That's the question.
There is no Socialist, Communist or Labor Party in the United States. Those parties are what pass for left in other countries, and every country that allows them has them. Except the United States. In the US, liberal Democrats are the left. In the
UK, or
Germany, they are the center. In
Japan they are the right, although their policies are little different from those of American liberal Democrats. Even Canada has Liberals in the center, Conservatives on the right, and the Socialist International member
New Democratic Party on the left. That's what is meant when it is said that the
United States is a Center-Right country. Not that the American left can't take power, but that the American left is anyone else's center.
"
Here's the latest book about it.
I. DEFINITIONThe first thing we need to do is define "Socialist" in this context. Just to be fair, even to the crazy wingnuts who insist that liberalism = Socialism = Communism = Naziism, we will take a very broad, multi-definition approach.
1. Any member party of the
Socialist International qualifies as Socialist. Any member of such a Party would qualify as a Socialist. That makes everyone from Nelson Mandela to Tony Blair a Socialist. Of course, in the context of the British Labor Party a "Socialist" is something more, but I don't speak British, and you probably don't either. D-Kos certainly isn't written in British.
2. If that's not broad enough for you, let's include anyone who self-identifies as Socialist. That includes Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Socialism, even though he and his party aren't in the Socialist International. Just to make the wingnuts happy we can even include Hitler here, despite the fact that the German Social Democrats, the real German Socialist Party, was the one and only political party that actually voted against Hitler taking power in Germany. That even includes the Communists, who commonly denounced the Socialists as "Social Fascists" or worse. It's only in the United States that "Socialist" is an epithet instead of a description, and where "Red States" are on the right, not the left.
II. THE REAL AMERICAN SOCIALISTSOnce upon a time, there was a real
Socialist Party in the United States. In 1912 they got 6% of the vote for President, elected two Congressional Representatives, and had dozens of mayors from Reading, Pennsylvania to Berkeley, California. This story has to be about what happened to them. They began declining, either in 1912 (when they purged their left wing), or in 1917 (when two Communist Parties split off) or in the 1930s (they had a brief resurgence in the Depression and got 2.2% of the presidential vote in 1932), but by the 1950s, instead of fusing with the Democrats as the Populists had, the Socialists had dwindled into insignificance, and no longer bothered with their presidential campaign. The Party suffered a three way split over the Vietnam War, but remained insignificant and relatively unknown to today. The graveyard of third parties in
Jon Stewart's America: A Guide to Democracy Inaction ignores them, though it includes the Anti-Masons, and even the Communists, who never reached anywhere near the size of the Socialists.
III. WHY THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT THE SOCIALISTS (a brief aside):It should be obvious that the Democrats are not the Socialists by now, if you hadn't figured that out from being a Democrat yourself. However, here's further proof if your wingnut friends and relatives don't get it.
When the Socialists split three ways over the Vietnam War, two of the successor groups, the Social Democrats U.S.A. (
SDUSA) and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC, which later merged with the New American Movement to form the Democratic Socialists of America,
DSA) thought the Democratic Party should become the Socialist Party in the United States. They were both attracting some support back in the '80s. Congressman Ron Dellums ("Berkeley's Red Congressman" to the Republicans) joined DSA, while Senator Moynihan of New York would address SDUSA meetings and talk about how we had to take back the word "Socialism" from the Communists. But he never actually joined SDUSA.
Moderate Democrats, led by the then unknown governor of the obscure state of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, were alarmed. They formed an organization you're all familiar with, the Democratic Leadership Council, (
DLC) to counter the Socialist argument that the Democrats should move left and declare themselves the Socialist Party in the United States. Clinton rode his DLC and its opposition to Socialism all the way to the White House. The Democratic Socialists are today totally marginalized, and there's a good possibility that the Social Democrats don't even exist. Of course it didn't stop a certain Lush Windbag from calling Clinton a Socialist, but that just shows how marginal the real Socialists are from the American political conversation. I think everyone here knows the DLC, but their former nemeses are largely forgotten. Dems are blue, not red. (Thanks to
John Yossarian for reminding us that the DSA still exists. I think most people even here were unaware of them.)
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont did say, in response to Amy Goodman's direct question on DemocracyNow, that he considered himself a Democratic Socialist, but he runs as an independent, just like Joe Lieberman. The Dems don't run anyone against him because otherwise the Republicans might take his seat. He caucuses with the Democrats, again like Joe Lieberman does, because, hey, who's he gonna caucus with? Himself? But he's not really a Democrat. Just ask him. Or ask the Democrats. Especially the DLC.
V. SO WHAT WAS THIS SOCIALIST PARTY, ANYWAY?Populists who wouldn’t “fuse”?A. Yes and no. Some Populists who wouldn't fuse with the Democrats did wind up in the Socialist Party, but others left politics altogether. If it had been the anti-fusion wing of the Populists it would have been stronger in North Carolina, where the Populists were cooperating with the Republicans rather than the Democrats. Although the Socialist Party did have strength among tenant farmers it was more of a working people's party than the Populists, who were basically an agrarian movement.
“Debs for president” movement?A. Again, yes and no. Debs was a charismatic speaker who attracted strong personal support. Many people say he created and dominated the party the way George Wallace did the American Independent Party or H. Ross Perot the Reform Party. Then without Debs the Socialists collapsed. But there was always more to the Socialist Party than Debs. They didn't even nominate him in 1916 (and went down in the presidential polls). He had to fight with the other tendencies in the party for his own ideas. And Norman Thomas was a famous national figure running as the Socialist Party's presidential candidate for many decades afterwards.
A branch of the German Social Democratic Party?A. Again, yes and no. The Wisconsin Party, centered in Milwaukee, could well be characterized that way, and the Party had so many German immigrant members that they were vilified as agents of the Kaiser for refusing to support American entry into World War I. But there were many such immigrant language federations in the Socialist Party, not just Germans, and there were significant groups of native-born Americans in it. The Party got its highest percentage of votes for president in 1912 in Oklahoma and Nevada, neither then known for its German immigrant population.
Extreme of Progressive movement?A. Again, yes and no. The moderate wing of the SP, the so-called "slowcialists", rubbed up against the left wing of the progressive movement. But there were real philosophical differences between them. Walter Lippmann worked on a Socialist campaign in 1912, and wrote a famous letter asking what was the difference between Socialists and Democrats if the party abandoned its ultimate goal of transforming the economy. He never got an answer and switched to the Democrats.
“Wild west” near anarchist miners?A. Again, yes and no. The left wing of the Socialist Party was the IWW, centered in the west and with a core of hard-rock miners. The IWW itself was split between Socialists and Anarchists so badly they passed a resolution telling political and anti-political activists to shut up during union meetings. The right wing of the Socialist Party decided this was an anarchist takeover of the IWW and used it as an excuse to purge the "Wobblies" from the Party. But the western, nearly anarchist wing of Socialism was still very strong.
different parties in every state?A. Yeah, I have to go along with that one. It's often said that the United States doesn't have two national parties, only two coalitions of fifty different state parties that get together once every four years to fight. The Socialists were no different. The Oklahoma sodbuster tenant farmers were very different from the brewery workers in Milwaukee. The New York Jewish Socialists were very different from miners in Goldfield Nevada. Once every four years they got together to nominate someone for president, who was usually Gene Debs. But not always.
They were all of the above - and probably more!V. SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS SOCIALIST PARTY, ANYWAY?1. America's two party system? Maybe the fact that the presidential system and one seat constituencies forces the American political landscape into two parties caused the Socialists to go the way of every other third party since the Civil War? Canada has a Socialist Party (the New Democrats) but they have a three party system. So do most European countries, with a liberal party, a conservative party and a socialist or labor party.
But why not a two party system with Socialists and Liberals, like Japan had with its
1955 system ? Some people argue that the real question is not the weakness of the American left, but the strength of the right. Without an established church or feudal privilege to defend the US right is unburdened by any of the baggage that helped the left grow in other countries.
The relatively high US standard of living? Yeah, right, like that's still true. < / sarcasm> Sure, it was once, but that was then. This is now. Besides, the relative gap between classes is greater in the US than in any other developed country. So I can't believe this explanation. I really wonder if I can take it seriously.
Social divisions within the working class? Americans are divided by religion, race, ethnicity, region, etc. etc. etc. The working class could never unite on a socialist platform because they were more interested in ethnic and other forms of identification, and the ethnic vote is still more important than any class consciousness.
Sure, in relation to European countries and Japan, but what about Australia (where the division between Irish and English settlers over the Republic question is still important) or Brazil, which is even more ethnically diverse than the US is? I don't think this explanation holds water either.
A narrow and weak base in the labor unions? In most countries with Socialist parties there is a strong relationship between the Socialist party and the labor unions. In Britain the unions set up the Labor Party. In Germany the Social Democratic Party set up the labor unions. In the US there have been many Socialists in the labor movement, but
other labor leaders have been downright hostile to Socialism. The first union boss who ever became president of the United States was Ronald Reagan, who got his political start in the Screen Actors' Guild, a union with strong right and left wings.
But what's cause here and what's effect? Is Socialism so weak in the US because unions don't support it, or are so many unions hostile to Socialism because Socialism is so weak in the US, and they don't want to be associated with it?
Foreigners are stupid! Don't laugh! This is actually proposed as a serious explanation. European workers were illiterate, and had to ask leftist intellectuals to write down their demands for them. The intellectuals added something at the end about socialization of the means of production, and Socialism was born out of this marriage of convenience between illiterate workers and leftist intellectuals. In the US universal primary education was traditional, workers could write their own demands, and demands for socialization of the means of production never occurred to anyone and never entered the workers' demands.
This explanation is so stupid I'm not even going to bother to refute it. But believe it or not, there is another equally stupid explanation that gets around.
Americans are stupid! I'm not even going to mess with this one. Help yourself in the comments.
VI. CONCLUSIONThe brief answer is I don't know either. I do feel strongly that the explanation should not be sought in something about American national character. After all, there was a Socialist Party in the US. It was very American (pragmatic, organized as a coalition of State Parties, and not really some foreign excrescence on the body politic). Maybe they shot themselves in the foot with the purge of the left in 1912, maybe they couldn't overcome corporate power and funding, maybe it's just a coincidence, and why do humans have to find deep meaning in everything?
You tell me. Then we'll write it up and make a fortune.
