together, teaching affirmation, helping

re-

their persistent

had

that

of

valued and could

all

suspicion of "Eastern sophisticates," these Southwestemers

do something with

this

at

to listen to stirring

by Gene Debs, Mother Jones, and Kate Richards

O'Hare. Oscar Ameringer, the leading journalist of Oklahoma

memoir:

socialism, has left a lovely

These encampments

.

.

.

lineal descendants

of the religious and

camp meetings usually lasted a audience came in covered wagons from as far

Populist

around.

We proper.

.

.

.

full as

week. The

seventy miles

arranged horseback parades through the town

often

...

A

tion of nations.

were

.

.

few thousand men riding through

perhaps not twice that

tion

.

just

Or

many

at least,

it

a

town of

inhabitants looked like the migra-

looked

around the comer.

.

as .

.

though the

social revolu-

The Era

Of Debs /

On the morning of the first day a mixed chorus

1

was organized

and rehearsed in SociaUst songs, usually of Populist origin, sung

we

to familiar melodies. After singing school

nomic and

historical lessons.

in the chair or store

.

box on

.

.

The

conducted eco-

instructor planted himself

a raised platform, then

urged the

audience on the ground or pine planks to ask questions.

Ameringer continues with three sons

would give

a description

how

of

,

.

he and

.^

his

concerts of classical music, playing ar-

rangements of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert for a brass quartet.

"They loved

it.

These simple people took to good music

like

ducks to water. Their minds were not yet corrupted by Tin Pan Alley

trash.

..." Then would come the speeches, in good nine-

teenth-century American fashion, long and ornate.

To many

people, including

selves as socialists,

Southwestern socialism

ble as an expression of

manity

—

some who don't

may

downtrodden people

a response that

is

surely right.

But

still

seem admira-

must

it

much

of analyzing American society or grasping the

as

them-

asserting their

that Southwestern socialism didn't really offer

of American

identify

also

hu-

be said

in the

way

distinctive traits

The fundamentalist cast of mind, in politics can rarely accommodate the problematic or the

elsewhere,

politics.

complex. Still

more

radical or perhaps

more fundamentalist than

the

Southwesterners was that segment of the Socialist Party, mostly in the

West, which sympathized with the syndicalism of the

Industrial

Workers of

the

World

(I

WW,

or the Wobblies).

Their supporters, writes James Weinstein, were virtually disfranchised groups

remote camps of the mountain

—

nonferrous metal miners in the

states,

lumber workers of northern

Louisiana and the Northwest, migratory agricultural workers,

and immigrant industrial workers. [These constituents of Big

Bill

14 / Socialism and America

Haywood,

the combative

Wobbly

leader] existed

on the edges

were more elemental

The demands of members because the conditions under which they lived were more barbarous, and his hostility to reof

his followers

society.

than those of other Party

form followed largely from the conditions

a belief that

few reforms could

under which the membership of the

affect

IWW

existed/

Addicted to a verbal violence and infantile brag that students

of Western humor should not fmd hard to identify; superbly gifted at stirring unskilled transients but ity for understanding the desire

with only a small capac-

of the average American worker

for stability; contemptuous, in the main,

of politics and contemp-

tuous, without exception, of reformers; remarkably spontaneous

—

indeed, elevating spontaneous combustion to a principle of

social life

—but

without an ideology other than some

really

word "sabotage"

improvisations on the

that

few people under-

—

become a fetish, caused endless grief embodiment of a fierce yet innocent native

stood but which, once

was the

IWW,

calism. Little

wonder

seemed "the

real thing," the

most left-wing

that to

quote from Capital, but

socialists the

this

radi-

IWW

revolution fleshed. Hillquit could

Haywood

looked

like the specter haunt-

ing the bourgeoisie.

Yet even

at the

height of

its

success the

an anachronism. Immediately after

Lawrence, Massachusetts, the

its

IWW was becoming

great 191 2 textile strike in

IWW had fourteen thousand mem-

bers in that city; a year later only seven hundred.

organizers, footloose, eager for

new

The Wobbly

excitements, indifferent to

organizational routine, had been unable to create a lasting union.

For

all its

American

courage and life. It

vitality, the

IWW failed to root itself in

could not keep the workers

not build stable industrial unions;

it

it

enrolled;

it

could

remained wide open to the

The Era

charge it

—sometimes

—of

sometimes not

valid,

Of Debs /

1

dual unionism; and

helped corrode the faith of the radical workers in political

action, thereby dealing an unintended

blow

at

the socialists.

Failing to grasp the significance of the machine process and the

modem

city, the

Wobblies and

their friends within the Socialist

Party could not see that the psychology of the small segment of

American workers

to

which they appealed was not

at all the

psychology of most American workers. There was fmally something tragic about this segment of American radicalism

devoted, free of opportunist or authoritarian rebellious,

excesses

of

American

to

.

.

taint, authentically

bones, yet destroying itself in the

in 191 2

"The American workers .

utterly

its zeal.

What Debs wrote ing

its

—

about the Wobblies was decisive:

are law-abiding

and no amount of sneer-

will alter the fact. Direct action will never appeal to any

number of them while they have

considerable

the ballot and the

right of industrial and political organization. Sabotage repels the

American worker.

He

is

ready for the industrial union but he

opposed to the 'propaganda of the deed.'

is

"^

These were the main groupings within the party, reflecting the sharply diflferent levels of development in American industrial capitalism.

There were other tendencies. Christian

commonly

Protestant ministers and ex-ministers, spoke for a

non-Marxist ers

social gospel.

were former ministers

(Some of

who

socialists,

the better socialist organiz-

had picked up

their skills

managing congregations.) Municipal reformers found into the larger branches of the party.

Orthodox

while

their

Marxists,

way some

of them pedants scrutinizing holy writ and others embryonic Bolsheviks, clustered in the tellectuals

—

cities.

And

then,

I

suppose, the in-

except for a few, like William English Walling,

i6 / Socialism and America

not a very impressive lot subject, as

—must be

considered a distinct group,

always in political movements, to the rank-and-file's

mixture of respect and suspicion. That the

socialist intellectuals

were not of high quality did some harm to the party, though in

a

larger perspective

— muck— was buoy-

mattered was that American culture in these years rakers, the

What

did not matter very much.

it

Chicago Renaissance, soon The Masses

ant, critical, energetic, a natural ally for

the

movements of

insur-

gency.

American socialism flourished

a

few decades

shameless

industrialization,

Coarsely primitive in

good many

little

labor

strikebreaking,

as the

enemy by everyone

spying.

Haywood, but

hatred for the bosses,

still

there

enough

Berger to come to the help of Haywood's

within, and

may have had

outside, the party. Victor Berger

love for Big Bill

common

time of

accumulations, early industrial capital-

its

ism could easily be taken a

after the

of Social Darwinism, rapid

the robber barons, the brutalities

was

still

enough

class solidarity, for

men when

they took

to the picket lines.

Meanwhile, the glow of Progress shone on the native horizon, and socialists basked in this

Americans, only they gave

you managed

glow

a different

it

much

quite as

to blend faith in Progress

name.

as

other

somehow,

If,

with a Marxist, or

vulgar-Marxist, notion about "the inevitability of socialism,"

then peal

you could respond to

Today

Reason this

:

any

"Socialism

may seem

191 2 intelligent

of the

is

once-famous slogan of the Ap-

not just a theory

—

it is

a destiny."

embarrassingly uncomplicated, but in

and serious people held to

Socialist Party

significant

to the

it

firmly.

No wing

thought capitalism could be reformed to

extent,

despite

movement, which proposed

to

do

the

burgeoning

precisely that; and

Progressive

meanwhile

The Era

the

Of Debs /

1

movement kept growing, so that despite differences over might send you into a rage with Debs or Berger Haywood, you shared with all of them a vision of a re-

strategy that

or

deemed

future.

Debs's personality exerted a spell over

ing those

who grumbled

about

all

the comrades, includ-

his deficiencies as a leader.

of nineteenth-century eloquence. But everyone sincerity

of

its

One

grip.

"hard-bitten" socialist

by Debs's biographer, Nick Salvatore

all right.

—

—

the story

felt that a

good

was mere "sentimental flummery,"

socialist agitation

added, "the funny part of is

testified to his

and goodness, a voice of fraternity that held even hostile

audiences in told

Read

from the garden

today, his speeches seem mostly wilted flowers

He means

it.

is

part

but, he

when Debs says 'comrade' it That old man with the burning eyes it is

that

actually believes that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood

of man. And around,

I

that's

believe

it

not the funniest part of

As long

it.

as he's

myself."^

Beset by severe inner contradictions, sometimes rhetorically

indulgent and feckless, Debsian socialism must cially to those

who

have tasted the sour

logically "correct" radicalism

socialism generous in

its

—an

fruits

still

of

seem

—

attractive enterprise. It

hungry sharecroppers.

tive craftsmen.

Tom" Hickey

It

a

It

min-

linked immigrant laborers and na-

brought together,

as

comrades no

less,

"Red

of Texas and Meyer London of the Lower East

Side. It enabled, despite residues

number of women Lewis,

was

sentiments, quick to ofler solidarity to

the oppressed: striking workers, besieged farmers, isolated ers,

espe-

a later, ideo-

—Kate

of

sexist condescension, a

Richards O'Hare, Lena

good

Morrow

—

Mary White Ovington, Rose Pastor Stokes to rise to when women in the United States

party prominence at a time

were

still

fighting for the suflrage.

It

tolerated a

wide

diversity

l8

/ Socialism and America

of opinion within the ranks, never lusting for the monoHthism of

movements.

later radical

most too

much —

spoke

It

—

sometimes,

in the native idiom, the accents

I'll

argue, al-

of American

idealism.

But from sive

a later socialist perspective,

about the Debsian party

were some

sects

within

it,

is

that

it

what seems most impres-

was not

a sect. Perhaps there

but the party had succeeded in wrench-

ing itself out of that narrow-spirited hermeticism which marks the life virtues.

of the

sect. Its

Nothing

Aileen Kraditor conservative

—

is

very faults were organically related to

easier for the historian

who

has

made

—

say,

from old

the leap

to

like

to

new

of Debsian so-

present. But you cannot expect movement the kind of ideological strictness even moral purity you may fmd in a sect. Nor can you expect fmd in a party of more than a hundred thousand members the

cialism. All these

or

someone leftist

than to point out the frequent incoherence, the

rhetorical self-indulgence, the intellectual laxities

to

its

fmd

were certainly

in a living

intellectual refinements said to characterize elite scholarly groups.

Nor should you be

surprised that a

dominant culture nevertheless takes betraying failures on issues such socialist

movement

insofar as

it

as

movement opposing the on many of its qualities,

racism that

aspires to transform

human

embraces masses of people,

it

now

shock

us.

A

consciousness, but

must deal with con-

sciousness untransformed.

By was

191 2 the Socialist Party had reached a dangerous point.

safely past the isolation

movement. What

it

of the

needed

—and

sect,

but not quite yet a mass

quickly

—was

to double

membership. The party had become large enough to be garded

as a threat

dore Roosevelt in

enough

by the powers-that-be

(especially

his antisocialist fulminations) yet

to defend itself

from the

It

attacks

it

its

re-

by Theonot strong

would soon have

to

The Era

And

face. ily,

its

more heav-

inner flaws of thought began to count

We

precisely insofar as the party itself did.

only a few of

need look

at

these.

Streaks of racism besmirched the Debsian party

or nasty

Of Debs / 19

as those in the

country

as a

—not

whole or even

in

as large

Theodore

Roosevelt's lily-white Progressivism, but visible nonetheless.

would sometimes

Later historians

try to align positions

ism with the right-left divisions in the party, but the not permit

Victor Berger was an open

this.

such left-wing

socialists

writer Jack London.

as

the editor

The South

racist,

Herman

on

rac-

facts

do

but so were

Titus and the

Carolina, Georgia, and Missis-

sippi parties practiced segregation within their locals; the 150

black socialists in Mississippi were relegated to being membersat-large

and kept out of the

locals; yet there

grated locals in Arkansas, Louisiana,

Southern

locals,

fully inte-

(Many

and Kentucky.

while in accord with Victor Berger on

issues, nevertheless

party.)

were

The Texas

racial matters; the

voted for socialist

his left-wing

racial

opponents within the

organization had a spotty record on

nearby Oklahoma party a better one.

Much

evidently depended on the quality of local leadership. Debs and

Haywood were

very good on

racial

issues.

Debs refusing

to

speak before segregated audiences and openly berating Southern

comrades

who

revealed prejudice,

Haywood

promot-

actively

ing biracialism in the unions he led. Victor Berger,

when

a

congressman from Wisconsin, consistently voted in behalf of black rights. glish

ward

The

left-wing socialist intellectual William En-

Walling, the right-wing

White Ovington were

Some

socialist intellectual

Russell, and the socialist settlement-house

sections

cially the

central figures in

forming the

of the party had splendid records

dockworkers of

New

Charles Ed-

worker Mary

on

NAACP.

race, espe-

Orleans and the miners in vari-

20 / Socialism and America

ous

states

—

by the United Mine Workers.* when A. Phillip Randolph, the black about 1917

established

Not

the latter partly as a result of a tradition of equality

—

until

labor leader, established The Messenger, a socialist dressed to Negroes and claiming a circulation of

thousand

—

monthly ad-

more than

did the party begin paying serious attention to the

blacks in America, especially that segment of the black

*Race came up

in another

way. Convention

working

after convention, the party

kept debating the painful issue of immigration: did

on

forty

it

favor restrictions

of immigrants?

free entry

Principle required a strict internationalist stand. Experience, prejudice, and, in ists

some

instances, ties

felt,

standards of

were used

since

little,

especially that

social-

of Asians,

cheap labor to undermine the living

as

American workers. Here too

the party counted for

right-left divisions within

both Victor Berger and the

leftist

Reason wanted to keep out "the yellow hordes." For the

Appeal

to

Jewish

socialists the issue

was

migrant Jews and their role

London, soon to be the the

AFL prompted some

on immigration,

to favor limitations

who, they

with the

Lower

especially difficult, their interest as

as unionists

coming

im-

Meyer Congress on

into conflict.

successful socialist candidate for

East Side of Manhattan, favored unrestricted immigration,

thereby reflecting faithfully the sentiments of his constituency. Morris Hillquit,

who

believed a prime condition for building a socialist

movement was to maintain good relations with the unions, took a more ambiguous position, which brought upon him harsh attacks in the Yiddish press.

As

for the Socialist Party

itself,

it

straddled the issue at

its

1910

convention with a facing-two-ways resolution introduced by Hillquit. This resolution favored measures "to prevent the immigration of strikebreakers and contract laborers, and the mass importation of workers

from foreign

countries,"

whose

arrival

would

threaten

American

stan-

The Era

which was created by

class

Of Debs /

a mass migration northward.

21

Yet

Debsian sociaHsm never did work out a sophisticated or even an adequate understanding of the place of blacks in American society.

Because

it

remained captive to the simplistic notion that the

only thing that fmally mattered was a counterposition of socialism to capitalism, the Debsian party offered

program or even

tactical

help regarding "the

analysis or

little

Negro problem."

On this, Debs was as thickheaded as he was pure-spirited. He kept saying that "there

no *Negro problem'

is

apart

from the general

labor problem," and that the party "had nothing specific to offer the Negro.

Nothing

.

.

[w]e cannot make special appeals to

.

specific to

of

greater admission

offer the

Negro! There could hardly be a

sectarian obtuseness.

For the one thing the

could have offered the American black community was

socialists

Jim Crow

a fierce, unqualified struggle against

now,

all races."^

in the here-and-

rather than preachments about the anticipated bliss of the

dards of living. In the next paragraph

opposed "the exclusion of any

it

immigrants on account of their race or nationality." It

W.

was

this sort

E. B.

Negro

of evasion

DuBois

to

tell

that

led, a

year earlier, the black leader

New York

that "the

race will not take kindly to Socialism so long as the international

Socialist

movement

puts up the bars against any race whether

yellow or black. ... If Socialism

and get him to join the its

had

a socialist audience in

attitude

From

is

to gain the confidence

Socialist Party

toward the yellow

races.

it

—

as

be

of the Negro

will have to begin

by changing

."^ .

.

a principled socialist standpoint, Hillquit's resolution

indefensible

it

he must have known. But he

felt it

was

necessary in order

to keep his party together and to maintain relations with the organized

working

class in

America.

about intolerable choices.

Some

will

condemn him;

others will mutter

22 / Socialism and America

Cooperative Commonwealth.

collapse

all

problems into "the

Debs proposed, made for

general labor problem," as

economy; but

To

A

also for a distinct thoughtlessness.

a decided

great deal

about "the Negro problem" could not be subsumed under "the

on

general labor problem," for racism in America had taken

a life

of its own, quite as a spreading cancer takes on a life of its own. The Debsian fundamentalists, with the best will in the world, made it impossible for the socialist movement to gain deeper support among the blacks, and prevented it from apprehending

many of Still,

we now

mind

that in

in

sit

on

for their flawed record in

marking American

the complexities

should

judgment on

society.*

the Debsian socialists

can society, the

if

we bear

else in

Ameri-

"Negro problem"? Only

the

comparison with almost everyone

looked pretty good. Even Victor

socialists

Berger, despite his racist bias, acted steadily in Congress to sup-

port the rights of blacks. At worst, one can say that the record

of the

socialists

the country,

on

alas,

there

Another problem

movement toward the

Toward as a

*One

—

year after year:

AFL

and

its

the

What

crucial

as

one

much

of

as that.

—rocked

the

attitude should socialists take

moderate, even conservative leaders?

the anarcho-syndicalist

IWW,

which the

AFL

attacked

had some influence within the unions and rightly took

socialist writer,

I.

M. Rubinow,

Crow

life?"^

The

cars,

—

asked a chilling question: "Are

Commonwealth

is

unthinkable

and other characteristic virtues of modem South-

question was especially pointed in view of the Debsian

tendency to envisage socialism say

occasion for saying

perhaps

so very sure that the Cooperative

with Jim

em

is little

rest

dual union? Such questions were oppressively real because

socialists

you

matter was ambivalent; about the

this

as a society that

—by

definition, so to

solves all problems.

i

The Era

main arena

them

to be a

in the

AFL felt that socialist support of the I

for activity.

hurt their standing; the small

support of the

AFL was

are these issues,

The above

IWW

active in the

officials

seriously felt that

of the revolution. So complex

the socialists faced vis-a-vis unionism was,

a reflection

all,

who were

WW would

can only try to sketch a few.

I

difficulties

movement. Had

number

a betrayal

Those

Of Debs / 23

of the weakness of the American labor

there been a powerful trade-union federation

encompassing even a large minority of the American working

would never have

class,

such problems

arise,

the socialists failed to grapple with

rigorous way. acter

They

failed to think

191 2 the

AFL, with fewer than

skill

capitalist society. In

members, was largely

work

force that could use

AFL made

to organize industrial and unskilled workers.

more smugness,

the industrial and unskilled workers

from place

were

It

ar-

many of

that

illiterate

immigrants

job to job, and lacking the

to place,

did

through the necessary char-

a million

gued, with some plausibility and

drifting

Once they

in a sufficiently

monopolies to gain good contracts. The

little effort

that

them

and limitations of trade unions in a

confined to skilled craftsmen, a stable its

arisen.

stability

unionism required.

Now,

the socialist

argument for

three decades ahead of criticism

its

time,

industrial unions,

was

a strong one.

of "pure and simple" unionism

—

that

it

only two or

The

could not cope

with problems collective bargaining did not even touch principle a cogent one. tive extremes,

president,

between

But

it

Samuel Gompers,

—was

in

was often pushed to such destruc-

with wanton denunciations of the

socialists

socialist

AFL

and

its

as "reactionary," that the distance

and unionists was unnecessarily widened. Debs

himself was a major sinner in

could denounce Gompers

as

this respect,

but even Victor Berger

"one of the most vicious and venom-

24 / Socialism and America ous enemies of Socialism and progressive trade unionism in

America."

The

James Weinstein writes that "Throughout

historian

new

SociaUst days, Debs favored the formation of a

of revolutionary to change the

industrial unions, believing

AFL.

.

.

.

Any

it

his

federation

useless to

attempt

effort to influence the 'rotten

graft-infected' Federation, he declared,

would be

useless as to

'as

spray a cesspool with attar of roses.'" ^^

By

very nature, however, a trade union must primarily

its

devote

itself to

limited ends.

assure that the gains

doing

of

it,

For

As Bernard Shaw shrewdly

if a

by

the

tracts")

I

WW

it

the same

is

communists

mainly an agency of

say,

would endanger

one-sidedly

if

And

socialists and, in later decades,

union were to become,

revolutionary politics,

When

in order to

today are honored tomorrow, and in

unions are the capitalism of the workers.

true for unions led too.

must sign contracts

becomes, so to speak, part of the daily functioning

this it

capitalist society.

put

won

It

its

survival as a union.

refused to sign lasting agreements ("time con-

with employers,

it

was

in eflect

union. True, a "revolutionary union"

committing suicide

may

as a

thrive briefly in an

extreme or revolutionary situation, but most of the time "revolutionary unionism" tends to be a contradiction in terms. is

Which

not to say that unions cannot or should not complement their

wage-and-hours negotiations with

what unions have been doing

deed,

is

CIO

ushered in "social unionism."

Had

political activities. That, in-

the Debsians, as loyal

stressed the

ment, while that they

though

since the 1930s,

critical

when

the

adherents of labor,

need for industrial unionism and political involveat the

same time avoiding the damaging impression

wanted to make the trade unions into

auxiliary, they

would have made good

a kind

of socialist

sense and probably in-

The Era

But when they attacked Gompers for

creased their influence. "class collaboration,"

Of Debs / 2$

without recognizing that unions are inher-

ently agencies of both "class struggle" and "class collaboration," the Debsians threatened the unity of the labor

movement

that included, as

it

had

to,

unattractive reasons for fighting the socialists, but too

of the

latter

wanton

—

Gompers had

ments, especially large numbers of Catholics.

own,

movement

strongly antisocialist elehis

many

played into his hands with careless language and

tactics.

Relations between the moderate unionists and the

were exacerbated by the

socialists

of "dual unionism." Again some

issue

elementary distinctions are needed. If an industrial union unaffiliated

with the AFL,

Amalgamated Clothing Workers,

like the

organized in an area where the

AFL

either

had no

affiliate

only a nominal one, that hardly constituted dual unionism

though the outside

AFL

might

When

ranks.

its

fling that

the

I

charge

WW was

at

any and

first set

up

all

or had

—even unions

in 1905,

it

seldom impinged on any workers organized by the AFL, yet by

uncompromising

its

be seen, even by

And by

its

191 3 there

IW W

was no question but

had rejoined the to the charge

it

came

increasingly to

that the

I

WW had begun —

AFL had stable affiliates

struck out against the

a lively industrial

AFL

friends, as at least potentially a dual union.

which the

to invade areas in

the

hostility to the

tragically,

Western Federation of Miners,

IWW in 1905 but Thereby the IWW laid itself open

union that had joined the

AFL

in 191 1.

both of dual unionism and of trying to undermine

one of the more militant American unions. The Wobblies shrugged off such charges, but the troubled.

By

Some

then,

socialists

should have been

were.

however, a good part of the damage had been done.

Debs joined the

IWW

at its

opening convention,

as

did other

26 / Socialism and America Gradually, he became antagonized by the Wobblies'

socialists.

by

rhetoric of "sabotage" (of which,

probably

IWW a

was unable

few years

the way, the loud

The

still

rift

between

socialists

and thereby helped to

and the

few

The

fill

more compli-

far

in the picture

I

give

I

had considerable support within the Western its

leadership.

union of metal miners, the Federation had

isolated

unionists.

details:

socialists

Federation of Miners, especially tant

AFL

and turns of events were of course

twists

it

held to the chimera of setting up

cated than this sketch allows, and to help just a

WW was

to maintain lasting unions, he quietly left

But he

later.

a rival, "revolutionary" labor federation,

deepen the

I

guilty than the sober AFL). Recognizing that the

less

Western towns, developed

A

small but milibase mostly in

its

a rich internal culture,

and

repeatedly had to conduct bitter strikes against a peculiarly vicious set of owners. In 1905

IWW— some

the

members

—but

it

became the

then, because

it

disastrous,

it

thousand

IWW policy

went on

its

own.

Western Federation was conducting negotia-

late as 191 4 the

tions to unite

fifty

recognized that the

of refusing to sign contracts was

As

group within

largest

twenty-seven thousand out of

with the AFL-affiliated United Mine Workers, and

Debs, writes the labor historian John Laslett, "expressed the hope that a

new

industrial-union federation could be established

would draw cies'

to itself

'all

which

the trade unions with industrial tenden-

and that the 'reactionary federation of

craft

unions [could]

be transformed within and without into a revolutionary organization.'"^^ Again, this erratic Debsian course socialists

was damaging

to

within the established unions.

The right-wing bly enough, that

socialists,

it

in part because they

meanwhile, not only argued, plausi-

was necessary to work within the AFL; had begun to fmd comfort

but,

in their leadership

The Era

positions and in part because they

Of Debs / 27

were reacting defensively

to

charges of "opportunism," they also gradually abandoned or softened their criticisms of the

was no good reason

do

to

Gompers

this,

There really

leadership.

except for the familiar law that

one excess provokes another. Clearly the task of American socialists in relation to unionism

was

far

more complicated than

that

of European

socialists,

who

enjoyed close relations with, or leadership within, the unions. This was in

itself a

America, and

major sign of the larger if

they couldn't

fmd

a

difficulties socialists faced

way

to at least moderately

cordial relations with the major unions, then they probably could

not fmd a

way toward

major force

establishing themselves as a

in the country.

In principle the outline of an appropriate policy vis-a-vis the

unions was available to the

socialists. It

was declared by some of

them: to recognize the dominant status of the legitimacy of

its stress

in fraternal fashion

its

on

AFL

and the

collective bargaining, while criticizing

failure to organize the

mass of industrial

workers; to distinguish clearly between the functions of unions

and the

Socialist Party; to support particular

IWW strikes where

workers were struggling for better conditions but to avoid any impression of endorsing the its

I

WW's tilt toward dual unionism or

fantasy about "revolutionary unionism"; and to stress the

value, in the

American

setting,

of

political activity against the

syndicalism of the Wobblies. These are elements of a formula,

and formulas can never cope with a

reality so chaotic

and contra-

dictory as the condition of American labor in those years. Morris

So did Debs

Hillquit

came

at times,

but erratically and with damaging lapses into the rheto-

ric

closest to speaking for this outlook.

of "revolutionary unionism." Debs's language was a good deal

more "revolutionary" than

his practice

—which meant

that nei-

28 / Socialism and America

ther a consistently reformist nor consistently revolutionary course

was taken. In 1904 there occurred a fascinating colloquy socialist

The

between the

Morris Hillquit and Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL.

latter

explained that the goal of trade unionists was

*'to

accomplish the best results in improving the conditions of the

working people

.

.

.

today and tomorrow and tomorrow

tomorrow's tomorrow. H.:

Now, my

.

.

."

There followed

is,

Will

question

nized labor ever stop until G.:

It

won't stop

it

this effort

this

on the

—and

exchange: part of orga-

has the full reward for

its

labor?

at all.

H.: Then, the object of the labor union social justice for themselves

.

.

.

is

to obtain complete

?

the effort to obtain a better life every day.

G.:

It is

H.:

Every day and always

G.:

Every day. That does not

limit

it.

H.: Until such time G.:

Not

until

H.: In other G.:

In other

we

any time.

words words we go further than you. You have an end;

have not.^^

Probably unawares, Gompers was here linking, in our characteristic fashion,

American "pragmatism" with American "ideal-

ism," the day-to-day immediate

demands with an

improvement. Hillquit should have had no that

Gompers was playing games with

Hillquit, thought

of socialism

as

endless vista

of

difficulty in replying

the

word "end." He,

an end in the sense of a goal,

The Era

Of Debs / 29

not a termination, so that the Gompersian vista did not really exclude socialism

major step along a sequence of

as a

steps

with-

out necessary end.

The

difference

and

large

real.

between Hillquit and Gompers was, of course,

But

I

don't think

it

a sign of caving in before "the

labor bureaucracy" to suggest that if the Debsian socialists hadn't

been so infatuated with their "revolutionary" language and had followed the more considered quit, there

might have

difference that

would

socialists

say;

decades of the century might have

have been

and unionists.

at

How

have made to the outcome of

finally

American socialism we cannot

dramatic approach of Hill-

not complete harmony, but

between

least a better relationship

much

if less

resulted,

but

if anything in the earlier

made

a difference,

it

would

this.

Daniel Bell has an interesting passage which follows the lines

of

this discussion:

To

the socialists the

demand

wages was no solution to the had to be fixed

was

lest

work-day and more

for a shorter

capitalist crisis.

Some

a sufficient instrument for melioration. If

viewpoint that a union, by itself

its

own

and an integral part of capitalist

theory makes sense. force

which by

ultimate goal

the workers gain illusions that the trade union

If,

its

nature,

one accepts the

becomes an end

however, one regards unionism

own

in

society, then such a socialist as a social

position in an industrial hierarchy

becomes a challenge to managerial power and changes the locus of power in capitalism, then Gompers' strategy of focusing on the day-to-day

Undeniably

issues

correct. ^^

correct, I'd szy, for the unions.

tion of daily gains society in a sort a consideration

was undeniably

might

also

That the accumula-

humanize and modulate

capitalist

of American adaptation of social democracy, was few Debsians were prepared to take seriously or

30 / Socialism and America

They

find attractive.

suffered, as

I

from

shall argue,

a simplistic

notion of capitalism-or-socialism and took no serious interest in intermediary or mixed ever,

was

states.

What

to keep a clear distinction

and the ends of the party; and

mattered

at the time,

how-

between the ends of a union

this,

to their

own

political cost,

the Debsians did not always do.

Debsian socialism verged the evangelical, at times

people into the

at times

on the

on

the nebulous, at times

sectarian;

movement was

but what brought

on

many

deep-going

a shared desire for a

revaluation of values. Thousands of Americans became socialists

out of an impulse toward moral generosity, a readiness to stake their

hopes on some goal beyond personal success. As Nick Sal-

vatore writes in his biography of Debs:

The

religious tone that permeated this Socialist

not negate the growing

class

awareness

—

but

The

consciousness in a particular cultural context. ple's lives, as in their society,

Rather,

as

was no mere

is

crisis in

intellectual

H. Richard Niebuhr has suggested,

lutionary temper" and a belief that "life

movement

did

did interpret that

it

it

peo-

problem.

fostered a "revo-

a critical affair"

and

forced each to confront the "necessity of facing the ultimate

of

realities

life.

.

.

."

This convergence of religious and secular

millenarianism generated a powerful social critique. religious

"right"

—

impulse provided moral principles to

—

the

A common notion of

denounce capitalism; the democratic tradition pro-

vided the context through which

and deteriorating

class

anger found expression;

social conditions supplied the

impetus for anger

and action. ^"^

By now

it

is

hard not to conclude that

this socialism also

contained too large a quota of innocence, too great a readiness

(which put

it

quite in the

American

grain) to let spirit

do the

The Era

work of mind. The sociaHsts

vision of the future held

Of Debs /

by most of

was remarkably unproblematic. Questions

since troubled people

on the

left

—

these

have

between workers

the relation

and the party speaking in their name, the

that

3

difficulties

of aligning

economic planning with personal freedom, the specter of bureaucratism

—were seldom

discussed during the Debsian era, and then

only by a few

intellectuals.

Debsians had

little

Like most Americans of their day, the

most Americans,

talent for self-doubt; like

they worked for a gleaming future with the assurance of people

who

have not yet heard our century's bad news.

Behind such

Anyone who

attitudes lay a strong sentiment

reads E. P.

ical radicalism in

of evangelicism.

Thompson's account of English evangel-

The Making of the English Working Class will

recognize similar, perhaps derived, elements of belief and feeling in the

the

American

life

of our

radical experience.

radical

when Thompson ried

through into

movements

An American who

is

likely to

nod

has shared

in recognition

writes that "the Methodist political rebel carhis radical or revolutionary activity a

moral earnestness, a sense of righteousness and of

profound

^calling,'

a

'Methodist' capacity for sustained organizational dedication and (at its best)

years

a high degree

American

socialists

of personal

might speak

responsibility."^^ In later

in the phrases

of Marxism,

but anyone with an ear for the native accent could detect a deeper note

—

the preacher's call to salvation, the Emersonian prod to

self-fulfillment.

If this quasi-religious fervor

purity,

and goodness,

it

also

made

Debsian socialism carried within that

damaged

the

gave Debsian socialism energy, for

itself a

movement even

in

less attractive qualities.

dybbuk of its

sectarianism, profoundly native in flavor, believe, in the

tradition

many

sectarianism

best years;

had

a

and that

major source,

branches of American Protestantism.

of moral testimony, sometimes moral absolutism

I

The

—with

32 / Socialism and America

its

tendency to reduce

good and

evil, its

human

existence to blunt compartments of

frequent readiness to

above the bonds of community

—

set the

tension with a democratic polity requiring

The

tailing imperfection.

tradition

compromise and en-

of moral testimony could

movements, most notably abolitionism;

inspire great social

served protest along the rim of political squarely within that

be

claims of conscience

could turn out to be in deep

made by groups

it

better than parties

but a quantity of mischief could easily

life;

like the

uneasily, ambivalently,

life

Debsian party

when

they teetered

between moral protest and

political ac-

tion.

The

was

evangelical note

where the

heard. In cities

not,

of course, the only one to be

socialists

Milwaukee, Berkeley, Schenectady reform.

Among Jewish

won

—

the party settled into mild

garment workers

ILGWU

the "social unionism" of the

municipal elections

it

slowly melded with

and the

Debsian socialism remained a "coalition party" that

was

itself a coalition

—but

national electoral campaigns,

At

first his

that

is,

Yes,

a party

especially in

of Debs.

soaring evangelicism was enormously enabling for

the party, but later cultural basis,

ACWA. that

dominant voice,

the

was

—

I

sians clung, the

it

became

seriously disabling.

think, for the simple dualism to

It

formed the

which the Deb-

notion that there were two, and only two, choices

facing mankind: capitalism (the devil's spawn) and socialism (the angelic promise)

.

Only

a

few

socialist intellectuals, like

William

English Walling, glimpsed the possibility that there might be multiple courses in ification

modem

history

—

that the trend

toward

stat-

of the economy might lead to a bastard formation called

"state capitalism," or that there

might occur

a gradual transition

toward a "welfare

state" or

mooted

were anathema to the Debsians. This did not

at the time,

"mixed economy." Such

ideas, if

The Era

matter very

much

brutal spirit

of domination unwilling

long

as

Of Debs /

American capitalism clung

as

make

to

33

to a

concessions to

plebeian and labor needs. But once the American political elite

grew more

sophisticated

Walling explained the

—and

this

how William

was

of Progressivism

rise

—

English

then the Debsian

approach ran into trouble.

You "the

could see

this

trouble in the narrow Debsian approach to

Negro problem,"

in

toward the labor unions, the in

damaging

its

oscillations

of attitude

its

refusal or inability to recognize

growing complication and

sophistication of capitalism, and

its

in

almost religious belief that

how

anyone, no matter

should never vote for

socialists

who ran for office on an old-party

liberal,

ticket.*

When

I first

began to examine

like a baneful inheritance

believe that

handed

whom

it

dogma

I

am

right, then

*I can testify to the in later years. socialist

To

liberals

seemed

power

Even

after

candidates once there

humiliating

two

ritual,

evils"

and that

when

there

it

—

even

my

or at least

a socialist

movement had become

was necessary to vote for "the

was one

— even

down

then

sick.

it

was

still

an old-party lever.

did that, voting in 1952 for Adlai Stevenson,

booth feeling almost physically

left

during the years of

us had decided that running socialist

was barely

hard to go to the polls and pull I

though not deny, the

over people on the

Norman Thomas,

many of

dealing

their grandparents.

to qualify,

this belief held

as sinful as

youth, seemed akin to being flooded with grace

sprinkled.

the

we ought

vote for

have come to

of an indigenous movement for

the leaders

an electoral bloc with

I

seemed

an inheritance of Debsianism,

with agents of the devil had seemed to If

critically, it

from Bolshevism. But or also,

really,

is

down by

this

I

lesser

a

of

emotionally

The

first

time

came out of the voting

34 / Socialism and America

of "American exceptionalism"

thesis

—

the thesis that concludes

country require major adaptations of so-

that conditions in this

ciaHst poHtics, approach,

and voice. For precisely insofar

as the

Debsians were rooted in the traditions of their culture, they were kept from seeing that their fundamentalist socialism was becoming increasingly ill-adapted to a rapidly changing American society. It

was the immigrant German Victor Berger, and the immi-

grant

Jew Morris

from

a certain distance,

political styles

its

Hillquit,

and

who, approaching American

now

society

and then showed a keener grasp of

possibilities than the native Debsians.

At

by Hillquit and

the party's 191 2 convention the forces represented

Berger had pushed through a clause mandating the expulsion of

any member advocating "sabotage" the Wobblies,

—

a thrust at

which indicated an understanding

a party wishing to be

more than

a sect

Haywood and

that in

would have

America to

work

within the confmes of republican legitimacy. But what the socialists

could not cope with was the interplay between two American

traditions: the

one

made "playing by

that

the rules" of democracy

an all-but-universal credo, and the one that inspired so the comrades to a quasi-religious radical fervor.

The

many of

faith inspir-

ing the ranks braked the party. I

am

saying something rather different here from what Daniel

Bell has said in his influential history of writes:

and

its

"The

socialist

rejection

of the

itself to the specific

movement, by capitalist

order

its

American

socialism.

He

very statement of goals

as a

whole, could not relate

problems of the here-and-now, give-and-take

world. It was trapped by the unhappy problem of living but not of the world.' "^^

political 'in

Bell

who

is

clearly

on

to something, as

must be evident to anyone

looks back to the founding 1901 convention of the party,

where an "impossibilist" wing fought against advocating any "immediate demands." This group was defeated, though not until

The Era

Hillquit fretted publicly that if for progress and

we

won, "other

it

But

for dreams."

Bell's

Of Debs /

35

parties will stand

formula has only a

limited value, for at least three reasons. First, socialists, if they are

must

to remain socialists,

they must also

of

in part not be

work within

it.

Max

responsibility"

too heavily

—

by

of another

society. In his

Weber's counterposition between the "ethic of

down

and the "ethic of conscience" Bell comes

so

must seem from

it

in behalf of the "ethic socialists,

as

Otherwise, they give up the idea

historical transcendence, the vision

resort to

"of the world" even

a socialist point

of responsibility."

He

of view

tends to forget

very vocation, must remember: that

their

what

Weber

also wrote, "Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth

—

that

man would

not have attained the possible unless time and

again he had reached out for the impossible." Second, there reason in principle

why

the

.

.

.

And

as

two

formula seems timeless and

well

as

Americans

it

it

placeless,

indeed

—which

is

to say,

it

much

doesn't

help

of the American and Euro-

parties.

No,

the trouble with Debsian socialism

was

"/«

was not primarily

but not of the world," nor that a part of

resisted the enticements its

—though

would presumably apply to Euro-

to explain the sharply different fates

pean

able to "relate itself to

can in practice cause severe tensions.

world-encompassing, so that peans

from being

here-and-now, give-and-take political world"

third. Bell's

no

advocacy of a basic transformation of

society should keep a party

linkage between the

is

of the

failure adequately to grasp,

of "the world"

as it

historical given.

and

relate to, the

The

its

that

"soul"

trouble

was

changing nature

was, once America had passed the formative

time of industrial capitalism.

The

decline of the Debsian party

Daniel Bell argues that

it

was

was

rapid:

from 1912

to 191 7.

mainly due to the right-left intra-

36 / Socialism and America

party dispute of 1912, James Weinstein that the party didn't really suffer serious losses until the

the United States entered the reason

is

government began

World War

I.

It is

me

sketch out the sequence:

191 2, the "antisabotage" clause in the Socialist

the departure

from the party of the

mostly in the West, sivism

is

at

leftist,

leads to

about the time that Wilsonian Progres-

a

few years intervene between

and the American entry into the war, the tion to

program

pro- Wobbly elements,

drawing away members from the right wing of the

movement; but only

a

repression after

between one supposed

that so little time elapsed

cause of decline and another. Let

its

hard to decide, and

which must soon evoke governmental

few months

later

tears apart the

world-wide

it

reprisals; yet

only

comes the 19 17 Bolshevik Revolution, which

establishment of the

cade so rapidly,

these events

Socialist Party's opposi-

socialist

Communist

movement and

leads to the

International. These events cas-

seems best to take them in sequence, without

pretending to certainty about their respective weights.

Woodrow new

Wilson's

first

administration introduced significant

social legislation anticipating the "welfare state"

Roosevelt's

New Deal. A

of Franklin

graduated income tax, the Clayton Act

to limit labor injunctions, a child-labor law, several laws helping

farmers, the direct election of senators

—

these

and other reforms,

part of the traditional socialist legislative program,

enacted.

The

were rapidly

Progressives were neither entirely consistent nor

entirely progressive.

There was a strong

Progressivist outlook;

its

record on

elitist

component

in the

Negro enfranchisement was Wilson

bad, and the unions had grounds to complain about the

administration. Nevertheless, a major shift of national policy had

begun away from

laissez-faire policies.

There lay behind Pro-

gressivism an impatience with "the energetic and selfish individu-

alism" that

its

spokesman Herbert Croly saw

as

part of the

The Era

Of Debs / 37

JefFersonian tradition; a belief in the need for a strong, reforming central

government; a commitment to

would

right the imbalances cast

however,

without,

social amelioration that

up by unregenerate capitalism

threatening

its

fundamental relations of

power. Leading left-wing

intellectuals,

from

Max

Eastman to A. M.

Simons and even John Reed, supported Wilson election; a ists

started

number of trade unions previously

the 1916

in

close to the social-

edging over toward Wilson. Socialist

losses in

mem-

bership seem mainly to have been due to resignations of pro-

Wobbly

leftist

Progressivism.

members;

The

their losses in votes, to the pull

socialists

of

did poorly in 1916, partly because

an ailing Debs did not run but also because the process had begun

through which old-party strength

liberal candidates

by appropriating some of

For the

socialists this

was

undermine

socialist

immediate proposals.

their

a disorienting experience.

They might

have learned from similar "interventionist" policies undertaken in

Europe by Bismarck and Lloyd George; but only did. Their response to this

however, follow any

wing

problem,

many

as to

clear left-right division.

Socialists, like the

Debsian cohort,

who

a

few of them

others, did not,

There were

behaved

as if

left-

they

needed only to repeat the usual fundamental, or fundamentalist, attack

on

capitalism, arguing that the

largely cosmetic; but there editors

of the

were

Wilsonian reforms were

also left-wing socialists, like the

International Socialist Review,

who

provided a

somewhat more complex analysis, seeing Progressivism as the American businessman's discovery "that he can carry on certain portions of the productive process

more

efficiently

through

his

government than through private corporations." William English Walling published

which he offered

in 1914 a

book

a sophisticated

called Progressivism and After in

argument

that the "individual-

Socialism and America

/

38

ism" Theodore Roosevelt and serve

—

—

that

now be saved

could

Woodrow Wilson hoped

to pre-

"the system of competition ... by private capital"

is,

collectivism."^^

"only by ceding a large part of the

Walling argued

that collectivism

field to

was not neces-

were "state-capitalist" forms on the good or bad, Progressivism was going to

sarily socialist; indeed, there

agenda

historical

introduce.

By

that, for

contrast, the usually flexible Hillquit did not quite

grasp the meaning of this still

new

Progressivism, perhaps because he

held to a version of Marxism.

The

movement

socialist

enough

did not respond to Progressivism with

thereby anticipat-

flexibility in either analysis or tactics,

ing the

more

serious

New

Roosevelt's

the pragmatism

Deal.

problems I

it

would

face under Franklin

take this to be a classical instance

upon which Americans

where

like to praise themselves

turned out to be impractical, or, put another way, where the failure to

ment of

engage in serious theoretical analysis of the develop-

capitalism caused the socialists trouble in their day-to-

day work. For

when spoken was going

it

soon became clear that Progressivism, especially

Robert La

Follette,

to be a serious competitor to the socialists,

and that

for

by an

attractive leader like

neither tub-thumping invective nor impatient dismissals

would

dispose of this competition.*

*These

issues

were

Walter Lippmann to the

newly

raised in a sharp in 191 3, after

elected socialist

going through the

leftist

and interesting

he had resigned

way by

the

young

his post as secretary

mayor of Schenectady. Lippmann, then

phase that in America often precedes becom-

ing an Establishment spokesman, wrote a long letter to the socialist national office arguing that the socialist fear of antagonizing "the

new

ad-

Lippmann, the

rate

property-holders whose votes decided the election" kept the ministration

from

raising the tax rate. But, argued

had to be increased so that the "Socialist administration [could] cut into

The Era

one can think of an excuse or two for the

Still,

new

to respond adequately to this

and the

socialists

had

to

new

time in which to

little

socialist failure

political situation

no one ever responds quickly enough

Soon

ered view of Progressivism.

Of Debs / 30

—

after all,

political situations,

work out

a consid-

of Wilson's

after the start

second term, the country entered the war, and the troubles caused

by Progressivism were dwarfed by

The

American

stand the

became for them the

a testing

mythology of

disparaging

way

—

the

far greater ones.

socialists

of

spirit

American

took toward World

left

—

I

no

war came

to

the party's opposition to the

up

to that

I

use that phrase in

acquire an aura of heroism. For the Debsians instance of standing

War

and an assertion of virtue. In

damned Wall

it

was a

Street

crucial

government,

Thoreau had denounced the Mexican War. For the

quite as

Marxists, even moderate ones like Hillquit,

it

was

a reassertion

of principle, though privately Victor Berger feared

it

was

also

a reckless gesture.

the returns

of property,

[in order] to take as

to be spent for social purposes."

was

that

least as

"We

well

[socialists] try to

as

we, and

we

The

much of them

basic difficulty, said

do the things

that reformers can

try to represent at the

do

at

same time

a pro-

We

can't."

foundly revolutionary movement. Supermen might do

What Lippmann

as possible

Lippmann,

it.

then proposed was that socialists advance only those

reforms too radical for the Progressives to accept, thereby drawing a

of distinction

clear line

from voting our

—"That

is

the

way

Lippmann's analysis was keen, but

his proposals utterly sectarian,

implying a kind of purity that could only tial allies.

to keep the progressives

ticket." ^^

isolate socialists

from poten-

A sensible, though not easy, solution to the problems he posed

would have been to reform,

to keep raising the ante,

moving ahead from reform

immediate demand to demand.

40 / Socialism and America

A

few days

in St. Louis ica's

of war, the sociaHsts convened

entry as "a crime against the people," declared

imperialistic

we

talism, It

after the declaration

and by an overwhelming majority denounced Amer-

called

on both

sides,

it

a

war

and pledged that "in support of capi-

will not willingly give a single life or a single dollar."

upon party members

to engage in "continuous, active

and public opposition" to conscription, and to offer "vigorous resistance" to assaults

on

vulnerable, the socialist

liberties

or the right to strike. Small and

movement

in

America stood proudly by

the traditional antiwar position of the Socialist International,

which most of

Did to

powerful European members had abandoned.

its

the socialists have any idea of the price they

pay for

their antiwar stand?

Did they

would have

anticipate that

it

would

cause or lead to the jailing of their leaders, the destruction of a

of

third

their locals,

and the banning from the mails of most of

Did they understand

their publications?

that in behalf of principle

they were in effect enabling the destruction of their

There tion.

is

no

clear evidence

The Debsian

ciation

of

their heart

leaders

on

this matter,

but

I

were the most extreme

capitalist "slavery" in

America, yet

of hearts they were persuaded that

as

own

party?

venture a specula-

I

in their

denun-

suspect that in

free-born Ameri-

cans they possessed inalienable rights, perhaps the most precious

of which was to denounce the government, and that

ment would not dare

this

resort to brutal repression against

govern-

free-bom

Americans. Leaders like Hillquit and Berger, being more temperate in

language and a good deal more skeptical about American

knew that troubles lay ahead. The immediate losses caused by the party's antiwar stand were small in number but large in consequence. Almost its entire

pretensions,

intellectual contingent, ranging

such figures

A.

M.

as John

from

right to left and including

Spargo, W.J. Ghent, Charles

Edward

Russell,

Simons, Upton Sinclair, and William English Walling,

I

The Era

war

resigned to support Wilson's

turned upon

their

effort. In

some

Of Debs / 41

instances they

former comrades with that venom which often

seems a specialty of ex-radicals. In the short run, the party managed

Most of the

quite well without these figures; in the long run, not. socialist intellectuals

of that moment strike me, perhaps unfairly,

somewhat mediocre; but at least they formed a countervoice tendency favoring "proletarian" fundamentalism.

of its

intelligentsia,

ways be

a

To

socialist

its

al-

movement.

For perhaps half a year the party gained members

of

to the

be deprived

whether distinguished or pedestrian, must

major blow for a

as

as a result

antiwar stand. Thousands flocked in during 191 7, the

foreign-language

swelling

federations

especially

because

of

immigrant enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution. Only a few intellectuals

opposed the war,

while not a doctrinal as

he wrote,

it

socialist,

percent

—which,

of all Randolph Bourne, who,

shared the party's judgment that,

was "a hateful and

endanger "democratic values the socialist vote

first

zoomed

at

futile

war" which would

home." In the 1917

local elections

dramatically, reaching an average of 22

calculated Paul Douglas,

would have meant

four million votes if there had been a national election. In

New

York, Hillquit ran a spectacular campaign for mayor, receiving almost 22 percent of the vote. This was probably the high point

outpouring of enthusiasm,

of American left-wing strength,

a vast

tremendous mass meetings, and

bitter conflicts

with opponents,

climaxed by Theodore Roosevelt's attack on Hillquit calls to

yellow."

The

19 17 socialist vote

was high:

in

as

"yellow

New York

22 percent, Chicago 34 percent, Dayton 44 percent, Toledo 34 percent, Cleveland 19 percent. It isn't

hard to see

why

socialist leaders

mistic after such a vote; but retrospect,

it

is

from

hard to understand

magnitude of the government

should have

felt opti-

the convenience of historical

assault

why

they didn't grasp the

soon to be directed against

42 / Socialism and America them. The party had taken an intransigent stand in opposition to the war, a stand that

many Americans saw

as

"revolutionary"

though, in truth, very Httle about the SociaHst Party was revolutionary.

lacked the toughness, perhaps the caution, which a

It

party fundamentally opposed to the status quo must have, especially

during wartime.

The history,

severe Wilsonian repressions

bly helped

set off.

began soon

after the declaration

Physical attacks

Espionage Act of 1917

any

sions

—

a blot

on American

became

upon

to pacifist

By

explicit policy.

and

radicals

pacifists

of war. With the passage of the

wide enough

a legislative net

from Wobbly sharks

fish,

socialist

form

matched by outbursts of mob violence which they proba-

minnows

—

to catch

the repres-

the end of 191 7 almost every

publication was banned from the mails. Party headquar-

and Ohio were raided, the national

office in

Chicago was occupied for three days by government

agents, a

ters

in Indiana

convention of the South Dakota party was broken up by force, the

Rand

School, a socialist educational society, was fined three

thousand dollars for publishing a pamphlet by Scott Nearing, and in

Boston mobs of

suffered a

good

West being

soldiers

deal more,

stormed the party its

office.

tarred and feathered, beaten, jailed,

food or water in the

desert,

The

IWW

supporters in the Southwest and

and

dumped without

arrested in large

numbers on

charges of violating the Espionage Act.*

Before the end of the war almost every

socialist leader

would

be prosecuted under the Espionage Act: Victor Berger, Kate

O'Hare, Adolph Germer

Richards

Charles Ruthenberg, and, of course stricken with tuberculosis,

*The most was

set in

tragic story

was

of war

Oklahoma. The

leftist

(the

national

secretary),

Gene Debs. Only

Hillquit,

spared. For a while, reeling under

resistance

and government repression

Oklahoma

Socialists

had unanimously

The Era

Of Debs / 45

governmental attack and with some leaders coming to think that the revolution in Russia should

prompt

a

changed attitude to-

adopted in December 1914 a resolution stating that "If clared, the Socialists

of Oklahoma

to enter military service to

but

shall refuse to enlist;

murder fellow workers, we humanity

to die fighting the enemies of

War if

shall

de-

is

forced

choose

our ranks rather than to

in

perish fighting our fellow workers." James Green, the historian

Southwestern socialism, comments that "This 'revolutionary

widely interpreted their officers,'

of

stand,'

pledge by Socialists to 'turn their guns on

as a

may have been

'the

most

made by

disastrous ever

the

party in Oklahoma.'"

By

were

the time of America's entry into the war, there

several

thousand Oklahoma poor farmers, almost entirely native Americans,

who were

opposed to entering the war that they regarded

so bitterly

the socialist position as too tame. societies,

one of them

called the

called the Jones Family, in

people in eastern

Oklahoma

August 191 7 gathered about to engage in

moves

similar insurrectionary

They organized themselves into secret Working Class Union. A smaller one, armed

resistance.

a

thousand

Expecting

to occur elsewhere in the Southwest,

One

they were sadly disappointed upon discovering their isolation. participant in

what

later

explained their motives: else's

war

for 'em and

came

to be called the

Green Corn Rebellion

"We decided we wasn't gonna fight somebody

we

refused to go.

We

didn't volunteer and

we

didn't answer the draft." ^^

An armed killed in a

posse

was formed to put down the

rebels; several

few skirmishes and more wounded; hundreds were

and many others, numbering apparently a few thousand, hills, fearful

for their safety.

Although the

had steadily opposed violent methods and not one involved in the Green Corn Rebellion, the harassed and arrested.

The once-strong party

again

would

socialism regain

its

nearby

of Oklahoma

socialist official

Oklahoma structure

an emergency convention voted to disband the

arrested;

fled to

Socialist Party

were

socialists

was

were

was crushed, and

Oklahoma

party.

Never

strength in that part of the country.

44 / Socialism and America

ward

the war, the socialists began to modulate their public views.

Perhaps in response to what he saw

made

famous speech

his

Debs

as this "backsliding,"

Canton, Ohio, in the spring of 191

at

reaffirming the St. Louis antiwar declaration. Convicted of vi-

was sentenced to ten years

olating the Espionage Act, he

Debs spoke the words

prison. In court

meaning of

years ago

beings, and

made up

I

recognized

I

my mind

than the meanest on earth.

It's

a

is

am of

I

not,

I

lower it,

class

I

am

think, a

how

mere

spirit

my

that

said then,

I

in

and while there

after these stirring

question of

it,

is

I

kinship with

all

living better

and

say

I

while there

is

now,

a soul in prison

I

am

was for the American

it

My own belief

is

not

United

—

to raise the

socialists to

said, a

if

have been proposing,

peace conference to end the war.

one shares these opinions that

socialist

response to the

Politically, the lesson

ment cannot loses

out

as a

make

indeed, defiant

that the war, as the socialists said,

in joining the mass slaughter in

States should

free.

of negation that leads me, directly

words of Eugene Victor Debs,

wise

that while

a criminal element

largely imperialist in character; that ordinary people had

any stake

the

was not one whit

their antiwar position into so intransigent

position.

summed up

his life:

Your Honor,

there

that

in

war of it

as

it

was

little if

Europe; and that the as,

again, the socialists

And of course

makes

—

only

it's

sense to speak

of the

having a "tragic" component.

all is

that a nonrevolutionary

move-

afford the indulgence of revolutionary postures:

party of reform,

it

proves

itself ineffectual as a

it

voice

of revolution. Something of the kind happened to the American socialists

during

World War

necessarily a sign that,

I.

But was opposition

of revolutionary

with the Debsian

socialists'

politics?

Not

to the

at all

—

war

except

habit of draping a fierce rhetoric

The Era

onto a somewhat less-than-fierce revolutionary to

said seemed

of inflamed

a time

in turn, enabled equally inflamed

this,

authorities to pretend that it

what they

many Americans during

national feelings, and

As

politics,

Of Debs / 45

was.

it

turned out, the Socialist Party was pathetically vulnerable

The socialists had not taken the precautions that a revolutionary movement customarily takes when it anticipates repression; they hardly knew what those precautions to

government

might

assault.

be.

The antiwar socialists were caught in a conflict, perhaps beyond mediation, between two positive values: to speak their truth or to protect the movement without which they could not eflectively speak their truth.

Had

they been fully aware of

which they found themselves or into which they

the trap in

had helped to put themselves, then

their

been genuinely "tragic." But whether figures really grasped that they

to

dilemma would have

many of

which they were committed and the vehicle they had

laboriously constructed for realizing that idea,

hard to say.

Knowing

movement

America,

in

their leading

had to choose between the idea

in

grand Debsian

style:

the I

diflficulties

I

fmd

of building a

so

very

socialist

cannot bring myself simply to declare,

Let the devil do his damnedest,

speak out in full voice. For the devil did paid a heavy price. Yet

it

I

—and

also see the force

we

will

the socialists

of the opposing

argument, that to have abandoned principle would have made the organization into an agency preserved after

its

purpose had

been denied.

Was

this conflict

between the claims of public testimony and

the claims of survival inescapable?

or finessed a

be

less

little?

Would

it

brave and more clever?

Might

it

have been modulated

have been better for the party to

To

wriggle a

little

but keep

itself

Socialism and America

/

4-6

from being ism thinks

all

One

but destroyed?

historian

of American

social-

so:

The choice

[for

American

socialists]

was not simply between

blind acceptance and blind opposition to war. Another path was

open: the party's consideration of American public opinion (by

which

it

would remain

part of

for the maintenance ...

American

society)

of democracy within

and working

a nation at war.

The overwhelming majority of voters could never regard party sympathetically after its war stance.^^ .

.

.

This formula in heroism) socialist is

—

—

admittedly v^eak in heroics (some would say,

not likely to have

is

opinion.

Nor

extreme within

satisfied either

thrill the hearts

of those for

whom politics

mainly gesture and declamation of rectitude. But

possible that such a prudent course

movement and enabled with certainty, and

this

feel

I

that

it is

The

rest is devastation.

years.

members, and

who

No

somewhat uneasy, it.

But

I

is

just

socialist

one can say

as if

betraying

have come to believe

right.

Despite losses to Progressivism and blows

from the government, the

war

it

might have saved the

to fight another day.

it

a received piety, even to suggest

the

the

Socialist Party kept

growing during

By

19 19

this

provides some comfort for those historians

it

again had over a hundred thousand

believe that the leftward turn within the

movement

in

response to the Russian Revolution was desirable. But examine the

membership

fifteen

stroyed

figures

hundred party

by wartime

and the

locals,

result

mainly

repressions,

seems

in the

with major

less

happy. About

West, had been delosses in

native-bom

membership. There had been an unmeasured but significant

loss

along the right wing of the party. "In 1908 the foreign-bom

The Era

percentage of SP membership was

29%

Of Debs / 47

and by 1912

it

was below

15%. During the war years the trend was reversed. By the end of 1915 the party was 32.5% foreign-born."^^ By 1919 over 53 percent of the members belonged to foreign-language federations.

This mattered, not because there was any inherent virtue in native birth, but because the bulk of these

members belonging

new

foreign-language

to the five Slavic federations and, constitut-

ing 30 percent of the total party membership, had joined mostly

out of a sudden enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution. They cared little and knew less about the conditions of American life. They were impatient indeed, scornful of American socialists like Dan Hogan of Arkansas, who in 1919 said that, while all

—

socialists

—

gave "unqualified support to Soviet Russia,"

psychology of American workers

workers" and

different than that

"the

of Russian

"must not appear to support Russian

socialists

methods for America"

is

still,

since to

do

so

"would

isolate us."^^

The

foreign-language recruits, politically raw but inflamed with passion for the

new Leninist regime, were often intent upon splitting up a new. Communist Party in accord

the party in order to set

with the strategy of Moscow.

Nothing American

in the

left

immediate prospects or inner dynamic of the

made

this

split

necessary.

American

socialism,

under the quickening impact of the Russian Revolution, had already turned sharply leftward. Morris Hillquit, against a

protocommunist group within

the fundamental premises of Leninism later)

and instead argued mainly on a

to accept the communists'

was impending

in the

dogma

United

when arguing

the party, failed to attack (as

he would a few years

tactical level,

i.e.,

refused

that a revolutionary situation

States

and that "underground"

methods of work were necessary. Even

after the split in 191 9,

48 / Socialism and America

which begins the tragicomic history of American communism, the SociaHst Party

Revolution

(as

was

still

so

much under

the spell of the Russian

were many other Americans)

Moscow

tional.

view, was

the

voted in

it

—which, from

all

Interna-

points of

surely to the good.

What now remnant.

brusquely refused

that

Communist

referendum to apply for membership in the

remained of the

Not only had

Katzenjammer

socialist

a large minority

intrigues

movement was

a pitiful

of the party quit to begin

of the communist

factions,

but thou-

sands of the faithful dropped out in weariness and disgust.

golden age of American socialism it

—was

—

over. Political competition

as, alas,

we must still

from the

The

consider

Progressives, severe

wartime repression, infatuation with the new wave of communism: one cause of decline led so quickly into another that, finally, it

is

almost impossible to distinguish

their respective impacts. in the rise

repeat

and

itself,

sixties. It is a

teristics

fall

tradition

a thread

with variations, in the

or measure

of continuity can be found

socialist thirties

movement:

it

would

and once again in the

thread of failure to recognize the distinctive charac-

of American

damaging

Yet

of the American

among them

life

and

society, complicated

by an equally

incapacity, or refusal, to recognize that a strong native

of sectarianism contributes heavily to

this failure.

Socialists in the Thirties

In

the

whole

sad history

must be reserved for the

of the American

socialists

of the

a special place

left,

thirties.

For a few

years,

between 193 1 and 1935, they seemed on the verge of becoming a vital movement. A good many people felt that the Socialist Party and

its

leader, the radiant

might provide an answer the Depression. Yet

—

at

and

selfless

Norman Thomas,

once radical and democratic

by about 1937 the party had

—

to

collapsed, a

victim of both severe external pressures and an inner quarrel-

someness that can't easily be distinguished from a drive to

self-

destruction.

When

Clarence Senior, an intelligent twenty-six-year-old

Missourian, became national secretary of the Socialist Party in 1929, he found the barest shell of an organization.

thriving party of

members "on else)

,

Debs was reduced

the books"

to a

mere

The once-

six

thousand

(which sometimes meant, nowhere

and most of these were immigrant workers belonging to the

"foreign-language federations."

Only

a

few hundred members

49

50 / Socialism and America

spoke English; 1927, he had

when

all

Senior reorganized the Cleveland branch in

who

of two comrades

could speak the language.

Senior's predecessor as national secretary,

was an old Debsian half literate

from Indiana,

loyalist

— one of

those figures

William H. Henry,

provincial, bumbling,

from the Midwest who might

have stepped out of a Dreiser novel depicting the struggle of small-town Americans for the rudiments of culture. That the party could

fmd no one

almost everything about

better to run its

its

By

decline.

day-to-day

the late 1920s

two centers of modest strength: Wisconsin, where German socialist settlers kept alive a municipal

New

affairs tells it

had only

descendants of socialism,

York, where the Jewish garment unions and the Yiddish

Daily Forward provided some financial and political support.

New York

mainly of

socialists, consisting

ans, called the

of

Old Guard, were

led

intellectual

and personal distinction.

New York

to

a

The

few hundred veter-

by Morris

Brought ers.

and

Hillquit, a

man

for conversations with the party lead-

Senior protested that he

knew

little

about

socialist

thought.

Replied Hillquit: "You've read Comrade [Harry] Laidler's book, haven't you?" Yes, he had. Continued Laidler: "You've read

Comrade

Hillquit's

more," concluded Hillquit (we irony),

may imagine with

"do you need to know about

Hillquit at best, it

was frank about the

came

a

touch of

socialist theory?"^

party's condition, admitting that,

to fitful life in a

few

cities

during electoral

campaigns and ^hen lapsed back into slumber. Somewhat said to Senior: "You'll

New York leftists

"What

book, haven't you?" Yes, that too.

later

he

have to remember that the comrades in

have elevated inaction into

a theory."^

Competing

often called the Socialist Party "a retirement home."

Another young

socialist

of the time, Gus Tyler, has described

the party headquarters in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn,

(

Socialists in the Thirties

in those years heavily

on one

offices

/

$1

Jewish and very poor. The party had

its

where old-timers would gather

floor,

to play

pinochle in the evenings, while in the basement there was a billiard parlor,

upkeep. there

Once Tyler

young

visited the

remarked

ple's Socialist

—not

that the

Social

—

enough income

in

on Sunday afternoons and,

sarcastically

as

which brought

to

group

socialist

in a plea for

some

pay the that

met

activity,

group was called the Young Peo-

League. His remarks were regarded

somewhat extreme.

The

"tired radicals"

activists for

of the Old Guard had, in

Debs; they had stood

position during

World War

garment unions

fast

been

they had struggled to keep the

I;

during the

afloat

their youth,

behind the party's antiwar

they had

difficult twenties;

fought bitterly to keep those unions out of communist hands; and they had run electoral campaigns, of a years.

There were good reasons to be

movement and Clarence and

Senior carefully

there, the party started

twenties a minister

tired.

Norman Thomas brought

In part because

number of

new luster to the tended a new local here of

drawn by

the

active figures.

Young

the hundreds. Militant trade unionists, the

Reuther brothers

Waldman,

a

signs

showing

ministers,

Thomas, became

through these lean

sort, all

life.

In the late

example of expeople joined by

most notable being the

in Detroit, enlisted in the party. In 1930 Louis

socialist

candidate for governor of New York, polled

over 120,000 votes, and Upton

of California, over

fifty

Sinclair, candidate for

thousand. But the party

modestly, certainly not so

much

as

itself

governor

grew only

one might expect during a

depression. Millions of Americans, even if jobless, kept hoping their troubles

being. There

were only

were

strikes

a brief interruption

of American well-

and demonstrations of the unemployed

toward the end of the Hoover administration, but these were

52 / Socialism and America

usually sporadic and defensive in character. People had to learn

through hard experience that the corresponded to social

mood of

the 1920s

no longer

reality.

During 193 1, ninety-six new socialist locals were set up; in the four months of 1932, 113 new locals. In December 193 1 two

first

young unemployed members, Amicus Most and Murray Baron, spent a month in West Virginia on the grand budget of $235, tourmg

the state to organize several

Norman Thomas seemed

new

locals.

The

indefatigable

to be everywhere, speaking for strikers,

fighting for civil liberties, visiting campuses to rouse

young

people. I

heard

first

Thomas

speak in 1934,

at a

time

when young

people had begun to fear the Depression was no mere aberration but signaled a deep social sickness. Hearing suppose that some that

I

about

might

me

now

new

force had entered

Thomas made me

my

life,

a possibility

understand the ugliness and chaos everywhere

and that perhaps

I

might even do a

little

toward a

largest presidential

campaign

remedy. In 1932, the party had put since the days

on the

of Debs. Forty full-time unpaid organizers took

Ten thousand people came to hear Thomas in Indianapolis, a still greater number in Philadelphia, and at the closing rally in Madison Square Garden there were twenty-two thousand. In the end, however, Thomas polled only 903,286 votes, three times more than his 1928 count but still disappointing to the field.

to his supporters.

of the

St.

A

respected newspaperman, Paul Y. Anderson

Louis Post-Dispatch,

gotten about

two million

wrote that Thomas had

votes, but

through thievery and neglect

had been denied half of them. Harry Fleischman, a tells

a

really

socialist leader,

a story, not at all unusual, about serving as poll watcher in

Bronx

district.

When

the votes

were counted, there were

six

Socialists in the Thirties

/

53

Communist Party, and since no communist watcher was RepubUcan and Democratic local agents proposed the six votes be split equally among the three parties. Good

for the

present, the that

democrat that he was, Fleischman indignantly refused. Later occurred to him that if he hadn't been there the

might

also

Many

socialist

it

vote

have been "redistributed."

him but that they were going to vote for Roosevelt simply to make sure Hoover would be thrown out. These people were acting upon what socialists would then have dismissed as "the theory of the people

lesser evil."

Thomas's

at

Rail

as

the socialists could

By point

they agreed with

they might against this pragmatic outlook,

do

to break

little

it.

In truth,

broke them.

it

1932 or 1933 the Socialist Party had reached a dangerous

—

a bit like the Debsian party in 191 2.

merely a

any

rallies said

sect

but not yet a mass party.

political difficulties, often

A

sect

It

was no longer

can weather almost

by simply ignoring them, or by

tacitly

counting on the likelihood that the world will simply

ignore

it.

A mass party can maneuver and skirmish,

its

leadership

aware that even when beset by severe internal disputes, segments have a stake in preserving unity. But a small party can enjoy neither the

ment's protective brawn; logical discipline

party.

Almost by

it

sect's

can

all its

socialist

isolation nor the mass move-

command

neither the sect's ideo-

nor the readiness for compromise of a large definition, a small socialist party

trouble most of the time.

External pressures grew

—

were refracted through the

pressures lens

of reality

must be

—and soon

in

these

of internal factionalism. The

we must ask is: Could these pressures have somehow withstood? Or at least checked and evaded?

question

been

At

first

glance the party's problems seemed mostly tactical; but

in retrospect

it

seems clear that the

socialists

were being over-

54 / Socialism and America

whelmed,

many

like so

of civilization

crisis

other people at the time, by the profound

would

that

Was

enormity of the problems:

beset our century. Consider the

capitalism

still

a viable system or

Would the fascists sweep across Europe and perhaps America as well? Was Stalinism a mere aberration of the October Revolution or a new mode of social was

it

doomed

oppression?

to rapid destruction?

How

should

New

rudimentary

its

socialists

analyze the "welfare state" in

Deal version, and what should be

their

political response?

we

Staring at these great blocks of difficulty,

remember them

is

that

whatever understanding

And

it

was

What we know is what they had painfully to among intelligent socialists there

inevitable that

should be divergences of opinion.

whole dreary story of

I

shall

not here rehearse the

the party's self-destruction through bitter

what follows,

factional disputes, but for its

have gained about

partly a result of the confusions and grapplings of an

earlier generation.

learn.

we

should also

I

need briefly to sketch

major internal groupings.

On

a youthful

newcomer

I

Old Guard, hard and

the right stood the

to the socialist

movement,

unyielding. As I

was of course

contemptuous of the Old Guard, and so was almost every other

new member.

How could

I

have

conventional of conventional left

known

that

I

was aping the most

leftist attitudes?

In the

American

of those days anything not "revolutionary" was dismissed

as

beneath discussion; but that didn't bother the Old Guard, which gloried in

its

distance

ism. Perhaps the

weight of

knowledge.

from the vulgar ferment of popular

Old Guard

historical pain It

had

won

—

radical-

carried within itself too large a

its

admirers

would

say,

historical

the struggle against the communists in

the garment unions during the 1920s, but that had drained

of its

socialist spirit. It

made of its very moderation

a

much

mannerism

I

Socialists in the Thirties

of excess. With a principled intent

upon showing

along the

sort

that sectarianism can be

Some Old

spectrum.

socialist

of grouchiness,

/ 55

seemed almost

it

found anywhere

Guardists, like Morris

who

Hillquit and Algernon Lee, were serious social democrats

looked upon Karl Kautsky as their

model. Others lived for the dry gratifications of anticom-

munism

and, to be

now

I

mentor and the German party

as their

fair,

think the

the visible achievements of their unions.

Old Guard was more

within the Socialist Party.

political estimates than the leftists

was more "correct"

in

its

But

if its

words were mostly

right,

its its

iar.

relation to the

New

Deal.

Old Guard

were unresponsive to whatever seemed new or unfamil-

They had

suppose

It

melody was mostly wrong.

In the chaotic atmosphere of the early thirties, the socialists

its

principled opposition to Stalinism and,

shrewder in

after a time, certainly

often "correct" in

lost the taste for insurgency,

socialists

would have

something you might

as their birthright.

They

failed to

understand what

life in

drive a

"leftism." Their

minds

had closed down. The

social-

still

ist

it was about American young person to the excesses of

worked, but

idea,

their imaginations

no longer

central to their lives,

hard to bear, hard to abandon.

past,

Old Guard religious

is

movements:

its

weight of the

What had happened

to the

political

and

belief had not been quite destroyed,

it

out.

Opposing the Old Guard was

New

like a

something that happens to many

had been hollowed mostly in

was

1933 that might

York,

who

a

younger generation of radicals,

called themselves the Militants. Their

very name suggests they were really more concerned with activity than ideology.

They wanted

a "live" party, responsive to

American needs and to the upheavals geois

two

democracy

in

responses that

Europe.

(It

that

was the

would bring them

were destroying bour-

effort to

combine

to grief, yet they

these

were right

56 / Socialism and America

hope they could combine them.) Ideologically, the Militants

to

tried to

fmd some uneasy

turf between reformist social

democ-

racy and doctrinaire Leninism. Inexperienced but ardent, they

were not very good

and

theoreticians,

Robert Delson and Hal

Siegel,

men

their leaders,

would soon

like

fade from the radical

scene.

What of the

troubled the Militants was any thought that, in the

crisis

might succumb to notions about "patch-

thirties, socialists

ing up the system." And, even more, that after Hitler's victory,

anyone should suppose reformism ists.

Partly, they

still

a viable strategy for social-

wanted to impress Marxists

with the

to their left

claim that they too were "revolutionary," though in fact they

were neither temperamentally nor prepared to accept

How hard it moment

cal

is

its

suited to

totalistic

to imagine

—

I

mean,

1935 might not have heard of John

We

near-beer."

becoming

really

Young

other than one's own.

in the Depression era

Communist

discipline

ideology.

Dos

—

a histori-

1934 or

Passos's wisecrack that

a socialist

might not have known

imagine

socialists in

was "like drinking

that in 1932 a

group of

prominent writers moving leftward had called for "a temporary dictatorship in the air,

of the class-conscious workers." But such

and disconcerting to those of us

democratic reformism.

we would

When we

spoke

still

ideas

"mired"

in

at a socialist street rally,

have to answer the needling question,

"You

think the capitalists are going to give up without a fight?" the this

damnable thing was

that not

but also quite ordinary people,

how

Somewhere

really

—and

only the communists would ask

be voting for Franklin Roosevelt. quite sure

were

mere

many of whom would soon And the truth is, we weren't

to answer the question.

in the

middle of the party, and mostly from the

middle of the country, was a loose assortment of younger people

—

intellectuals, trade unionists

—not

so ideologically rigid as the

Socialists in the Thirties

Old Guard

or the younger Militants. Perhaps the most promising,

certainly the

wanted

ple

/ 37

most open-minded segment of the party,

a

movement

at

once

these peo-

and principled;

active, flexible,

and since they could not stomach the Old Guard, they went along with the Militants, though been a

little

of the

but

I

must confess it is

also

better if they

that

with regard to the

was

striking.

of the Militants

Not only

did the

as a repulsive sort

seriously.

creating a

treat

of quasi-Bolshevism;

was something

tion spoke for

its

own

this

generation

would not have

country a line of socialist continuity, so that each

this collision

to start as if

few of the problems

that

the socialists of the thirties:

The Soviet Union,

Fifty years

from the beginning,

have been avoided.

sketch, quite schematically, a

overwhelmed

Each genera-

portion of experience, and only if there

had been in

me

out

to be taken

The youth had entered the movement in the hope of new world, a new life, and now the old-timers came

along, grumbling about defeats, mistakes, betrayals.

1.

stress.

Old Guard

Norman Thomas booming

the credo of "socialism in our time"

Let

politics,

Socialist Party in the

found intolerable the enthusiasm of these naive young

comrades, their expectation that

might

had

phrasemaking

impossible to avoid at least some generational

clash in style

the ideas it

would have been

of "generational" interpretations of

suspicious

thirties

The

it

skeptical about the revolutionary

latter.

am

I

more

the

Communists, and the United Front

ago things looked

different: theories

of totalitarian-

ism had scarcely been heard; the myth of Soviet progress

still

found credence; hardly anyone would have challenged the claim that the tic

communists, for

part of the

left.

all their

destructiveness,

were an authen-

58 / Socialism and America

Socialists

viet regime.

were among the

Though Morris

propose that

as to

of the So-

earlier principled critics

had gone so

Hillquit, in 1920,

his party affiliate

far

with the Third International,

and Abe Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, had written enthusiastically about Lenin's

government, the Old Guard was by

now,

a decade or so later, shed

cow.

It

of any

Mos-

illusions regarding

opposed united fronts with the communists, distrusting

Moscow, their deceitful Old Guard had achieved a considerable

their regimentation, their submission to tactics.

By

1932 the

theoretical clarity about Stalinism,

its

leader Morris Hillquit

writing that the Soviet system "presupposes a dictatorship that

brooks no opposition

.

.

.

and

Not many people said this The left socialists tended, to

draw

political system,

A

grim

few

years, to waffle.

Some

years,

brilliant trade unionist

tried

society,

an experiment in planning, and

as

which they

few left-wing

in those

for a

between the economic base of Soviet

a line

which they applauded

ties.

maintained by force and terror."^

is

in 1932.

criticized for

socialists,

went

who

its

hungry for something

Leo Krzycki,

further.

its

lack of civil liber-

succeeded Hillquit

to adore

a not-very-

as Socialist

Party

chairman in 1933, praised Russia for having built herself

up from

a

weak and poverty-stricken nation to by concentrating on one principle

a

strong and prosperous one

the elimination of private profit.

.

.

.

Because their electorate was

uneducated and untrained in democratic methods, they had to exercise that control not only against the dispossessed aristocracy,

but against those members of the working

enough vision

to understand

Krzycki was not a fellow

But for Norman Thomas in reply:

who

had not had

what they were doing.

traveler, either

this

class

.

.

.^

openly or in disguise.

was simply too much. He wrote

Socialists in the Thirties

The average man

in the street or the factory

that [Krzycki's statement]

torship in Russia but

is

is

bound

not merely a justification for dicta-

on mighty dangerous ground when we give

liberals

—

—

to think

of the extraordinary terror which unques-

tionably has been directed against Russian radicals.

In a few^ years

/ 59

certainly sooner than a great

.

.

.

We

are

that impression.^

many American

the left-w^ing socialists shook off their illusions about

Haim Kan-

(Some, like their theoretician

the Stalin regime.

They came to understand that w^ith owns the entire economy, it if economic base could be severed from

torovich, never had any.)

regard to a country where the state is

a mistake to speak as

political system.

Years

Thomas admitted

with

later,

characteristic grace,

that "in 1932 [Hillquit]

judgment of what was happening

Norman

was nearer right

in Russia than

I

in his

was and

certainly than the Militants were."^

More

was the problem of the united

difficult

through the inspired

by

mocracy

is

late

1920s and the

Stalin's

the moderate

social

tactic

managed

usually

it

addressed.

(1929-33)

wing of fascism,"

of appealing to

from below,"

that

is,

to chip

Decommunist move-

the

as

socialist

"twins") and the equally

members

for unity against their

away

a

for "a united front

own

few leftward-leaning

merely antagonized the very people to

The madness of

—and

the

there are times

leaders.

whom

it

but

was

communist "Third Period"

when

a politics can be accurately

significant role in enabling Hitler to take it

This

socialists,

described only through the language of pathology

since

1930s,

the bizarre theory of "social fascism" (which

democracy and fascism

bizarre tactic

few years of the

inane discovery that "objectively. Social

ment had developed saw

first

All

front.

power

—played

in

a

Germany,

foreclosed the possibility of linking social democrats and

communists

in united action against the Nazis.

6o / Socialism and America

The communist methods reached Everyone on the

trian socialists

cHmax

— was my —by

stirred

of Europe under fascism

the tragedy

in early 1934.

initiation into

it

the resistance the Aus-

had put up against the attacks of the

government. The ity in

had been

left

a savage

fascist

Dollfuss

organized a demonstration of solidar-

socialists

Madison Square Garden on February

16,

but no sooner was

opened than a communist contingent proceeded to

the meeting

through organized chanting and booing. Only one

disrupt

make himself

speaker, Frank Crosswaith, a black socialist, could

heard, and in a burst of rage he cried out that the communists

were pigs "who will always remain pigs because of Communists to be

pigs.'"^

In

it is

in the nature

pandemonium and

disgrace, the

meeting had to be adjourned.

The

with shock. The American Civil

entire left responded

Liberties

Union put

up the meeting.

A

the

blame on the Communists for breaking

group of

intellectuals,

many of whom had

supported the communist presidential candidate in 1932

Dos

—John

Edmund Wilson, Meyer Schapiro, Lionel Trilling Communist Party an "open letter" of protest. The Old

Passos,

sent the

Guard

felt

"Ishmaels

human

.

vindicated, .

.

beings.

it

paper denouncing the communists .

.

.

as

with civilized

unfit to associate

."^ .

.

Yet the clamor for of the 1930s,

its

moral lepers

had

a united front continued. In the atmosphere

to.

During 1934 and 1935 the

socialists

were

moving leftward and the communists, entering their Popular Front period, were moving rightward, so that for a little while they seemed rather close to each other.

There was a genuine urgency behind the clamor for a united front. sas

Consider the feelings of the handful of socialists in Arkan-

and Tennessee,

who were

organize sharecroppers: didn't

trying, at the risk it

make

sense to

of

their lives, to

work with anyone

/ 6l

Socialists in the Thirties

sharing their immediate objectives, ries

StaHn advanced and

his

no matter which

New York

idiotic theo-

followers repeated?

Or

the socialists unionizing the automobile plants in Michigan: could

who were

they refuse out of hand to cooperate with communists

You

also trying to organize the industry?

should collaborate

as

individual unionists while their parties

separate ways; but, if logical, this ling.

And many

went

was not emotionally compel-

people feared a victory of fascism in the United

following

States

could say that they

its

victories in Europe.

Anytime we held

a

we would be peppered with questions What could we say? That the communists,

meeting during those years about united fronts. if

not by nature the "pigs" Frank Crosswaith had said they were,

held to a politics that denied legitimacy to any other

on the

left

and, indeed, required that

destroyed?

We

difficult to

persuade people of

Let us tive

visit a

Committee

tried to say that,

than

it

was

where

a

motion

to

more

far

fifty years later.

Execu-

Socialist Party's National

meeting of the in 1932

but in 1935

this truth

movement

movements be

other

all

meet with the com-

munists to discuss united fronts was defeated by a vote of six to five.

Here

are

comments made

at this session, all

of them,

I

think,

with a certain cogency: Morris Hillquit:

Such Communist proposals ... are insincere and treacherous. [Their] invitation to

form

with gratui-

a "united front" bristles

tous and deliberate slanders of our party.

.

.

.

Albert Sprague Coolidge: .

.

.

Sooner or

triumph over always be the

later a

way

this tragic last,

will be

found for

and paralyzing

rather than the

first,

split.

common .

.

.

sense to

We

to close the door.

should .

.

.

The

62 / Socialism and America younger generations on both

sides are

among

fraternize, disregarding the feud

showing tendencies to their elders.

Norman Thomas:

am

I

whether the Communists will undertake united

skeptical

action

on honorable

people,

it

terms.

But for

of our

the sake

must be made obvious that

it is

[the

.

.

younger

.

Communists]

who

sabotage the united front.^

Responsive to the sentiments of the younger

Thomas would create

socialists,

understood that a blunt rejection of the united front

He

dissatisfaction.

A

meant.

what he

therefore tried carefully to clarify

united front did not

mean

a fusion

of the two

parties,

or a joint program, or suspending intellectual criticism. All really

meant was cooperation on

specific issues

—

it

for instance,

efforts to protect civil liberties.

Once

the

communists

united front

grew more

debate between

1934, to

in

started,

certain realism in appraising

American

the

Garden, in which Browder was acerbic,

all

was

communist in

Madison Square

bland amiability and

weak

that

it

Thomas

cannot afford, eighteen

years after the revolution, to grant civil liberties to fact

of such

And

in 1936 there

and

socialist leaders

in the unions, and, parties.

a public

leader Earl

once even provoking the large communist contin-

gent by asking, "Is Russia so

Yet the mere

a

the idea of a

alluring. In 1936 there

Norman Thomas and

Browder, before twenty thousand people

more

move toward

politics,

a debate signified a

were some private

talks

thaw

its

citizens?"

in relations.

between communist

about joint electoral campaigns, cooperation it

was even mooted, unification of the two

Nothing came of the

first

of

these, a little

of the second,

and the third was a mere pipe dream. For there were too

many

Socialists in the Thirties

And

deep divisions of principle. the socialists, going

was the additional

were declining into

left,

communists, about to don the Front,

there

/ 63

fact that

a sect, while the

masquerade of the Popular

brilliant

would soon be contemptuous of

the scatter of Thomas's

followers.

Might

the socialists have coped with such problems?

Only

if

they had had a strong, principled understanding of Stalinism, and

been able to inculcate

this

among

their

members, could they have

either withstood the appeals for a united front or entered into

without

loss.

to gain an understanding socialists its,

—

of Stalinism. Precisely the virtues of the

their relative openness

their free-and-easy styles

a better-disciplined rival.

front were not at

all

informed comrades

—made

their democratic hab-

for weakness in coping with

bad; but he lacked a strong cohort of

who

could cut a path between outright rejec-

So the

socialists lost

who

opposed and among those

Complexity of

of mind,

Thomas's thoughts about the united

tion and mindless acceptance.

who

one

But, like most other people, they were only starting

among

those

favored the united front.

humane

vision, intellectual doubt,

tolerance are

often a handicap in politics.

2.

Third

Parties, Coalitions,

and Splendid

Isolation

All through the 1930s there kept appearing local labor and

farmer-labor parties, or third parties, expressing radical senti-

ments but refusing the Marxist options. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, these

new

parties

were

substantial,

sometimes upsetting

saw such devel-

the traditional two-party system.

Most

opments

"old capitalist parties" were in

as positive signs that the

socialists

trouble.

How,

then, should socialists respond? Enter the third parties

64 / Socialism and America

as

an organized group in order to maintain a distinct identity?

how

That was

things

were done

where the Labour

in England,

Party was a membership organization yet allowed other organizations to affiliate with

but these local American parties re-

it;

jected this kind of structure. dissolve themselves into these

individual the

members would help keep

main options, though

keep

Or should the socialists simply new parties while hoping their

strictly apart,

on

truly socialist. Before

a

ground

the

the idea alive? These

minority

felt that socialists

however, turn back just a

little

were

still

not

further, let

me,

that the options

examining these views any

to an earlier historical

During the Debsian period, the

socialists

were

should

moment.

had accumulated

some strength in the Northwest, attracting to their party a number of populists and agrarian radicals. In 191 5 the North Dakota socialists helped organize the Nonpartisan League, which had a quite radical program, calling for the nationalization of railroads and grain elevators.

League captured the

ment

But

Four years

later,

Republican Party and

won

when

then, in part because

disintegrated. Similar

of

movements

its

success, the

move-

arose in the states of

Montana and Washington, merging with or taking over local It

Democratic

as

that socialists in the

to these strong yet ephemeral

Northwest should be

movements, and inevitable

well that once these movements peaked, the

suffer.

They

lost a

the

parties.

was inevitable

drawn

the

statewide

introduced a number of reforms favorable to

office, its leaders

the farmers.

local

good

part of their

socialists

membership

should

to the populist

movements; they sincerely hoped the movements would succeed yet were skeptical of their ability to endure. Socialists are people

who

take the long

separates

view

—

in

America they have

to;

and that alone

them from most other Americans engaged

in politics.

/ 6