councilor.org
| Source | Dave Anderson |
| Date | 00/06/08/10:59 |
| from the British business magazine The Economist....
------------------------------------------------------- Why there is no socialism in Americahttp://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/mo8052.html Blame the steaks IT DIDN'T HAPPEN HERE: WHY SOCIALISM FAILED IN THE UNITED STATES. By Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks. W.W. Norton; 384 pages; $26.95 and £19.95 As American labour unions attract hundreds of thousands of new members, an age-old question is being asked once more IN 1906 a German sociologist, Werner Sombart, published a book entitled "Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?", which was notable for its splendid conclusion that "on rafts of beef and apple pie, socialist utopias of every description go down to destruction." This conclusion is too simple for Seymour Martin Lipset and his co-author, Gary Marks. There has been, for one thing, as they show, quite a lot of socialism in the United States, even if it never attained the influence social democracy achieved at different times in Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. In New York city, in German-settled Wisconsin, in Scandinavian-settled Minnesota, in the Pacific north-west (especially among the Oregon Finns) and among Dutch farmers-turned-industrial-workers in Reading, Pennsylvania, socialist parties and socialist candidates could and did attract substantial support over many decades. Yet in the Great Depression, when the moment arrived, America's socialists muffed it. Norman Thomas, a patrician socialist leader who saw the issue as Socialism v Capitalism, insisted on standing against Franklin Roosevelt, and won only 187,000 votes nationwide. The unions turned away from socialism and followed FDR within the Democratic Party. Their refusal to endorse the second world war completed their discomfiture. As for the American communists, for all their success in infiltrating the intelligentsia and the leadership of some industrial unions, their appeal was largely limited to the foreign-born and to intellectuals: in the late 1930s, as much as 44% of the membership were white-collar workers. In "It Didn't Happen Here", Messrs Lipset and Marks show that this was neither predictable nor inevitable. America had been expected to turn socialist precisely because it was the most developed country industrially. Foreign observers, stretching as far back as de Tocqueville, cited the high levels of social egalitarianism and social mobility, together with the absence of feudal legacies such as fixed social classes, as reasons for making the same prediction. Yet, even if this is counter-intuitive, American socialists were historically more Marxist, not less so, than their brothers in Britain, Australia or anywhere else except Russia. They were also more pugnacious. Victor Berger, a pragmatic early socialist leader in Milwaukee, argued more than once that "every socialist should have a good rifle and 50 cartridges." The authors painstakingly test many theories that have been put forward to explain why America did not follow the social-democratic pattern. They dismiss the idea that the failure of socialist parties was a special case of the failure of third parties generally. The character of the American political system-divided, checked and balanced as well as federal-may explain the general weakness of third parties, they argue, but it does not explain the specific failure of socialism. A more plausible explanation is the division between socialist parties and organised labour. Why were these two organisations, both theoretically devoted to the welfare of the working people, "locked into intense mutual hostility"? One reason, the authors suggest, was that because manhood suffrage was established by the late 1820s, earlier than in any European country, the main political parties had already staked out their claim to represent the working man. In addition, they say, an "anti-statist strain" in American culture led labour to oppose precisely the practical reforms labour parties campaigned for in Britain, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The authors do not say so, but the roots of that anti-statism were to be found both in the original colonial resentment against royal government and in various ethnic traditions: Irish hostility to government by British Protestants; German liberal, and Catholic, suspicion of the Prussian state; Russian and especially Jewish fear of Tsarist militarism; Slav and Italian hatred of foreign rulers. The experience of immigrants before they ever arrived in America fed the primal suspicion of government. Immigration was also a factor, though here Messrs Lipset and Marks miss the point. "Only a minority of immigrants were socialists," they rightly point out, "but for extended periods of time most socialists were immigrants." True enough. But they do not fully explain why immigration made American workers conservative. One reason was that immigrants and especially their children were exposed to socialising influences far more powerful than any socialist ones. From the moment they stepped off the boat they were exposed to propaganda about the superiority of "the American way", an ideological battering that left little room for communitarianism as opposed to individualism, or for equality of condition as a value that might be preferred to equality of opportunity. Another was that immigrants were predisposed to accept this teaching. They needed, after all, to justify the decision to leave their homeland and the sacrifices that had to be made before and after the journey. The second generation, especially, were determined to be as good Americans as those who had arrived before them. And finally the immigrants were divided, where the working classes of Europe had been united within their own ethnic and language groups. The Irish were divided from the British Protestants, the Germans from the Jews, each European immigrant group from its neighbours; and Mr Lipset and Mr Marks give many instances of how ethnicity defined both socialist parties and their opponents. Above all, white immigrants were in competition with, and desperate to distinguish themselves from, non-white fellow workers, African-Americans-but also, on the west coast, Asians. In general, of course, immigrants were better off than if they had stayed at home. On the whole, that remains true today, though the comparison with traditional emigrant countries, such as Italy and Ireland, has narrowed. It is important to remember the circumstances in which international income comparisons came to be made in "purchasing-power parities". This measure, which dates back to before the first world war, became widely used at precisely the moment when unadjusted northern-European incomes came closest to catching up with or, in the case of Scandinavia, overtaking American ones. Mr Lipset and Mr Marks have the candour to admit (and it is this that distinguishes their version of American exceptionalism from mere flag-wagging) that America has paid a hard, quantifiable price for missing out on the social-democratic experiment. They demonstrate that, if America has remained the wealthiest country in the world, it is also, by many incontrovertible measures, the most unequal of the rich countries. Though far behind, the next most unequal countries are those that have recently followed the American model-Britain and Australia. American workers, they conclude, were not able to shape American culture "as a counterweight to individualism and anti-statism". But, the authors say, "the seemingly universal shift to support for capitalism and the free market may be of short duration." New movements and new ideologies can be expected to appear, either because capitalism will be seen to fail economically, or because it cannot appeal to idealism. Will it be Ralph Nader's Greens? Or will some future Sombart be asking, "Why is there no Green party in the United States?" |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho